consume the viands placed on their altars.  Add to which, that in various mythologies, Greek, Scandinavian, and others, the oldest beings are giants; that according to a traditional genealogy the gods, demi-gods, and in some cases men, are descended from these after the human fashion; and that while in the East we hear of sons of God who saw the daughters of men that they were fair, the Teutonic myths tell of unions between the sons of men and the daughters of the gods.

Let them remember, too, that at first the idea of death differed widely from that which we have; that there are still tribes who, on the decease of one of their number, attempt to make the corpse stand, and put food into his mouth; that the Peruvians had feasts at which the mummies of their dead Incas presided, when, as Prescott says, they paid attention “to these insensible remains as if they were instinct with life;” that among the Fejees it is believed that every enemy has to be killed twice; that the Eastern Pagans give extension and figure to the soul, and attribute to it all the same substances, both solid and liquid, of which our bodies are composed; and that it is the custom among most barbarous races to bury food, weapons, and trinkets along with the dead body, under the manifest belief that it will presently need them.

Lastly, let them remember that the other world, as originally conceived, is simply some distant part of this world—­some Elysian fields, some happy hunting-ground, accessible even to the living, and to which, after death, men travel in anticipation of a life analogous in general character to that which they led before.  Then, co-ordinating these general facts—­the ascription of unknown powers to chiefs and medicine men; the belief in deities having human forms, passions, and behaviour; the imperfect comprehension of death as distinguished from life; and the proximity of the future abode to the present, both in position and character—­let them reflect whether they do not almost unavoidably suggest the conclusion that the aboriginal god is the dead chief; the chief not dead in our sense, but gone away carrying with him food and weapons to some rumoured region of plenty, some promised land, whither he had long intended to lead his followers, and whence he will presently return to fetch them.

This hypothesis once entertained, is seen to harmonise with all primitive ideas and practices.  The sons of the deified chief reigning after him, it necessarily happens that all early kings are held descendants of the gods; and the fact that alike in Assyria, Egypt, among the Jews, Phoenicians, and ancient Britons, kings’ names were formed out of the names of the gods, is fully explained.  The genesis of Polytheism out of Fetishism, by the successive migrations of the race of god-kings to the other world—­a genesis illustrated in the Greek mythology, alike by the precise genealogy of the deities, and by the specifically asserted apotheosis of the later ones—­tends