Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/203

Rh varying phases of the sky became each the germ of a myth, and every one of these myths, when translated into the conditions of human life, tended to degrade the idea of the god as much as the idea of his changeless perfection, rising more and more in the mind, tended to raise it. According to the latter, he would be the righteous Judge, seen by none, yet beholding all, looking down from heaven on the children of men to see if they will understand and seek after God, appointing to them a life of labour for their highest good, and finally recompensing to all men after their works. By the other process he would become all that names applied to outward pheno- mena must denote when used to signify the actions of a personal and conscious being. As in every land the dews of heaven fertilise the earth, Zeus must be the husband of many brides, the father of countless children in every country. As looking down on the havoc caused by drought or pestilence, storm or war, he would be a god of merciless indifference and disinterested cruelty. He must smile alike over the wealth of a teeming harvest or the withered fruits of a sun-scorched land. But the blighting of a spring-tide fair in its promise is his work, and he would thus become capricious as well as treacherous, while the interchangeable characteristics of the earliest gods would heighten still more the repulsive features of the anthropo- morphised Zeus. If the old hymn had praised Aditi as " mother, father, and son," Zeus must become at once the brother and the husband, and his own daughters through many generations would become the mothers of his children. The transference of these phrases to the relations of human life has its necessary result in the fearful horrors of the tale of Oidipous and lokaste.

That the two streams of religion and mythology ran on side by influence side, or rather that the same words are used to express two wholly ?^ ™ytho- gy on different lines of thought, is abundantly proved by Greek not less religion. than by Hindu literature. The result was that the same man might seem to speak two languages, and perhaps delude himself into the notion that under the name of Zeus he spoke of one person, and of one person only. This would be the case especially with the classes, which, although familiar, or because they were familiar, with the complicated mythical lore of their country, might not care to analyse their own thoughts, or fairly to face the difficulties involved in many or most of these ancient stories. But there would be a lower class who, as being perhaps practically ignorant of these narratives, would be saved in great measure from this traditional influence.^ However

' "What," asks Professor Max know of the intricate Olymjiian theo- Miiller, "did the swineherd Eumaios gony? Had he ever heard the name