The supreme god will not be he of whom most tales are invented, because, as these tales must appeal to human interests and relate adventures of the human sort, they will cling more naturally round the name of some inferior divinity. The very age of mythology--so far as regards the beings to whom it relates[56]--is probably rather that of a decaying religion. In any case, there will probably be a metaphysical and a mythological side to every system. Thus among the Egyptians, Amun, the concealed, was the metaphysical god; but their mythology centred round the names of Osiris and Horus. And just so with the Aryans, the sky was the original, most abstracted, and most metaphysical god; the sun rose into prominence in obedience to the wish of man for a more human divinity. If the Semitic people were more inclined toward sun-worship, the Aryans inclined rather toward heaven-worship; and the difference is consistent with the greater faculty for abstract thought which has always belonged to our race. The two influences of which we have spoken are perfectly well marked in Aryan mythology. The history of it may almost be said to represent the rivalry between the sky-gods and the gods of the sun. It is on account of his daily change that the last far less becomes the position of a supreme god. Born each day in the east, faint and weak he battles with the clouds of morning; radiant and strong he mounts into the midday sky; and then, having touched his highest point, he turns to quench his beams in the shadowy embrace of night. Even the Egyptians and Assyrians, in view of these vicissitudes, were driven to invent a sort of abstract sun, separated in thought from the mere visible orb. This daily course might stand as an allegory of the life of man. The luminary who underwent these changing fortunes, however great and godlike in appearance, must have some more than common relationship with the world below; he must be either a hero raised among the gods, or, better (for of this thought the Aryans too had their dim foreshadowing), he is an Avatar, an Incarnation of the Godhead, come down to take upon him for a while the painful life of men. This was the way the sun-gods were regarded by the Indo-European nations. Accordingly, while their deepest religious feelings belonged to the abstract god Zeus, Jupiter among the Greeks and Romans, Dyâus and later on Brahma (a pure abstraction) among the Indians, the stories of their mythology belonged to a more human divinity, who in most cases is the sun-god. He is the Indra[57] of the Hindus, who wrestles with the black serpent, the Night, as Horus did with Typhon; he is the Apollo of the Greeks, likewise the slayer of the serpent, the Pythôn; or else he is Heracles (Hercules), the god-man--sometimes worshipped as a god, sometimes as a demi-god only--the great and mighty hero, the performer of innumerable labours for his fellows; or he is Thor, the Hercules of the Norsemen, the enemy