ollect, also, that not only have the
results of this process been visible in various nations and in all
times, but that they are occurring among ourselves at the present
moment, and that the causes assigned for previous depreciations may be
seen daily working out other ones--when we recollect this, it becomes
scarcely possible to doubt that the process has been as alleged; and
that our ordinary words, acts, and phrases of civility were originally
acknowledgments of submission to another's omnipotence.

Thus the general doctrine, that all kinds of government exercised over
men were at first one government--that the political, the religious, and
the ceremonial forms of control are divergent branches of a general and
once indivisible control--begins to look tenable. When, with the above
facts fresh in mind, we read primitive records, and find that "there
were giants in those days"--when we remember that in Eastern traditions
Nimrod, among others, figures in all the characters of giant king, and
divinity--when we turn to the sculptures exhumed by Mr. Layard, and
contemplating in them the effigies of kings driving over enemies,
trampling on prisoners, and adored by prostrate slaves, then observe how
their actions correspond to the primitive names for the divinity, "the
strong," "the destroyer," "the powerful one"--when we find that the
earliest temples were also the residences of the kings--and when,
lastly, we discover that among races of men still living there are
current superstitions analogous to those which old records and old
buildings indicate; we begin to realise the probability of the
hypothesis that has been set forth.

Going back, in imagination, to the remote era when men's theories of
things were yet unformed; and conceiving to ourselves the conquering
chief as dimly figured in ancient myths, and poems, and ruins; we may
see that all rules of conduct whatever spring from his will. Alike
legislator and judge, all quarrels among his subjects are decided by
him; and his words become the Law. Awe of him is the incipient Religion;
and his maxims furnish its first precepts. Submission is made to him in
the forms he prescribes; and these give birth to Manners. From the
first, time develops political allegiance and the administration of
justice; from the second, the worship of a being whose personality
becomes ever more vague, and the inculcation of precepts ever more
abstract; from the third, forms of honour and the r