of the Supreme Being by either of the names of the two last-mentioned popular divinities; nor do they even denote this idea by the name of Brahma, the first person of their trinity, but by the word _Brahm_, a neuter noun which signifies the Supreme Being. As there were now two conflicting elements in the breast of man--the old inheritance or original dowry of truth, which God had imparted to him in the primitive revelation; and error, or the foundation for error in his degraded sense and spirit now turned from God to Nature--how easily must error have sprung up, when the precious gem of divine truth was no longer guarded with jealous care, nor preserved in its pristine purity; how much must truth have been obscured, as error advanced in all its formidable might, and in all its power of seduction; and how soon must not this have happened among a people, like the Indians, with whom imagination and a very deep, but still sensual, feeling for Nature, were so predominant!--It was thus a wild enthusiasm, and a sensual idolatry of Nature, generally superseded the simple worship of Almighty God, and set aside or disfigured the pure belief in the eternal, uncreated Spirit. The great powers and elements of nature, and the vital principle of production and procreation through all generations, then the celestial spirits, or the heavenly host (to speak the language of antiquity), the luminous choir of stars, which the whole ancient world regarded not as mere globes of light or bodies of fire, but as animated substances; next the Genii and tutelar spirits, and even the souls of the dead received now divine worship; and men, instead of honouring the Creator in these, and of regarding these in reference to their Creator, considered them as Gods. Such is, when we have once supposed that man had turned away from God to Nature, such is the natural origin of Polytheism, which in every nation assumed a different form according to the peculiar modes of life, and the prevailing principles of life, in each.