re and
more from Euhemerism towards the conception of Greek religion as a kind of
cult of nature; when the sudden awakening to a more correct understanding
came towards the close of the century, Euhemerism was evidently already an
antiquated view. Thus, since the Renaissance, by a slow and very devious
process of development, a gradual approach had been made to a more correct
view of the nature of ancient religion. After the Devil had more or less
taken the place of the demons, the rest of demonology, the moral allegory,
Hebraism and Euhemerism were eliminated by successive stages, and
nature-symbolism was reached as the final stage.

We know now that even this is not the correct explanation of the nature
and origin of the conception of the gods prevailing among the ancients.
Recent investigations have shown that the Greek gods, in spite of their
apparent simplicity and clarity, are highly complex organisms, the
products of a long process of development to which the most diverse
factors have contributed. In order to arrive at this result another
century of work, with many attempts in the wrong direction, has been
required. The idea that the Greek gods were nature-gods really dominated
research through almost the whole of the nineteenth century. If it has now
been dethroned or reduced to the measure of truth it contains--for
undoubtedly a natural object enters as a component into the essence of
some Greek deities--this is in the first place due to the intensive study
of the religions of primitive peoples, living or obsolete; and the results
of this study were only applied to Greek religion during the last decade
of the century. But the starting-point of modern history of religion lies
much farther back: its beginnings date from the great revival of
historical research which was inaugurated by Rousseau and continued by
Herder. Henceforward the unhistorical methods of the age of enlightenment
were abolished, and attention directed in real earnest towards the earlier
stages of human civilisation.

This, however, carries us a step beyond the point of time at which this
sketch should, strictly speaking, stop. For by the beginning of the
eighteenth century--but not before--the negative fact which is all important
in this connexion had won recognition: namely, that there existed no
supernatural beings latent behind the Greek ideas of their gods, and
corresponding at any rate in some degree to them; but that these ideas
must be