[87] Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, p. 362.
But though man created his gods in his own image and likeness, endowing them with a mind and a body modelled after his own, he never lost sight of the difference between him and them. He always ascribed to them a superior power of action; otherwise they would have been no gods at all. In many cases, at least, he also attributed to them a superior knowledge. The Bechuanas maintain that their gods are much wiser than they are themselves.[88] In the admonitions of an Aztek mother to her daughter reference is made to a god who “sees every secret fault.”[89] The gods of the Greeks and Romans were possessed of superhuman wisdom,[90] and so was Yahveh. It is true that the anthropomorphic god acquires knowledge of the affairs of men through his senses. When hearing the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah, Yahveh said, “I will go down now, and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto me; and if not, I will know.”[91] But the senses of a god are generally superior to those of a man. “A god,” says Orestes, “can hear even from a distance.”[92] Varuna has an all-seeing eye, and the Zoroastrian Mithra has a thousand ears and ten thousand eyes.[93] In other respects, also, the bodies of gods excel the bodies of men. Sometimes they are more beautiful, sometimes they have a gigantic shape. When Ares is felled to the ground by the stone flung by Athene, his body covers seven roods of land. [94] When Here takes a solemn oath, she grasps the earth with one hand and the sea with the other.[95] In three steps Poseidon goes an immense distance;[96] in three paces Vishnu traverses earth, air, and sky.[97]
[88] Arbousset and Daumas, Exploratory Tour to the North-East of the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope, p. 341.
[89] Sahagun, Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España, vi. 19, vol. ii. 131.
[90] Cf. Westcott, Essays in the History of Religious Thought, p. 101.
[91] Genesis, xviii. 20 sq.
[92] Aeschylus, Eumenides, 297.
[93] Yasts, x. 7.
[94] Iliad, xxi. 407.
[95] Ibid. xiv. 272 sq.