Page:Four Dissertations - David Hume (1757).djvu/57

 divinities, whom they cloathed in human figures, gave great encrease to the public devotion, and determined its object. It was probably for want of these arts in rude and barbarous ages, that men deified plants, animals, and even brute, unorganized matter; and rather than be without a sensible object of worship, affixed divinity to such ungainly forms. Could any statuary of Syria, in early times, have formed a just figure of Apollo, the conic stone, Heliogabalus, had never become the object of such profound adoration, and been received as a representation of the solar deity.

was banished by the council of Areopagus for affirming that the Minerva in the citadel was no divinity; but the workmanship of Phidias, the sculptor. What degree of reason may we expect in the religious belief of the vulgar in other nations; when Athenians and Areopagites could entertain such gross conceptions?