They are capable of being propitiated by
mankind and of coming to the assistance of those who ask their aid. Their
interest in human affairs is keen, and on the whole beneficent; but they
become very angry if neglected, and punish rather the first they come
upon, than the actual person who has offended them; their fury being
blind when it is raised, though never raised without reason. They will
not punish with any less severity when people sin against them from
ignorance, and without the chance of having had knowledge; they will take
no excuses of this kind, but are even as the English law, which assumes
itself to be known to every one.
Thus they have a law that two pieces of matter may not occupy the same
space at the same moment, which law is presided over and administered by
the gods of time and space jointly, so that if a flying stone and a man's
head attempt to outrage these gods, by "arrogating a right which they do
not possess" (for so it is written in one of their books), and to occupy
the same space simultaneously, a severe punishment, sometimes even death
itself, is sure to follow, without any regard to whether the stone knew
that the man's head was there, or the head the stone; this at least is
their view of the common accidents of life.
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