



HISTOKICAL EVOLUTION OF MYTH AND SCIENCE. 181 



them . boldly, and were ready to resist them. The 

 Indian legends, and those of the Hellenes, the 

 Scandinavians, and the whole Aryan race, are full 

 of conflicts between gods and men. The denii-gods 

 must be remembered, showing that the Aryans believed 

 themselves to be sufficiently noble and great for the 

 gods to love them, and to intermarry with them. 

 Thus the Aryan made himself into a God, and often 

 took a glorious place in Olympus, while he declared 

 that God was made man. 



"We might imagine that the doctrine of God in- 

 carnate would be as repugnant to the ideas, feelings, 

 and intellect of the Aryan as it was to the Semitic 

 race. But the anthropomorphic side of Christianity 

 was readily embraced by the former as a mythical 

 and aesthetic conception, and indeed it was they 

 who made a metaphorical expression into an 

 essential dogma : the pride natural to the Aryan 

 race made them eager to accept a religion which 

 placed man in a still higher Olympus : a belief in 

 Christ was rapidly diffused, not as God but as the 

 Man-God. These are the true reasons, not only for 

 the rapid spread of Christianity in Europe, but also 

 for the philosophic systems of the Platonists and 

 Alexandrines which preceded it. Although Philo was 

 a Hebrew, and probably knew nothing of Christ, he 

 attained by means of Hellenism to the idea of the 

 Man- God ; the Platonic Word, which was merely the 

 projection of God into human reason, was accepted 



