Note (return) — Chapter III

This universal tendency to recognize a superior Power upon whom we are dependent, and by whose hand our well-being and our destinies are absolutely controlled, has revealed itself even amid the most complicated forms of polytheistic worship. Amid the even and undisturbed flow of every-day life they might be satisfied with the worship of subordinate deities, but in the midst of sudden and unexpected calamities, and of terrible catastrophes, then they cried to the Supreme God. 119 "When alarmed by an earthquake," says Aulus Gellius, "the ancient Romans were accustomed to pray, not to some one of the gods individually, but to God in general, as to the Unknown." 120