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That the earliest social aggregations were ruled solely by the will of
the strong man, few dispute. That from the strong man proceeded not only
Monarchy, but the conception of a God, few admit: much as Carlyle and
others have said in evidence of it. If, however, those who are unable to
believe this, will lay aside the ideas of God and man in which they have
been educated, and study the aboriginal ideas of them, they will at
least see some probability in the hypothesis. Let them remember that
before experience had yet taught men to distinguish between the possible
and the impossible; and while they were ready on the slightest
suggestion to ascribe unknown powers to any object and make a fetish of
it; their conceptions of humanity and its capacities were necessarily
vague, and without specific limits. The man who by unusual strength, or
cunning, achieved something that others had failed to achieve, or
something which they did not understand, was considered by them as
differing from themselves; and, as we see in the belief of some
Polynesians that only their chiefs have souls, or in that of the ancient
Peruvians that their nobles were divine by birth, the ascribed
difference was apt to be not one of degree only, but one of kind.

Let them remember next, how gross were the notions of God, or rather of
gods, prevalent during the same era and afterwards--how concretely gods
were conceived as men of specific aspects dressed in specific ways--how
their names were literally "the strong," "the destroyer," "the powerful
one,"--how, according to the Scandinavian mythology, the "sacred duty of
blood-revenge" was acted on by the gods themselves,--and how they were
not only human in their vindictiveness, their cruelty, and their
quarrels with each other, but were supposed to have amours on earth, and
to consume the viands placed on their altars. Add to which, that in
various mythologies, Greek, Scandinavian, and others, the oldest beings
are giants; that according to a traditional genealogy the gods,
demi-gods, and in some cases men, are descended from these after the
human fashion; and that while in the East we hear of sons of God who saw
the daughters of men that they were fair, the Teutonic myths tell of
unions between the sons of men and the daughters of the gods.

Let them remember, too, that at first the idea of death differed widely
from that which we have; that there are still tribes who, on