It is no easy matter for a man of ordinary education to form a notion of the mental crudeness of the lower type of the human race of our own times; it is far more difficult for him to divest his mind of all its acquisitions through study and observation, and reduce his ideas to the level of those progenitors of his race, the men of antiquity. When men had to struggle with savage beasts, it required superior intelligence to preserve themselves from destruction. That might have led to the worship of the strongest animals, such as the lion and the tiger. But no sooner did man learn the use of iron, which enabled him to kill these his gods, proving himself superior to the thing he worshiped, than these gods were thrown aside. So long as man was unable to explain the mysterious appearances of the sun, moon, and stars, he endowed them with his own intelligence. He worshiped what was to him incomprehensible, mighty, wonderful; made images representing their phenomena or forces for his adoration. In his mind he pictured the sun as a warrior clad in golden panoply, the pale moon he regarded as the queen, and the stars as an immense host of spirits and heroes. Some interpreted the sun to be the child of darkness, the morning the bride of heaven, the clouds a fairy network, and the heat a friend of man; when the heat was very intense, then the sun was slaying his children. They would liken the dark clouds which rested on the earth to a terrible being whom they named the Snake or Dragon, that shut up the waters in his prisonhouse. When the thunder rolled they said that this hateful monster was uttering his hard riddles; and when, at last, the rain burst forth, they said that the bright sun had slain his enemy, and brought the stream of life for the thirsting earth. Professor Max Müller says: "He begins to lift up his eyes; he stares at the tent of heaven, and asks, Who supports it? He opens his ears to the winds, and asks them, Whence and whither? He is awakened from darkness and slumber by the light of the sun, and him whom his eyes cannot behold, and who seems to grant him the daily pittance of his existence, he calls his life, his health, his brilliant Lord and Protector. He gives names to all the powers of nature." All sorts of names were invented to designate any particular force, phenomenon, or characteristic. In the Vedas the sun has twenty different names, each one descriptive of the sun or its aspect. In Persia the blazing sun was adored, and altars smoked perpetually of fire. In Gaul and Britain pillars were raised to the sun, altars to the moon, and fires were heaped under sacrificial caldrons to Cardwen, the earth-goddess.