this fusion, however, there continued also the hero in his purity, as well as the demon, whose various forms were at most crowded into the background by the appearance of the gods. To however great an extent, therefore, the age of heroes and gods may introduce a completely new spiritual movement that proves fundamental to all future culture and religion, it nevertheless also includes all the elements of previous development. These elements, moreover, are not merely present in forms that have been altered and in part completely changed by the processes of assimilation; side by side with such forms, there are always also the original elements, which may be traced back to the earliest beginnings of mythological thought. The dominant factor determining the character of this new age, however, is the _hero_. The ideal of human personality which the hero engenders in the folk consciousness conditions all further development, and especially the origin of the god. For this reason the 'age of heroes and gods' might also, and more briefly, be called the _heroic age_. As the direct incarnation of the idea of personality, it is the hero about whom the new development of myth and religion centres. Similarly, the hero also stands in closest relation to the transformations that occur in all other departments of human life. Enormous changes in economic conditions and in the forms of life dependent upon them, new social institutions, with their reactions upon custom and law, transformations and creations in all branches of art--all give expression to the new development upon which this age has entered. Here also, just as at the beginning of the anteceding age, there are numerous reciprocal relations between these various factors. The hero and the god cannot be conceived apart from the _State_, whose founding marks the beginning of this period. Custom and law are just as much results of the new political society as they are themselves essential factors in its creation. Neither the State nor the worship of gods protected by it could survive apart from the great changes in economic life that took place at the beginning of this period, and that were further established and perfected in the course of time. Thus, here also each element reinforces every other; all the factors of life are in constant interaction. At the beginning of the totemic period, as we have seen, it was the new creations of mythological thought that constituted the centre from which radiated all the other elements of culture. At the beginning of the age of heroes and gods it is the creative power of the _religious_ consciousness whose activities most accurately mirror the various spiritual achievements of the period. 2. THE EXTERNAL CULTURE OF THE HEROIC AGE.