it is a fact, a simple,
natural fact. He sees the effects of a power, but he can only guess at
its cause, and if he is to speak of it, he can only do so by speaking
of it as an agent, or as something like a human agent, and, if in some
respects not quite human, in others more than human or superhuman.
Thus the concept of Fire grew; and while it became more and more
generalized, it also became more sublime, more incomprehensible, more
divine. Without Agni, without fire, light, and warmth, life would have
been impossible. Hence he became the author and giver of life, of the
life of plants and animals and of men; and his favor having once been
implored for "light and life and all things," what wonder that in the
minds of some poets, and in the traditions of this or that
village-community he should have been raised to the rank of a supreme
ruler, a god above all gods, their own true god!

* * * * *

We now proceed to consider the powers which the ancient poets might
have discovered in the air, in the clouds, and, more particularly, in
those meteoric conflicts which by thunder, lightning, darkness,
storms, and showers of rain must have taught man that very important
lesson that he was not alone in this world. Many philosophers, as you
know, believe that all religion arose from fear or terror, and that
without thunder and lightning to teach us, we should never have
believed in any gods or god. This is a one-sided and exaggerated view.
Thunderstorms, no doubt, had a large share in arousing feelings of
awe and terror, and in making man conscious of his weakness and
dependence. Even in the Veda, Indra is introduced as saying: "Yes,
when I send thunder and lightning, then you believe in me." But what
we call religion would never have sprung from fear and terror alone.
_Religion is trust_, and that trust arose in the beginning from the
impressions made on the mind and heart of man by the order and wisdom
of nature, and more particularly by those regularly recurring events,
the return of the sun, the revival of the moon, the order of the
seasons, the law of cause and effect, gradually discovered in all
things, and traced back in the end to a cause of all causes, by
whatever name we choose to call it.

Still the meteoric phenomena had, no doubt, their important share in
the production of ancient deities; and in the poems of the Vedic
Rishis they naturally occupy a very prominent place. If we were a