the egg is born the Father. A farrago of
contradictions is all that these tales amount to, nor are they
redeemed even by a poetical garb.[65]

In the period immediately following the Br[=a]hmanas, or toward the
end of the Brahmanic period, as one will, there is a famous
distinction made between the gods. Some gods, it is said, are
spirit-gods; some are work-gods. They are born of spirit and of works,
respectively. The difference, however, is not essential, but
functional; so that one may conclude from this authority, the Nirukta
(a grammatical and epexigetical work), that all the gods have a like
nature; and that the spirit-gods, who are the older, differ only in
lack of specific functions from the work-gods. A not uninteresting
debate follows this passage in regard to the true nature of the gods.
Some people say they are anthropomorphic; others deny this. "And
certainly what is seen of the gods is not anthropomorphic; for
example, the sun, the earth, etc."[66] In such a period of theological
advance it is matter of indifference to which of a group of gods, all
essentially one, is laid the task of creation. And, indeed, from the
Vedic period until the completed systems of philosophy, all creation
to the philosopher is but emanation; and stories of specific acts of
creation are not regarded by him as detracting from the creative
faculty of the First Cause. The actual creator is for him the factor
and agent of the real god. On the other hand, the vulgar worshipper of
every era believed only in reproduction on the part of an
anthropomorphic god; and that god's own origin he satisfactorily
explained by the myth of the golden egg. The view depended in each
case not on the age but on the man.

If in these many pages devoted to the Br[=a]hmanas we have produced
the impression that the religious literature of this period is a
confused jumble, where unite descriptions of ceremonies, formulae,
mysticism, superstitions, and all the output of active bigotry; an
_olla podrida_ which contains, indeed, odds and ends of sound
morality, while it presents, on the whole, a sad view of the
latter-day saints, who devoted their lives to making it what it is; we
have offered a fairly correct view of the age and its priests, and the
rather dreary series of illustrations will not have been collected in
vain. We have given, however, no notion at all of the chief object of
this class of writings, the liturgical details of the sacrifices
thems