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action; the god ceases to be tangible, and later he ‘ceases 
to be visible or audible. Along with this differentiation of 
physical attributes from those of humanity, there goes on more 
slowly the differentiation of mental attributes. ‘The gods of 
the savage, represented as having intelligence scarcely, if at 
all, greater than that of the living man, are deluded with ease. 
Kven the gods of the semi-civilised are deceived, make mis- 
takes, repent of their plans; and only in course of time does 
there arise the conception of unlimited vision and universal 
knowledge. The emotional nature simultaneously undergoes 
a parallel transformation. The grosser passions, originally 
conspicuous and carefully ministered to by devotees, gradually 
fade, leaving only the passions less related to corporeal satis- 
factions; and eventually these, too, become partially de- 
humanised. ! 
“These ascribed characters of deities are continually 
adapted and re-adapted to the needs of the social state. 
During the militant phase of activity, the chief god is con- 
ceived as holding insubordination the greatest crime, as 
implacable in anger, as merciless in punishment; and any 
alleged attributes of a milder kind occupy but small space in 
the social consciousness. But where militancy declines, and 
the harsh, despotic form of government appropriate to it is 
gradually qualified by the form appropriate to imdustrialism, 
the foreground of the religious consciousness is increasingly 
filled with those ascribed traits of the divine nature which are 
congruous with the ethics of peace; divine love, divine 
forgiveness, divine mercy, are now the characteristics enlarged 
upon. 
“To perceive clearly the effects of mental progress and 
changing social life thus stated in the abstract, we must 
glance at them in the concrete. If, without foregone con- 
clusions, we contemplate the traditions, records, and monu- 
ments of the Egyptians, we see that out of their primitive 
ideas of gods, brute or human, there were evolved spiritualised 
ideas of gods, and, finally, of a god; until the priesthoods of 
later times, repudiating the earlier ideas, described them as 
corruptions, being swayed by the universal tendency to regard 
the first state as the highest—a tendency traceable down to 
the theories of existing theologians and mythologists. Again, 
if, putting aside speculations, and not asking what historical 
value the Iliad may have, we take it simply as indicating the 
early Greek notion of Zeus, and compare this with the notion 
contained in the Platonic dialogues, we see that Greek civi- 
lisation had greatly modified (in the better minds, at least) the — 
