TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H. 639 
often momentary activities of man in the spheres of agricultural and domestic life, 
These powers are indicated ‘by no proper personal names, but by mere appellatives 
that are invented to express their limited function: they appear to have a very 
slight degree of personality, no definite relations with concrete divinities, and no 
continuous life, but are merely invoked at the particular moment of a certain 
action, Also in the record of the Greek cults we find a species of divine beings 
that seem to possess a similar character, such as ’ExerAatos, Etvvooros, Kvapirns, 
Kovporpéqos, Kad\tyévera, Mviaypos, and many others; and Dr. Usener has 
discovered a similar system of functional divinities designated by adjectival 
names in the old Lithuanian religion. A few examples have been recently 
gathered of cognate cult-forms among modern savage peoples. This system may 
be regarded as a peculiar form of animism. But Dr. Usener has coined the terms 
‘Sonder-Gott’ and ‘Augenblick-Gott’ to express the character of these vague, 
transitory, limited divinities. Dr. Usener’s theory about these gains its chief 
importance from two assumptions: (a) that these are the relics, in Greece and 
elsewhere, of a very primitive period when the religious imagination had not yet 
created the concrete personal figures such as dominate Greek polytheism, but only 
such shadowy half-personal forms as in the ‘ Indigitamenta’; (6) that the Greek 
pantheon was deeply indebted to this system, since its divinities attach to them- 
selves and absorb many of these appellatives that once characterised independent 
and vaguely conceived ‘numina,’ and that now serve to express the complex 
individuality of a Zeus, Apollo, Demeter, &c. 
But a critical examination of the Greek evidence, whatever may be said of his 
theory when applied to other religious areas, does not support his assumptions, and 
he does not give due weight to the other and opposing explanation of many of these 
Greek appellative ‘numina’ that, e.g., Kouvporpogos, KadXiorn, EvBooia, may be 
creations of the personal polytheism, mere emanations of concrete divinities like 
Nike of Athena, coming into being owing to the accidental detachment of an 
epithet from a personal god or goddess. The same epithet is often applied to 
many anthropomorphic divinities, and his argument that, ¢.g., because Zeus, the 
Nether-God, and Dionysos are all called MewAiywos there must have been an 
aboriginal ‘ Sonder-Gott’ Me:Aiytos existing independently whom all these absorbed, 
has no logical force. Again, none of these Greek appellatives of ‘Sonder-Gotter’ 
proper appear to belong to the earliest stage of the language: Zevs is probably an 
earlier linguistic form than MeAiyios, and many of the assumed ‘ Sonder-Gotter,’ 
such as ZavOos, ‘the yellow-haired one,’ KaAXNiorn, ‘the very beautiful one,’ are 
not functional, and if they ever existed as independent powers in the popular 
imagination belong obviously as much to the anthropomorphic system as Apollo 
and Artemis. Etvooros, whose name is purely functional, and who was doubt- 
less a very early product of a peasant-agricultural religion, distinct from the 
‘Olympian,’ has nothing shadowy about him, but is fitted with a very anthropo- 
morphic legend and personality. Finally, many of these appellative ‘Sonder- 
Gétter’ are provably late fictions, such as Muiaypos and Tapdéumros, and are merely 
created to assist the festivals of the higher personal gods, Doubtless many of the 
divinities of the Hellenes took over the epithets and names of those whom they 
dispossessed. But there is reason for believing that a strong personal religion, 
a pervading belief in concrete individual divinities, was brought with them by the 
earliest Hellenic tribes, and that this character also attached to much of the 
earlier religion that they found in their Mediterranean homes. 
Joint Discussion with Section L on Anthropometrics in Schools. 
See p. 704. 
