In a subsequent part of the comedy (Act III, Scene 1) Strepsiades is represented as speaking of this idea of a whirlwind as a deified being, thus admirably showing the tendency of man to consider that which he could not comprehend as the result of supernatural agency, and to personify it.
Str. Thou swearest now, by Jove.
Phid. I do.
Str. Thou see'st how good it is to learn,
There is no Jove, Phidippides.
Phid. Who then?
Str. A whirlwind reigns; having driven him, Jove, away.
It would seem, also, that Socrates himself was subject to the influence of this feeling; for a passage in Act V, Scene 1,[16] has led to the conclusion "that in the school of Socrates was placed an earthen image (δῖνος, the name of an earthen vessel as well as of the whirlwind, who has usurped the honours and attributes of Jove). (See Schol. ad Vesp. 617.) This, probably, was done by the philosopher as a sort of compensation for having expelled Jupiter (τὸν Διά) from his mythological system."[17]
II. But the ideas derived from the contemplation of natural phenomena were not the sole sources of mythology, such as we have received it. Other and most powerful causes operated, and of those next in degree of importance were those feelings which prompted to the deification of men.
Persæus, a disciple of Zeno, "says, that they who have made discoveries advantageous to the life of man, should be esteemed as gods; and the very things, he says, which are healthful and beneficial, should have divine appellations; so that he thinks it not sufficient to call them the discoverers of gods, but that they themselves should be deemed divine."[18]
The author of the "Book of Wisdom" in the Apocrypha, details other causes which tended to the same result. He writes, (Chapter xiv, v. 15-21):—