Note 63.2 — Chapter III · THE SECOND PERIOD, 900-500 B.C.

But we observe in many cases that the name itself was an obstacle to the emergence of a convincingly personal God or Goddess; and where this is the case the personality never could play a leading part in the advanced religion. Thus Ἑστία bore a name that denoted nothing more than ‘the Hearth,’ considered as animate and holy; Greek anthropomorphism did its utmost for her, but never or rarely succeeded in establishing her as a fully formed personal goddess. The same phenomenon is observable in regard to Ge, Helios and Selene; it was easy to regard them as animate substances or powers and as such to worship them; such worship they received throughout all periods of Greek religion, but no direction of the moral, social and spiritual progress of the race, for their names connoted so obviously substances unlike and alien to man that they could not with conviction be imagined as glorified men or women.63.2 It was otherwise with such names as Apollo, Hera, Athena, which could become as real and individual as Miltiades or Themistokles; and it is these humanised personalities that alone dominate the higher religion of Greece. The spiritual career of Demeter only began when men forgot the original meaning of her name and half forgot that she was only Mother Earth. The ‘Anemoi’ being mere ‘Winds,’ were scarcely fitted for civic life; but Boreas, having a personal name, could become a citizen and was actually worshipped as Πολίτης ‘the Citizen’ at Thourioi.64.1 A curious and unscientific distinction that Aristophanes makes between the religions of the Hellenes and the Barbarians64.2 has its justification from this point of view.