Totemic culture is succeeded--through gradual transitions--by a _third_ period, which we will call the _age of heroes and gods_. Initial steps towards the latter were already taken during the preceding period, in the development of a rulership of individuals within the tribal organization. This rulership, at first only temporary in character, gradually becomes permanent. The position of the chieftain, which was of only minor importance in the totemic age, gains in power when the tribal community, under the pressure of struggles with hostile tribes, assumes a military organization. Society thus develops into the _State_. War, as also the guidance of the State in times of peace, calls out men who tower far above the stature of the old chieftains, and who, at the same time, are sharply distinguished from one another through qualities that stamp them as typical personalities. In place of the eldest of the clan and the tribal chieftain of the totemic period, this new age gives rise to the _hero_. The totemic age possesses only fabulous narratives; these are credited myths dealing, not infrequently, with animal ancestors who have introduced fire, taught the preparation of food, etc. The hero who is exalted as a leader in war belongs to a different world, a world faithfully mirrored in the heroic song or epic. As regards their station in life, the heroes of Homer are still essentially tribal chieftains, but the enlarged field of struggle, together with the magnified characteristics which it develops, exalt the leader into a hero. With the development of poetry, the forms of language also become modified and enriched. The epic is followed by formative and dramatic art. All this is at the same time closely bound up with the origin of the State, which now displaces the more primitive tribal institutions of the preceding period. When this occurs, different customs and cults emerge. With national heroes and with States, national religions come into being; and, since these religions no longer direct the attention merely to the immediate environment, to the animal and plant world, but focus it primarily upon the heavens, there is developed the idea of a higher and more perfect world. As the hero is the ideal man, so the god becomes the ideal hero, and the celestial world, the ideally magnified terrestrial world.