That Law, Religion, and Manners are thus related—­that their respective kinds of operation come under one generalisation—­that they have in certain contrasted characteristics of men a common support and a common danger—­will, however, be most clearly seen on discovering that they have a common origin.  Little as from present appearances we should suppose it, we shall yet find that at first, the control of religion, the control of laws and the control of manners, were all one control.  However incredible it may now seem, we believe it to be demonstrable that the rules of etiquette, the provisions of the statute-book, and the commands of the decalogue, have grown from the same root.  If we go far enough back into the ages of primeval Fetishism, it becomes manifest that originally Deity, Chief, and Master of the ceremonies were identical.  To make good these positions, and to show their bearing on what is to follow, it will be necessary here to traverse ground that is in part somewhat beaten, and at first sight irrelevant to our topic.  We will pass over it as quickly as consists with the exigencies of the argument.

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That the earliest social aggregations were ruled solely by the will of the strong man, few dispute.  That from the strong man proceeded not only Monarchy, but the conception of a God, few admit:  much as Carlyle and others have said in evidence of it.  If, however, those who are unable to believe this, will lay aside the ideas of God and man in which they have been educated, and study the aboriginal ideas of them, they will at least see some probability in the hypothesis.  Let them remember that before experience had yet taught men to distinguish between the possible and the impossible; and while they were ready on the slightest suggestion to ascribe unknown powers to any object and make a fetish of it; their conceptions of humanity and its capacities were necessarily vague, and without specific limits.  The man who by unusual strength, or cunning, achieved something that others had failed to achieve, or something which they did not understand, was considered by them as differing from themselves; and, as we see in the belief of some Polynesians that only their chiefs have souls, or in that of the ancient Peruvians that their nobles were divine by birth, the ascribed difference was apt to be not one of degree only, but one of kind.

Let them remember next, how gross were the notions of God, or rather of gods, prevalent during the same era and afterwards—­how concretely gods were conceived as men of specific aspects dressed in specific ways—­how their names were literally “the strong,” “the destroyer,” “the powerful one,”—­how, according to the Scandinavian mythology, the “sacred duty of blood-revenge” was acted on by the gods themselves,—­and how they were not only human in their vindictiveness, their cruelty, and their quarrels with each other, but were supposed to have amours on earth, and to