been some supernatural powers concerned in the game.

An exceptional place is occupied by the attempt made during the
Renaissance at an actual revival of ancient paganism and the worship of
its gods. It proceeded from Plethon, the head of the Florentine Academy,
and seems to have spread thence to the Roman Academy. The whole movement
must be viewed more particularly as an outcome of the enthusiasm during
the Renaissance for the culture of antiquity and more especially for its
philosophy rather than its religion; the gods worshipped were given a new
and strongly philosophical interpretation. But it is not improbable that
the traditional theory of the reality of the ancient deities may have had
something to do with it.

Simultaneously with demonology, and while it was still acknowledged in
principle, there flourished more naturalistic conceptions of paganism,
both in the Middle Ages and during the Renaissance. As remarked above, the
way was already prepared for them during antiquity. In Thomas Aquinas we
find a lucid explanation of the origin of idolatry with a reference to the
ancient theory. Here we meet with the familiar elements: the worship of
the stars and the cult of the dead. According to Thomas, man has a natural
disposition towards this error, but it only comes into play when he is led
astray by demons. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Devil is
mentioned oftener than the demons (compare Acosta's view of the heathenism
of the American Indians); evidently the conception of the nature of evil
had undergone a change in the direction of monotheism. In this way more
scope was given for the adoption of naturalistic views in regard to the
individual forms in which paganism manifested itself than when dealing
with a multiplicity of demons that answered individually to the pagan
gods, and we meet with systematic attempts to explain the origin of
idolatry by natural means, though still with the Devil in the background.

One of these systems, which played a prominent part, especially in the
seventeenth century, is the so-called Hebraism, _i.e._ the attempt to
derive the whole of paganism from Judaism. This fashion, for which the way
had already been prepared by Jewish and Christian apologists, reaches its
climax, I think, with Abbot Huet, who derived all the gods of antiquity
(and not only Greek and Roman antiquity) from Moses, and all the goddesses
from his sister; according to him the knowledge of these two