But surely no one supposes that this is all that can be said upon the subject, and that, after such admissions, the discussion must be closed. On the contrary, we have, as yet, scarce caught a glimpse of the real character and genius of Grecian polytheistic worship, and we have not made the first approach towards a philosophy of Grecian mythology. The assumption that the heathen regarded the images "graven by art and device of man" as the real creators of the world and man, or as having any control over the destinies of men, sinks at once under the weight of its own absurdity. Such hypothesis is repudiated with scorn and indignation by the heathens themselves. Cotta, in _Cicero_, declares explicitly: "though it be common and familiar language amongst us to call corn Ceres, and wine Bacchus, yet who can think any one so mad as to take that to be really a god that he feeds upon?"[141] And _Plutarch_ condemns the whole practice of giving the names of gods and goddesses to inanimate objects, as absurd, impious, and atheistical: "they who give the names of gods to senseless matter and inanimate things, and such as are destroyed by men in the using, beget most wicked and atheistical opinions in the minds of men, since it can not be conceived how these things should be gods, for nothing that is inanimate is a god."[142] And so also the Hindoo, the Buddhist, the American Indian, the Fijian of to-day, repel the notion that their visible images are real gods, or that they worship them instead of the unseen God. [Footnote 141: Cudworth's "Intell. System," vol. ii. p. 257, Eng. ed.] [Footnote 142: Quoted in Cudworth's "Intell. System," vol. ii. p. 258, Eng. ed.]