prosecution of their intrigues and the achievement of their adventures) are the mythical deities of Mexicans, Peruvians, Finns, and Scandinavians. Into the composition of these gods enter not only the old magical and bestial notions, and the notion of great personal forces of Nature, but also what we may call the departmental theory. The larger divisions of natural phenomena and of human interests have now their presiding deities, gods or goddesses of love, of war, of agriculture, of commerce, or of art. These ideal persons supersede or mingle with the other and presumably older members of the national pantheons, and share their supernatural accomplishments.
In this process there is a natural tendency for gods to double their parts, or rather, perhaps one should say, for each part to have its "under-study." For example, there is a time in the mythical and religious evolution, as we have said, when each great national force and phenomenon (like everything else in the world known to men) is a person. Wind is a person, sky or heaven is a person, each river is a person, the sea is a person. But the tendency of advancing human thought is gradually to withdraw the conception of personality from the things in the world, gradually to restrict it to man, and to beings conceived to exist in man's image. The time thus arrives when the sun is in common thought usually regarded as a mere physical phenomenon, and when the personal element or the old personal conception of the sun separates itself, and becomes a god, anthropomorphic, full of special and novel characteristics, and limitless
