Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/312

 many different characteristics within it; there is here a rich individuality which must necessarily possess and give evidence of the existence in it of the element of contradiction, just because the two opposite elements in it have not yet been absolutely reconciled.

Since the gods have in themselves this wealth of external characteristics, we have a certain element of indifference existing in reference to those particular qualities, and they can be made sport of and be treated with levity. It is with this side of their nature that the element of contingency which we observed attached to them in the stories of the gods, is connected.

Dionysius of Halicarnassus, in drawing a comparison between the Greek and the Roman religion, extols the religious institutions of Rome, and points out the great superiority of the old Roman religion to the Greek. It has temples, altars, divine worship, sacrifice, solemn religious gatherings, festivals, symbols, &c., in common with the Greek religion; but the myths with their blasphemous features, the mutilations, the imprisonments, the wars, the squabbles, &c., of the gods, are excluded from it. These, however, belong to the gods in their joyous aspect, they lay themselves open to this, they are made sport of in comedy, and yet in all this they have a safe and undisturbed existence. When the element of seriousness comes in, then the outward form taken by gods, their actions and the events in their life, must appear in a way which is in conformity with a fixed principle. In free individuality, on the other hand, there are no such fixed ends, no such one-sided moral characterisations of the understanding. The gods, it is true, contain within them the moral element; but at the same time, since they have a particular definitely marked existence, they are possessed of a rich individuality, and are concrete. In this rich individuality the element of earnestness is not at all a necessary characteristic; on the contrary, it is free in all its separate manifestations, it