In Stages I. and II. of the evolution of nature-deities, it is the nature power or object itself which is the deity. Stage II. (Anthropomorphism), so long as it is not meant literally, is not inconsistent with a direct worship of natural objects and phenomena. But the vulgar are always prone to mistake metaphor for reality. When they are told that the Sun is a goddess, who walks, weaves, wears armour, sows rice, and so on, they take these statements literally, combining an implicit belief in them with the worship of the Sun itself. Even Motoöri says that it is the actual Sun in Heaven which we worship as Amaterasu no Oho-Kami (the Heaven-shining-great Deity), while he believes at the same time that the Sun-myth of the _Kojiki_ is real history. A time comes when it is objected that the Sun has no arms or legs necessary for the performance of the actions attributed to her. It is pointed out that the wind has no bodily form at all. Instead of going back to the true explanation--that these things are only metaphorical, the literal-minded man prefers to accept the suggestion (which brings us to Stage III.) that the deity is not the actual sun, or wind, or sea, or mountain, but a powerful being who rules it. Such beings, however, are not at first conceived of as in any way incorporeal. There is considerable confusion observable in Shinto between Stages I. and II. and Stage III. We have seen that Motoöri identified Ama-terasu with the Sun. His pupil Hirata, on the other hand, says that the Sun-Goddess was born on earth, and was sent up to Heaven as "Ruler of the Sun." And while it is true that a sea may be directly called _Kami_, we have also a Sea-God, Toyotama-hiko, who is as clearly distinguished from the physical ocean as Neptune is. This fluctuation is common to all mythologies. Greek literature is full of examples of reverence paid at one time to natural objects and phenomena, and at another to deities which rule them. They adored Apollo as well as Helios. Muir, in the introduction to vol. v. of his 'Sanskrit Texts,' says:--"The same visible object was at different times regarded diversely as being either a portion of the inanimate universe, or an animated being and a cosmical power. Thus in the Vedic hymns, the sun, the sky, and the earth are severally considered, sometimes as natural objects governed by particular gods, and sometimes as themselves gods who generate and control other beings." Our own poets are not a whit disturbed by such inconsistencies. In 'Paradise Lost' the Sun is apostrophized in one place as the "God of this new world," while in another passage of the same poem we have a "Uriel, Regent of the Sun." Shakespeare, in the 'Tempest,' puts into the mouth of an anthropomorphic Iris the words:-- The Queen of the Sky, Whose watery arch and messenger am I.