widely they differ from the religious conceptions and
ideas of other races. The vein of fanciful creations is inexhaustible,
and there is a wealth of symbolic combinations and a profusion of
celestial and semi-celestial dramas. The intrinsic habit of forming
mythical representations of nature is due to a more vivid sense of her
power, to a rapid succession of images, and to a constant projection of
the observer's own personality into phenomena. This peculiar
characteristic of our race is never wholly overcome, and to it is added
a proud self-consciousness, an energy of thought and action, a constant
aspiration after grand achievements, and a haughty contempt for all
other nations.

"The very name of Aryan, transmitted in a modified form to all
successive generations, denotes dominion and valour; the Brahmanic
cosmogony, and the epithet of apes, given to all other races in the epic
of Valmiki, bear witness to the same fact; it is shown in the slavery
imposed on conquered peoples, in the hatred of foreigners felt by all
the Hellenic tribes; in the omnipotence of Rome, the haughtiness of the
Germanic orders; in the feudal system, in the Crusades; and finally, in
the modern sense of our superiority to all other existing races. The
quickness of perception, and the facile projection of human personality
into natural objects, led to the manifold creations of Olympus, and this
was an aesthetic obstacle to any nearer approach to the pure and absolute
conception of God, while the innate pride of race was a hindrance to our
humiliation in the dust before God. The Semites declared that man was
created in the image of God, and we created God in our own image; while
conscious of the power of the _numina_ we confronted them boldly, and
were ready to resist them. The Indian legends, and those of the
Hellenes, the Scandinavians, and the whole Aryan race, are full of
conflicts between gods and men. The demi-gods must be remembered,
showing that the Aryans believed themselves to be sufficiently noble and
great for the gods to love them, and to intermarry with them. Thus the
Aryan made himself into a God, and often took a glorious place in
Olympus, while he declared that God was made man.

"We might imagine that the doctrine of God incarnate would be as
repugnant to the ideas, feelings, and intellect of the Aryan as it was
to the Semitic race. But the anthropomorphic side of Christianity was
readily embraced by the former as a mythical a