law of its own constitution to seek an objective reality. Conscience, so far as it revealed obligation, revealed relation to a being higher than self. Imagination, when it turned its eye to Heaven, beheld there the higher Being, the great Soul which directed the varied celestial movements, and created the multitudinous terrestrial lives. Without the conscience, the life the imagination saw would have been simply physical; without the imagination, the relation the conscience revealed would have been purely ideal-the relation of a thinker to his thought, not of one personal being to another. But the being given by the one faculty and the relation given by the other coalesced so as to form that worship of the bright Dyaus, which was our primitive IndoEuropean religion.

These, then, were the two faculties generative of the idea of God, i.e., from their action and inter-action the primitive religion sprang. Of course, in terming these "the faculties generative of the idea" we do not mean that they acted alone. No faculty can be isolated in action, whatever it may be as an object of thought. We only mean that these, for the time being the governing faculties of the mind, were the two from whose combined instincts and actions the idea of God rose into form. That conscience was a main factor of our Indo-European faith is evident, setting aside psychological considerations, from that faith itself. More moral

elements can be found, comparatively speaking, in its earlier than in its later forms. The proofs of its Naturalism, as of its Polytheism, are derived from the developed national religions, not from the rudimentary and common faith. But it is certain that some of these grew from a (comparative) Spiritualism into an almost pure Naturalism. It was almost certainly the conflict of the spiritual and sensuous forms that separated the Iranian and Indian branches.* In the Rig Veda the younger and more physical faith is seen superseding the older and more moral.† Varuna has a "moral elevation and sanctity" of character "far surpassing that attributed to any other Vedic deity."+ Yet he is seen undergoing a twofold process, one of supersession and another of deterioration, until, in the later Vedic hymns, the God, in his older and nobler character, almost entirely disappears. The God that supersedes him is Indra, a splendid physical figure, no doubt, "borne on a shining golden car with a thousand supports," drawn by "tawny steeds" "with flowing golden manes," hurling his thunder-bolts, drinking the soma-juice, slayer of Vritra, but the moral elements in his character are far fewer and inferior

* Professor Roth, "Zeitschrift der Deut. Morgenländ. Gesellschaft," vol. v. pp. 76 ff.

+ Ib. Also Muir, "Sanskrit Texts," vol. v. pp. 116-118, where an epitome is given of Roth's views.

Muir, "Sans. Texts," v. p. 66.

to those in Varuna's.* Behind the latter the still more ancient Dyaus stands, and his character, though shadowy and fragmentary, reveals moral elements transcending the conception of a mere physical deity. In the religion behind the Vedas and Avesta we see the point where mind becomes conscious of a dualism in its faith, and by exclusion of the moral element, the Naturalism of the first is developed, by exclusion of the physical, the Spiritualism of the second. But behind this point stands the ancient and common Indo-European faith in which the two elements existed together as matter and form, spirit and letter, not in a consciously apprehended dualism, but in a realized unity. In this oldest religion worship,† sacrifice, ‡ prayer, § and such rudimentary ideas as faith, piety,|| holiness, T can be discovered, and their existence implies, as the creative faculty, a moral sense. acquired conscience of Utilitarianism cannot explain these acts and ideas, because they rise with the Indo-European people, create, are not created by, its religious experience, are deteriorated rather than improved by certain later developments. The oldest is here the highest. The physical eclipses the moral, the moral does not rise by hardly perceptible gradations from the physical.

The

* See the admirable and exhaustive exhibition of Indra in the fifth volume of Dr. Muir's "Sanskrit Texts," sec. v.

+ Pictet, "Les Origines Indo-Europ.," vol. ii. 690. § Ib., p. 699. || Ib., p. 696.

+ Ib., p. 702.

¶ Ib., p. 694.

We require, therefore, a faculty generative of these primary religious acts and ideas, and we have it in conscience. Consciousness and conscience rose together. Mind conscious of self was also mind conscious of obligation. The "I am" and the "I ought" were twins, born at the same moment. But to be conscious of obligation was to be conscious of relation, and so in one and the same act mind was conscious of a self who owed obedience, and a Not-Self to whom the obedience was due.

The idea of God was thus given in the very same act as the idea of self; neither could be said to precede the other. Mind could be mind as little without the consciousness of God as without the

consciousness of self.

Certain philosophies may have dissolved the first idea as certain others may have dissolved the second, but each idea is alike instinctive, rises by nature, can be suppressed only by art. But we must try now to define the nature of this πράτη Oeoù évvola. Our ordinary terms are so associated with modern ideas as to be inapplicable to this aboriginal idea. We cannot call it a Monotheism, for, as Preller rightly remarks, "Monotheism rests essentially on abstraction and negation,"* while here the very idea of other gods has not as yet been formed. Schelling terms the primitive faith relativer Monothe

* Quoted in Welcker, “Griech. Götterlehre,” iii. p. xiv.

ismus, * * but this phrase is hardly descriptive and definite enough, is also, perhaps, properly denotive of a Monotheism which admits a number of divine beings as intermediate between God and the world, as contrasted with an absolute Monotheism, which draws the line of a sharp and rigid dualism. Max Müller uses the term Henotheism. This is better; but we would prefer, as more intelligible, the terms, individual Theism, or simply Individualism. It is a Theism, as opposed to Naturalism, in so far as it makes Dyaus conscious, creative, moral. It is an individual Theism, as opposed to an abstract and exclusive Monotheism, on the one hand, and a Polytheism, on the other, in so far as it affirms God is, but neither that there are or are not other gods. These, indeed, were questions the primitive mind could neither raise nor answer. Centuries of unconscious creation were needed to raise the onecenturies of conscious reflection to raise the other.

II.

We come now to the to the development of the idea. It was in its earliest form essentially capable of evolution. A pure Monotheism or an actual Polytheism is, each in its own way, an ultimate form, which may be developed as to its accidents, but not as to * "Philos. der Mythol.," i. 126.

"Chips from a German Workshop," vol. i. p. 355.