34 SCIENCE AND THE HUMAN MIND 



The grain-bearing earth was personified as Demeter; 

 the unharvested sea came to life in Poseidon the earth- 

 shaker. 



From generation to generation the divine figures 

 are multiplied and more clearly delineated, new 

 attributes are assigned to them, cycles of stories 

 cluster round each name. We watch a continual 

 process of evolution. Each poet is free to adapt the 

 myths to his own purpose ; to introduce a recovered 

 legend, to weave a new allegory ; to re-interpret at 

 his will. As the ages pass, and the intellect masters 

 the senses, a need for a higher creed is felt, until at 

 length ^Eschylus and Sophocles evolve out of the 

 older crude polytheism the idea of a single, supreme 

 and righteous Zeus. All this is wrought quite naturally, 

 with hardly an idea of innovation, by those whose 

 object is to preserve, purify and expound the old 

 faiths. The process culminates in the metaphysical 

 reconstruction of religion by the genius of Plato, 

 which, founded on the social and ethical needs of the 

 Hellenic people in the day of their greatest triumph, 

 rises to those highest flights of mysticism which 

 afterwards so profoundly influenced the theology of 

 Christianity. 



But, alongside this process of conservative evolution, 

 a simultaneous sceptical criticism was going on. A 

 religion so frankly anthropomorphic appealed rather 

 to the imagination than to the intellect, and its weak- 

 ness on the philosophical side became apparent 

 when growing doubt ventured to express itself more 

 openly. This very weakness, coupled with the 

 essential freedom of intellectual outlook of the Greek 

 world, led to a natural and metaphysical philosophy, 



