Possibly, if any one had said this during the Vedic age in India, or even during the Periklean age in Greece, he would have been called, like Sokrates, a blasphemer or an atheist. And yet nothing can be clearer or truer, and we shall see that some of the poets of the Veda too, and, still more, the later Vedântic philosopher, had a clear insight that it was so. Only let us be careful in the use of that phrase "it is a mere name." No name is a mere name. Every name was originally meant for something; only it often failed to express what it was meant to express, and then became a weak or an empty name, or what we then call "a mere name." So it was with these names of the Vedic gods. They were all meant to express the _Beyond_, the Invisible behind the Visible, the Infinite within the Finite, the Supernatural above the Natural, the Divine, omnipresent, and omnipotent. They failed in expressing what, by its very nature, must always remain inexpressible. But that Inexpressible itself remained, and in spite of all these failures, it never succumbed, or vanished from the mind of the ancient thinkers and poets, but always called for new and better names, nay calls for them even now, and will call for them to the very end of man's existence upon earth. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 221: Muir, iv. p. 209] [Footnote 222: Muir, iv. p. 214.] [Footnote 223: Hibbert Lectures, p. 307.] [Footnote 224: X. 168, 3, 4.] [Footnote 225: See Kaegi, Rig-Veda, p. 61.] [Footnote 226: Rig-Veda II. 13, 12; IV. 19, 6.] [Footnote 227: Joshua x. 13.] [Footnote 228: Rig-Veda IV. 30, 3; X. 138, 3.] [Footnote 229: L. c. VIII. 37, 3.] [Footnote 230: L. c. VIII. 78, 5.] [Footnote 231: I am very strongly inclined to regard these names as Kushite or Semitic; Hermes, from חרם, the sun; Dionysos, from _dyan_, the judge, and _nisi_, mankind; Orpheus, from _Orfa_, the Arabic name of Edessa; Prometheus, from _pro_ and _manthanô_, to learn.--A. W.] [Footnote 232: Muir, iv. p. 23.] [Footnote 233: Ibid. p. 142. An excellent paper on Par_g_anya was published by Bühler in 1862, "Orient und Occident," vol. i. p. 214.] [Footnote 234: Rig-Veda VII. 101, 6.] [Footnote 235: Rig-Veda V. 63, 3-6.] [Footnote 236: L. c. I. 38, 9.] [Footnote 237: L. c. I. 164, 51.] [Footnote 238: L. c. X. 98, 1.] [Footnote 239: Rig-Veda V. 83. See Bühler, "Orient und Occident," vol. i. p. 214; Zimmer, "Altindisches Leben," p. 43.] [Footnote 240: Both Bühler ("Orient und Occident," vol. i, p. 224) and Zimmer (Z. f. D. A. vii. p. 169) say that the lightning is represented as the son of Par_g_anya in Rig-Veda VII. 101, 1. This seems doubtful.] [Footnote 241: Rig-Veda VII. 102, 1.] [Footnote 242: L. c. VIII. 6, 1.] [Footnote 243: See Max Müller, Sanskrit Grammar, § 174, 10.] [Footnote 244: Cf. Gobh. G_ri_hyà S. III. 3, 15, vidyut--stanayitnu--p_ri_shiteshu.]