It must be observed that we have gradually ascended from the special to the specific fetish, and to types which are resolved by the intelligence into more ideal and less concrete images; precisely because they are ideal and less bound to the form they had before, they are incarnated in an anthropomorphic and anthropopathic form. Released from the necessity of regarding them in a vague form, or one different from that of man, the image becomes more human, and that not only as before in consciousness and purpose, but also in aspect and structure.
In fact, in this stage man does not merely infuse his spiritual essence into these types, but likewise his corporeal form, whence we have the true, human image of myth. This may be seen in the various primitive Olympuses of all historic races as well as among savage peoples, only varying in the splendour of their imagery. They consist in the transformation of the earlier fetish into an intelligent, corporeal person, and result from the formation and personification of types.
Beginning with the mysterious conception of some particular spring as a malignant or beneficent fetish which, although personified, still retains its concrete form, the classifying action of the intelligence gradually constructs, from its points of resemblance to other springs, a generic type which includes them all. This typical conception, personified in its turn, next represents a unique power, of which all the individual and accidental springs are only manifestations. Thus it is clear that man, in the personification of this type or specific conception, is no longer bound to the actual form of the special object which first represented it, but he may be said to mould a more indefinite and plastic substance into which he can with spontaneous or facile art incarnate his whole person. Hence this substance will assume an anthropomorphic form, and will issue, not in a mysterious being of extrinsic and indefinite form, but in a person with human features, obvious to human senses.
It was thus, when the fetish attained to a specific type, that mythical anthropomorphism was generated, and polytheism, properly so-called; a polytheism which represents in its figures and images the humanization and personification of specific types. These afterwards diverge into specifications which vary with the number of phenomena that are united in a single idea or conception. The first polytheistic Olympus consisted of natural types, and at a much later period they became moral or abstract, in accordance with the spontaneous evolution of the intelligence itself.
It was in fact in this way that all the specific myths of the general phenomena of nature had their origin, and in our Aryan race we can, starting from the Rig-Veda, follow their splendid development among Græco-Latins, Celts, Germans, and Slavs; it may also be traced in the memory and historic evolution of other races, and with less distinctness among those which are barbarous and savage.[21]
To take some example which may throw light upon our theory of the evolution of myth, let us consider that of Holda in the German Pantheon, since it is a generic type of the special primitive fetishes of sources, already in process of formation before the dispersion of the Aryan tribes. Mannhardt (Deutsche Mythologie) has shown what was the primitive form of the conception of Holda and of the Nornas, that is, of the phenomenal appearances of water; Holda, the lady of waters, first watched over the heavenly sources, and then, by a subsequent interweaving of myths and duplication of images, she kept and guarded the souls of new-born infants. This early conception by progressive specification gave birth to those of the Nornas, of Valkuria, Undine, and others. The primitive fetish, or fetishes of waters out of which the specific type, afterwards personified, was evolved and formed, were at first so bound to the concrete form of the phenomenon, that although animated, it could not assume a human aspect and form. But when the specific type which ideally represented the power manifested in all the various modes of special phenomena was evolved, then man was released from the concrete and individual forms of the fetish, and readily moulded it in his own corporeal as well as in his moral image. So Holda, changed from a heavenly to an earthly deity, was transformed into the goddess of wells and lakes, and assumed a perfectly human and even artistic form. She loved to bathe at noon-day, and was often seen to issue from the water and then plunge anew into the waves, appearing as a very fair and lovely woman.
Again, we know that in the gradual mythical evolution which found its climax in Apollo, the animation of this type, so fruitful in special instances, extended even to the form of his arms, his bow and arrows, and to the place of his habitation at Delphos. He was armed, according to Schwartz, with the rainbow and with thunderbolts, and Delphos was esteemed to be the centre and navel of the world.
These mythical ideas have their special reproduction in the mythology of the Finns. (Castren.) The god Ukko with his great bow of fire sends forth trees as darts against his enemies; while fighting, he stands erect upon a cloud, called the umbilicus of heaven. Thus we see that the process of myth is similar, even in different races.
By the primitive personification of the special fetishes whence he was evolved, the Indra of Vedic India is shepherd of the herd of heavenly kine. Vritra, a three-headed monster in the form of a serpent, steals away the herd and hides it in his cave. Indra pursues the robber, enters the cave with fury, overwhelms the monster with his thunderbolt, and leads back the kine to heaven, their milk sprinkling the earth. This myth gradually assumed in the Vedic hymns more splendid and artistic forms, and more amazing personifications. The original motive of the myth, as it has been interpreted even by Indian commentators, was the storm with all its alternations which bursts forth with more terrific violence in hot climates. The luminous clouds which bring rain are the purple kine whom a black-demon tries to steal; the fruitfulness of the earth depends on the issue of the contest, and the thunderbolt disperses the cloud, which falls on the earth in rain, while Indra, that is, the blue sky, appears in his splendour.[22]