ht; the winds could
break the trees, could dry up the wet earth, or could bring rain.
Heaven was over all, and the Earth was the supporter and fertile
producer of all; from her all life came. The moon as well as the sun
was a friendly power, nay, in some climates, more friendly. Fire was
a living being certainly, on whom much depended; and so was the great
lake or the ocean. This is what M. Reville calls the great
Nature-worship, in comparison with the minor Nature-worship to be
noticed presently.

We do not now enter on the subject of mythology; that is to say, of
the names men very early began to give to the great natural objects
of worship, the characters they ascribed to them, the stories they
told about them. That process of myth-making began very early, and is
to be found at work in every part of the world. But at first it was
simply the natural being itself, conceived as living, that was
worshipped, not a spirit or a person thought to dwell in it. Of this,
abundant evidence has survived in the great religions. Jupiter is
just the sky, the Greek god Helios is just the sun, and the goddess
Selene the moon. In China heaven itself is worshipped to this day.
The Babylonians worshipped the stars. The Vedic gods are primarily
the elements. From savage life examples of this earliest state of
matters can also be quoted, though mythology has nearly everywhere
greatly confused it. The Mincopies adore the sun as a beneficent
deity, the moon as an inferior god. To the Natchez the sun is the
supreme god; with some tribes of North America the chief god is
heaven blowing, the sky with a wind in it, what Longfellow calls the
"Great Spirit" or blowing. The Incas invoked together the Creator and
the Sun and Thunder. Thunder was one of the great gods of the
Germans. The Samoyede bows to the Sun every morning and every evening
and says. "When thou arisest I also arise; when thou settest I also
betake myself to rest." To the Ojibways Fire is a divine being, to be
well entertained, with whom no liberties must be taken. In every land
men are to be found who worship the Earth as a great deity, calling
her by her own name and serving her with suitable rites. In the
_Prometheus_ of Aeschylus the hero addresses his appeal as follows to
the beings he regards as gods of old race who will sympathise with
him against the upstart Zeus:--

Ether of Heaven and Winds untired of wing,
Rivers whose fountains fail not, and thou Sea,
Laughing