Note 169 — Chapter III · LEADING CONCEPTIONS OF THE ELEMENTARY RELIGION—continued II.—Naturism
Joseph Ward Swain translation
It is true that Max Müller held that for the Greeks, "Zeus was, and remained, in spite of all mythological obscurations, the name of the Supreme Deity" (Science of Language, II, p. 478). We shall not dispute this assertion, though it is historically contestable; but in any case, this conception of Zeus could never have been more than a glimmer in the midst of all the other religious beliefs of the Greeks.
Besides this, in a later work, Max Müller went so far as to make even the notion of god in general the product of a wholly verbal process and thus of a mythological elaboration (Physic. Rel., p. 138).