How individual are the gods of the Greeks with respect to one another! Under the influence of poetry every god has here become a clearly defined personality, whose individuality was fixed by formative art. Thus, the error of the demon theory or, as it might also be called, the three-stage theory, lies in the fact that it effaces the essential distinctions between god and demon, retaining as the chief characteristic of the multitude of resulting deity-conceptions only the most external quality, that of _permanence_. For the 'god of a moment' is characterized merely by his extreme transitoriness; the 'particular god' is the 'god of a moment' become somewhat more enduring but not yet possessed of sufficient stability to develop personal traits; the true or personal god, finally, owes his distinctive attribute solely to the permanence of his characteristics. Because of this confusion of the concepts god and demon, there is lacking precisely that which is of most importance for a psychological investigation--namely, an answer to the question as to the _intrinsic_ marks that differentiate a god, in the proper and only true sense of the word, from demons, ancestors, and souls--in short, from all other creations of mythological thought. Herewith we come to a question which will bring us closer to an answer respecting the origin of gods. By what characteristic marks is a mythological conception to be distinguished as that of an actual god? The question might also be stated in a more concrete form. What characteristics differentiate a god from a _demon_, who is not yet a god because he lacks personality, and from a _hero_, who is regarded by the age in which gods originate as somewhat approximating a god but as nevertheless still a man? Or, briefly expressed, how does the god differ from the demon and from the ideal man? The criteria thus demanded are to be found in the traits that are universally ascribed to gods wherever any complete deity mythology and a corresponding religion have been developed. The god is always distinguished by three characteristics. The first of these is that his _place of abode_ is other than that of man. He may occasionally visit man on the earth, but this occurs only rarely. So far as he himself is concerned, the god lives in another world. In this sense, the idea of a 'beyond' is closely bound up with that of gods. As a rule, the 'beyond' is the heavenly world. But gods may dwell also in the regions of the air and clouds between the heaven and the earth, on high mountains, on distant islands, or, finally, under special circumstances, in the depths of the earth. Secondly, the gods lead a _perfect_ life, free, on the whole, from the evils and infirmities of earthly existence. A perfect life, however, is always regarded as primarily a life without death and without sickness. There then develops, though doubtless gradually, the idea of something even more perfect than is involved in this merely