-no more absurd
than twenty similar guesses on record. Try to imagine the gradual
genesis of such myths as the Egyptian scarabaeus and egg, or the Hindoo
theory that the world stood on an elephant, the elephant on a tortoise,
the tortoise on that infinite note of interrogation which, as some one
expresses it, underlies all physical speculations, and judge: must they
not have arisen in some such fashion as that which I have pointed out?

This, I say, would be the culminating point of the wasp-worship, which
had sprung up out of bodily fear of being stung.

But times might come for it in which it would go through various changes,
through which every superstition in the world, I suppose, has passed or
is doomed to pass.

The wasp-men might be conquered, and possibly eaten, by a stronger tribe
than themselves. What would be the result? They would fight valiantly
at first, like wasps. But what if they began to fail? Was not the wasp-
king angry with them? Had not he deserted them? He must be appeased; he
must have his revenge. They would take a captive, and offer him to the
wasps. So did a North American tribe, in their need, some forty years
ago; when, because their maize-crops failed, they roasted alive a captive
girl, cut her to pieces, and sowed her with their corn. I would not tell
the story, for the horror of it, did it not bear with such fearful force
on my argument. What were those Red Men thinking of? What chain of
misreasoning had they in their heads when they hit on that as a device
for making the crops grow? Who can tell? Who can make the crooked
straight, or number that which is wanting? As said Solomon of old, so
must we--"The foolishness of fools is folly." One thing only we can say
of them, that they were horribly afraid of famine, and took that means of
ridding themselves of their fear.

But what if the wasp-tribe had no captives? They would offer slaves.
What if the agony and death of slaves did not appease the wasps? They
would offer their fairest, their dearest, their sons and their daughters,
to the wasps; as the Carthaginians, in like strait, offered in one day
200 noble boys to Moloch, the volcano-god, whose worship they had brought
out of Syria; whose original meaning they had probably forgotten; of whom
they only knew that he was a dark and devouring being, who must be
appeased with the burning bodies of their sons and daughters. And so the
veil of fancy would be lifted again, a