If we now turn to Greece, we find, even in the infancy of its religion, not the faintest trace of any thing approaching to this. For in Greece, the causes of fear being less abundant, the expression of terror was less common. The Greeks, therefore, were by no means disposed to incorporate into their religion those feelings of dread natural to the Hindus. The tendency of Asiatic civilization was to widen the distance between men and their deities; the tendency of Greek civilization was to diminish it. Thus it is, that in Hindostan all the gods had something monstrous about them; as Vishnu with four hands, Brahma with five heads, and the like.229 But the gods of Greece were always represented in forms entirely human.230 In that country, no artist would have gained attention, if he had presumed to portray them in any other shape. He might make them stronger than men, he might make them more beautiful; but still they must be men. The analogy between God and man, which excited the religious feelings of the Greeks, would have been fatal to those of the Hindus.

This difference between the artistic expressions of the two religions, was accompanied by an exactly similar difference between their theological traditions. In the Indian books, the imagination is exhausted in relating the feats of the gods; and the more obviously impossible any achievement is, the greater the pleasure with which it was ascribed to them. But the Greek gods had not only human forms, but also human attributes, human pursuits, and human tastes.231 The men of Asia, to whom

pare the curious account of an image supposed to represent Mahadeo, in Journal Asiatique, I. série, vol. i. p. i. 354, Paris, 1822.

229 Ward on the Religion of the Hindoos, vol. i. p. 35; Transac. of Society of Bombay, vol. i. p. 223. Compare the gloss in the Dabistan, vol ii. p. 202.

230 The Greek gods were formed like men, with greatly increased powers and faculties, and acted as men would do if so circumstanced, but with a dignity and energy suited to their nearer approach to perfection. The Hindu gods, on the other hand, though endued with human passions, have always something monstrous in their appearance, and wild and capricious in their conduct. They are of various colours, red, yellow, and blue; some have twelve heads, and most have four hands. They are often enraged without a cause, and reconciled without a motive." Elphinstone's History of India, pp. 96, 97. See also Erskine on the Temple of Elephanta, in Transac. of Soc. of Bombay, vol. i. p. 246; and the Dabistan, vol. i. p. cxi.

231 "In the material polytheism of other leading ancient nations, the Egyptians, for example, the incarnation of the Deity was chiefly, or exclusively, confined to animals, monsters, or other fanciful emblems. In Greece, on the other

hand, it was an almost necessary result of the spirit and grace with which the deities were embodied in human forms, that they should also be burdened with human interests and passions. Heaven, like earth, had its courts and palaces, its trades and professions, its marriages, intrigues, divorces." Mure's History of the Literature of Ancient Greece, vol. i. pp. 471, 472. So, too, Tennemann (Geschichte der Philosophie, vol. iii. p. 419): "Diese Götter haben Menschengestalt. Haben die Götter aber nicht nur menschliche Gestalt, sondern auch einen menschlichen Körper, so sind sie als Menschen auch denselben Unvollkommenheiten, Krankheiten und dem Tode unterworfen; dieses streitet mit dem Begriffe" i. e. of

every object of nature was a source of awe, acquired such habits of reverence, that they never dared to assimilate their own actions with the actions of their deities. The men of Europe, encouraged by the safety and inertness of the material world, did not fear to strike a parallel, from which they would have shrunk had they lived amid the dangers of a tropical country. It is thus, that the Greek divinities are so different from those of the Hindus, that in comparing them we seem to pass from one creation into another. The Greeks generalized their observations upon the human mind, and then applied them to the gods.232 The coldness of women was figured in Diana; their beauty and sensuality in Venus; their pride in Juno; their accomplishments in Minerva. To the ordinary avocations of the gods, the same principle was applied. Neptune was a sailor; Vulcan was a smith; Apollo was sometimes a fiddler, sometimes a poet, sometimes a keeper of oxen. As to Cupid, he was a wanton boy, who played with his bow and arrows; Jupiter was an amorous and good-natured king; while Mercury was indifferently represented either as a trust-worthy messenger, or else as a common and notorious thief.

Precisely the same tendency to approximate human forces towards superhuman ones, is displayed in another peculiarity of the Greek religion. I mean, that in Greece we for the first time meet with hero-worship, that is, the deification of mortals. According to the principles already laid down, this could not be expected in a tropical civilization, where the Aspects of Nature filled Man with a constant sense of his own incapacity. It is, therefore, natural that it should form no part of the ancient Indian religion;233 neither was it known to the Egyptians,234 to the Persians, 235 nor, so far as I am aware, to the Arabi

Epicurus. Compare Grote's History of Greece, vol. i, p. 596: "The mythical age was peopled with a mingled aggregate of gods, heroes, and men, so confounded together that it was often impossible to distinguish to which class any individual name belonged." See also the complaint of Xenophanes, in Müller's Hist. of Lit. of Greece, London, 1856, p. 251.

232 The same remark applies to beauty of form, which they first aimed at in the statues of men, and then brought to bear upon the statues of the gods. This is well put in Mr. Grote's important work, History of Greece, vol. iv. pp. 133, 134,

edit. 1847.

233 "But the worship of deified heroes is no part of that system." Colebrooke on the Vedas, in Asiatic Researches, vol. viii. p. 495.

234 Mackay's Religious Development, vol. ii. p. 53, Lond. 1850. Compare Wilkinson's Ancient Egyptians, vol. iv. pp. 148, 318; and Matter, Histoire de l'Ecole d'Alexandrie, vol. i. p. 2; the "culte des grands hommes," which afterwards arose in Alexandria (Matter, vol. i. p 54), must have been owing to Greek influence.

235 There are no indications of it in the Zendavesta; and Herodotus says, that the Persians were unlike the Greeks, in so far as they disbelieved in a god having a human form; book i. chap. cxxxi. vol. i. p. 308: oùк àv@рwπuquéas évóμioav Toùs θεοὺς, κατάπερ οἱ Ἕλληνες εἶναι.

ans.2

236 But in Greece, Man being less humbled, and, as it were, less eclipsed, by the external world, thought more of his own powers, and human nature did not fall into that discredit in which it elsewhere sank. The consequence was, that the deification of mortals was a recognized part of the national religion at a very early period in the history of Greece ;237 and this has been found so natural to Europeans, that the same custom was afterwards renewed with eminent success by the Romish Church. Other circumstances, of a very different character, are gradually eradicating this form of idolatry; but its existence is worth observing, as one of the innumerable illustrations of the way in which European civilization has diverged from all those that preceded it.2: 238

It is thus, that in Greece every thing tended to exalt the dignity of Man, while in India every thing tended to depress it.239 To sum up the whole, it may be said that the Greeks had more respect for human powers; the Hindus for superhuman. The first dealt more with the known and available; the other with the unknown and mysterious.240 And by a parity of reasoning, the imagination, which the Hindus, being oppressed by the pomp and majesty of nature, never sought to control, lost its supremacy in the little peninsula of ancient Greece. In Greece, for the first time in the history of the world, the imagination was, in some degree, tempered and confined by the understanding. Not that its strength was impaired, or its vitality diminished. It was broken in and tamed; its exuberance was checked, its

296 I am not acquainted with any evidence connecting this worship with the old Arabian religion; and it was certainly most alien to the spirit of Mohammedanism.

237 Mure's History of Literature of Greece, vol. i. pp. 28, 500, vol. ii. p. 402: very good remarks on a subject handled unsatisfactorily by Coleridge; Literary Remains, vol. i. p. 185. Thirlwall (History of Greece, vol. i. p. 207) admits that "the views and feelings out of which it (the worship of heroes) arose, seem to be clearly discernible in the Homeric poems." Compare Cudworth's Intellectual System, vol. ii. pp. 226, 372. In the Cratylus, chap. xxxiii., Socrates is represented as asking, Ovк oloba öτi μídeo oi hpwes; Platonis Opera, vol. iv. p. 227, edit. Bekker, Lond. 1826. And in the next century, Alexander obtained for his friend Hephæstion the right of being "worshipped as a hero." Grote's History of Greece, vol. xii. p. 339.

238 The adoration of the dead, and particularly the adoration of martyrs, was one great point of opposition between the orthodox church and the Manichæans (Beausobre, Histoire Critique de Manichée, vol. i. p. 316, vol. ii. pp. 651, 669); and it is easy to understand how abhorrent such a practice must have been to the Persian heretics.

239 M. Cousin, in his eloquent and ingenious work (Histoire de la Philosophie, II. série, vol. i. pp. 183-187), has some judicious observations on what he calls "l'époque de l'infini" of the East, contrasted with that "du fini," which began in Europe. But as to the physical causes of this, he only admits the grandeur of nature, overlooking those natural elements of mystery and of danger by which religious sentiments were constantly excited.

240 A learned orientalist says, that no people have made such efforts as the Hindus "to solve, exhaust, comprehend, what is insolvible, inexhaustible, incomprehensible." Troyer's Preliminary Discourse on the Dabistan, vol. i. p. cviii

follies were chastised. But that its energy remained, we have ample proof in those productions of the Greek mind which have survived to our own time. The gain, therefore, was complete; since the inquiring and sceptical faculties of the human understanding were cultivated, without destroying the reverential and poetic instincts of the imagination. Whether or not the balance was accurately adjusted, is another question; but it is certain that the adjustment was more nearly arrived at in Greece than in any previous civilization. There can, I think, be little doubt that, notwithstanding what was effected, too much authority was left to the imaginative faculties, and that the purely reasoning ones did not receive, and never have received, sufficient attention. Still, this does not affect the great fact, that the Greek literature is the first in which this deficiency was somewhat remedied, and in which there was a deliberate and systematic attempt to test all opinions by their consonance with human reason, and thus vindicate the right of Man to judge for himself on matters which are of supreme and incalculable importance.

I have selected India and Greece as the two terms of the preceding comparison, because our information respecting those countries is most extensive, and has been most carefully arranged. But every thing we know of the other tropical civilizations, confirms the views I have advocated respecting the effects produced by the Aspects of Nature. In Central America, extensive excavations have been made; and what has been brought to light proves that the national religion was, like that of India, a system of complete and unmitigated terror. 242 Neither there, nor in

241 This is noticed by Tennemann, who, however, has not attempted to ascertain the cause: "Die Einbildungskraft des Griechen war schöpferisch, sie schuf in seinem Innern neue Ideenwelten; aber er wurde doch nie verleitet, die idealische Welt mit der wirklichen zu verwechseln, weil sie immer mit einem richtigen Verstande und gesunder Beurtheilungskraft verbunden war." Geschichte der Philosophie, vol. i. p. 8; and vol. vi. p. 490, he says, "Bei allen diesen Mängeln und Fehlern sind doch die Griechen die einzige Nation der alten Welt, welche Sinn für Wissenschaft hatte, und zu diesem Behufe forschte. Sie haben doch die Bahn gebrochen, und den Weg zur Wissenschaft geebnet." To the same effect, Sprengel, Histoire de la Médecine, vol. i. p. 215. And on this difference between the Eastern and the European mind, see Matter, Histoire du Gnosticisme, vol. i. pp. 18, 233, 234. So, too, Kant (Logik, in Kant's Werke, vol. i. p. 350), "Unter allen Völkern haben also die Griechen erst angefangen zu philosophiren. Denn sie haben zuerst versucht, nicht an dem Leitfaden der Bilder die Vernunfterkenntnisse zu cultiviren, sondern in abstracto; statt dass die anderen Volker sich die Begriffe immer nur durch Bilder in concreto verständlich zu machen suchten."

242 Thus, of one of the idols at Copan, "The intention of the sculptor seems to have been to excite terror." Stephens's Central America, vol. i. p. 152; at p. 159, "The form of sculpture most generally used was a death's head." At Mayapan (vol. iii. p. 133), “representations of human figures, or animals with hideous features and expressions, in producing which the skill of the artist seems to have been expended;" and again, p. 412, “unnatural and grotesque faces."

Mexico, nor in Peru, nor in Egypt, did the people desire to represent their deities in human forms, or ascribe to them human attributes. Even their temples are huge buildings, often con structed with great skill, but showing an evident wish to impress the mind with fear, and offering a striking contrast to the lighter and smaller structures which the Greeks employed for religious purposes. Thus, even in the style of architecture do we see the same principle at work; the dangers of the tropical civilization being more suggestive of the infinite, while the safety of the European civilization was more suggestive of the finite. To follow out the consequences of this great antagonism, it would be necessary to indicate how the infinite, the imaginative, the synthetic, and the deductive, are all connected; and are opposed, on the other hand, by the finite, the sceptical, the analytic, and the inductive. A complete illustration of this, would carry me beyond the plan of this Introduction, and would perhaps exceed the resources of my own knowledge; and I must now leave to the candour of the reader what I am conscious is but an imperfect sketch, but what may, nevertheless, suggest to him materials for future thought, and, if I might indulge the hope, may open to historians a new field, by reminding them that every where the hand of Nature is upon us, and that the history of the human mind can only be understood by connecting with it the history and the aspects of the material universe.

NOTE 36 to p. 44.

As these views have a social and economical importance quite independent of their physiological value, I will endeavour, in this note, to fortify them still further, by showing that the connexion between carbonized food and the respiratory functions may be illustrated by a wider survey of the animal kingdom.

The gland most universal among the different classes of animals is the liver; and its principal business is to relieve the system of its superfluous carbon, which it accomplishes by secreting bile, a highly carbonized fluid. Now, the connexion between this process and the respiratory functions is highly curious. For if we take a general view of animal life, we shall find that the liver and lungs are nearly always compensatory; that is to say, when one organ is small and inert, the other is large

"The most constant gland in the animal kingdom is the liver." Grant's Comp. Anat. p. 576. See also Béclard, Anat. Gen. p. 18, and Burdach, Traité de Physiol. vol. ix. p. 580. Burdach says, "Il existe dans presque tout le règne animal;" and the latest researches have detected the rudiments of a liver even in the Entozoa and Rotifera. Rymer Jones's Animal Kingdom, 1855, p. 183, and Owen's Invertebrata, 1855, p. 104.

Until the analysis made by Demarçay in 1837, hardly any thing was known of the composttion of bile; but this accomplished chemist ascertained that its essential constituent is choleate of soda, and that the choleic acid contains nearly sixty-three per cent. of carbon. Compare Thomson's Animal Chemistry, pp. 59, 60, 412, 602, with Simon's Chemistry, vol. ii. pp. 17-21.