dily goes on to weave their
histories and their relations. If the moon is a cow, the sun is a
bull chasing her round the sky. This is an instance of a principle
which obtains in many at least of the early religions and which it is
important to remember, viz. that the powers of nature were first
identified with animals. The zoomorphic stage of the nature-gods
comes before the anthropomorphic (_cf._ the signs of the zodiac), and
in many savage tribes it still survives.

But it is when the gods begin to be thought of after the likeness of
human beings that the decisive step is made in their development. If
heaven is a father, it is easy to go on from that. Earth will be the
corresponding mother (an idea found all over the world); and all men
will be their children. If the sun is invested with a name of
masculine gender (but the sun is frequently feminine), he must do
feats becoming such a character. If the storm is a male god, he will
be a warrior or a huntsman. Thus the god acquires a personal
character and an independent movement; what is told about him has
reference, of course, to the natural object he sprang from, or the
season with which he is connected; but the deity is becoming more and
more separate from the natural object, and acquiring a character and
history of his own. The stories connected with the god vary according
to the habits and the imaginations of different peoples; in some
cases the gods remain pure and exalted beings, in others savage and
indecent myths are accumulated around them, and these primitive myths
adhere to their persons long after they themselves have felt an
upward tendency and acquired a civilised character with the moral
elevation of their peoples. We shall see in many instances how the
nature-gods were personified, made into beasts, made into men, and
surrounded with myths and legends. That is the natural history of the
nature-gods; the process through which they must pass if they grow at
all.

Polytheism.--Another general feature of the worship of the great
natural objects has to be mentioned. Each god has a history of his
own; he has grown up separately as men concentrated their attention
upon him. But as one god grows up after another, or as the gods who
grow up in two countries are afterwards brought together, it comes to
pass that there are many of them, and none of them is necessarily
supreme. What is the worshipper to do? The least reflection will
convince us that in any act o