What is the nature-significance of this maiden-goddess? It is less easy to determine than in the case of the other three divinities. One form of the maiden-goddess is the divinity of the seed, like Persephone, that is to say, a goddess of all vegetation, and hence of the spring. In the Vedas, again, Ushas is a goddess of the dawn, an idea nearly allied to that of Spring; and some people think that this is also the foundation of Athenê’s nature. There are other characteristics of the maiden-goddess which look as if she were an embodiment of the clouds; but then the clouds are so nearly connected with the dawn that such an idea can scarcely be said to contradict the other notion. The maiden-goddess is in many cases born of the sea. Not only is Aphroditê, or Venus, born of the sea, but Athenê is so likewise; at any rate one of her names, Tritogeneia, implies this origin. The more common story of Athenê’s birth, that she sprang from the head of her father, Zeus--this, too, when we remember that Zeus is the sky, is not inconsistent with her being the cloud. When all is said, it must be owned that the nature-origin of this maiden-goddess is not so obvious as in the case of the divinities of the sky, sun, or earth. That only means that, as a nature-goddess, she is not so necessary to the creed, but that on the other hand many objects of nature--the dawn, the clouds, streams, the wind, sunshine--have suggested the thought of this divinity, and that the suggestion found a natural echo in the heart of mankind. There are, of course, behind the greater nature-gods a number of other natural forces--the sea, the wind, lightning, fire, streams, fountains, the dawn, the clouds. These all receive their place in the Aryan pantheon. But the characters of the lesser gods tend to echo those of the greater. Sometimes two different but nearly allied objects of nature are rolled into one to form a new god. Thus the god of storms and thunder is often associated with the sky, as are Zeus and Jupiter among the Greeks and Romans. Dyâus, the most primitive form of sky-god, is the clear heaven. The name is connected with a root _div_, to shine. But Zeus and Jupiter are the cloudy or thundery skies. The Vedic Indra is often not unlike them. That is to say, the sky-god, in their persons, has taken upon him the nature of the god of storms. But despite these changes, we may still go back to the gods of earth, and sky, and sun, and cloud as forming the backbone of the Aryan creed taken as a whole. * * * * * [Sidenote: Vedic religion of India.]