s entire, and some would only show their backs;
some were jealous, some were foolish, some turned themselves into men,
some into swans, some into bulls, some into doves, and some into holy
ghosts, and made love to the beautiful daughters of men. Some were
married--all ought to have been--and some were considered as old
bachelors from all eternity. Some had children, and the children were
turned into gods and worshiped as their fathers had been. Most of
these gods were revengeful, savage, lustful, and ignorant; as they
generally depended upon their priests for information, their ignorance
can hardly excite our astonishment.

These gods did not even know the shape of the worlds they had created,
but supposed them perfectly flat. Some thought the day could be
lengthened by stopping the sun, that the blowing of horns could throw
down the walls of a city, and all knew so little of the real nature of
the people they had created, that they commanded the people to love
them. Some were so ignorant as to suppose that man could believe just
as he might desire, or as might command, and to be governed by
observation, reason, and experience was a most foul and damning sin.
None of these gods could give a true account of the creation of this
little earth. All were woefully deficient in geology and astronomy.
As a rule, they were most miserable legislators, and as executives,
they were far inferior to the average of American presidents.

The deities have demanded the most abject and degrading obedience. In
order to please them, man must lay his very face in the dust. Of
course, they have always been partial to the people who created them,
and they have generally shown their partiality by assisting those
people to rob and destroy others, and to ravish their wives and
daughters. Nothing is so pleasing to these gods as the butchery of
unbelievers. Nothing so enrages them, even now as to have some one
deny their existence.

Few nations have been so poor as to have but one god. Gods were made
so easily, and the raw material cost so little, that generally the god
market was fairly glutted, and heaven crammed with these phantoms.
These gods not only attended to the skies, but were supposed to
interfere in all the affairs of men. They presided over everybody and
everything. They attended to every department. All was supposed to be
under their immediate control. Nothing was too small--nothing too
large; the falling of sparrows an