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LECTURE IV.
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their namesakes in the East. The ea among the Red Indians were struck by nothing so much as by their apparent pantheism, by their seeing the presence of the Divine everywhere, even in what were clearly the works of man. Thus Roger Williams related
that when they talke amongst themselves of the English ships and great buildings, of the plowing of their Fields, and especially of Bookes and Letters, they will end thus: Manittwock," they are Gods,” Cummanittôo, s you are a God.”' He sees in these idioms an expression of the strong conviction naturall in the soule of man, that God is filling all things, and places, and that all Excellencies dwell in God, and proceed from him, and that they only are blessed who have that Jehovah for their portion.' It may have been so when Roger Williams wrote, but a scholarlike study of the North American languages such as has lately been inaugurated by a few American savants, shows that, if it was so, the equivocal character of language had more to do with producing this peculiar American pantheism than the independent evolution of thought. Manito, literally-Manit,' plur. manitbog (see Trumbull, "Transact. Am. Phil. Assoc.' i. p. 120), is no doubt the Indian name for their Supreme Spirit. Lahontaine defined it long ago as a name given by the savages
to all that surpasses their understanding and proceeds from a cause that they cannot trace' ("Voyages,' Engl. ed. 1703, vol. ii. 29). But this Manit is not the name of the sky or the sun or any other physical phenomenon gradually developed into a bright god, like Dyaus or Zeus, and then generalised into a name of the Divine, like deva or .deus. If we may trust the best students of the American languages the name of
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