[703]. Aryan. Among the Aryans of India the god Kama (desire) appears to be identical with Cupido. Some other abstractions, such as Piety and Infinity, are akin to Mazdean conceptions.[1203] Brahma, originally 'magical formula,' then 'prayer,' and later 'pious thought,' becomes finally Brahma, the all-embracing god. Ṛta (arta), 'order,' at first, perhaps, the proper order of the sacrificial ritual, becomes finally 'moral order or righteousness' and 'cosmic order.' This conception is still more prominent in the Avesta,[1204] in which Asha (Order) is one of the Amesha-spentas, only inferior to the supreme god; the other companions of Ahura Mazda have similar titles and may equally be regarded as the personalization of abstract ideas.[1205] In the same category may be included the Mazdean conceptions Endless Time (Zrvan Akarana) and Endless Space (Thwasha), which appear to be treated in the Avesta as personal deities.[1206] The organizers of the Mazdean faith, having discarded almost all the old gods, invested the supreme god with certain moral qualities, and these, by a natural process of thought, were concretized (Ahura Mazda is sometimes included in the list of Amesha-spentas). Thus arose a sort of pantheon, an echo of the old polytheism; but the history of the process of formulation is obscure.[1207]
[704]. Most, if not all, of the abstract conceptions mentioned above are also placed, in the various theistic systems, under the control of great gods. Thus, for example, Jupiter is the guardian of boundaries and has the epithet "Terminus," and Zeus is the patron of freedom (Eleutherios).[1208] It is, however, not necessary to suppose that the abstractions in question are taken from the functions of the great gods. Rather these epithets of the gods are to be explained from the same tendency that produced gods of abstractions. It was the sense of the importance of the boundary in early life that led both to the creation of the god Terminus and to the assignment of the epithet "Terminus" to Jupiter. The desire or love that was so important an element in human life both fashioned itself into a personality and was put under the guardianship of a special deity. Public safety was a cherished idea of the Romans and was doubtless held to be maintained by every local or national god, yet could none the less become an independent deity. The data are not sufficient to enable us to determine in all cases the question of chronological precedence between the deification of the abstraction and the assignment of the epithet to a god. We know that in the later Roman period abstractions were personalized, but this procedure was often poetical or rhetorical.[1209]
[705]. A general relation may be recognized between the intellectual character of a people and the extent to which it creates abstract gods. The Semitic peoples, among whom the development of such gods is the feeblest, are characterized by objectiveness of thought, indisposition to philosophical or psychological analysis, and a maintenance of local political and religious organization; it is natural that they should construct concrete deities exclusively or almost exclusively. Egypt also was objective, and carried its demand for visible objects of worship to the point of incarnating its gods in living animals; such living gods tend to banish pale abstractions, and such conceptions played an insignificant part in Egyptian religion. In India, with its genius for philosophical refinement, we might expect to find this latter class of gods; but Indian thought speedily passed into the large pantheistic and other generalizations that absorbed the lesser abstractions. Greece appears to have had the combination of philosophy and practicalness that favors the production of a certain sort of abstract gods, and a considerable number of these it did produce;[1210] but here also philosophy, in the form of large theories of the constitution and life of man, got the upper hand and repressed the other development. The Romans had no pretensions to philosophic or æsthetic thought, but they had a keen sense of the value of family and civic life, and great skill in using religion for social purposes. It is they among whom specialized deities, including abstractions, had the greatest significance for the life of the people—family and State.
[706]. With the growth of general culture all specialized divinities tend to disappear, 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 early religious thought and make it difficult to trace its history in detail.
[709]. Among natural objects the heavenly bodies, sun, moon, and stars, and particularly the sun and moon, have very generally attracted men's attention and become objects of worship. The deification of the sun may be traced through all stadia of development, from the crudest objectivism to a highly developed monolatry or a virtual monotheism.[1213] Veneration of the physical sun, or a conception of it as a supernatural man, is found in many parts of the world.[1214] It has not been observed, apparently, in Australia, Melanesia, Indonesia, and on the North American Pacific Coast;[1215] these regions are all backward in the creation of gods—devoting themselves to the elaboration of social organization they have contented themselves largely with an apparatus of spirits and divine animals. In Central and Northern Asia and among the Ainu of Jesso, while there appears to be a recognition of the sun as divine, it is difficult to distinguish real solar divinities.[1216] In Japan mention is made of a sun-goddess but she plays an insignificant part in the religious system.[1217]
[710]. The cult is more developed in Eastern and Central North America, particularly in the former region. The Navahos (in the center of the continent) have a vague deity of the sun, but the cult is most prominent among the Algonkin (Lenâpé) and Natchez tribes; the last-named especially have an elaborate cult in which the sun as deity seems to be distinct from the physical form.[1218]