nomy the
nominal identification of the planets with certain gods (their own
divine names being substituted for the Babylonian); this did not
necessarily carry with it stellar worship,[1240] but at a late period
there was a cult of the constellations.[1241]

To some savage and half-civilized peoples the rainbow has appeared to be
a living thing, capable of acting on man's life, sometimes friendly,
sometimes unfriendly.[1242] It figures largely in myths, but is not
treated as a god.

THE GREAT GODS

+719+. Along with the deities described above there is a class of higher
gods with well-defined personalities, standing quite outside physical
nature and man, with definite characters, and humanized in the higher
sense. In contrast with the bizarre or barbarous anthropomorphic forms
of the earlier deities these have the shape of refined humanity, capable
of taking part in the life of the best men; they are the embodiment of a
reflective conception of the relations between men and the great world.
Inchoate divine forms of this sort may be recognized among certain
half-civilized communities, but in their full form they are found only
among civilized peoples, being indeed the product of civilization; and
among such peoples they exist in varying degrees of approach to
completeness.

+720+. The process of growth from the clan deities and the nature gods
up to these higher forms may be traced with some definiteness in the
great civilized nations of antiquity. We can see that there has been a
scientific movement of separation of gods from phenomena. There is the
distinct recognition not only of the difference between man and physical
nature, but also of the difference between phenomena and the powers that
control them.[1243] At the same time there is an increasing belief in
the predominance of reason in the government of the world, and along
with this a larger conception of the greatness of the world and finally
of its unity. Artistic feeling cooeperates in the change of the character
of divine beings--the necessity of giving symmetry and clearness to
their persons, whereby they more and more assume the form of the highest
human ideals. Necessarily the ethical element advances hand in hand with
the intellectual and artistic; it becomes more and more difficult to
conceive of gods as controlled by motives lower than those recognized by
the best men.

+721+. This general progress of thought is in some cases embodied in the
conc