s first god,* was a military chief or a political king: the moon was
his wife and queen; the planets were servants, bearers of commands,
messengers; and the multitude of stars were a nation, an army of heroes,
genii, whose office was to govern the world under the orders of their
chiefs. All the individuals had names, functions, attributes, drawn from
their relations and influences; and even sexes, from the gender of their
appellations.**

* The Sabeans, ancient and modern, says Maimonides,
acknowledge a principal God, the maker and inhabitant of
heaven; but on account of his great distance they conceive
him to be inaccessible; and in imitation of the conduct of
people towards their kings, they employ as mediators with
him, the planets and their angels, whom they call princes
and potentates, and whom they suppose to reside in those
luminous bodies as in palaces or tabernacles, etc. More-
Nebuchim.

** According as the gender of the object was in the language
of the nation masculine or feminine, the Divinity who bore
its name was male or female. Thus the Cappadocians called
the moon God, and the sun Goddess: a circumstance which
gives to the same beings a perpetual variety in ancient
mythology.

"And as the social state had introduced certain usages and ceremonies,
religion, keeping pace with the social state, adopted similar ones;
these ceremonies, at first simple and private, became public and
solemn; the offerings became rich and more numerous, and the rites more
methodical; they assigned certain places for the assemblies, and began
to have chapels and temples; they instituted officers to administer
them, and these became priests and pontiffs: they established liturgies,
and sanctified certain days, and religion became a civil act, a
political tie.

"But in this arrangement, religion did not change its first principles;
the idea of God was always that of physical beings, operating good or
evil, that is, impressing sensations of pleasure or pain: the dogma was
the knowledge of their laws, or their manner of acting; virtue and sin,
the observance or infraction of these laws; and morality, in its native
simplicity, was the judicious practice of whatever contributes to the
preservation of existence, the well-being of one's self and his fellow
creatures.*

* We may add, says Plutarch, that these Egyptian priests
always regarded th