relatively to himself, an idea of weakness, of subjection, and
relatively to them, an idea of power, of domination; and this idea
was the primitive and fundamental type of all his conceptions of the
divinity.

"The action of the natural existences, in the second place, excited in
him sensations of pleasure or pain, of good or evil; by virtue of his
organization, he conceived love or aversion for them, he desired or
dreaded their presence: and fear or hope was the principle of every idea
of religion.

"Afterwards, judging everything by comparison, and remarking in those
beings a motion spontaneous like his own, he supposed there to be a
will, an intelligence inherent in that motion, of a nature similar to
what existed in himself; and hence, by way of inference, he started
a fresh argument. Having experienced that certain modes of behavior
towards his fellow-creatures wrought a change in their affections and
governed their conduct, he applied those practices to the powerful
beings of the universe. 'When my fellow-creature of superior strength,'
said he to himself, 'is disposed to injure me, I humble myself before
him, and my prayer has the art of appeasing him. I will pray to the
powerful beings that strike me. I will supplicate the faculties of the
planets, the waters, and they will hear me. I will conjure them to
avert the calamities, and to grant me the blessings which are aft their
disposal. My tears will move, my offerings propitiate them, and I shall
enjoy complete felicity.'

"And, simple in the infancy of his reason, man spoke to the sun and
the moon; he animated with his understanding and his passions the great
agents of nature; he thought by vain sounds and useless practices to
change their inflexible laws. Fatal error! He desired that the water
should ascend, the mountains be removed, the stone mount in the air;
and substituting a fantastic to a real world, he constituted for himself
beings of opinion, to the terror of his mind and the torment of his
race.

"Thus the ideas of God and religion sprung, like all others, from
physical objects, and were in the understanding of man, the products
of his sensations, his wants, the circumstances of his life, and the
progressive state of his knowledge.

"As these ideas had natural beings for their first models, it resulted
from hence that the divinity was originally as various and manifold
as the forms under which he seemed to act: each being was a power, a
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