elements,
and treating not of Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades, but of Air, Water, Fire.
The destruction of theological conceptions led irresistibly to the
destruction of religious practices. To divinities whose existence he
denied, the philosopher ceased to pray. Of what use were sacrificial
offerings and entreaties directed to phantasms of the imagination? but
advantages might accrue from the physical study of the impersonal
elements.

[Sidenote: Inevitable destruction of Greek religious ideas]

Greek religion contained within itself the principles of its own
destruction. It is for the sake of thoroughly appreciating this that I
have been led into a detail of what some of my readers may be disposed
to regard as idle and useless myths. Two circumstances of inevitable
occurrence insured the eventual overthrow of the whole system; they were
geographical discovery and the rise of philosophical criticism. Our
attention is riveted by the fact that, two thousand years later, the
same thing again occurred on a greater scale.

[Sidenote: by geographical discovery.]

As to the geographical discovery, how was it possible that all the
marvels of the Mediterranean and Black Seas, the sorcerers, enchanters,
giants, and monsters of the deep, should survive when those seas were
daily crossed in all directions? How was it possible that the notion of
a flat earth, bounded by the horizon and bordered by the circumfluous
ocean, could maintain itself when colonies were being founded in Gaul,
and the Phoenicians were bringing tin from beyond the Pillars of
Hercules? Moreover, it so happened that many of the most astounding
prodigies were affirmed to be in the track which circumstances had now
made the chief pathway of commerce. Not only was there a certainty of
the destruction of mythical geography as thus presented on the plane of
the earth looking upward to day; there was also an imminent risk, as
many pious persons foresaw and dreaded, that what had been asserted as
respects the interior, or the other face looking downward into night,
would be involved in the ruin too. Well, therefore, might they make the
struggle they did for the support of the ancient doctrine, taking the
only course possible to them, of converting what had been affirmed to be
actual events into allegories, under which, they said, the wisdom of
ancient times had concealed many sacred and mysterious things. But it is
apparent that a system forced to this necessity is fast