imposture; thus from age to age, they did no more than render nature and
its parts, which they bad originally depicted, more unknown, until they
completely lost sight of the primitive ideas; these were replaced by a
multitude of fictitious personages, under whose features this nature had
primarily been represented to them. The people, either unaccustomed to
think, or deeply steeped in ignorance, adored these personages, without
penetrating into the true sense of the emblematical fables recounted to
them. These ideal beings, with material figures, in whom they believed
there resided a mysterious virtue, a divine power, were the objects of
their worship, the source of their fears, the fountain of their hopes.
The wonderful, the incredible actions ascribed to these fancied
divinities, were an inexhaustible fund of admiration, which gave
perpetual play to the fancy; which delighted not only the people of
those days, but even the children of latter ages. Thus were transmitted
from age to age, those marvellous accounts, which, although necessary to
the existence of the power usurped by the ministers of these gods, did,
in fact, nothing more than confirm the blindness of the ignorant: these
never supposed that it was nature, its various operations, its numerous
component parts--that it was the passions of man and his diverse
faculties that lay buried under an heap of allegories; they did not
perceive that the passions and faculties of human nature were used as
emblems, because man was ignorant of the true cause of the phenomena he
beheld. As strong passions seemed to hurry man along, in despite of
himself, they either attributed these passions to a god, or deified
them; frequently they did both: it was thus love became a deity; that
eloquence, poetry, industry, were transformed into gods, under the names
of Hermes, Mercury, Apollo; the stings of conscience were called the
Furies: the people, bowed down in stupid ignorance, had no eyes but for
these emblematical persons, under which nature was masked: they
attributed to their influence the good, to their displeasure the evil,