Now, in regard to the divine command as the origin of our ideas of right and wrong, if you turn to Mr. Spencer's "Principles of Sociology," you will find an immense collection of evidence which shows the genesis of deities of all kinds. Beginning with the ideas formed by the primitive men of souls, ghosts, spirits, and demons, the ideas of another life and of another world, there came about the ideas of supernatural beings, aided in their development by ancestor-worship, idol-worship, fetich-worship, animal-worship, plant-worship, and nature-worship. Hence came the ideas of deities of various kinds, one class of which is that of the human personality greatly disguised, and the other is the class which has arisen by simple idealization and expansion of the human personality. The last class, although always coexisting with the other, at length becomes predominant, and finally there is developed the idea of one chief or supreme deity. Having traced the origin of this idea of a supreme deity, Mr. Spencer puts and answers this question: "While among all races and all regions, from the earliest times down to the most recent, the conceptions of deities have been naturally evolved in the way shown, must we conclude that a small clan of the Semitic race had given to it, supernaturally, a conception which, though superficially like the rest, was in substance absolutely unlike them?"[124] He then proceeds to show that the Hebrew Jehovah, or God, was a conception that had a kindred genesis with all the other conceptions of a deity or deities. "Here," he says, "pursuing the methods of science, and disregarding foregone conclusions, we must deal with the Hebrew conception in the same manner as with all the others." Dealing with it by the scientific method, he shows that behind the supernatural being of the order of the Hebrew God, as behind the supernatural beings of all other orders, there has in every case been a human personality. Thus, taking the narrative as it has come down to us of God's dealing with Abraham, he shows that what Abraham thought, or is described as thinking by those who preserved the tradition, was of a terrestrial ruler who could, like any other earthly potentate, make a covenant with him about land or anything else, or that he was the maker of all things, and that Abraham believed the earth and the heavens were produced by one who eats and drinks, and feels weary after walking. Upon either idea, Abraham's conception of a Deity remains identical with that of his modern Semitic representative, and with that of the uncivilized in general. But the ideas of Deity entertained by cultivated people, instead of being innate, arise only at a comparatively advanced stage, as results of accumulated knowledge, greater intellectual grasp, and higher sentiment.[125]