Note (return) — Chapter IV

The mechanical theory of the universe has interposed its long series of secondary causes--the qualities, properties, laws, forces of nature; the vital theory which attaches a separate "soul" to the various parts of nature as the cause and intelligent director of its movements. Of these "souls" or gods, there were different orders and degrees--deified men or heroes, aërial, terrestrial, and celestial divinities, ascending from nature up to God. And this tendency to supply some scale of ascent towards the Deity, or at least to people the vast territory which seems to swell between the world and God, finds some countenance in "the angels and archangels," "the thrones, and dominions, and principalities, and powers" of the Christian scriptures. 197