When we pass from the first plane of corpse-preservation and mummification to the second plane where burial is habitual, it might seem at a hasty glance as though continued worship of the dead, and their elevation into gods, would no longer be possible. For we saw that burial is prompted by a deadly fear lest the corpse or ghost should return to plague the living. Nevertheless, natural affection for parents or friends, and the desire to ensure their good will and aid, make these seemingly contrary ideas reconcilable. As a matter of fact, we find that even when men bury or burn their dead, they continue to worship them: while, as we shall show in the sequel, even the great stones which they roll on top of the grave to prevent the dead from rising again become in time altars on which sacrifices are offered to the spirit. In these two later stages of thought with regard to the dead which accompany burial and cremation, the gods, indeed, grow more and more distinct from minor ghosts with an accelerated rapidity of evolution. They grow greater in proportion to the rise of temples and hierarchies. Furthermore, the very indefiniteness of the bodiless ghost tells in favour of an enlarged godship. The gods are thought of as more and more aerial and immaterial, less definitely human in form and nature; they are clothed with mighty attributes; they assume colossal size; they are even identified with the sun, the moon, the great powers of nature. But they are never quite omnipotent during the polytheistic stage, because in a pantheon they are {073}necessarily mutually limiting. Even in the Greek and Roman civilisation, it is clear that the gods were not commonly envisaged by ordinary minds as much more than human; for Pisistratus dressed up a courtesan at Athens to represent Pallas Athene, and imposed by this cheap theatrical trick upon the vulgar Athenians; while Paul and Barnabas were taken at Lystra for Zeus and Hermes. Many similar instances will occur at once to the classical scholar. It is only quite late, under the influence of monotheism, that the exalted conceptions of deity now prevalent began to form themselves in Judaism and Christianity.