THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGIONS. 155 



moon, and the rest likewise. This was a current opinion among the 

 Stoics. Cicero makes some philosophers, in his treatise "De Natura 

 Deorum," say that the gods recruited either from among the phe- 

 nomena that strike the imagination, or from among the natural ob- 

 jects that render services to man.* 



These views have been confirmed in our days, not only for the 

 Greek and Roman Pantheon, but also for the gods of all known 

 peoples. Only here again we must take account of other theogonic 

 factors. Among the gods there are some who are certainly men or 

 animals deified. Others are derived exclusively from moral abstrac- 

 tions, such as Virtue, Good Faith, Prudence, Fortune, etc., or from 

 metaphysical speculations, like the supreme Brahm of the Hindoos. It 

 should also be remembered that the gods of Nature tend, among some 

 peoples, to become transformed into gods superior to Nature, so that 

 their primitive significance is at last obscured and lost, as Assur among 

 the Assyrians, Ahura Mazda among the Persians, and Jahveh among 

 the Israelites. It was through the failure to grasp these shades that 

 Dupuis, at the end of the last century, wasted his time and learning 

 in maintaining the astronomical significance of all ancient and modern 

 gods and cults. f 



We can easily explain how the personification of the celestial bodies 

 and of natural phenomena has led to the representation of their move- 

 ments and relations as adventures of heroes or of gods. Antiquity 

 had already penetrated the sense of its most transj^arent myths. But 

 the interpretation of mythology has found its methods only in our 

 own days. 



Otfried Miiller regarded myths as local legends that translated into 

 a form of personality some particular features of geography or circum- 

 stances of history. 



Others witb Mr. Max Miiller have insisted on the solar significa- 

 tion of myths ; they have seen in them a reflection of the impression 

 produced on the imagination of infantile people by the periodical suc- 

 cession of light and darkness, of day and night, of summer and winter. 

 Thus, the labors of Hercules are simply the works of the sun during 

 the twelve months of the year. (Edipus personifies the day-star ; son 

 of the Dawn, he kills his father every morning ; son of the Night, he 

 marries his mother every evening. 



Others still, among them Adalbert Kuhn, have set forth that the 

 mind of primitive men was most manifestly affected by the irregular 

 phenomena of Nature and sudden changes of the atmosphere ; by this 

 theory the principal myths dramatized the apparent struggles of the 

 sky and the storm, of the sun and the cloud, of the fire and the dark. 

 Developing this view, M, Darmesteter has shown how among the Hin- 



* Cicero, " De Natura Deorum," I, 42 ; II, 23. 



+ " Origine de tous les cultes, ou religion univcrselle," by Dupuis, " Citoyen Fran9ais, 

 Paris, the Year III." 



