Volume 4 — CHAPTER VI

GODS

635. The climax of the organization of external religion appears in the conception of gods proper; this conception is always associated with more or less well-developed institutions. Early religious life expresses itself in ceremonies; the god is the embodiment of man's ideal of the extrahuman power that rules the world. It is not always easy to distinguish the true gods from the other supernatural beings with which early man's world is peopled.1052 As far as concerns power, the ghosts and the spirits appear to do all that the gods are credited with doing; the sphere of ghostly action is practically unlimited, and the spirit that dwells in a spring, in a river, or in a mountain, is as mighty in his sphere as Indra or Apollo in his sphere; the difference between them and gods is a difference of intellectual and moral culture and of the degree of naturalization in a human society—a god might be defined as a superhuman Being fashioned by the thought of a civilized people (the term 'civilized' admitting, however, of many gradations). Still, gods proper may be distinguished from other Powers by certain characteristics of person and function. Ghosts are shadowy doubles of human beings, sometimes nameless, wandering about without definite purpose except to procure food for themselves, uncertain of temper, friendly or unfriendly according to caprice or other circumstances, able to help or to harm, and requiring men to be constantly on the alert so as not in an unguarded moment to offend them. Souls of recently deceased ancestors, more highly organized ghosts, conceived of also as attenuated bodies, have powers not essentially different from those of the simpler ghosts, but are differentiated from these in function by their intimate relations with the family or clan to which they belong, and by their more definite human nature; they are as a rule permanently friendly, are capable of definite sympathetic social intercourse with living men, and are sometimes controllers and patrons, hardly to be distinguished from local or departmental gods. Spirits are ethereal beings residing in, or closely connected with, certain objects (trees, rivers, springs, stones, mountains, etc.), sometimes permanently attached to these objects, sometimes detached; roaming about, sometimes kindly, more generally inimical, authors of disease and death, to be feared and to be guarded against, but sometimes in function (though not in origin) identical with ancestral ghosts. Totems, in their developed form, are revered, but rarely if ever worshiped. The term 'animal-gods' may mean either living animals regarded as divine, or animals believed to be the forms assumed by gods; in the latter case they may be taken to be real gods of an inferior type.

In distinction from the four classes of Powers just mentioned, a true god is a supernatural being with distinct anthropomorphic personality, with a proper name or a distinctive title, exercising authority over a certain land or people or over a department of nature or a class of phenomena, dwelling generally in a sanctuary on the earth, or in the sky, or in the other world, and in general sympathetic with men. Gods have rational human qualities, human modes of procedure, and are human beings in all things except power.1053

636. The god appears to have been at the outset a well-formed anthropomorphic being. His genesis is different from that of the ghost, spirit, ancestor, or totem. These, except the spirit, are all given by experience: totems are familiar objects plainly visible to the eye; ghosts and ancestors are known through dreams and appearances by day, and by tradition; and the conception of the spirit is closely allied to that of the ghost, though it is in part a scientific inference rather than a fact of experience. In distinction from these a god is a larger product of imagination, springing from the necessity of accounting for the existence of things in a relatively refined way. The creator is a beast only in low tribes, and in process of time, if the tribe continues to grow in culture, is absorbed in the cult of a true god. It is rarely, if ever, that a beast, whether a totem or only a sacred thing, becomes a god proper.

The best apparent examples of such a growth are the Egyptian bull Apis, who had his temple and ministers, the Hindu monkey-god Hanuman, and the divine snake of the Nagas of India.1054 But, though in these cases the beast forms receive divine worship, it is not clear whether it is the beast that is worshiped or a god incarnate in the beast; the question is difficult, the data being meager. The myths in which gods appear in beast forms do not prove a development of the former out of the latter. It is not necessary to suppose that Zeus was once a bull, Artemis a bear or a sow, Adonis a boar, and Aphrodite a sow or a dove. The myths may be naturally explained as arising from the coalescence of cults, the local sacred beast becoming attached to a local deity who had a different birth.

The god is a figure of slow growth. Beginning as a sort of headman, identified sometimes with an ancestor, sometimes with a beast, his character is shaped by all the influences that go to form the tribal life, and he thus embodies from generation to generation the tribe's ideals of virtue.

637. The list of classes of supernatural Powers given above must be regarded, as is there intimated, as a general one. One class appears sometimes to shade into another; in the theistic schemes of low tribes it is often difficult to define the conceptions of supernatural beings with precision.

Early mythical founders of culture. Before proceeding to a consideration of true gods, a class of beings must be mentioned that appears to stand on the borderland between divine animals, spirits, and gods. There are various sorts of beings that appear sometimes in animal form, sometimes in human form, their function being the arranging of the affairs of the world, the origination of institutions, and sometimes a definite creation of various things. The title "founders" or "transformers" or "culture-heroes" has been given them. They arise, just as the true gods do, from the necessity of accounting for the beginnings of things,1055 and, from a comparison of the ideas of various tribes, a certain growth in the conception may be recognized.

638. In some cases the figure is that of a mere trickster, a mischievous being, the hero of countless stories, who acts from caprice or malice, though his actions may result in advantage to men. Such are many of the animal forms of the North American Indians: the coyote of the Thompson River Indians,1056 the raven of North British Columbia,1057 the mink and the blue jay of the North Pacific Coast.1058 In other cases, as also to some extent in the Thompson River region, he appears in a more dignified form as a benevolent organizer.

This growth of the trickster into the real culture-hero may be referred to a progress in thought and refinement.1059 Among the Northern Maidu of California there is a sharp distinction between the two characters: the coyote is tricky and mischievous in the bad sense, with no desire to do anything profitable to men; the benevolent and useful work of the world is ascribed to a personage called "the creator," who is always dignified and regardful of the interests of man.1060 This sort of distinction, intended to account for the presence of both good and evil elements of life, is found in inchoate form among other low peoples (as, for example, the Masai and the Australians1061), but reaches its full proportions only in the great civilized religions.

639. In this class of vaguely conceived creators or transformers we may place the Central Australian Arunta ancestors, who embodied the idea of the identity of beasts and human beings, and are the originators of all the arts and institutions of the tribes; they established the totemic groups and the ceremonies, and, in the developed myth, perpetuate their existence by entering the bodies of women and being born as human beings.1062 The relative antiquity of this conception of the origin of things is uncertain; in one point of view it is crude, but in another it is an elaborate and well-considered attempt to explain the world. These Arunta ancestors, notwithstanding their half-bestial forms, are represented as acting in all regards like human beings, and as having planned a complete system of tribal organization, but no religious worship is offered them—they figure only in sociogonic myths and in the determination of the totemic status of newborn children. Among the Navahos we find a combination of beast and man in the work of creation.1063 In their elaborate cosmogonic myth the first actors are Coyote, First Man, and First Woman, and there is discord between Coyote and his human coworkers. Here again the object seems to be to account for the diverse elements of the tribal life.

640. Many such personages, originators or introducers of the arts of life and the distribution of territory, are described in the folk-tales and myths of the North American tribes. The conception, it may be concluded, existed all over the world, though for many communities the details have not yet been brought to light.1064 A noteworthy personage of this class is the Melanesian Qat (especially prominent in the Banks Islands), a being credited with almost plenary power, the creator or arranger of seasons, the introducer of night, therefore an important cultural power, yet mischievous, the hero of numerous folk-stories; he does not appear in animal form but lives an ordinary family life. He is not worshiped—he is regarded rather as the explanation of phenomena, a genuine product of early cosmogonic science. He appears to be the nearest approach in Melanesia to a real creator (with the exception perhaps of a somewhat uncertain female being called Koevasi); but alongside of him stand a number of spirits and ancestral ghosts who play an important part in the organization of society.1065 For the Koryaks of Northeastern Siberia the "Big Grandfather" is an arranger of all things out of preëxisting material;1066 the Chukchee, on the other hand, regard as creator a benevolent being residing in the zenith. Vague stories of simitar arrangers are found among the East African Nandi, and the South African Zulus.1067

641. Traces of this function of organizing society appear in the mythical figures of some higher religions. Among such figures may be reckoned the Babylonian Gilgamesh, the Old Testament Cainides, the Greek Heracles, Theseus, Orpheus, and others.1068 But these personages generally take on human form and are treated as factors in the regular social development.

642. The "culture-hero" thus seems to be a natural product of incipient civilization. He represents the vague feeling that the institutions of society arose out of human needs and that the origination of these institutions demanded more than human wisdom and power.1069 He partakes of the nature of both men and gods—he is all-powerful, yet a creature of caprice and a slave of accident. To him society is supposed to owe an incalculable debt; but his mixed nature affords a wide field for bizarre myths and folk-stories, and he of necessity gives way to more symmetrical divine figures.

643. The god, in the true sense of the word, is the highest generalization of the constructive religious imagination. In his simplest and earliest form he appears as a venerable supernatural man, wise according to the wisdom of his place and time—such is the natural conception of the lower tribes. His position is described by the titles "the old one," "the father," "the grandfather";1070 he is a superhuman headman or chief, caring for his people, giving them what they need, sharing their ethical ideas and enforcing their ethical rules. He is an all-sufficient local ruler or overseer, his functions touching the whole life of his people and of no other people. In the progress of myth-making (that is, in the construction of early scientific theology) such gods are not infrequently represented as men who have gone up to the sky; this is a natural way of accounting for their superterrestrial abode. Savage conceptions of the origin and history of such figures are usually vague, and their theologies fluctuating and self-contradictory; but there are two points as to which opinion is firm: the god is like men in everything except power, and his functions are universal. He represents not a monotheistic creed (which takes the whole world as the domain of God), but a narrow tribal acceptance of the sufficiency of the local divine patron.1071

Clan Gods

644. The character just described is that of the earliest known gods; it is embodied in certain figures found in various parts of the world. Such divine figures belong to the simplest form of social organization, the clan; it is in the clan that they are shaped, and they reflect the conceptions, political and ethical, of the clan. In Southeast Australia the personages called Daramulun, Baiame, Bunjil, correspond to this description: they are supernatural old men who have always existed; they are taken for granted without inquiry into their origin; they direct the affairs of the tribe in a general way in accordance with the moral ideas of the place and time.1072 The Australians have other beings with vaguely expressed characters and functions, but our information regarding these is so meager that it is not possible to form a distinct judgment of their character. Similar figures are the Klamath Indian "Old Man"1073 and the Zulu Unkulunkulu, an old man, the father of the people, only dimly understood by the natives who have been questioned on this point; they are uncertain whether he is dead or alive, but in any case he is revered as a great personage.1074

645. Other such deities are reported in South Africa, as the Qamata of the Xosa, Morimo of the Bakuana, and farther north Molungu.1075 On the West Coast also, in Ashanti, Dahomi, and Yoruba, a number of deities exist which were in all probability originally local.1076 Such appears to be the character of certain gods of the non-Aryan tribes of India, as the Kolarian Sunthals and Koles.1077 Perhaps also the god Vetala was originally such a local deity with the savage characteristics proper to the time and place, though later he was half Brahmanized and became a fiend.1078 Among the Todas every clan has its god, who was the creator and instructor of the people. The large number of gods now recognized by the various Toda communities are essentially the same in character and function, and the existing system has doubtless been formed by the coalition of the clans.1079 In North America the Navahos have a number of local deities, the yei (Zuñi, yeyi), some of which are called by terms that mean 'venerable.'1080 The Koryak guardians of occupations and houses may be of the nature of such objects of worship in the clans,1081 and so also the Patagonian family-gods. Cf. the Greek κουροτρόφος. In Japan the early system of supernatural beings has been obscured by the great religions of the later time—Shinto in its developed form, and Buddhism—but the indications are that the general term kami, a designation of all supernatural things, included local deities.1082

646. It is not clear how early the practice began of giving these beings proper names. In the lowest known tribes we meet descriptive titles such as "old one," "grandfather," "grandmother"; and so among some civilized peoples, as the Semites, whose local deities are often known simply as baals ('possessors,' 'lords'), sometimes as lords of particular places, as, for example, the Arabic Dhu ash-Shara (Dusares), 'lord of the Shara.' A god identified with a particular object may be called by its name; so 'Heaven' is said to have become the proper name of a Huron deity (cf. Zeus, Tien, Shangti).1083 Names of Pawnee gods are Bright Star (Evening Star), Great Star (Morning Star), Motionless One (North Star), and many other such; the Navahos have The Woman Who Changes (apparently the changing year), White Shell Woman, Child of Water;1084 the Kolarian Sunthals, Great Mountain;1085 the Brazilian Arawaks, River-born.1086 A proper name becomes necessary as soon as definite social relations with a god are established. Divine names in civilized religions, of remote origin, are often inexplicable.

647. Among the simple clan gods divinized men should be included. In many parts of the world, as is remarked above, chiefs and other great personages are regarded as divine; this attribution of divinity is a part of that general early conception according to which there was an element of power in all things, naturally embodied in a special way in important men. This sort of divinization is particularly prominent in Melanesia and parts of Polynesia; it exists also in Japan and in West Africa. As a rule it is only the recently dead that are thus regarded as divine objects of worship, and the cult would thus be substantially a part of the worship of ancestors; but such divinized men frequently bore a peculiarly intimate relation to the clan or community and became specific protectors.1087 So far as their origin is concerned, this class of divine patrons differs essentially from the old clan god, whose genesis probably belongs to a remote antiquity and is based on the general consciousness of some powerful influence in nature.1088

648. Clan gods are found abundantly among the ancient civilized peoples, Egyptian, Babylonian, Canaanite, Arabian, Greek, Roman, and probably existed among other peoples as to whom we have no exact information. In Old Egypt every hamlet had its protecting deity; these continued to be the objects of popular worship down to a very late time, the form of the deity being usually that of a living animal.1089

649. A similar religious constitution obtained among the old Semitic peoples. This is obvious in the case of the Canaanites (including the Phœnicians), where every clan or community had its divine lord (the Baal), who was a universal deity sufficient for all the needs of the living, though particularly connected with the dominant interests of his people.1090 Such, probably, was the original form of the Hebrew Yahweh (Jehovah); in his Sinaitic home he was naturally connected with the phenomena of desert and mountain, and in Canaan, whither the Israelites brought his cult, he was after a while recognized as the giver of crops also, and gradually became a universal god in the larger sense of the term.1091 The Phœnician Baals—such as the Tyrian Melkart, 'the king of the city'—are obviously local deities.1092 The same thing is true of the various gods that appear in pre-Mohammedan Arabia; the deity of any particular clan or tribe was known to the people as "the god" (Arabic Allah, that is, al-Ilahu), and the title "Allah," adopted by Mohammed as the name of the supreme and only god, thus in so far fitted in with the usage of the people.1093

650. In Babylonia also a very large part of the divine names found in the inscriptions must be understood to refer ultimately to local deities, each supreme in his own territory; the later theologians (probably priests) endeavored to organize these into a sort of pantheon, but never succeeded in differentiating the various deities distinctly. In general it may be said that all these old Semitic gods had one and the same character; each in his place was supreme, and it is difficult to find any difference in real character and function among the great gods, as Ea, Bel, Marduk, Sin, Shamash, Ishtar, Nabu, Ashur, Eshmun, and others.1094

651. The same remark will probably hold good of the popular worship of the old Greeks. When Pausanias traveled through Greece he found everywhere local cults which bore evidence of primitiveness, and obviously pertained to the clan gods of the various regions. In many cases these had been identified with old animal-gods or had been interwoven into the general later scheme and had been merged with the great gods of the developed pantheon.1095 The functions ascribed to various deities in the Veda suggest a similar origin for them. When we find that many of them are credited with the same larger or smaller acts of creation, protection, or blessing, we may suspect that they were originally clan gods that have been incorporated in the great theologic system, and that "henotheism" is mainly a survival from this earlier scheme or an extension of it.1096 Similar local gods appear in Peru1097 and Mexico.1098

652. One class of Greek "heroes" may be considered as belonging in the category of clan gods.1099 When the hero appears to be originally a god his worship is identical in character with that offered to local deities; so in the case of Achilles and many others.1100 Such an one is often a divine patron of a definite (usually small) territory, has his sacred shrine with its ministers, and his specific sacrificial cult. A trace of this type may perhaps be recognized in Hesiod's "halfgods,"1101 the heroes of the Trojan war and others, whom he places just after the age of bronze and just before his modern age of iron; their origin is thus made relatively late, as was natural if they descended culturally from old gods.

653. A similar view appears in the fact that a hero is sometimes of mixed parentage—his father or his mother is divine: a local god, standing in close cultic connection with a greater deity, is easily made into a son of the latter. In general, in the popular worship there seems to be no distinction between old heroes and gods. Where such a hero stood in close relations with a community—if, for example, as was sometimes the case, he was the patron or tutelary divinity of a family, or a mythical ancestor—there was doubtless a peculiar tenderness in the feeling for him. But his general function probably was simply that of local patron.1102

654. Clan gods are specially important in the history of worship—they form the real basis of the great theistic development. Ghosts and spirits continue to be recognized and revered or dreaded, but they are not powerful social bonds—it is the local deity about whose person organized public worship grows up, and it is he whose functions are gradually enlarged till he becomes a universal god. The initial forms of religion are everywhere limited locally and intellectually; it is only by loyalty to the home as a center and standing-place that man's religious affections and ideals have expanded so as to embrace the world, and reach a high standard of ethical purity and logical consistency.

Departmental Gods

655. It must be regarded as an advance in religious conceptions and religious life when natural phenomena are divided into classes and assigned each to its special deity; such a scheme brings men into more intimate and sympathetic relations with the gods. It presupposes a relatively advanced observation of nature and some power of coördination and generalization, and seems to be found only in communities that have some well-organized communal life. In general it belongs to the agricultural stage and to the higher civilizations that have grown out of this stage. Care for food appears to be the starting-point; later, all sorts of social interests demand consideration.

656. This specialization of functions is possibly in part an elevation of the old scheme of spirits according to which every object in the world was conceived of as inhabited or controlled by some spiritlike being. It is not probable that the departmental gods are always developed directly out of spirits—they appear sometimes to belong rather in the clan system, are anthropomorphic, human, lending themselves more readily than spirits do to human intercourse.1103 It is true that the lower cults of animals and spirits persist alongside of the higher religious forms, and the various groups often appear to blend with one another, as is generally the case in transitions from one system of thought to another.

657. Deities with this sort of specialized functions appear in all parts of the world and at various periods of culture. The particular sort of specialization differs according to climatic conditions and social organization—that is, it depends in any community on the nature of the phenomena that touch the life of the community closely. But the general principle remains the same—it is the effort to penetrate more deeply into the nature of the supernatural Powers, and to enter into more intimate and helpful relations with them; it is the beginning of a more practical study of theology proper.

658. A somewhat low and vague form of specialization of function is found in Melanesia, where certain beings appear as patrons of work.1104 These are said by Codrington to be ghosts, yet to be prayed to just as if they were gods; and in fact, being men with indefinitely great powers, they can hardly be distinguished from such deities as Daramulun and Unkulunkulu, except in the fact that their function is specific. In Australia the published reports do not describe departmental gods proper, with the possible exception of an undefined being in the North. A more developed scheme exists in Polynesia. In New Zealand there were deities of food-planting and of forests.1105 The highest point of Polynesian civilization seems to have been reached in the Hawaiian Islands, where, besides several great gods, there were deities of the sky, the sea, winds, and lightning, of agriculture, and of various occupations and professions, such as fishing, and even robbing.1106

659. The Sea Dyaks have a god of rice-farming and one of war.1107 In the Malay Peninsula there is a confused mingling of supernatural beings of various sorts, with a great development of magic; the determination of the functions of the better-developed gods is rendered difficult by the fact that the Malays have been much affected by Hindu influence.1108 Such influence is possibly to be recognized also in the systems of the Dravidian and Kolarian tribes, though in them there seems to be a native non-Aryan element. The Khonds have gods of rain, fruit, hunting, and boundaries. Among all these tribes the chief deity is the sun-god, by whose side stands the earth-god; these may well be primitive, though their present form may be due to Hindu influence.1109

660. The Masai of Eastern Africa have two chief gods—one black, said to be good; the other red, said to be bad.1110 The only trace of a recognition of cosmic powers appears in their myth that the sky and the earth were once united in one embrace;1111 but it is not clear that they recognize a god of the sky and one of the earth. Among the Bantu, who are largely, though not wholly, pastoral, there appears to be no trace of an apportionment of natural phenomena among supernatural beings.1112 On the West Coast of Africa there is a somewhat elaborate scheme of departmental deities. The sky is the chief god, but in Dahomi and Ashanti there are gods of lightning, fire, the ocean, the rainbow, war, markets, silk, cotton, and poison trees, smallpox, sensual desire, discord, and wisdom; in Dahomi there is a tutelary god of the royal family. The Yorubans have a similar system, embracing gods of the Niger, nightmare, wealth, gardens, and divination.1113 This more elaborate system corresponds to their more highly developed scheme of social organization.

661. The tribes of Northeastern Asia are less developed religiously. The Koryaks are said to have benevolent and malevolent deities, but appear not to have made much progress in the recognition of the distinct departments of nature.1114 The Ainu have a large number of specific deities: the goddess of fire, whose title is "Grandmother"; gods of the kitchen, of doors, of springs, and of gardens.1115 As the Ainu culture resembles that of Northeastern Asia in several respects, it is possible that in the latter region there exists a more highly specialized scheme than has yet been reported. In Central Asia also it seems that no great progress has been made in this direction by native thought. The statement of Herodotus1116 that the Thracians in time of thunderstorms used to shoot arrows at the sky and threaten the god, may point to a recognition of a god of the sky or of storm. In the greater part of Central Asia the conception of local spirits has prevailed and still prevails (Shamanism), a phase of religion that stands below that of the division of nature into departments. In certain districts of Mongolia, in which the theistic system is complicated, departmental deities are now found, but the obvious dependence of this region on Buddhism (Lamaism) and other outside cults makes it doubtful whether or how far this scheme of gods is of native origin.1117

662. In North America the Algonkin and Maskoki nations and the Skidi Pawnee have deities of the sky, the heavenly bodies, the winds, and fire.1118 In the western part of the continent the theistic systems are less developed, but the details of the cults have not yet been fully collected; so far as appears, a departmental organization has not been made. In Brazil there is a trace of such a conception among the Tupis; but the South American tribes remain at a low level of theistic development.1119

663. The three greater religions of America, the Maya, the Mexican, and the Peruvian, offer much more interesting material, in regard to which the information which has been handed down to us is often unfortunately meager. Particularly, little definite is known of the Maya system; the indications are that the Mayas were superior in civilization to the Aztecs, and their religious customs and conceptions correspondingly higher than those of the latter.1120

664. The Aztec religion is that which the Spaniards on their arrival found to be the dominant one in Mexico. It was the religion of a conquering race, formed in part by a coalition of tribes and a combination of cults. From the records (none of which are contemporaneous) it appears that there was a very considerable specialization of function in the Aztec deities. These were probably local gods with universal functions gradually differentiated. Huitzilopochtli, apparently a patron of vegetation (with three annual festivals corresponding to agricultural seasons), became especially the god of war, in accordance with the character of the Aztecs. Another side of social life was embodied in the conception of Tezcatlipoca, who represented law and justice, but naturally became also a god of war. In sharp contrast with these stands Quetzalcoatl, a milder god, apparently a representative of general culture and good life. But he is commonly held to be of foreign origin. If a foreigner, he was nevertheless adopted by the Aztecs and embodied one side of their life, particularly, perhaps, the protests against the human sacrifices, which were so prominent a feature in the cults of the other two deities. There were further a god of rain, a goddess of harvest, and a goddess of sensual pleasure, besides a great number of minor specialized deities. With this specialization of function, however, there was no corresponding development of character in the gods, no pantheon proper. The myths which have been preserved relate to the origin of social customs and to the birth of gods. They appear to have been developed only a step beyond the myths of the Redmen.1121

665. The Peruvian cult differs from the Mexican in that it recognizes, in its developed form, one preëminent deity, the sun-god, from whom issues all authority. Along with him stand two prominent figures, Viracocha and Pachacamac, who also are credited with great powers. Apparently they were local universal deities who were incorporated into the Peruvian system and subordinated to the sun-god. All three are only vague, general figures, having no histories except a few stories of origins, and the Peruvian myths do not differ in essential character from those of the Aztecs.1122

666. In this category we may include a large number of minutely specialized deities of the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Romans. As among some lower tribes already referred to, so here many common objects and pursuits are regarded as being under the fostering care of specific deities. In Egypt the ripe ear of the grain, the birth of a child and its naming, and other things had their special divinities.1123

667. The Greeks had such divine patrons of the corncrib, beans, plowshare, cattle, city walls, banquets, potters, physicians, athletic contests, and even one hero known as the "frightener of horses" and a deity called the "flycatcher."1124

668. The Romans carried out this specialization in even greater detail. Almost every object and every event of the communal life had its patron deity: the house, the hearth, the field, the boundary stone, sowing and reaping, the wall, breath, marriage, education, death; the Lares were the special protectors of the house or of the field, and all patrons of the home were summed up under the general designations dii penates and dii familiares. Most of these beings have proper names, but even where there are no such names, as in the case of the dii penates, there can be little doubt that they were looked on as personal individualized beings.1125 The tendency was, as time went on, to add to the number of these specialized patrons, as appears from the Roman indigitamenta1126 lists of such divine beings redacted by the priests, who were disposed, naturally, to make the objects of worship as numerous as possible; but herein they doubtless responded to a popular impulse.

669. This disposition to define practical functions minutely appears also in the cultic history of the greater gods of the old Roman religion: the rôle of Jupiter as god of sky and rain was definitely fixed, and Tellus was not the divine mother of the human race but the beneficent bestower of crops. As the functions of such greater gods became more numerous and more definitely fixed, epithets were employed; Jupiter had a dozen or more of such adjectival additions, and it appears that at a later time such epithets were personalized into deities; but this academic or priestly procedure does not set aside the fact that the early Roman religion recognized a vast number of divine beings as the specific patrons of certain things and acts.

670. It was quite natural for the practical Roman mind to place everything of importance under the care of a divine being—a procedure which is simply carrying out in greater detail modes of thought which we have seen to be common in many of the lower tribes. Augustine thinks this specialization amusing, ridiculous, and difficult to understand. He brings up the whole question of origin when he asks why it was necessary to have two goddesses for the waves of the sea—one, Venilia, representing the wave as advancing to the shore; the other, Salacia, representing the wave as receding.1127 This seems, to be sure, an unnecessary specialization; but, considered in connection with the whole Roman system, it is not less intelligible than the multiplication of deities attending upon the birth and education of a child, on the processes of farming, and on the fortunes of war. Since human life is guided by the gods, thought the Romans, there is no act that may not have its god; this system is the objectivation of the conception of divine special providence.1128

671. To certain Semitic deities highly specialized functions have been supposed to belong; but the known facts hardly warrant this supposition. In the names Baal-Marqod, Baal-Marpe, Baal-Gad, the second element may be the name of a place; that is, the Baal may be a local deity (as the Baals elsewhere are). The title Baal-berit1129 has been interpreted as meaning "lord of a covenant"—that is, a deity presiding over treaties; but the expression is not clear. Baalzebub is in the Old Testament the god of the Philistine city Ekron, where he had a famous oracle;1130 it is highly improbable that the name means "lord of flies" (which would rather be Baal-zebubim), but the sense is obscure. The New Testament Baal [Beel]-zebul1131 (the only correct form) has been variously explained. The second element, zebul, occurs in the Old Testament as a name of the heavenly abode of the deity,1132 and the title has been regarded as the Semitic rendering of a Greek or Roman title of a god of heaven (Zeus Ouranios; cf. Caelestis, epithet of Jupiter); as foreign deities were called "demons" by the later Jews, the chief of these deities, it is held, might well be taken to be the "prince of demons." However this may be, Beelzebul cannot be ranked among the deities with highly specialized functions.1133

672. The scheme of gods just described is closely allied to that of tutelary deities for individual human beings. A transitional step may be recognized in the assignment of special divine protectors to every house or village or grove, as among the Ainu (with whom the tutelary power is the head of a bear), in Borneo (where every house has a human skull as protector), among the Khonds, in the Vedic Vastoshpati, the "lord of the house," in the Hindu "house goddess," and in the Chinese tutelary god for every year.1134 From such a scheme to the assignment of a protecting spirit to every human being there is but a step, and this is made natural or necessary by the increasing sense of the value of the individual. Such tutelary spirits or deities are found in Polynesia and Africa.1135 The North American manitu and the Central American nagual,1136 referred to above, are not only special objects of worship but also constantly present guardians of individual men. The Iroquois have special tutelary spirits.1137 In Ashanti such a function is performed by the indwelling spirit, which is scarcely distinguishable from the man himself.1138 The Roman genius represents the man's individual life, but becomes also his guardian;1139 and the daimon of Socrates was possibly originally a being of the same sort,1140 though he may have identified it with conscience.

673. In the great religions of antiquity every city and every state had its special divine protector. The Persian fravashis are the guardians of individual human beings. The later Jews held that there was a guardian angel for every nation and for every person.1141 All such conceptions embody the human sense of dependence on divine aid and the demand for specific divine protectors standing near to man and sustaining special relations with individuals. In some forms of Christianity the function of protection is assigned to patron saints.

674. Certain classes of departmental or specific gods may be mentioned here for the purpose of indicating their development.

675. Creators. The work of the creation of the world is assigned among various peoples to a great variety of beings. In the earliest strata of religious belief animals play a great rôle as creators. The known examples of their creative function are so numerous that we may well be disposed to regard it as universal. In general it is the best-known animal, or the one credited with the greatest sagacity, that is regarded as creator.1142

676. But the natural progress of thought involved the advance to the conception of anthropomorphic creators. A transitional stage is presented by the Australian Arunta, in whose mythical system the authors of tribal institutions and the makers of heavenly bodies are the half-animal, half-human ancestors; this seems to be an attempt at a transformation of the old scheme of creation by animals—unwilling to abandon the earlier conception, these tribes have satisfied themselves by the theory that the ancestors and creators, though animals in nature, must at the same time have been human.1143 We may compare with these the Melanesian and Samoan supernatural beings who are incarnate in animal forms and are at the same time originators of civilization.1144 These zoömorphic beings are not necessarily totems, as in Australia; outside of the Arunta it does not appear that totems as such are ever regarded as creators1145—they are ancestors, but at that point their function appears to cease.

677. There are however ghosts, which, while of course representing ancestors, are regarded not specially in their ancestorial capacity, but rather as powerful beings who have been more or less active in framing the constitution of society. This form of ghost occurs in Melanesia, where also spirits, vague beings who never were human, play a great rôle. The best authorities find it somewhat difficult to distinguish between such ghosts and spirits on the one hand, and gods on the other hand.1146 The Qat of the Banks Islands is in one sense a creator, since he determines the regular courses of the seasons and is the introducer of night; yet, since he does not actually create the world, but only rearranges the existing material, he belongs rather in the category of transformers or initiators. Real anthropomorphic gods appear as creators in very early tribes. Such, for example, are Baiame, Daramulun, Bunjil of Australia,1147 perhaps Supu of the Melanesian island of Vate.

678. In Polynesia there is a better-defined cosmogonic anthropomorphism. The Hawaiian creators Kane and Tangaloa appear to be fully formed deities.1148 The Maoris have the divine figures Heaven and Earth, whose children are the producers of all things in the world. But Maui, who seems to be a general Polynesian figure, is rather a culture-hero than a god, though his achievements were of a very serious sort. The Tapa of the Borneo Land Dyaks,1149 and the Boora Pennu of the Khonds1150 may be regarded as real gods. On the West Coast of Africa the Yorubans, the most advanced of the coast tribes, with a well-developed pantheon, have deities who may be called creators; such are Obatala, who, according to one account, made the first human pair out of clay, and Ifa, the restorer of the world after the flood.1151 In North America the New England Kiehtan and the Virginian Oki have creative functions.1152 The Navahos ascribe the creation of certain animals to a god Bekotsidi, whose character and rôle, however, are vague.1153 The Brazilian Tupan and Jurupari appear to be divine creators.1154 For a good many tribes in all parts of the world the published reports give no precise information regarding the beginning of things, but it seems probable that fuller acquaintance with them would reveal conceptions similar to those described above.

679. The great civilized nations, with their well-formed anthropomorphic deities, have constructed elaborate cosmogonies, which commonly begin with the conception of an unshaped mass of material out of which the gods arise and create the world. There is no great difference in these various schemes: Babylonians and Greeks have fallen upon substantially the same general view of creation; the variations among the various peoples are due to circumstances of place and culture. It is noteworthy that the Maoris have a cosmogony which is not unlike that of the great civilized nations of antiquity, but the origin of their scheme of the world is not clear.1155

680. Gods of the other world. The class of departmental gods includes those who have charge of the other world. As soon as the abode of men after death is definitely fixed, it is natural that a deity presiding over this other world should arise. Among the lower tribes this sort of god is not frequent.1156 One of the clearest cases of such organization occurs in Fiji.1157 Here, in addition to other deities who deal with the dead on their entrance into this farther world, the great deity Ndengei has his abode, and one of his functions is to pass on the merits of those who present themselves from the world of living men. He is, however, in part an otiose deity and can hardly be said to rule over this otherworldly realm. Similar undeveloped deities are found among the Maoris and the Finns.1158

681. But fully formed and effective divine rulers of the other world occur only in the more advanced religions, such as the Babylonian, the Egyptian, the Hindu, the Persian, the Greek, the Roman.1159 From the nature of their abode such deities have very little to do with the life on earth except when, as in the Egyptian system and to some extent in the Fijian, there is a judge of conduct, with authority to assign the dead their places, good or bad. In such cases they become important moral factors in life.

682. An ethical god of the other world appears not to have been created by the Semites. The Babylonian Underworld goddess or god has nothing to do with moral character, and among the Hebrews, so far as the statements in the Old Testament go, no special deity was assigned to the other world; whether such an Underworld deity once existed and was lost by the Hebrews, or has been expurged by the later editors of the Old Testament books, must remain uncertain;1160 in the late pre-Christian period the national god, Yahweh, was regarded as controlling the Underworld as well as Heaven and Earth.1161 The Greek Aïdes or Ploutōn and the Roman Pluto also are not ethical gods in the higher sense, as indeed no early deity of any people has such a moral character. At a later period ethical distinctions were introduced into the administration of the other world.

By reason of paucity of data it is difficult to determine the precise characters of various Celtic, Slavic, and Germanic deities whose names appear in the records. They are gods of clans and of departments of nature; none of them can properly be reckoned among the great gods.1162

683. Division into good and bad Powers. Among many savage and half-civilized peoples we find that a distinction is recognized between good and bad ghosts and spirits—a distinction at first vague, based on passing experiences in which all the fortunes of men, favorable and unfavorable, are referred to these beings. Their morals are those of the human communities with which they are connected: they may be amiable or malignant, beneficent or revengeful, but the ethical element in their characters and deeds is not distinctly recognized and is not made the basis of the distinction between the two classes. The world is seen to be full of Powers that make for weal or for woe—a conception that contains the germ of all the later development but is at first nebulous.

684. In a somewhat higher form of culture these two classes of Powers may be unified respectively into, or replaced by, two gods, one helpful, the other harmful. Such appears to be the scheme of the Masai, who have their black god and red god.1163 A Californian cosmogonic myth describes a nonmoral conflict of work between the good "Creator" and the malicious Coyote.1164 A real unification appears, however, to be rare; it supposes in fact a degree of reflection and organization that we should not expect to find among lower peoples. The story, for example, that has been told of a well-developed dualistic system of the Iroquois is based on a misconception.1165 Dualism proper is not recognizable among the savages of America, Polynesia, Asia, or Africa.1166 In the Old Testament prior to the sixth century B.C. the spirits, good and bad, which are not essentially different from those we find among the lower tribes, are massed under the control of Yahweh, and do his bidding without moral reflection; when he sends a lying spirit into the mouth of Ahab's prophets1167 this spirit goes without malice merely to perform the will of the supreme god. This massing of all spirit Powers under the control of one god is a step toward unity and clearness in the conception of the government of the world.

685. At a later stage of social growth there appears the conception of a cosmic struggle, the conflict between the natural forces that tend to disorder and those that tend to order. Philosophical reflection led to the supposition of an original chaos, a medley of natural forces not combined or organized in such a way as to minister to the needs of human life; and a similar conception of conflict may have arisen from observation of the warring elements at certain seasons of the year.

686. The adjustment of the rival forces and the establishment of a system of physical order is referred to the great gods. Such a picture of the original state of things is contained in the elaborate Babylonian cosmologies that have come down to us; in these the dragon of disorder (Tiamat) is completely conquered by the god Bel-Marduk, who represents the Babylonian civilization of the time in which the cosmology arose. Of the same nature is the Egyptian myth of the contest between Horus (the light) and Set (the dark), in which, however, the victory of Horus is not described as being absolute1168—a representation suggested, possibly, by the recognition of the persistence of the good and bad elements of the world; compare the cosmologies of the Maidu and the Khonds mentioned above (§684). In the Greek and Teutonic myths in which the Giants are the enemies of the great gods a more humane and settled government of the world is introduced by Zeus and Wodan. Traces of this construction of the universe are to be found also among the Maoris, the Hawaiians, and other peoples of a like grade.1169

687. In the original form of these myths there is no moral element beyond the fact that the settlement of the cosmic powers was necessary in order to the establishment of good social life. Individual wicked deities do not appear at this stage, but the way is prepared for them by the picture of cosmic struggle in which powers friendly and unfriendly to men are opposed to one another. A similar conception is found in the figures of the Fates, who are the embodiment of the course of events in the world—the immovable, remorseless, absolute fortune of men, good and bad—a picture of life as it has presented itself, doubtless, to men in all periods of history. Out of this came the abstract conception of Fate, the impersonal power that controls all things.

688. The deeper conception of a conflict between the moral good and the moral evil in life belongs to the latest period in religious history. Here the determining fact is the control of the world by the high gods, who have their adversaries, but in general prove victors. At the foundation of this scheme of the world lies the conception of order, which is particularly defined in the Vedic arta and the Avestan asha1170—the regulation of the world in accordance with human interests, in which the ethical element becomes more and more prominent as human society is more and more formed on an ethical basis.

689. Ethical dualism is most fully embodied in the Persian conception of two gods, good and bad, with the understanding that the good god, Ahura Mazda, exercises a certain restraint on the bad god, Angro Mainyu, who is finally to be crushed.1171 This optimistic point of view, which has no doubt existed in germinal shape among all peoples, appears also in the modified dualism of the Old Testament and the late Jewish and Christian schemes. The Old Testament Satan is originally a divine being, one of the "sons of the Elohim" (that is, he belongs to the Elohim, or divine, class); his function is that of inspector of human conduct, prosecutor-general, with a natural tendency to disparage men and demand their punishment. As a member of Yahweh's court and council he makes regular reports to his divine lord and pleads cases before the divine court.1172 In this character he is suspicious and mischievous but not immoral; but a little later a trace of malice appears in him,1173 and in the uncanonical Jewish book of the Wisdom of Solomon and in the New Testament he advances to the position of the head of the kingdom of moral evil, so that he is called also "the god of the present age"1174—that is, he is the controller of the existing unregenerate element in human society, and is to be displaced when the ideal age shall be established.

690. Man's attitude toward demons. Demons1175 (the term being taken to include all early malefic superhuman beings, whether ghosts or spirits) are feared and guarded against, but rarely receive worship. As they are the authors of all physical ills that cannot be explained on natural grounds, measures, usually magical, are taken to thwart their purposes—to prevent their intervention or to overcome and banish the evil begun by them. As they are not credited with moral principle, hostility to them rests not on ethical feeling but merely on fear of suffering.1176 If they are placated, it is in cases in which they approach the character of gods and in so far cease to be demons in our sense of the word. They serve a useful purpose in that, taking on their shoulders all the ills of life, they leave the clan gods free from the suspicion of unfriendliness to men.1177 On the other hand, the belief in them has created a pseudo-science of relief from suffering and a great host of pseudo-doctors who for a long time exercised a large control over society and bound men in fetters of ignorance.

691. In early societies demons have not individual names. In savage societies there are malefic deities, with individual names, connected with sicknesses and other ills; but such deities are not demons. Demons do not enter into friendly social relations with men,1178 and observation of experiences is not carried so far as to assign every ill to a separate author. In more advanced societies, as, for instance, the Babylonian,1179 demons are divided into classes according to their various lines of activity, and to these classes names are given. If some individual demon, representing a particular ill, becomes specially important, it may receive an individual name. In general, the demonic name-giving follows the theistic, but lags behind it. Clan gods have at first some such appellation as Old One, Grandfather, or a descriptive epithet (as among some American Indian tribes), and later, Lord, Lady, Mighty One, Exalted One; in process of time they receive proper names, which must have arisen at a relatively early period, since the meaning of the names of most of the old deities was to the ancients, as it is to us, unknown. In the case of the demonic world this development has not been carried so far, for the reason stated above, namely, that these beings, unlike gods, have not become real citizens of the communities with which they are connected.

692. In like manner the organization of demons has not kept pace with that of gods. In most regions they have remained a mob, every individual pursuing his way independently. It is only in advanced cults that they form a community with a head. In China and Persia the sharp division of supernatural forces into two classes was the outcome of great religious reformations that followed the usual savage chaos of the hordes of demons. The Jewish demonology (probably influenced by the Persian) chose for the head of its kingdom of evil an old god (the Satan) or the similar figure Azazel.1180

693. It does not appear that religious worship has ever been offered to a being regarded as morally bad and in honor of moral badness. The "devils" reported by early (and some recent) travelers as the recipients of religious homage turn out on inquiry to be clan gods whose anger is feared.1181 The cult of many savage and many civilized deities has been, and is, characterized by gross cruelty and licentiousness; but it is certain that human sacrifice and sexual indulgence were, and are, in these cases not regarded as morally wrong. Durga (Kali), wife of Çiva, most terrible and repulsive of female deities, while she is feared, is also revered as the giver of all good gifts; and the Thugs, when they offered her their strangled victims, ascribed no more moral blame to her than to themselves—their work they regarded not as murder but as pious sacrifice.1182 The Gnostic sects, Ophites and Cainites, looked on the serpent and Cain as friends of the supreme Deity and of man; they were enemies only of the Demiourgos, the Jewish god Yahweh, who, they held, wished to keep man in ignorance.1183 The Mesopotamian Yezidis also (the so-called devil-worshipers) revere only beings that they regard as morally good or as destined to become good. Their peculiar attitude toward Satan (a mingling of fear and respect) is based not on his connection with evil but on their expectation that, though he is now fallen from his high angelic estate, he is ultimately to be restored to his original dignity.1184

694. Thus, it cannot be said that a demon has ever developed into a god. The malefic Powers of savages have generally been absorbed by higher beings or have otherwise disappeared. Some gods, such as the Hebrew Satan and certain Greek deities, have been degraded to the demonic class. In some cases, particularly in the Zoroastrian system, a being who is the consolidation of all malign supernatural activities has been credited with all-but divine power and authority.1185 But the two classes remain distinct—the true "god" is a friendly member of a human society, and when he is angry may be placated; the true "demon" is essentially hostile to men and must be thwarted and expelled.1186

695. Gods of abstractions. Gods of abstractions, found in certain theistic systems, are to be distinguished on the one hand from deities that are simply personalizations of physical objects (such as Vesta and Agni) and on the other hand from poetical personifications, such as that of Wisdom in the Jewish books of Proverbs, Ecclesiasticus, and the Wisdom of Solomon, and from concrete figures like the Logos of Philo and the Fourth Gospel. Though these abstract forms appear to be relatively late (posterior to the formation of the greater gods), the meagerness of our data makes it difficult to describe their genesis and the conceptions of their character by the peoples among whom they arise. Some facts known to us, however, may help us to understand in part the process by which they came into existence.

696. We have already considered the tendency in human communities to particularize the divine objects of worship and to personalize external objects; everywhere, it would appear, there is a disposition to assign a particular divine control to every fact that is specially connected with human interests. We have to note, further, the tendency to concretize, as, for example, in many cases in which evil, physical or moral, is regarded as a concrete thing that may be removed bodily from the community.1187 This sort of conception we may suppose to be connected with early psychological theory, according to which anything that affects man is credited with manlike form and power. The facility with which the abstract and the concrete may be identified is illustrated by such modern terms as deity, majesty, highness, state, government, direction, counsel; in these expressions the abstract quality or act is incarnated in certain persons, and so we may imagine that at a certain stage of society any quality or act might be isolated and regarded as a personal thing. A series of victories, for example, might suggest the conception of 'victory' as a thing present in these events, and the tendency to personalize would then create the divine figure Victory. Historically a personalization may have arisen, in some cases, through the isolation of an epithet of a deity (so, for example, Fides may have come from Dius Fidius),1188 but in such cases the psychological basis of the personalization is the same as that just stated. From these, as is remarked above, must be distinguished poetical and philosophical abstractions.

697. Whatever be the explanation of the process, we find in fact a large number of cases in which such abstractions appear as deities and receive worship.

698. Semitic. The material for the Semitic religions on this point is scanty.1189 The Arabic divine names supposed by Nöldeke to represent abstractions are Manāt (fate), Sa'd (fortune), Ruḍā (favor), Wadd (love), Manāf (height), 'Auḍ (time). Whether these are all abstract terms is doubtful. Wadd means also 'lover,' divine friend or patron. Sa'd occurs as adjective 'fortunate,' is the appellation of certain stars, and the god Sa'd is identified by an Arab poet with a certain rock1190—the rock is doubtless an old local divinity. Ruḍā is found apparently only as a divine name (in Palmyrene and Safa inscriptions and as a god of an Arabian tribe)—the form may be concrete, in the sense of 'favoring,' divine patron. As "time" (dahr, zaman) often occurs in Arabic poetry in the sense of 'fate,' the god 'Auḍ may be an embodiment of this conception.1191 Manāf, if understood, as is possible, in the sense 'high place,' is not abstract but concrete, though in that case the original reference of the term is not clear.

699. Manāt is one of the three great goddesses of Mecca, the others being Al-Lât ('the goddess') and Al-Uzza ('the mighty one'); as these two names are concrete, there is a certain presumption that Manāt likewise is concrete. The original meaning of the word is obscure. It does not occur as a common noun, but from the same stem come terms meaning 'doom, death,'1192 and, if it be allied to these, it would be an expression for 'fate' (like 'Auḍ). However, the stem is used in the sense 'number, determine, assign,' and Manāt may be the divine determiner of human destinies. From this same stem comes the Biblical Meni, and apparently the Assyrian Manu.1193 The ordinary North Semitic conception of the source of human destinies is that they are determined by the gods and written on tablets or in a book,1194 and the same conception may have existed in the South Semitic area.1195 The other deity mentioned in Isaiah lxv, 11, is Gad; the word means in Arabic and Hebrew 'fortune, good fortune,' and occurs as the name of a deity in Phœnician and Aramaic inscriptions, but the data are not sufficient to fix its original sense. It is the name of a Hebrew tribe, which is perhaps so called from the tribal god, and the name of a tribal god is probably concrete.1196

700. It seems, then, that for most if not all of the names of the Semitic deities just mentioned abstract senses, though possible, are not certain. Nöldeke remarks that most of these terms are poetical—they may be ornate epithets given to old concrete divine figures, in which case the real cults were attached to these latter and not to abstractions. It must be regarded as doubtful whether Semitic religion created any abstract deity.

701. Egyptian. The most prominent Egyptian abstract deity is Maat, 'truth.' She fulfilled an important function in the judgment-hall of Osiris in the Underworld, and was widely revered, but had no mythical history, and seems to have been rather a quasi-philosophical creation than a vital element of the Egyptian religious life. A god Destiny is mentioned, who generally bestowed a happy fate.1197

702. Roman and Greek. The most fully developed form of this conception is found in the Roman cult.1198 The civic genius of the Romans led them to give prominence to the maintenance of public and private rights; thus among their deities appear public safety or salvation (Salus Publica), public faith or fidelity to engagements (Fides), civic harmony (Concordia), connubial purity (Pudicitia), filial devotion (Pietas), the boundary of property (Terminus), victory (Victoria), liberty (Libertas). There are further the gods Youth (Juventus and Juventas) and Desire1199 (Cupido), perhaps as things fundamental in human life.1200 Fortune (Fortuna) is the mass of evidence determining life by the will of the gods, with which the utterances of the gods (Fata) are identical, and the embodiment of the determining agencies is the Parcæ. Several of these deities have their correspondents in the Greek theistic system:1201 Eros (desire); Tuche (that which is allotted one by the gods or by the course of events); Moira (Aisa), the unification of all the powers that determine man's destiny. The god Kronos was by some improperly identified with "time" (χρόνος).1202

703. Aryan. Among the Aryans of India the god Kama (desire) appears to be identical with Cupido. Some other abstractions, such as Piety and Infinity, are akin to Mazdean conceptions.1203 Brahma, originally 'magical formula,' then 'prayer,' and later 'pious thought,' becomes finally Brahma, the all-embracing god. Ṛta (arta), 'order,' at first, perhaps, the proper order of the sacrificial ritual, becomes finally 'moral order or righteousness' and 'cosmic order.' This conception is still more prominent in the Avesta,1204 in which Asha (Order) is one of the Amesha-spentas, only inferior to the supreme god; the other companions of Ahura Mazda have similar titles and may equally be regarded as the personalization of abstract ideas.1205 In the same category may be included the Mazdean conceptions Endless Time (Zrvan Akarana) and Endless Space (Thwasha), which appear to be treated in the Avesta as personal deities.1206 The organizers of the Mazdean faith, having discarded almost all the old gods, invested the supreme god with certain moral qualities, and these, by a natural process of thought, were concretized (Ahura Mazda is sometimes included in the list of Amesha-spentas). Thus arose a sort of pantheon, an echo of the old polytheism; but the history of the process of formulation is obscure.1207

704. Most, if not all, of the abstract conceptions mentioned above are also placed, in the various theistic systems, under the control of great gods. Thus, for example, Jupiter is the guardian of boundaries and has the epithet "Terminus," and Zeus is the patron of freedom (Eleutherios).1208 It is, however, not necessary to suppose that the abstractions in question are taken from the functions of the great gods. Rather these epithets of the gods are to be explained from the same tendency that produced gods of abstractions. It was the sense of the importance of the boundary in early life that led both to the creation of the god Terminus and to the assignment of the epithet "Terminus" to Jupiter. The desire or love that was so important an element in human life both fashioned itself into a personality and was put under the guardianship of a special deity. Public safety was a cherished idea of the Romans and was doubtless held to be maintained by every local or national god, yet could none the less become an independent deity. The data are not sufficient to enable us to determine in all cases the question of chronological precedence between the deification of the abstraction and the assignment of the epithet to a god. We know that in the later Roman period abstractions were personalized, but this procedure was often poetical or rhetorical.1209

705. A general relation may be recognized between the intellectual character of a people and the extent to which it creates abstract gods. The Semitic peoples, among whom the development of such gods is the feeblest, are characterized by objectiveness of thought, indisposition to philosophical or psychological analysis, and a maintenance of local political and religious organization; it is natural that they should construct concrete deities exclusively or almost exclusively. Egypt also was objective, and carried its demand for visible objects of worship to the point of incarnating its gods in living animals; such living gods tend to banish pale abstractions, and such conceptions played an insignificant part in Egyptian religion. In India, with its genius for philosophical refinement, we might expect to find this latter class of gods; but Indian thought speedily passed into the large pantheistic and other generalizations that absorbed the lesser abstractions. Greece appears to have had the combination of philosophy and practicalness that favors the production of a certain sort of abstract gods, and a considerable number of these it did produce;1210 but here also philosophy, in the form of large theories of the constitution and life of man, got the upper hand and repressed the other development. The Romans had no pretensions to philosophic or æsthetic thought, but they had a keen sense of the value of family and civic life, and great skill in using religion for social purposes. It is they among whom specialized deities, including abstractions, had the greatest significance for the life of the people—family and State.

706. With the growth of general culture all specialized divinities tend to disappear, absorbed by the great gods and displaced by better knowledge of the laws governing the bodily and mental growth of men.1211 The divinities of abstractions, so far as they were really alive, had the effect of making great civic and religious ideas familiar to the people. Later (as in modern life) such ideas were cherished as the outcome of reflection on domestic and national relations—in the earlier period they were invested with sacredness and with personal power to inspire and guide. Exactly what their ethical influence on the masses was it is hardly possible to determine; but it may be regarded as probable that they helped to keep alive certain fundamental conceptions at a time when reflection on life was still immature.

Nature Gods

707. The term "nature gods" may be taken as designating those deities that are distinguished on the one hand from natural objects regarded as divine and worshiped, and on the other hand from the great gods, who, whatever their origin, have been quite dissociated from natural objects; in distinction from these classes nature gods are independent deities who yet show traces of their origin in the cult of natural objects.1212

708. These three classes often shade into one another, and it is not always easy to draw the lines between them. It is worth while, however, to keep them separate, because they represent different stadia of religious and general culture; the nature gods are found in societies which have risen above the old crude naturalism, but have not yet reached the higher grade of intellectual and ethical distinctness. But as they are in a real sense dissociated from natural objects, they tend to expand as society grows, and it is unnecessary to attempt to deduce all their functions from the characteristics of the objects with which they were originally connected. In some cases, doubtless, they coalesce with the local clan gods whose functions are universal; and in general, when a god becomes the recognized deity of his community, the tendency is to ascribe to him a great number of functions suggested by the existing social conditions. In some cases the particular function of the god may be derived from the function of the natural object whence he is supposed to spring; but the number and variety of functions that we often find assigned to one deity, and the number of deities that are connected with a single function, indicate the complexity of the processes of early religious thought and make it difficult to trace its history in detail.

709. Among natural objects the heavenly bodies, sun, moon, and stars, and particularly the sun and moon, have very generally attracted men's attention and become objects of worship. The deification of the sun may be traced through all stadia of development, from the crudest objectivism to a highly developed monolatry or a virtual monotheism.1213 Veneration of the physical sun, or a conception of it as a supernatural man, is found in many parts of the world.1214 It has not been observed, apparently, in Australia, Melanesia, Indonesia, and on the North American Pacific Coast;1215 these regions are all backward in the creation of gods—devoting themselves to the elaboration of social organization they have contented themselves largely with an apparatus of spirits and divine animals. In Central and Northern Asia and among the Ainu of Jesso, while there appears to be a recognition of the sun as divine, it is difficult to distinguish real solar divinities.1216 In Japan mention is made of a sun-goddess but she plays an insignificant part in the religious system.1217

710. The cult is more developed in Eastern and Central North America, particularly in the former region. The Navahos (in the center of the continent) have a vague deity of the sun, but the cult is most prominent among the Algonkin (Lenâpé) and Natchez tribes; the last-named especially have an elaborate cult in which the sun as deity seems to be distinct from the physical form.1218

711. The highest development of this cult in America was reached in Mexico and Peru. In both these countries, which had worked out a noteworthy civilization, the solar cult became supreme, and in Peru it attained an ethical and universalistic form which entitles it to rank among the best religious systems of the lower civilized nations.1219

712. The Egyptians, with their more advanced civilization, finally carried sun-worship to a very high point of perfection. The hymns to Ra, the sun-god, reached the verge of monotheism and are ethically high, yet traces of the physical side of the sun appear throughout.1220 The same thing is true of the old Semitic sun-cult. The Babylonian and Assyrian Shamash is in certain respects an independent deity with universal attributes, but retains also some of the physical characteristics of the sun.1221 In Africa, outside of Egypt, the only trace of an independent sun-god appears to be in Dahomi, where, however, he is not prominent; why such a god should not be found in the neighboring countries of Ashanti and Yoruba is not clear; climatic conditions would affect all these countries alike.1222

713. In the Veda the sun-god Savitar has a very distinguished position as ethical deity, but earlier than he the similar figure Surya represents more nearly the physical sun, and this is true perhaps also of Mitra.1223 With the latter it is natural to compare the Avestan Mithra; he is held by some to have been originally a god of light, but he seems also to have characteristics of the sun in the Avesta,1224 and in late Persian the word mihr ('sun') indicates that he was at any rate finally identified with the sun. It is noteworthy that a distinct sun-worship is reported among certain non-Aryan tribes of India, particularly the Khonds;1225 this cult may be compared with that of the Natchez mentioned above,1226 though the Khonds are less socially advanced than these American tribes.

714. The cultic history of the moon is similar to that of the sun, but in general far less important. In addition to its charm as illuminer of the night, it has been prominent as a measurer of time—lunar calendars appear among many tribes and nations, uncivilized (Maoris, Hawaiians, Dahomi, Ashanti and Yorubans, Nandi, Congo tribes, Bantu, Todas, and others) and civilized (the early Babylonians, Assyrians, Hebrews, Greeks, Romans, perhaps the early Egyptians, and now all Mohammedan peoples). Naturally it has been associated with the sun in myths, standing to it in the relation of brother or sister, husband or wife. Among existing noncivilized peoples it sometimes receives worship as a god1227 or as connected with a god.1228 In these cases it retains to a great extent its character as an object of nature. So the Greek Selenē and the Roman Luna, standing alongside of the lunar gods proper, probably indicate an early imperfect deification of the moon.

715. Though the stars were generally regarded, both among savages and in ancient civilized communities, as animated (possessed of souls), and in a sort divine,1229 instances of the deification proper of particular stellar bodies are rare. In Egypt they were reverenced, but apparently not worshiped.1230 The Babylonian astronomers and astrologers began early to connect the planets with the great gods (Jupiter with Marduk, Venus with Ishtar, etc.), and stars, like other heavenly bodies, were held by them to be divine, but a specific divinization of a star or planet does not appear in the known literature.1231 The same thing is true of China, where, it may be supposed, reverence for the stars was included in the general high position assigned to Heaven.1232 In the Aryan Hindu cults stars were revered, and by the non-Aryan Gonds were worshiped, but there is no star-god proper.1233

716. In the Old Testament and the Apocrypha there are passages in which stars and planets are referred to in a way that indicates some sort of a conception of them as divine: they are said to have fought against Israel's enemies, and in the later literature they are (perhaps by a poetical figure of speech) identified with foreign deities or with angels.1234 But there is no sign of Israelite worship offered them till the seventh century B.C., when, on the irruption of Assyrian cults, incense is said to have been burned in the Jerusalem temple to the mazzalot (probably the signs of the zodiac) and to all the host of heaven (the stars);1235 and there is still no creation of a star-god.1236 The early Hebrews may have practiced some sort of star-worship; there are traces of such a cult among their neighbors the Arabs.

717. The Arab personal name Abd ath-thuraiya, 'servant (worshiper) of the Pleiades,' testifies to a real cult,1237 though how far it involves a conception of the constellation as a true individual deity it may be difficult to say. It has been supposed that the pre-Islamic Arabs worshiped the planet Venus under the name Al-Uzza,1238 but this is not certain. It is true that they worshiped the morning star, and that ancient non-Arab writers identified the planet with Al-Uzza because it was with this goddess that the Roman goddess Venus was generally identified by foreigners. But Al-Uzza was an old Arabian local deity who gradually assumed great power and influence, and it is certain that she could not have been originally a star. It must, therefore, be considered doubtful whether the Arabs had a true star-god.

718. A well-defined instance of such a god is the Avestan Tistrya.1239 His origin as an object of nature appears plainly in his functions—he is especially a rain-god, and, as such, a source of all blessings. Alongside of him stand three less well defined stellar Powers. The Greeks and Romans adopted from Chaldean astronomy the nominal identification of the planets with certain gods (their own divine names being substituted for the Babylonian); this did not necessarily carry with it stellar worship,1240 but at a late period there was a cult of the constellations.1241

To some savage and half-civilized peoples the rainbow has appeared to be a living thing, capable of acting on man's life, sometimes friendly, sometimes unfriendly.1242 It figures largely in myths, but is not treated as a god.

The Great Gods

719. Along with the deities described above there is a class of higher gods with well-defined personalities, standing quite outside physical nature and man, with definite characters, and humanized in the higher sense. In contrast with the bizarre or barbarous anthropomorphic forms of the earlier deities these have the shape of refined humanity, capable of taking part in the life of the best men; they are the embodiment of a reflective conception of the relations between men and the great world. Inchoate divine forms of this sort may be recognized among certain half-civilized communities, but in their full form they are found only among civilized peoples, being indeed the product of civilization; and among such peoples they exist in varying degrees of approach to completeness.

720. The process of growth from the clan deities and the nature gods up to these higher forms may be traced with some definiteness in the great civilized nations of antiquity. We can see that there has been a scientific movement of separation of gods from phenomena. There is the distinct recognition not only of the difference between man and physical nature, but also of the difference between phenomena and the powers that control them.1243 At the same time there is an increasing belief in the predominance of reason in the government of the world, and along with this a larger conception of the greatness of the world and finally of its unity. Artistic feeling coöperates in the change of the character of divine beings—the necessity of giving symmetry and clearness to their persons, whereby they more and more assume the form of the highest human ideals. Necessarily the ethical element advances hand in hand with the intellectual and artistic; it becomes more and more difficult to conceive of gods as controlled by motives lower than those recognized by the best men.

721. This general progress of thought is in some cases embodied in the conception of a succession of dynasties—one set of gods is overthrown or succeeded by another set; the most extreme form of the overthrow appears in the conception of the death of a whole community of gods, but this occurs not in the form of natural development, but only when one stadium or phase of religion is overmastered and expelled by another.

722. In Babylonia the earliest pair of deities, Lakhmu and Lakhamu, vague forms, were succeeded by a second pair, Anshar and Kishar, somewhat less vague, and these in their turn yielded to the more definite group represented by Ea, Bel, and Marduk—deities who became the embodiments of the highest Babylonian culture; in Assyria Ashur and Ishtar occupied a similar position. In the long religious history of the Hindus many of the gods prominent in the Veda disappear or sink into subordinate positions, and deities at first unimportant become supreme. The Greek succession of dynasties resembles the Babylonian. The ancient Heaven and Earth are followed by Kronos,1244 and he is dethroned by Zeus, who represents governmental order and a higher ethical scheme of society. The Romans appear to have borrowed their chronology of the gods from the Greeks: the combination of Saturnus with Ops (who belongs rather with Consus), the identification of these two respectively with Kronos and Rhea, and the dynastic succession Cælus,1245 Saturnus, Jupiter, seem not to be earlier than the Hellenizing period in Rome.

723. These changes, when original, may have been due partly to the shifting of political power—the gods of a particular dominant region may have come into prominence and reigned for a time, giving place then to deities of some other region which had secured the hegemony; the history of the earliest gods lies far back in a dim region without historical records and therefore is not to be reconstructed definitely now. But such light as we get from literary records of later times rather suggests that the dynastic changes are the product of changes in the conception of the world, and these are as a rule in the direction of sounder and more humane thought.

724. There is a general similarity between the great deities that have been created by the various civilized peoples, since civilization has been practically the same everywhere. But the gods differ among themselves according to the special characters, needs, and endowments of the various peoples, so that no deity can be profitably studied without a knowledge of the physical and mental conditions of the community in which he arose. But everywhere we find that any one god may become practically supreme. Here again the political element sometimes comes in—a dominant city or state will impose its special god on a large district. There is also the natural tendency among men to concentrate on an individual figure. As legendary material has always gathered around particular men, so the great attributes of divinity gather about the person of a particular god who, for whatever reason, is the most prominent divine figure in a given community. Such a god becomes for the moment supreme, to the exclusion of other deities who under different circumstances might have had similar claims to precedence; and under favorable conditions a deity thus raised to the highest position may maintain himself and end by becoming the sole deity of his people and of the world. In any case such a divine figure becomes an ideal, and thus influences more or less the life of his worshipers.

725. In Oriental polytheistic systems the desire to secure completeness in the representation of divine activity shows itself in the combination of two or more forms into a unity of action. On the lower level we have the composite figures of Egypt and Babylonia, congeries of bodies, heads, and limbs, human and nonhuman—the result partly of the survival of ancient (sometimes outgrown) forms or the fusion of local deities, partly of the imaginative collocation of attributes. Many compound names may be explained in this way; in some cases they seem to arise from accidental local relations of cults.

As illustrations of lines of growth in divine figures we may take brief biographies of some of the greater gods. It is in comparatively few cases that the development of a god's character can be satisfactorily traced. There are no records of beginnings—we can only make what may be judged to be probable inferences from names, cults, and functions. The difficulty of the subject is increased by the fact that mythologians and theologians have obscured early conceptions by new combinations and interpretations, often employing familiar divine figures simply as vehicles of late philosophical ideas or some other sort of local dogmas.

726. Egypt.1246 The cult of the sun in Egypt issued in the creation of a group of solar divinities, the most important of whom are Horus (Har or Hor) and Ra (or Rê).

Horus appears to have been the great god of united Egypt in the earliest times about which we have information. The kings of the predynastic and early dynastic periods are called "worshipers of Horus," a title that was adopted by succeeding monarchs, who had each his "Horus name."1247 He was also the special patron of some small communities—a fact that has been variously interpreted as indicating that the god's movement was from local to general patron,1248 or that it was in the opposite direction1249; the former of these hypotheses is favored by what appears elsewhere in such changes in the positions of deities. As Horus is always connected with light he may have been originally a local sun-god; it is possible, however, that he was a clan god with general functions, who was brought into association with the sun by the natural progress of thought. In any case he became a great sun-god, but yielded his position of eminence to Ra. The myth of his conflict with Set, the representative of darkness, is probably a priestly dualistic construction, resting, perhaps, on a political situation (the struggle between the North and the South of the Egyptian territory).1250

727. The general development of Ra is plain, though details are lacking. It may be inferred from his name (which means 'sun') that he was originally the physical sun. Traces of his early crudeness appear in the stories of his destruction of mankind, and of the way in which Isis, by a trick, got from him his true name and, with it, his power.1251 With the growth of his native land (Lower Egypt) he became the great lord of the sun, and finally universal lord;1252 his supremacy was doubtless due in part to the political importance of On (Heliopolis), the seat of his chief shrine. What other circumstances contributed to his victory over Horus are not recorded; in general it may be supposed that political changes occasioned the recedence of the latter.

The primacy of Ra is illustrated by the fact that Amon was identified with him. Amon, originally the local god of Thebes,1253 became great in the South as Ra became great in the North, rising with the growth of the Theban kingdom. His hold on the people, and particularly (as was natural) on the priests, is shown in a noteworthy way by the episode of Amenhotep IV's attempt to supplant him by establishing a substantially monotheistic cult of the sun-god Aton; the attempt was successful only during the king's life—after his death Amon, under the vigorous leadership of the Theban priests, resumed his old position and maintained it until the first break-up of the national Egyptian government. But it was Amon-Ra that became supreme from the fourteenth century onward. The combination of the names was made possible by the social and political union of the two divisions of the land, and it was Ra who gave special glory to Amon.1254

728. A different line of growth appears in the history of Osiris—he owed his eminence mainly to his connection with the dead. Where his cult arose is not known; he was a very old god, possibly prominent in the predynastic period;1255 at a later time the importance of Abydos, the chief seat of his worship, may have added to his reputation. But the ceremonies of his cult and the myths that grew up about his name indicate that he was originally a deity of vegetation, the patron of the underground productive forces of the earth, and so, naturally, he became the lord of the Underworld,1256 and eventually (as ethical conceptions of life became more definite in Egypt) the embodiment of future justice, the determiner of the moral character and the everlasting fate of men. Why he and not some other underground god became Underworld judge the data do not make clear. His association with the death and revivification of plants gave a peculiarly human character to his mythical biography and a dramatic and picturesque tone to his cult.1257 Of all ancient lords of the Otherworld it is Osiris that shows the most continuous progress and reaches the highest ethical plane—a fact that must be referred to the intense interest of the Egyptians in the future.1258

729. The three most prominent female deities of the Egyptian pantheon, Hathor of Dendera, Neith (Nit, Neit) of Sais, and Isis of Buto, exhibit one and the same type of character, and each is occasionally identified with one of the others. Hathor was widely worshiped, but was not otherwise especially noteworthy. The famous inscription said to have stood in the temple of Neith at Sais ("What is and what shall be and what has been am I—my veil no one has lifted"1259) seems not to be immediately connected with any important religious movement, though it is in keeping with the liberal and mystical tendency of the later time. The third goddess, Isis, had a more remarkable history. Her beginnings are obscure, and she appears in the inscriptions later than the other two. She may have been a local deity,1260 brought into association with Osiris (as his sister or his wife) through the collocation of their cults, and thus sharing his popularity; or she may have been a late theological creation.1261 Whatever her origin, as early as the sixteenth century B.C. she appears as a great magician (poisoning and healing Ra by magic arts),1262 then (along with Osiris) as civilizer, and finally as model wife and mother, and as serene and beneficent mistress of the land. It was, apparently, in this last character that she became the gathering-point for the higher religious and ethical ideas of the time, and the central figure in a religious scheme that was widely adopted in and out of Egypt and seemed to be a formidable rival of Christianity.1263

730. India. It is in India that we find the most varied and most sweeping development in the functions and positions of deities—a result due in part to the long-continued movement of philosophic thought, partly to changes in the popular religious point of view occasioned by modifications of the social life.1264

The etymology of the name Varuna is doubtful, but the representation of him in the Rig-Veda points to the sky as his original form—he is a clear example of a sky-god who becomes universal. Of his earliest history we have no information—in the most ancient records he is already fully formed. In the Rig-Veda he embraces the whole of life—he is absolute ruler and moral governor, he punishes sin and forgives the penitent. In conjunction with Mitra he is the lord of order.1265 Mitra, originally the physical sun, is naturally associated with Varuna, but in the Rig-Veda occupies a generally subordinate position, though he appears sometimes to have the attributes of his associate; the two together embody a lofty ethical conception. In accordance with the Hindu fondness for metaphysical abstractions and generalizations the nature god Varuna in the course of time yielded the primacy to Prajapati, 'lord of beings,'1266 who in his turn gave way to the impersonal Brahma. In the popular cults as well as in philosophical systems Varuna sank (or perhaps returned) to the position of patron of phenomena of nature—there was no longer need of him.

731. A god of somewhat uncertain moral character is Indra, who as a nature god is closely connected with the violent phenomena of the air (rain, thunder, and lightning). In this relation he is often terrible, often beneficent, but with low tastes that it is difficult to explain. His fondness for soma, without which he attempts nothing, is perhaps a priestly touch, a glorification of the drink that played so important a part in the ritual; or he may herein be an expression of popular tastes. The sensuous character of the heaven of which he (as air-god) is lord arose doubtless in response to early conceptions of happiness;1267 it is not unlike the paradise of Mohammed, which is to be regarded not as immoral, but only as the embodiment of the existing conception of happy family life. Yet Indra also became a universal god, the controller of all things, and it was perhaps due to his multiform human character as warrior and rain-giver1268 (in his victorious conflict with the cloud-dragon), and as representative of bodily enjoyment, that he became the favorite god of the people. It is not hard to understand why Agni, fire, should be associated with him and share his popularity to some extent; but the importance of fire in the sacrifice gave Agni a peculiar prominence in the ritual.

732. The most curious case of transformation and exaltation is found in the history of Soma, at first a plant whose juice was intoxicating, then a means of ecstatic excitement, a gift to the gods, the drink of the gods, and finally itself a god invested with the greatest attributes. This divinization of a drink was no doubt mainly priestly—it is a striking illustration of the power of the association of ideas, and belongs in the same general category with the deification of abstractions spoken of above.1269

733. An example of a god leaping from an inferior position to the highest place in the pantheon is afforded by Vishnu, a nature god of some sort, described in the early documents as traversing the universe in three strides. Relatively insignificant in the earlier period and in the Upanishads, he appears in the epic, and afterwards, as the greatest of the gods, and, in the form of his avatar Krishna, becomes the head of a religion which has often been compared with Christianity in the purity of its moral conceptions. By his side in this later time stands his rival Çiva, the chief figure in a sect or system which shared with Vishnuism the devotion of the later Hindus. The rise of these two gods is to be referred probably to the dissatisfaction in the later times with the phenomenal character which still clung, in popular feeling, to the older deities. Varuna, once supreme, sank after a while to the position of a god of rain, and Indra, Agni, and Soma were frankly naturalistic, while the impersonal Brahma was too vague to meet popular demands. What the later generation wanted was a god personal and divorced from physical phenomena, supreme, ethically high, but invested with warm humanity. These conditions were fulfilled by Vishnu and Çiva, and particularly by Krishna; that is, the later thought constructed these new deities in accordance with the demand of the higher and the lower religious feeling of the time: the two sides of the human demand, the genial and the terrible, are embodied, the first in Vishnu, the second in Çiva.