as powerful
anthropomorphic spirits, and believing himself to be more or less
dependent on their good will he woos their favour by prayer and
sacrifice. This personification of the various aspects of external
nature is one of the most fruitful sources of polytheism. The spirits
and gods created by this train of thought may be called spirits and gods
of nature to distinguish them from the human gods, by which I mean the
living men and women who are believed by their worshippers to be
inspired or possessed by a divine spirit.

[Sidenote: In time men reject polytheism as an explanation of natural
processes and substitute certain abstract ideas of ethers, atoms,
molecules, and so on.]

But as time goes on and men learn more about nature, they commonly
become dissatisfied with polytheism as an explanation of the world and
gradually discard it. From one department of nature after another the
gods are reluctantly or contemptuously dismissed and their provinces
committed to the care of certain abstract ideas of ethers, atoms,
molecules, and so forth, which, though just as imperceptible to human
senses as their divine predecessors, are judged by prevailing opinion to
discharge their duties with greater regularity and despatch, and are
accordingly firmly installed on the vacant thrones amid the general
applause of the more enlightened portion of mankind. Thus instead of
being peopled with a noisy bustling crowd of full-blooded and
picturesque deities, clothed in the graceful form and animated with the
warm passions of humanity, the universe outside the narrow circle of our
consciousness is now conceived as absolutely silent, colourless, and
deserted. The cheerful sounds which we hear, the bright hues which we
see, have no existence, we are told, in the external world: the voices
of friends, the harmonies of music, the chime of falling waters, the
solemn roll of ocean, the silver splendour of the moon, the golden
glories of sunset, the verdure of summer woods, and the hectic tints of
autumn--all these subsist only in our own minds, and if we imagine them
to have any reality elsewhere, we deceive ourselves. In fact the whole
external world as perceived by us is one great illusion: if we gave the
reins to fancy we might call it a mirage, a piece of witchery, conjured
up by the spells of some unknown magician to bewilder poor ignorant
humanity. Outside of ourselves there stretches away on every side an
infinitude of space without s