tics
and with a unity of development, so the stories about them recount
adventures and acts that form biographical unities; and, as these
stories are of diverse nature, some reflecting barbarous periods, others
marked by refinement, they exhibit, when brought together and arranged
in order of moral or intellectual excellence or according to their
geographical or ethnical origin, not only the history of the gods, but
also the development of Greek religious feeling. Being the embodiment of
human experiences, they lend themselves readily to processes of
allegorizing and spiritualizing.[1758]

+963+. Roman gods, homely figures, occupied with agriculture and affairs
of State, have no adventures and no biographies. The practical Roman
mind was concerned with the domestic functions of divine beings, and the
Roman genius was not of a sort to conceive gods as individuals leading
lives filled with human passions. Myths do not figure in the Roman
religious scheme except as they are borrowed from Greece or from some
other land.

+964+. Teutonic mythology is largely cosmogonic or cosmologic, not
without shrewd portraitures and attractive episodes, but never reaching
the point of artistic roundness and grace.[1759] The adventures of Odin,
Thor, Loki, and other divine persons reflect for the most part the
daring and savagery of the viking age, though there are kindly features
and an occasional touch of humor.[1760] Loki in some stories is a
genuine villain, and the death of Balder is a real tragedy. The great
cosmogonic and eschatological myths are conceived in grandiose style.
The struggle between gods and giants is in its basis the widespread
nature myth of the conflict of seasons. The overthrow of the old divine
government (the Twilight of the Gods) and the rise of a new order appear
to have a Christian coloring, but the belief that the world is to be
destroyed may be old Teutonic.[1761]

The history of theistic movements in civilized peoples shows that the
effectiveness of a polytheistic system as a framework of religious life
is in proportion to the extent of its anthropomorphization of deities,
that is, it is in proportion to their humanization that gods enter into
intimate association with human experiences. On the other hand, it is
true that the tendency toward a unitary conception of the divine
government of the world is in inverse proportion to such humanization;
the more definitely aloof from men the gods have stood (as