predecessors we are indebted for much of what we thought most our own, and that their errors were not wilful extravagances or the ravings of insanity, but simply hypotheses, justifiable as such at the time when they were propounded, but which a fuller experience has proved to be inadequate. It is only by the successive testing of hypotheses and rejection of the false that truth is at last elicited. After all, what we call truth is only the hypothesis which is found to work best. Therefore in reviewing the opinions and practices of ruder ages and races we shall do well to look with leniency upon their errors as inevitable slips made in the search for truth, and to give them the benefit of that indulgence which we may one day stand in need of ourselves: _cum excusatione itaque veteres audiendi sunt_. CHAPTER III. KILLING THE GOD. “Sed adhuc supersunt aliae superstitiones, quarum secreta pandenda sunt, ... ut et in istis profanis religionibus sciatis mortes esse hominum consecratas.”—FIRMICUS MATERNUS, _De errore profanarum religionum_, c. 6. § 1.—Killing the divine king. Lacking the idea of eternal duration primitive man naturally supposes the gods to be mortal like himself. The Greenlanders believed that a wind could kill their most powerful god, and that he would certainly die if he touched a dog. When they heard of the Christian God, they kept asking if he _never_ died, and being informed that he did not, they were much surprised and said that he must be a very great god indeed.(755) In answer to the inquiries of Colonel Dodge, a North American Indian stated that the world was made by the Great Spirit. Being asked which Great Spirit he meant, the good one or the bad one, “Oh, neither of _them_” replied he, “the Great Spirit that made the world is dead long ago. He could not possibly have lived as long as this.”(756) A tribe in the Philippine Islands told the Spanish conquerors that the grave of the Creator was upon the top of Mount Cabunian.(757) Heitsi-eibib, a god or divine hero of the Hottentots, died several times and came to life again. His graves are generally to be met with in narrow passes between mountains.(758) The grave of Zeus, the great god of Greece, was shown to visitors in Crete as late as about the beginning of our era.(759) The body of Dionysus was buried at Delphi beside the golden statue of Apollo, and his tomb bore the inscription, “Here lies Dionysus dead, the son of Semele.”(760) According to one account, Apollo himself was buried at Delphi; for Pythagoras is said to have carved an inscription on his tomb, setting forth how the god had been killed by the python and buried under the tripod.(761) Cronus was buried in Sicily,(762) and the graves of Hermes, Aphrodite, and Ares were shown in Hermopolis, Cyprus, and Thrace.(763)