three distinct characters:--

I. It has a physical character. It represents some of the great powers
or objects of nature--sun or moon, or heaven, or the winds, or the sea.
And the fables first related about each deity represent, figuratively,
the action of the natural power which it represents; such as the rising
and setting of the sun, the tides of the sea, and so on.

II. It has an ethical character, and represents, in its history, the
moral dealings of God with man. Thus Apollo is first, physically, the
sun contending with darkness; but morally, the power of divine life
contending with corruption. Athena is, physically, the air; morally, the
breathing of the divine spirit of wisdom. Neptune is, physically, the
sea; morally, the supreme power of agitating passion; and so on.

III. It has, at last, a personal character; and is realised in the minds
of its worshippers as a living spirit, with whom men may speak face to
face, as a man speaks to his friend.

Now it is impossible to define exactly, how far, at any period of a
national religion, these three ideas are mingled; or how far one
prevails over the other. Each enquirer usually takes up one of these
ideas, and pursues it, to the exclusion of the others: no impartial
effort seems to have been made to discern the real state of the heathen
imagination in its successive phases. For the question is not at all
what a mythological figure meant in its origin; but what it became in
each subsequent mental development of the nation inheriting the thought.
Exactly in proportion to the mental and moral insight of any race, its
mythological figures mean more to it, and become more real. An early and
savage race means nothing more (because it has nothing more to mean) by
its Apollo, than the sun; while a cultivated Greek means every operation
of divine intellect and justice. The Neith, of Egypt, meant, physically,
little more than the blue of the air; but the Greek, in a climate of
alternate storm and calm, represented the wild fringes of the
storm-cloud by the serpents of her aegis; and the lightning and cold of
the highest thunder-clouds, by the Gorgon on her shield: while morally,
the same types represented to him the mystery and changeful terror of
knowledge, as her spear and helm its ruling and defensive power. And no
study can be more interesting, or more useful to you, than that of the
different meanings which have been created by great nations, and great
poets, out o