ear, absorbed by the great gods and displaced by better
knowledge of the laws governing the bodily and mental growth of
men.[1211] The divinities of abstractions, so far as they were really
alive, had the effect of making great civic and religious ideas familiar
to the people. Later (as in modern life) such ideas were cherished as
the outcome of reflection on domestic and national relations--in the
earlier period they were invested with sacredness and with personal
power to inspire and guide. Exactly what their ethical influence on the
masses was it is hardly possible to determine; but it may be regarded
as probable that they helped to keep alive certain fundamental
conceptions at a time when reflection on life was still immature.

NATURE GODS

+707+. The term "nature gods" may be taken as designating those deities
that are distinguished on the one hand from natural objects regarded as
divine and worshiped, and on the other hand from the great gods, who,
whatever their origin, have been quite dissociated from natural objects;
in distinction from these classes nature gods are independent deities
who yet show traces of their origin in the cult of natural
objects.[1212]

+708+. These three classes often shade into one another, and it is not
always easy to draw the lines between them. It is worth while, however,
to keep them separate, because they represent different stadia of
religious and general culture; the nature gods are found in societies
which have risen above the old crude naturalism, but have not yet
reached the higher grade of intellectual and ethical distinctness. But
as they are in a real sense dissociated from natural objects, they tend
to expand as society grows, and it is unnecessary to attempt to deduce
all their functions from the characteristics of the objects with which
they were originally connected. In some cases, doubtless, they coalesce
with the local clan gods whose functions are universal; and in general,
when a god becomes the recognized deity of his community, the tendency
is to ascribe to him a great number of functions suggested by the
existing social conditions. In some cases the particular function of the
god may be derived from the function of the natural object whence he is
supposed to spring; but the number and variety of functions that we
often find assigned to one deity, and the number of deities that are
connected with a single function, indicate the complexity of the
processes of