their home. To become like the gods, therefore, the masters and
fathers of men, is to remain eternally and absolutely human: so that who
is most like them on earth takes his place beside them in heaven.
Hercules and Elias and Krishna, Caka-Muni and Ishvara, Jesus and Baha
Ullah. Nay, they are the very gods themselves, manifest as men! The
history of the gods thus presents a double aspect: it is first a
characterization of the important objects and processes of nature and
their survival-values,--the sun, thunder, rain, and earthquakes;
dissolution, rebirth, and love; and again it is the narration of
activities native and delightful to mankind. Zeus is a promiscuous lover
as well as a wielder of thunderbolts; Apollo not only drives the chariot
of the sun; he plays and dances, discourses melody and herds sheep.

But while the portrait of the heart's desire in fictitious adventures of
divinity endears the gods to the spirit, the exploration of the elements
in the environment whose natures they dramatically express, destroys
their force, reduces their number, and drives them still further into
the unknown. Olympus is surrendered for the planets and the fixed stars.
With remoteness of location comes transmutation of character. The forces
of the environment which were the divinity are now conceived as
instrumental to its uses. Its power is more subtly described; its nature
becomes a more purely ideal expression of human aspiration. Physical
remoteness and metaphysical ultimacy are akin. God among the stars is
better than God on Olympus. If, as with the Parsees, the unfavorable
character of the environment is expressed in another and equal
being,--the devil, then the god of good must, in the symbolic struggle,
become the ultimate victor and remain the more potent director of man's
destiny. In religion, therefore, when the mind grows at all by
experience, monism develops spontaneously. For the character of the god
becomes increasingly more relevant to hope than to the conditions of
hope's satisfaction. And what man first of all and beyond all aspires
to, is that single, undivided good,--the free flow of his unitary life,
stable, complete, eternal. There is hence always to be found a chief and
father among the gods who, as mankind gain in wisdom and in material
power, consumes his mates and his children like Kronos or Jahweh,
inherits their attributes and performs their functions. The chief
divinity becomes the only divinity; a go