oblige him to part with any old one; it was one god he
was seeking, but he could not settle on one god as yet, when there
were so many beings with a good claim to the position. He made his
gods not out of nothing, but out of a great variety of experiences
and impressions, and they acted and reacted on each other in an
endless variety of ways. One god came to the front here and another
there; an object was deified here from one reason and there from
another; new gods in time turned old and were less thought of while
forgotten gods of former days came back to memory and were worshipped
once more. Endless change, endless recurrences of growth and of decay
filled up those great spaces and periods, measureless and trackless
almost as the expanses of the ocean, that were covered by the
prehistoric life of mankind.

BOOKS RECOMMENDED

Jevons, _Introduction to the History of Religion_, 1896.

E. S. Hartland, in _Proceedings of Oxford Congress of the History of
Religion_, p. 21, _sqq._

Of the large class of books reporting the manners and beliefs of
special savage races we may specify--

D. G. Brinton, _The Myths of the New World_, 1896.

W. W. Gill, _Myths and Songs from the South Pacific_, 1876.

Kingsley, Miss, _West African Studies_, 1899.

Callaway, _The Religious System of the Amazulu_, 1863-72.

Duff Macdonald, _Africana, the Heart of Heathen Africa_, 1882.

G. Grey, _Journals of Two Expeditions of Discovery in North-Western
and Western Australia_, 1841.

Spencer and Gilpen. _Native Tribes of Central Australia_, 1899.

CHAPTER IV
EARLY DEVELOPMENTS--BELIEF

We have seen from what materials early man made his gods. As the gods
differed in their origin, they differed also from the very first in
the mode of their development. The great nature-gods gave rise to one
kind of religion, and the minor nature-gods to another, the thought
of the departed members of the household to a third. But these
various religions could not develop side by side without influencing
each other. These different worships began in the very earliest times
to get mixed up together; there is none of the great religions which
we do not find to be a combination of them. It will be well to
consider them in the first place separately.

1. Growth of the Great Gods.--Taking them in the order we have
already followed, we come first to the great nature-worship, of which
heaven, the sun, the moon, the stars, dawn and sunset, and then