Solon spoke of { ~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON WITH DASIA~} { ~GREEK SMALL LETTER THETA~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON WITH OXIA~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~} and of { ~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON WITH VARIA~} { ~GREEK SMALL LETTER THETA~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH PERISPOMENI~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}, and Sophocles of { ~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON WITH DASIA~} { ~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON WITH OXIA~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER GAMMA~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~} { ~GREEK SMALL LETTER THETA~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON WITH OXIA~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~}. The term for "God" is identical in all the Indo-European languages, and therefore belonged to the time before those languages separated; see Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 1:201-208. In Virgil's Æneid, Mezentius is an atheist, a despiser of the gods, trusting only in his spear and in his right arm; but, when the corpse of his son is brought to him, his first act is to raise his hands to heaven. Hume was a sceptic, but he said to Ferguson, as they walked on a starry night: "Adam, there is a God!" Voltaire prayed in an Alpine thunderstorm. Shelley wrote his name in the visitors' book of the inn at Montanvert, and added: "Democrat, philanthropist, atheist"; yet he loved to think of a "fine intellectual spirit pervading the universe"; and he also wrote: "The One remains, the many change and pass; Heaven's light forever shines, Earth's shadows fly." Strauss worships the Cosmos, because "order and law, reason and goodness" are the soul of it. Renan trusts in goodness, design, ends. Charles Darwin, Life, 1:274--"In my most extreme fluctuations, I have never been an atheist, in the sense of denying the existence of a God."
D. This agreement among individuals and nations so widely separated in time and place can be most satisfactorily explained by supposing that it has its ground, not in accidental circumstances, but in the nature of man as man. The diverse and imperfectly developed ideas of the supreme Being which prevail among men are best accounted for as misinterpretations and perversions of an intuitive conviction common to all.