Πάντες δὲ θεῶν χατέους’ ἄνθρωποι, said Homer. It was not within the domain of the wholly tangible that India sought for its gods; understanding by _tangible_ whatever one can touch on all sides, stones, shells, bones, etc.; and Max Müller sees in this fact (which, by the way, may be contested) a fresh argument against the fetich theory. On the contrary, in the presence of his great, snow-capped mountains, of which our comparatively level Europe can scarcely afford us even an idea, in the presence of his immense beneficent rivers with their rumbling cataracts, their eddies, their unknown sources, in the presence of the ocean, stretching away beyond the line of vision, the Hindu found himself surrounded by things, of which he could touch and understand but some inconsiderable portion—of which the origin and destiny baffled him. It was in the domain of the _semi-tangible_ that India found its _semi-deities_. One step beyond, Hindu thought domesticated itself in the region of the intangible, that is to say, in the region of things which, though visible, lie entirely beyond our reach—the visible heaven, the stars, the sun, the moon, the dawn, which were regarded in India, as also elsewhere, as true divinities. Add to these thunder, which for the Hindus also descends from heaven with a “howl,” the wind sometimes so terrible, which, however, in the hot days of summer “pours honey” upon man, and the rain, sent by the beneficent rain god, Indra. Having thus created their deities and peopled heaven somewhat at haphazard, the Hindus were not slow to distribute them into classes and families—to invent for them a necessary background of genealogy. There is a record of certain efforts to establish in the Hindu heaven, as in the Olympus of the Greeks, a system of government, a supreme authority; in a number of hymns the notion of the one God, Creator and Master of the world, is clearly expressed: He is “the Father that begat us, the Ruler who knows the laws and the worlds, in Him alone all creatures repose.” [Sidenote: And from the intangible to the unreal.]