zed,
in the classic languages, into deus, or God, it is quite certain that in
early days, before the Aryan separation, it had acquired no such exalted
significance. It was only in Greece and Rome--or, we may say, among
the still united Italo-Hellenic tribes--that Jupiter-Zeus attained a
pre-eminence over all other deities. The people of Iran quite
rejected him, the Teutons preferred Thor and Odin, and in India he was
superseded, first by Indra, afterwards by Brahma and Vishnu. We need
not, therefore, look for a single supreme divinity among the old Aryans;
nor may we expect to find any sense, active or dormant, of monotheism in
the primitive intelligence of uncivilized men. [102] The whole fabric
of comparative mythology, as at present constituted, and as described
above, in the first of these papers, rests upon the postulate that the
earliest religion was pure fetichism.

In the unsystematic nature-worship of the old Aryans the gods are
presented to us only as vague powers, with their nature and attributes
dimly defined, and their relations to each other fluctuating and often
contradictory. There is no theogony, no regular subordination of one
deity to another. The same pair of divinities appear now as father and
daughter, now as brother and sister, now as husband and wife; and again
they quite lose their personality, and are represented as mere natural
phenomena. As Muller observes, "The poets of the Veda indulged freely in
theogonic speculations without being frightened by any contradictions.
They knew of Indra as the greatest of gods, they knew of Agni as the god
of gods, they knew of Varuna as the ruler of all; but they were by no
means startled at the idea that their Indra had a mother, or that
their Agni [Latin ignis] was born like a babe from the friction of two
fire-sticks, or that Varuna and his brother Mitra were nursed in the lap
of Aditi." [103] Thus we have seen Bhaga, the daylight, represented
as the offspring, of Aditi, the boundless Orient; but he had several
brothers, and among them were Mitra, the sun, Varuna, the overarching
firmament, and Vivasvat, the vivifying sun. Manifestly we have here
but so many different names for what is at bottom one and the same
conception. The common element which, in Dyaus and Varuna, in Bhaga and
Indra, was made an object of worship, is the brightness, warmth, and
life of day, as contrasted with the darkness, cold, and seeming death
of the night-time. And this common e