of its religion, not the faintest trace of any thing approaching to this. For in Greece, the causes of fear being less abundant, the expression of terror was less common. The Greeks, therefore, were by no means disposed to incorporate into their religion those feelings of dread natural to the Hindus. The tendency of Asiatic civilization was to widen the distance between men and their deities; the tendency of Greek civilization was to diminish it. Thus it is, that in Hindostan all the gods had something monstrous about them; as Vishnu with four hands, Brahma with five heads, and the like.229 But the gods of Greece were always represented in forms entirely human.230 In that country, no artist would have gained attention, if he had presumed to portray them in any other shape. He might make them stronger than men, he might make them more beautiful; but still they must be men. The analogy between God and man, which excited the religious feelings of the Greeks, would have been fatal to those of the Hindus. This difference between the artistic expressions of the two religions, was accompanied by an exactly similar difference between their theological traditions. In the Indian books, the imagination is exhausted in relating the feats of the gods; and the more obviously impossible any achievement is, the greater the pleasure with which it was ascribed to them. But the Greek gods had not only human forms, but also human attributes, human vol. i. pp. 215, 221. Compare the curious account of an image supposed to represent Mahadeo, in Journal Asiatique, I. série, vol. i. p. 354, Paris, 1822. 220 229 Ward on the Religion of the Hindoos, vol. i. p. 35; Transac. of Society of Bombay, vol i. p. 223. Compare the gloss in the Dabistan, vol. ii. p. 202. "The Greek gods were formed like men, with greatly increased powers and faculties, and acted as men would do if so circumstanced, but with a dignity and energy suited to their nearer approach to perfection. The Hindu gods, on the other hand, though endued with human passions, have always something monstrous in their appearance, and wild and capricious in their conduct. They are of various colours, red, yellow, and blue; some have twelve heads, and most have four hands. They are often enraged without a cause, and reconciled without a motive." Elphinstone's History of India, pp. 96, 97. See also Erskine on the Temple of Elephanta, in Transac. of Soc. of Bombay, vol. i. p. 246; and the Dabistan, vol. i. p. cxi. pursuits, and human tastes.231 The men of Asia, to whom every object of nature was a source of awe, acquired such habits of reverence, that they never dared to assimilate their own actions with the actions of their deities. The men of Europe, encouraged by the safety and inertness of the material world, did not fear to strike a parallel, from which they would have shrunk had they lived amid the dangers of a tropical country. It is thus, that the Greek divinities are so different from those of the Hindus, that in comparing them we seem to pass from one creation into another. The Greeks generalized their observations upon the human mind, and then applied them to the gods.232 The coldness of women was figured in Diana; their beauty and sensuality in Venus; their pride in Juno; their accomplishments in Minerva. To the ordinary avocations of the gods, the same principle was applied. Neptune was a sailor; Vulcan was a smith; Apollo was sometimes a fiddler, sometimes a poet, sometimes a keeper of oxen. As to Cupid, he was a wanton boy, who played with his bow and arrows; Jupiter was an amorous and good-natured king; while Mercury was indifferently represented either as a trust 231 In the material polytheism of other leading ancient nations, the Egyptians, for example, the incarnation of the Deity was chiefly, or exclusively, confined to animals, monsters, or other fanciful emblems. In Greece, on the other hand, it was an almost necessary result of the spirit and grace with which the deities were embodied in human forms, that they should also be burdened with human interests and passions. Heaven, like earth, had its courts and palaces, its trades and professions, its marriages, intrigues, divorces." Mure's History of the Literature of Ancient Greece, vol. i. pp. 471, 472. So, too, Tennemann (Geschichte der Philosophie, vol. iii. p. 419): "Diese Götter haben Menschengestalt. . . . Haben die Götter aber nicht nur menschliche Gestalt, sondern auch einen menschlichen Körper, so sind sie als Menschen auch denselben Unvollkommenheiten, Krankheiten und dem Tode unterworfen; dieses streitet mit dem Begriffe' i. e. of Epicurus. Compare Grote's History of Greece, vol. i. p. 596: "The mythical age was peopled with a mingled aggregate of gods, heroes, and men, so confounded together that it was often impossible to distinguish to which class any individual name belonged." See also the complaint of Xenophanes, in Müller's Hist. of Lit. of Greece, London, 1856, p. 251. 232 The same remark applies to beauty of form, which they first aimed at in the statues of men, and then brought to bear upon the statues of the gods. This is well put in Mr. Grote's important work, History of Greece, vol. iv. pp. 133, 134, edit. 1847. worthy messenger, or else as a common and notorious thief. Precisely the same tendency to approximate human forces towards superhuman ones, is displayed in another peculiarity of the Greek religion. I mean, that in Greece we for the first time meet with hero-worship, that is, the deification of mortals. According to the principles already laid down, this could not be expected in a tropical civilization, where the Aspects of Nature filled Man with a constant sense of his own incapacity. It is, therefore, natural that it should form no part of the ancient Indian religion;233 neither was it known to the Egyptians, 234 nor to the Persians, 235 nor, so far as I am aware, to the Arabians.236 But in Greece, Man being less humbled, and, as it were, less eclipsed, by the external world, thought more of his own powers, and human nature did not fall into that discredit in which it elsewhere sank. The consequence was, that the deification of mortals was a recognized part of the national religion at a very early period in the history of Greece;237 and this has been found so natural to Europeans, that the same custom was after 233 "But the worship of deified heroes is no part of that system." Colebrooke on the Vedas, in Asiatic Researches, vol. viii. p. 495. 23 Mackay's Religious Development, vol. ii. p. 53, Lond. 1850. Compare Wilkinson's Ancient Egyptians, vol. iv. pp. 148, 318; and Matter, Histoire de l'Ecole d'Alexandrie, vol. i. p. 2; the "culte des grands hommes," which afterwards arose in Alexandria (Matter, vol. i. p. 54), must have been owing to Greek influence. 235 There are no indications of it in the Zendavesta; and Herodotus says, that the Persians were unlike the Greeks, in so far as they disbelieved in a god having a human form; book i. chap. cxxxi. vol. i. p. 308: oùk ἀνθρωποφυέας ἐνόμισαν τοὺς θεοὺς, κατάπερ οἱ Ἕλληνες εἶναι. 236 I am not acquainted with any evidence connecting this worship with the old Arabian religion; and it was certainly most alien to the spirit of Mohammedanism. 237 Mure's History of the Literature of Greece, vol. i. pp. 28, 500, vol. ii. p. 402 very good remarks on a subject handled unsatisfactorily by Coleridge; Literary Remains, vol. i. p. 185. Thirlwall (History of Greece, vol. i. p. 207) admits that "the views and feelings out of which it (the worship of heroes) arose, seem to be clearly discernible in the Homeric poems." Compare Cudworth's Intellectual System, vol. ii. pp. 226, 372. In the Cratylus, chap. xxxiii., Socrates is represented as asking, Ouk oiσða öтi ημídeoɩ oi npwes; Platonis Opera, vol. iv. p. 227, edit. Bekker, Lond. 1826. And in the next century, Alexander obtained for his friend Hephaestion the right of being "worshipped as a hero." Grote's History of Greece, vol. xii. p. 339. wards renewed with eminent success by the Romish Church. Other circumstances, of a very different character, are gradually eradicating this form of idolatry; but its existence is worth observing, as one of the innumerable illustrations of the way in which European civilization has diverged from all those that preceded it.238 It is thus, that in Greece every thing tended to exalt the dignity of Man, while in India every thing tended to depress it.239 To sum up the whole, it may be said that the Greeks had more respect for human powers; the Hindus for superhuman. The first dealt more with the known and available; the other with the unknown and mysterious.240 And by a parity of reasoning, the imagination, which the Hindus, being oppressed by the pomp and majesty of nature, never sought to control, lost its supremacy in the little peninsula of ancient Greece. In Greece, for the first time in the history of the world, the imagination was, in some degree, tempered and confined by the understanding. Not that its strength was impaired, or its vitality diminished. It was broken-in and tamed; its exuberance was checked, its follies were chastised. But that its energy remained, we have ample proof in those productions of the Greek mind which have survived to our own time. The gain, therefore, was complete; since the inquiring and sceptical faculties of the human understanding were cultivated, without destroying the reverential and poetic instincts of the imagination. 238 The adoration of the dead, and particularly the adoration of martyrs, was one great point of opposition between the orthodox church and the Manichæans (Beausobre, Histoire Critique de Manichée, vol. i. p. 316, vol. ii. pp. 651, 669); and it is easy to understand how abhorrent such a practice must have been to the Persian heretics. 239 M. Cousin, in his eloquent and ingenious work (Histoire de la Philosophie, II. série, vol. i. pp. 183 187), has some judicious observations on what he calls "l'époque de l'infini" of the East, contrasted with that "du fini," which began in Europe. But as to the physical causes of this, he only admits the grandeur of nature, overlooking those natural elements of mystery and of danger by which religious sentiments were constantly excited. 240 A learned orientalist says, that no people have made such efforts as the Hindus "to solve, exhaust, comprehend, what is insolvable, inexhaustible, incomprehensible." Troyer's Preliminary Discourse on the Dabistan, vol. i. p. cviii, Whether or not the balance was accurately adjusted, is another question; but it is certain that the adjustment was more nearly arrived at in Greece than in any previous civilization.241 There can, I think, be little doubt that, notwithstanding what was effected, too much authority was left to the imaginative faculties, and that the purely reasoning ones did not receive, and never have received, sufficient attention. Still, this does not affect the great fact, that the Greek literature is the first in which this deficiency was somewhat remedied, and in which there was a deliberate and systematic attempt to test all opinions by their consonance with human reason, and thus vindicate the right of Man to judge for himself on matters which are of supreme and incalculable importance. I have selected India and Greece as the two terms of the preceding comparison, because our information respecting those countries is most extensive, and has been most carefully arranged. But every thing we know of the other tropical civilizations, confirms the views I have advocated respecting the effects produced by the Aspects of Nature. In Central America, extensive excavations have been made; and what has been brought to light proves that the national religion was, like that of India, a system of complete and unmitigated terror.242 Neither 241 This is noticed by Tennemann, who, however, has not attempted to ascertain the cause: "Die Einbildungskraft des Griechen war schöpferisch, sie schuf in seinem Innern neue Ideenwelten; aber er wurde doch nie verleitet, die idealische Welt mit der wirklichen zu verwechseln, weil sie immer mit einem richtigen Verstande und gesunder Beurtheilungskraft verbunden war." Geschichte der Philosophie, vol. i. p. 8; and vol. vi. p. 490, he says, "Bei allen diesen Mängeln und Fehlern sind doch die Griechen die einzige Nation der alten Welt, welche Sinn für Wissenschaft hatte, und zu diesem Behufe forschte. Sie haben doch die Bahn gebrochen, und den Weg zur Wissenschaft geebnet." To the same effect, Sprengel, Histoire de la Médecine, vol. i. p. 215. And on this difference between the Eastern and the European mind, see Matter, Histoire du Gnosticisme, vol. i. pp. 18, 233, 234. So, too, Kant (Logik, in Kant's Werke, vol. i. p. 350), "Unter allen Völkern haben also die Griechen erst angefangen zu philosophiren. Denn sie haben zuerst versucht, nicht an dem Leitfaden der Bilder die Vernunfterkenntnisse zu cultiviren, sondern in abstracto; statt dass die anderen Völker sich die Begriffe immer nur durch Bilder in concreto verständlich zu machen suchten." 242 Thus, of one of the idols at Copan, "The intention of the sculptor |