And, indeed, he had no other form in which to speak forth his soul. That which we call the invention of the Greeks at work upon the subject-matter of religion was, in fact, the voice of human nature, giving expression in the easiest and simplest manner to its sense of the great objects and powers amidst which its lot was cast. It has been well said by Professor M. Müller, in an able Essay[20] on ‘Comparative Mythology,’ that ‘abstract speech is more difficult, than the fulness of a poet’s sympathy with nature.’ Thus it was not so much that poetry usurped the office of religion, as that their respective functions brought them of necessity to a common ground and a common form of proceeding. Homer saw, heard, or felt the action of the sun, the moon, the stars, the atmosphere, the winds, the sea, the rivers, the fountains, the soil; and he knew of family affections, of governing powers, of a healing art, of a gift and skill of mechanical construction. Action, in each of these departments, could not but be referred to a power. How was that power to be expressed? [20] Oxford Essays, 1856, p. 36. ~_On Impersonation in Homer._~ At least for the Greek mind, less subtle, as Aristotle has observed, than the Oriental, it was more natural to deal with persons, than with metaphysical abstractions. It was foreign to the mental habit of the heroic age to conceive of abstract essences; as it still remains difficult, more difficult perhaps than, in the looseness of our mental processes, we suppose, for the men of our own generation. Even now, in the old age of the world, we have many signs of this natural difficulty, which formerly was a kind of impossibility. Especially we have that one which leads all communities, and above all their least instructed classes, to apply the personal pronouns _he_ or _she_ to a vast multitude of inanimate objects, both natural, and the products of human skill and labour. These objects are generally such as stand in a certain relation to action: they either do, suffer, or contain.