As time rolled on and civilisation advanced, this simple nature-worship and deification of astronomical phenomena developed into larger and more complex conceptions. Following different lines of evolution, polytheism, pantheism and monotheism began to emerge as religious systems with definite creeds, rituals, and sacred books. These lines seem to have been determined a good deal by the genius of the race in which the religious development took place. The impressions made on the human mind by the surrounding universe are very various. Suppose ourselves looking up at the heavens on a clear starry night, what will be the impression? To one, that of awe and reverence, and he will feel crushed, as it were, into nothingness, in the presence of such a sublime manifestation of majesty and glory. Another, of more æsthetic nature, will be charmed by the beauty of the spectacle, and tempted to assign life to it, and to personify and dramatise its incidents. A third, of a scientific turn, will above all things wish to understand it. Thus we find the impression of awe preponderating among the Semitic races generally; and as in their political relations, so in their religious conceptions, we find them prone to prostrate themselves before despotic power. With the Greeks again the æsthetic idea almost swallowed up the others, and the old astronomical myths blossomed into a perfect flower-bed of poetical and fanciful legends. The Chinese never got beyond a simple pantheism, which looked upon the universe as being alive, and saw nothing behind it; while the more metaphysical and physically feebler races of Hindoos and Buddhists refined their pantheism into a system of illusion, in which their own existence and the surrounding universe were literally such stuff As dreams are made on, and to be ‘rounded with a sleep’ was the final consummation devoutly to be desired.