ut we have reason
for this in the fact that their earliest literature dates from so late a
period. It began with Homer not earlier than 600 B.C., and direct
accounts of the religion of the Greeks are not traced beyond 560 B.C.
But Welcker, whose examinations have been exhaustive, has, in the
opinion of Max Mueller, fairly established the primitive monotheism of
the Greeks. Mueller says: "When we ascend with him to the most distant
heights of Greek history the idea of God as the supreme being stands
before us as a simple fact. Next to this adoration of One God the father
of men we find in Greece a worship of nature. The powers of nature,
originally worshipped as such, were afterward changed into a family of
gods, of which Zeus became the king and father. The third phase is what
is generally called Greek mythology; but it was preceded in time, or at
least rendered possible in thought, by the two prior conceptions, a
belief in a supreme God and a worship of the powers of nature.... The
divine character of Zeus, as distinguished from his mythological
character, is most carefully brought out by Welcker. He avails himself
of all the discoveries of comparative philology in order to show more
clearly how the same idea which found expression in the ancient
religions of the Brahmans, the Sclavs, and the Germans had been
preserved under the same simple, clear, and sublime name by the original
settlers of Hellas."[154]

The same high authority traces in his own linguistic studies the
important fact that all branches of the Aryan race preserve the same
name for the Supreme Being, while they show great ramification and
variation in the names of their subordinate gods. If, therefore, the
Indo-Aryans give evidence of a monotheistic faith at the time of their
dispersion, there is an _a priori_ presumption for the monotheism of the
Greeks. "Herodotus," says Professor Rawlinson, "speaks of God as if he
had never heard of polytheism." The testimony of the Greek poets shows
that beneath the prevailing polytheism there remained an underlying
conception of monotheistic supremacy. Professor Rawlinson quotes from an
Orphic poem the words:

"Ares is war, peace
Soft Aphrodite, wine that God has made
Is Dionysius, Themis is the right
Men render to each. Apollo, too,
And Phoebus and AEschlepius, who doth heal
Diseases, are the sun. All these are one."

Max Mueller traces to this same element of monotheism the real greatne