Note 96 — Chapter IV

Some writers (e.g. ‘Savage Life in Africa.’ Home and Foreign Review, July, 1862,) have objected that ‘it does not follow, because a savage calls God and sky by the same name, that therefore he necessarily confuses one with the other. Hebrews, Greeks, and Latins had one name for spirit, breath, and wind; but we cannot therefore conclude that they identified them. The foundation of reason is the power of using symbols, i.e., of making one thing stand for another, which is known to be different from it.’ But this is a vicious analogy. The Hebrews, Greeks, and Latins were not savages: I only assert, that in the undeveloped human mind the confusion of name points to the confusion of sense—that the metaphysical idea is subordinate to the physical. Nezuhualcoyotl, the great Mexican king, when weary of idols, raised a temple ‘al Dios no conocido, causa di los causas.’ If this be no priestly pious fraud, Mexico, like Athens, had the foot lifted for another step in advance when Christianity, the fourth and penultimate act of the great drama, appeared on the stage of life.