SECOND QUESTION.
Another man of learning, and a much greater philosopher, who is one of the profoundest metaphysicians of the day, advances very strong arguments to prove that polytheism was the primitive religion of mankind, and that men began with believing in several gods before their reason was sufficiently enlightened to acknowledge one only Supreme Being.
On the contrary, I venture to believe that in the beginning they acknowledged one only God, and that afterwards human weakness adopted several. My conception of the matter is this:
It is indubitable that there were villages before large towns were built, and that all men have been divided into petty commonwealths before they were united in great empires. It is very natural that the people of a village, being terrified by thunder, afflicted at the loss of its harvests, ill-used by the inhabitants of a neighboring village, feeling every day its own weakness, feeling everywhere an invisible power, should soon have said: There is some Being above us who does us good and harm.
It seems to me to be impossible that it should have said: There are two powers; for why more than one? In all things we begin with the simple; then comes the compound; and after, by superior light, we go back to the simple again. Such is the march of the human mind!
But what is this being who is thus invoked at first? Is it the sun? Is it the moon? I do not think so. Let us examine what passes in the minds of children; they are nearly like those of uninformed men. They are struck, neither by the beauty nor by the utility of the luminary which animates nature, nor by the assistance lent us by the moon, nor by the regular variations of her course; they think not of these things; they are too much accustomed to them. We adore, we invoke, we seek to appease, only that which we fear. All children look upon the sky with indifference; but when the thunder growls they tremble and run to hide themselves. The first men undoubtedly did likewise. It could only be a sect of philosophers who first observed the courses of the planets, made them admired, and caused them to be adored; mere tillers of the ground, without any information, did not know enough of them to embrace so noble an error.
A village then would confine itself to saying: There is a power which thunders and hails upon us, which makes our children die; let us appease it. But how shall we appease it? We see that by small presents we have calmed the anger of irritated men; let us then make small presents to this power. It must also receive a name. The first that presents itself is that of "chief," "master," "lord." This power then is styled "My Lord." For this reason perhaps it was that the first Egyptians called their god "knef"; the Syrians, "Adonai"; the neighboring nations, "Baal," or "Bel," or "Melch," or "Moloch"; the Scythians, "Papæus"; all these names signifying "lord," "master."
Thus was nearly all America found to be divided into a multitude of petty tribes, each having its protecting god. The Mexicans, too, and the Peruvians, forming great nations, had only one god—the one adoring Manco Capak, the other the god of war. The Mexicans called their warlike divinity "Huitzilipochtli," as the Hebrews had called their Lord "Sabaoth."
It was not from a superior and cultivated reason that every people thus began with acknowledging one only Divinity; had they been philosophers, they would have adored the God of all nature, and not the god of a village; they would have examined those infinite relations among all things which prove a Being creating and preserving; but they examined nothing—they felt. Such is the progress of our feeble understanding. Each village would feel its weakness and its need of a protector; it would imagine that tutelary and terrible being residing in the neighboring forest, or on a mountain, or in a cloud. It would imagine only one, because the clan had but one chief in war; it would imagine that one corporeal, because it was impossible to represent it otherwise. It could not believe that the neighboring tribe had not also its god. Therefore it was that Jephthah said to the inhabitants of Moab: "You possess lawfully what your god Chemoth has made you conquer; you should, then, let us enjoy what our god has given us by his victories."
This language, used by one stranger to other strangers, is very remarkable. The Jews and the Moabites had dispossessed the natives of the country; neither had any right but that of force; and the one says to the other: "Your god has protected you in your usurpation; suffer our god to protect us in ours."