Note 146.1 — Chapter VIII · Religion and Morality.

One more difference strikes us in comparing the ethical character of the two religions. The Greek high divinity is a moral being, but not every divinity was moralised to such an extent as were the higher powers of Mesopotamia. A few Hellenic deities remain ethically undeveloped and crude, Ares, for instance, and in a certain sense Hestia. A salient example is the contrast between the fire-god Hephaistos and the Babylonian-Sumerian Nusku or Girru.146.1 Both are elemental powers of fire, both are therefore concerned with the arts of metalwork; but Hephaistos remains a handicraftsman, and has little or nothing to do with moral life; whereas the Babylonian deity acquires an exalted moral and spiritual character. Dionysos becomes a most potent force in the later Hellenic world; yet an irrepressible vein of wildness and a spirit that refuses to conform to the ethical ideal of Hellas remains in him. A god so highly placed at Babylon would have been clothed with moral attributes in many an ecstatic phrase of temple liturgy.