Many writers have supposed that the contemplation of Power in nature first stirred religious thought in man. Though this is not the view taken in this book, no one will question that the leading trait in the gods of barbarism is physical strength. The naive anthropomorphism of the savage makes his a god of a mighty arm, a giant in stature, puissant and terrible. He hurls the thunderbolt, and piles up the mountains in sport. His name is often The Strong One, as in the Allah, Eloah of the Semitic tongues. Hercules, Chon, Melkarth, Dorsanes, Thor and others were of the most ancient divinities in Greece, Egypt, Phœnicia, India, and Scandinavia, and were all embodiments of physical force. Such, too, was largely the character of the Algonkin Messou, who scooped out the great lakes with his hands and tore up the largest trees by the roots. The huge boulders from the glacial epoch which are scattered over their country are the pebbles he tossed in play or in anger. The cleft in the Andes, through which flows the river Funha, was opened by a single blow of Nemqueteba, chief god of the Muyscas. In all such and a hundred similar legends, easy to quote, we see the notion of strength, brute force, muscular power, was that deemed most appropriate to divinity, and that which he who would be godlike must most sedulously seek. When filled with the god, the votary felt a surpassing vigor. The Berserker fury was found in the wilds of America and Africa, as well as among the Fiords. Sickness and weakness, on the contrary, were signs that the gods were against him. Therefore, in all early stages of culture, the office of priest and physician was one. Conciliation of the gods was the catholicon. Such deities were fearful to behold. They are represented as mighty of stature and terrible of mien, calculated to appal, not attract, to inspire fear, not to kindle love. In tropical America, in Egypt, in Thibet, almost where you will, there is little to please the eye in the pictures and statues of deities. In Greece alone, a national temperament, marvellously sensitive to symmetry, developed the combination of maximum strength with perfect form in the sun-god, Apollo, and of grace with beauty in Aphrodite. The Greeks were the apostles of the religion of beauty. Their philosophic thought saw the permanent in the Form, which outlives strength, and is that alone in which the race has being. In its transmission love is the agent, and Aphrodite, unmatched in beauty and mother of love, was a creation worthy of their devotion. Thus with them the religious sentiment still sought its satisfaction in the individual, not indeed in the muscle, but in the feature and expression.