When we survey these various heroic figures in both their generic and their individual aspects and compare them with the god-personalities, we are struck by the fact that the god was not created directly in the image of a man, but rather in that of the hero, man idealized. It is the hero who gives to the gods those very characteristics which the demon lacks from the outset. Of these, the most important are personality, self-consciousness, and a will controlled by diverse and frequently conflicting motives. This multiplicity of motives has a close connection with the multiplicity of gods. Polytheism is not an accidental feature which may or may not accompany the belief in gods; it is a necessary transitional stage in the development of the god-idea. Folk-belief, which never frees itself entirely from mythology, always retains a plurality of divine beings. Hence true monotheism represents a philosophical development of the god-idea. Though this development was not without influence on the theological speculation which was dominated by traditional doctrines, it was never able to uproot the polytheistic tendency involved in the god-idea from the very beginning. There are two sources from which this tendency springs. Of these, one is external and, therefore, though of great importance for the beginnings of religious development, is transitory. It consists in the influence exerted by the multiplicity of natural phenomena, through the nature myth, upon the number of gods. More important and of more permanent significance is the second or _internal_ motive, namely, the fact that the psychical needs that come to expression in the demand for gods are numerous. There cannot be a single god-ideal any more than a single type of hero. On the contrary, as heroes exhibit the diversity of human effort on an exalted plane, so, in turn, does the realm of gods represent, on a still higher level, the world of heroes. This advance beyond the hero-ideal becomes possible to the mythological imagination only because the very endeavour to exalt the hero above the human itself brought the hero-idea, at the very time of its origin, into connection with the demon-idea. For the demon is a superhuman being, magic-working and unpredictable, affecting in mysterious ways the course of nature and of human destiny. But it lacks the familiar human traits which make the hero an object not only of fear but also of admiration and love. Thus, the fusion of hero and demon results in the final and the greatest of mythological creations, the conception which represents the birth of religion in the proper and ultimately only true sense of the word. I refer to _the rise of gods_.