as a mere abstraction. No
mystery, no possibility of human personality, can gather round those
two plain prose words. So long as a deity is known by the name of the
physical agency that he represents, so long will he be unable to grow
into a personal God in India. The priests may sing vociferous psalms
to Vayu the Wind-spirit and Surya the Sun-spirit, and even to their
beloved Agni the Fire-god; but sing as much as they will, they never
can make the people in general take them to their hearts.

Observe what a different history is that of Zeus among the
Greeks--Zeus, Father of Gods and Men, the ideal of kingly majesty and
wisdom and goodness. The reason is patent. Ages and ages before the
days when the Homeric poets sang, the Greeks had forgotten that Zeus
originally meant "sky": it had become to them a personal name of a
great spiritual power, which they were free to invest with the noblest
ideal of personality. But very likely there is also another reason: I
believe that the Olympian Zeus, as modelled by Homer and accepted by
following generations, was not the original [Greek: _Zeus pater_] at
all, but a usurper who had robbed the old Sky-father of his throne and
of his title as well, that he was at the outset a hero-king who some
time after his death was raised to the seat and dignity of the old
Sky-father and received likewise his name. This theory explains the
old hero-sagas which are connected with Zeus and the strange fact that
the Cretans pointed to a spot in their island where they believed Zeus
was buried. It explains why legends persistently averred that Zeus
expelled his father Kronos from the throne and suppressed the Titan
dynasty: on my view, Kronos was the original Father Zeus, and his name
of Zeus and rank as chief god were appropriated by a deified hero.
How natural such a process was in those days may be seen from the
liturgy of Unas on the pyramids at Sakkarah in Egypt.[2] Here Unas
is described as rising in heaven after his death as a supreme god,
devouring his fathers and mothers, slaughtering the gods, eating their
"magical powers," and swallowing their "spirit-souls," so that he thus
becomes "the first-born of the first-born gods," omniscient,
omnipotent, and eternal, identified with the Osiris, the highest god.
Now this Unas was a real historical man; he was the last king of the
Fifth Dynasty, and was deified after death, just like any other king
of Egypt. The early Egyptians, like many savage tr