As religion, however, became more self-conscious, the intellectual element in it gained more force and energy, and the thinkers of the priestly schools endeavoured to bring the claims of different deities into some sort of order, and regulate the hierarchy of heaven. {176} But they were often confronted with ancient elements of savagery which could be imperfectly harmonised with the more refined ideas of a progressive culture. Thus already in Homer, Zeus, as supreme God, bears one significant epithet; he is _mêtieta_, full of _mêtis_ or counsel. The word is of doubtful derivation, but with the strong tendency of Greek imagination to turn abstract ideas into persons, Mêtis is presented by Hesiod (next in literary succession to Homer) as the daughter of Ocean, the Hellenic equivalent of the Babylonian Deep, source of all being even for the gods. Greek thought was not yet ripe for the ontological conception of wisdom or intelligence as inherent in the divine nature, so the union of Thought with Zeus is represented mythologically as a marriage, and Mêtis becomes the bride of the great "king of gods and men." The result is conceived in truly savage fashion. In order to possess her in the most intimate manner, and embody her in his own person, Zeus suddenly swallows her. Mythology, of course, has to provide a reason; she would bear a son who would overthrow him. The poet (or perhaps his editor), desirous of correcting this brutal selfishness, suggests a further plea; the goddess should be his perpetual monitor, and warn him inwardly of good and evil. The myth is being directly moralised. Whatever, therefore, may be the origins of myth, whether in connection with tribal {177} tradition, in the interpretation of the incidents of nature--as when a Siberian described to Baron von Wrangell the occultation of one of Jupiter's moons by saying that the blue star had swallowed another very small star and soon after vomited it up again--or in endeavours to picture the characters and relations of the gods, the beginnings of the world, the birth of man, the entry of evil, sin, and death, or the condition of those who have already passed away, the myth becomes the reflex of the culture in the midst of which it rises. It is the depository of human experience, of man's criticism of his own life. And in its representations of a distant age when gods visibly consorted with men, and deigned to instruct them in the conditions of social welfare, mythology is the direct product of religion.