This disintegration of primitive traditions forms the second stage, a negative one, in the process which produced the Homeric Theo-mythology.
When the divine idea, and also the idea of the relation between man and his Maker, had once been fundamentally changed, there was now room for the introduction without limit of what was merely human into religion. Instead of man’s being formed in the image of God, God was formed in the image of man. The ancient traditions were made each to assume a separate individual form; and these shapes were fashioned by magnifying and modifying processes from the pattern that human nature afforded.
Again, as man does not exist alone and individually, but in the family, so the nexus of the family was introduced as the basis of a divine order. This we may call, resting on the etymology of the word, the divine Œconomy of the Homeric religion.
But as with man, so with the supernatural world, on which his own genius was now powerfully reflected, families themselves, when multiplied, required a political order; and therefore, among the gods also a State and government are formed, a divine polity. Human care, by a strange inversion, makes parental provision for the good government of those deities whom it has called into being.
The propagation, for which a physical provision was made among men, takes place within the mythological circle also, under the laws of his intelligent nature. The ranks of the Immortals are filled with persons metaphysically engendered. These persons they represent concrete forms given to abstract ideas, or, to state nearly the same thing in other words, personal modes of existence assigned to powers which man saw as it were alive and at work in the universe, physical or intelligent, around him. But here too a distinction is to be observed. Sometimes the deity was set above the natural power, as its governor and controller: sometimes he merely signified the power itself put in action. The former mode commonly points to tradition; the latter always to invention.
And lastly, when a supernatural κοσμὸς or order had thus been constructed, the principles of affinity between it and the order here below exercised a reciprocally attractive force. The gods were more and more humanized, man was more and more invested with deity: deity was made cheap and common among men, and the interval from earth to heaven was bridged over by various means. These means were principally; first, the translation of men into the company of the immortals; secondly, the introduction of intermediate races; and, thirdly and most of all, the deification of heroes.
Subordinate to this general view, there arises another question: how are we to subdivide the inventive parts of the Homeric mythology? What general statements can be propounded, or criteria supplied, to show how much Greece fabricated or moulded for herself, and what she owed to Egypt, or to Phœnicia, or to other lands in the East, whose traditions she had either inherited or received?
Sources of the inventive portions.
A deep obscurity hangs over this subject. We do not know all that was contained in each of the various religions of the East at any one epoch, much less at all the periods within which they may have contributed materials to the gorgeous fabric of Homer. Many things were probably common to several of them: and where this was so, circumstantial evidence cannot avail for determining the source at which the Poet or his nation borrowed.
But several propositions may be laid down, which will tend towards describing the path of our inquiry.