Lhropomorphism and anthropopathism) ; and, of course, from th «e pn noises infers in regard to events of life c rtaio specific feelings on the part oftbe gods,
I or kindly, out of which the events grew. It attributes Bex to the gods on natural principles, for in every language the gender of different objects in nat- ure differs. Not always is the sun m tsculine nor the
ninine, but all things are alive, and, according to the especial mode of thinking in each nation, are male or female. Causation, again, is conceived of under the [mage of procreation ; and w here the gods were thought of as coming into being, they themselves were begotten l>y parents, until the mind landed in a tir-t cause, which was Mind and impersonal. 'Jims theogonies arose, such as we find in Greece, Phoenicia, Scandinavia, and even am ing the passive races of this continent. See Mythology. A room was thus opened for the im- pure imagination, which, not content with imputing to love and lust towards each other, without
■ the laws of kindred or wedlock, represented them as enamoured of men or women also, and as thus : pnitors of extraordinary persons, demigods or
I rom this conception the way was easy to- wards attributing to extraordinary p arsons som i divine Mr- or mother, and of allying them to the celestials. ■■■> ■)•■ only a little higher than moil ils, the distam ■ was bridged over, bo that demi- gods were both mortal and divine. Hence it became easier to fall down into the worship of men of great
t -kill, until in the old age of some of the religions wo find kings receiving divine honors even in their lifetime, and deified after their death. This vagueness of the line between the divine and the bu- rn in pa. ted on religious theory, so th it a doctrine like tli.it ofEuemeras had easy currency when the divine had rank bo low- -the doctrine, namely, that all the gods were originally dead men, and were deified on ol gre it achievements and services to mankind.
■ nly one theory ofmythology, which, indeed, is a wilderness where one i- in danger of getting lost, and, if one would attempt explanations, musl do bo with caution. There are many forms of explanation.
: lie ph; sic d, where phenomena of nature are. turned into events, and here the difficulty, not easily solved, meets us of explaining how an event of nature present d in mythologj orrence in history. I here is, again, thai in which Bom ■ fad is the 1 I the drip tv i- mythological invention, Bui
'» adding this drap rj . and in , ther ?ui b inventions, ' did nol feel that they were ch irgeable with fraud, any m< n than Milton blamed himself for uniting bis own poetical thread- will, the woof of Scripture truth. I here wot also a mythology breathing an alle- gorical spirit, and dictated perhaps by the de-ire to teach moral truth in the form which relij i us truth as-
Mimed. This was more consciously fictitious. 1 1
logical mythology, igain, < oncerned itself chiefly with th • births and life i t I ime into
the religious system. We have in Greek a working up of this that goes under the name of Hesiod, and m a\ belong to the *th century B.C.; and the frag- ment- of another al-o ascribed to a primeval poet, Or- pheus, but later by one or two centuries than that of Hesiod. A comparison of these seems to show that the theological poets were free in changing the myths which they had to deal with, either inventing in part, or drawing their materials from earlier poems where a different religious philosophy was exhibited. The mythology of Greece was fully grown in the age of it i- not true that he and Hesiod created it, but rather they and others like them gathered it. and gave it a form of greater beauty. Nor is it true, as we think, that a priestly (lass gave the first form to mythology. More true is it to say that a nation did this, and an age— a very long age, perhaps. We are not to conceive of a body of philosophers teaching in figures, the shadows of things real, those realities that lay in sunshine before their own minds ; on the contra- ry, the mythological spirit was spread over all; it was the way in which all conceived of things supernatural. A word or two may not be inappropriate here in re- gard to objects of worship that may be called second- ary, that is, such as do not attain to the rank of principal divinities, or even of divinities at all, but still played a not unimportant part in some heathen religions. Among these we name, i i | the representa- tives or personifications of the life in the inferior ob- jects of nature, like those which went by the title of nymphs in the Greek mythology, as the nymphs of the wood, of fountains, of the sea— beings having a narrow range of habitation and of attributes. Nome ! of these spirits inhabited the object or element after which they were called, but were thought of as more or less able to disengage themselves from it. Thus the sea-nymphs wandered over the coasts, the wood or mountain nymphs over the mountain. Some of them, being personifications oftbe life of perishable object — as the hamadryads — were supposed to die when the tree, their substratum, died. (2) The spirits of the de- parted. Such were the heroes and demigods of Greece ; the spirits of ancestors or of other mortals, who might be causes of good or of harm, might be believed to be present on earth, to be under the ground, and capable of being raised by rites of evocation, or to inhabit the -tars, like the Fravashis in the Persian religion. Faith in the continued existence of men after death was very widely diffused over the world, and furnished a support for such arts as necromancy, and an explanation for the phenomena of dreams. Nations in which the family feeling was strong were especially addicted to the ven- eration of ancestors, as the Chinese and the Romans. (3) The attendants on other gods, who sometime- were almost deities in the popular mind. Such were the Fauns; Silyanus, among the Romans ; Satyrs among