This element has undoubtedly had an important influence in the formation of the various myths, but it refers rather to an advanced stage in mythology, and to that period of development when a nation has made some progress in arts and literature.
These elements, and doubtless also others of which the effects are less easily unfolded, e.g. intercourse between various nations, dispersion of tribes, &c., have all exercised a greater or less degree of influence on the development and formation of the mythologies of different nations.
If we contemplate a race in the earlier phases of its existence, or one degraded in the scale of being, we find that its ideas of the supernatural are confined to the deification and worship of the simplest and most striking of the objects and phenomena of nature: as it has increased in civilization and learning, those deities have been represented in symbolical forms; and as civilization and the cultivation of the mind advances, and the knowledge of surrounding nature has become increased, so have the number of deities been multiplied by the deification of the less evident powers of nature, of kings, and of distinguished men, and then also allegory has come into play. Every variation in the character of a nation, and every era, has impressed more or less distinct marks on its mythology; and mythology, as we receive it now, is the sum of all those changes which have been impressed upon it from its earliest formation.
When Christianity dawned upon the world, its effect was not the immediate eradication or dispersion of the superstitious beliefs and observances then entertained: it induced a change in the form and nature of those beliefs.
At the commencement of the Christian era, certain men, inspired by the Holy Ghost, were enabled to cast aside all those thoughts and feelings derived from habit, education, and authority, and to receive at once, in all its purity and fulness, the light of the gospel—perhaps the most wonderful of all the miracles of Holy Writ. Such was not the case, however, with the majority of the earlier Christians. They did not thus throw off the superstitious beliefs of pagan origin, but modified them so as to concur, as they thought, with Scripture.
Thus, the Scriptures enunciated the doctrine of one sole, omnipotent, and omniscient God; and it fully defined a power of evil, and denounced idolatry. Hence the early Christian fathers were led to conceive, and teach, that the gods of the heathen were devils; and further, that their history, attributes, and worship, had been taught to mankind by the devils themselves.
"Powers that erst in heaven sat on thrones;
Though of their names in heavenly records now
Be no memorial,—blotted out and razed,
By their rebellion from the book of life,—
... wandering o'er the earth,
Through God's high sufferance for the trial of man,
By falsities and lies the greatest part
Of mankind they corrupted, to forsake
God their Creator, and the invisible
Glory of Him that made them to transform
Oft to the image of a brute adorn'd
With gay religions, full of pomp and gold,
And devils to adore for deities;
Then were they known to man by various names,
And various idols through the heathen world."[21]
This phase being given to the existing superstitions, it will readily be understood how, under the form of devils, most of the principal classes of deities in pagan mythology were retained and believed in. Thus the elemental and primary gods of paganism were perpetuated under the name of fiends, dæmons, genii, &c.; and the terms salamanders, undines, &c., expressed certain spirits of fire and of water; in the form of fairies, elves, sylphs, &c., were retained the graceful Nymphs—Oreads, Dryads, &c.—of antiquity,—
"The light militia of the lower sky;"