Page:Four Dissertations - David Hume (1757).djvu/54

 attention on sensible, visible objects; and in order to reconcile these opposite inclinations, they are led to unite the invisible power with some visible object.

distribution also of distinct provinces to the several deities is apt to cause some allegory, both physical and moral, to enter into the vulgar systems of polytheism. The god of war will naturally be represented as furious, cruel, and impetuous: The god of poetry as elegant, polite, and amiable: The god of merchandise, especially in early times, as thievish and deceitful. The allegories, supposed in Homer and other mythologists, I allow, have been often so strained, that men of sense are apt entirely to reject them, and to consider them as the product merely of the fancy and conceit of critics and commentators. But that allegory really has place in the heathen mythology is undeniable even on the least reflection. Cupid the son of Venus; the Muses the daughters of memory; Prometheus the wise brother, and Epimetheus the foolish; Hygieia or the goddess of health descended from Æsculapius or the god of physic: Who sees not, in these, and in many other instances, the plain traces of alle-