Page:Myth, Ritual, and Religion (Volume 1).djvu/143

 enjoys on earth all the attributes of Zeus. Briefly, the miraculous and supernatural endowments of the gods of myth, whether these gods be zoomorphic or anthropomorphic, are exactly the magical properties with which the medicine-man is credited by his tribe. It does not at all follow, as Euemerus and Mr. Herbert Spencer might argue, that the god was once a real living medicine-man. But myth-making man creates gods in his own image, as he conceives it, and confers on the deities of myth the magical powers which he claims for himself.