of their abode such deities have very little to do with the life
on earth except when, as in the Egyptian system and to some extent in
the Fijian, there is a judge of conduct, with authority to assign the
dead their places, good or bad. In such cases they become important
moral factors in life.

+682+. An ethical god of the other world appears not to have been
created by the Semites. The Babylonian Underworld goddess or god has
nothing to do with moral character, and among the Hebrews, so far as the
statements in the Old Testament go, no special deity was assigned to the
other world; whether such an Underworld deity once existed and was lost
by the Hebrews, or has been expurged by the later editors of the Old
Testament books, must remain uncertain;[1160] in the late pre-Christian
period the national god, Yahweh, was regarded as controlling the
Underworld as well as Heaven and Earth.[1161] The Greek Aides or
Plout[=o]n and the Roman Pluto also are not ethical gods in the higher
sense, as indeed no early deity of any people has such a moral
character. At a later period ethical distinctions were introduced into
the administration of the other world.

By reason of paucity of data it is difficult to determine the precise
characters of various Celtic, Slavic, and Germanic deities whose names
appear in the records. They are gods of clans and of departments of
nature; none of them can properly be reckoned among the great
gods.[1162]

+683+. _Division into good and bad Powers._ Among many savage and
half-civilized peoples we find that a distinction is recognized between
good and bad ghosts and spirits--a distinction at first vague, based on
passing experiences in which all the fortunes of men, favorable and
unfavorable, are referred to these beings. Their morals are those of the
human communities with which they are connected: they may be amiable or
malignant, beneficent or revengeful, but the ethical element in their
characters and deeds is not distinctly recognized and is not made the
basis of the distinction between the two classes. The world is seen to
be full of Powers that make for weal or for woe--a conception that
contains the germ of all the later development but is at first nebulous.

+684+. In a somewhat higher form of culture these two classes of Powers
may be unified respectively into, or replaced by, two gods, one helpful,
the other harmful. Such appears to be the scheme of the Masai, who have
their black god a