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ORIGINAL SOURCES OF CULTURE. 81reason, why no hesitation was made among those nations todepart from this human form, and to disfigureit wheneverit seemed possibleto give, by that means, a greater degreeof distinctness to the symbolic representation or if j anyother object could thus be more successfully accomplished.This is the source of all those singular shapes, under whichthe gods of the East appear.The Indian makes no scrupleof giving his gods twenty arms ; the Phrygian representshis Diana with as many breasts j the Egyptian gave themthe heads of beasts.Different as these disfigurations are, theyall have their originin this ;the human form was but asubordinate object ;the chief aim was the distinct representation of the symbol, under a form suited to their modes ofcomprehension.As the Grecians received most if not all of their "godsfrom abroad, they of course received them as symbols ofthose natural objects and powers and the farther we look;back in the Grecian thcogony, the more clearly do theirHe who reads with tolerablegods appear as such beings.attention the earlier systems as contained in Hcsiod, cannotmistake this for a moment ;and it cannot be denied, thatthere are traces of this originin the gods of Homer, That hisJupiter designates the ether, his Juno the atmosphere, hisPhoebus Apollo the sun, is obvious in many of his narrations. But it is equally obvious, that the prevailing representation with him is not the ancient symbolical one, thatrather his Jupiter is already the ruler of gods and men, hisJuno the queen of Olympus.This then is the essential peculiarity of the popularreligion of the Greeks ; they gradually dismissed those symbolical representations, and not only dismissed them, butadopted something moi*e human and more sublime in theirstead. The gods of the Greeks were moral persons.When we call them moral persons, we do not mean tosay, that a higher degree of moral purity was attributed tothem than humanity can attain ; (the reverse is well enoughknown ;)but rather, that the whole moral nature of man,with its defects and its excellencies, was considered as belonging to them, only with the additional notions of superiorphysical force, a more delicately organized system, and amore exalted, if not always a more beautiful form, But