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And if such be the attitude of the uneducated man towards the
permanent terrors of nature, what will it be towards those which are
sudden and seemingly capricious?--towards storms, earthquakes,
floods, blights, pestilences? We know too well what it has been--
one of blind, and therefore often cruel, fear. How could it be
otherwise? Was Theophrastus's superstitious man so very foolish for
pouring oil on every round stone? I think there was a great deal to
be said for him. This worship of Baetyli was rational enough. They
were aerolites, fallen from heaven. Was it not as well to be civil
to such messengers from above?--to testify by homage to them due awe
of the being who had thrown them at men, and who though he had
missed his shot that time might not miss it the next? I think if
we, knowing nothing of either gunpowder, astronomy, or Christianity,
saw an Armstrong bolt fall within five miles of London, we should be
inclined to be very respectful to it indeed. So the aerolites, or
glacial boulders, or polished stone weapons of an extinct race,
which looked like aerolites, were the children of Ouranos the
heaven, and had souls in them. One, by one of those strange
transformations in which the logic of unreason indulges, the image
of Diana of the Ephesians, which fell down from Jupiter; another was
the Ancile, the holy shield which fell from the same place in the
days of Numa Pompilius, and was the guardian genius of Rome; and
several more became notable for ages.
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