We know, too, that sun-worship has prevailed among the most highly civilized races, and that it was the basis of Greek, Egyptian, Celtic, and Oriental mythologies. "Our northern natures," says Mr. Helps,[179] referring to the influence of this religion of the outer world, "can hardly comprehend how the sun and the moon and the stars were imaged in the heart of a Peruvian, and dwelt there; how the changes in these luminaries were combined with all his feelings and his fortunes; how the dawn was hope to him; how the fierce mid-day brightness was power to him; how the declining sun was death to him; and how the new morning was a resurrection to him: nay, more, how the sun and the moon and the stars were his personal friends, as well as his deities; how he held communion with them, and thought that they regarded every act and word; how, in his solitude, he fondly imagined that they sympathized with him; and how, with outstretched arms, he appealed to them against their own unkindness, or against the injustice of his fellow-man." But such a creed as this is indicative of some degree of advancement, of some modicum of civilization, and may not be compared with the monstrous fetichism prevailing in Melanesia, Australia, Africa, and the Polar Deserts. In these regions the savage takes for the objects of his veneration beasts and inanimate objects; or is without any definite belief, and shows himself refractory to all religious teaching. Such is the case, according to Sir John Ross, among the Eskimos; while the Australians, according to Latham, have not even succeeded in formulating the rudest elements of a mythology; and the negroes of Equatorial Africa indulge in horrible superstitions which are a hundredfold worse than the absence of all belief. The individuals, therefore, who act as priests among these ignorant and stupid savages are, in reality, only miserable sorcerers, to whom they attribute the power of predicting the future, of controlling wind and rain, the sun and the moon, of curing disease, either by magic potions, incantations, or amulets; but they fear without respecting them, and never hesitate to put them to death when the effect of their juggleries or their prophecies does not respond to the hopes cherished by the worshippers. Among these credulous and cruel peoples we find the realization of all those terrible dreams embodied by the poet in his picture of the influences and consequences of superstition. For a vivid commentary on the following lines of Pope, the reader should turn to the pages of Livingstone, Burton, Speke, Du Chaillu, William Ellis, John Williams, or Admiral Wilkes. Of superstition, the poet says:[180]--