Page:Greek and Roman Mythology.djvu/26

 12 GREEK AND ROMAN MYTHOLOGY and object are not noticed, i.e. in the case of the divini- ties that work in the heavens and the air. For, in the case of storms, winds, clouds, sun, and moon, it cannot be decided whether the same phenomenon is constantly repeated, or whether various, yet similar, phenomena follow each other. 13. With the uniting of individual families into races and states, the divinities that have in a certain sense been independently created by each family can for the first time rise to the dignity of gods generally recog- nized and clearly conceived of as individual beings by the mass of the people. For, until then, the real identity of various individual conceptions cannot be discovered; and, on the other hand, it is not until this stage of prog- ress that the spirit of an ancestor of a ruling family can become the hero of a race. 14. When, at length, in the progress of civilization and culture, the superiority of spiritual power over everything physical is recognized, the gods become more and more spiritualized. As they are stripped of the sensual char- acteristics of animals or human beings, they gradually develop more or less completely into purely spiritual deities, defenders of morals and the moral laws, which have meanwhile grown up among mankind under divine direction. Such beings as these were the gods of the Greeks and the Romans in the best period in the life of those peoples. Not until the gods are recognized in this light can the independent deification of abstract ideas begin ; but after such recognition it is no longer a necessary requisite for the creation of a personality that there should be an activity perceptible by the senses. It cannot, however, be denied that there is a