The absorption of the respective worships of a number of deities into the worship of one deity has been an incidental consequence of the progress of science. Humanity began by offering up a multitude of special services to a multitude of special gods. If one were to believe certain linguists, it is true, natural objects—the sun, fire, the moon—were at first adored as impersonal entities; their subsequent personification being due to a too literal interpretation of figurative impressions habitually employed to designate them, such as Ζεύς, the brilliant. Certain myths, no doubt, did spring from this source: _nomina, numina_; but humanity does not usually progress from the general to the particular. Primitive religion, on the contrary, was at first subdivided or rather simply divided into cults of all sorts; it was only later that simplifications and generalizations arose. The passage from fetichism to polytheism and to monotheism was simply the consequence of a progressively scientific conception of the world; of the progressive absorption of the several transcendent powers into a single power immanent in the laws of the universe. [Sidenote: Development of sociological and moral sides of religion.] More important still than this metaphysical and scientific evolution of religion is the sociological and moral evolution. What is really important in a religious theory is less the conceived relation of the primary substance to its manifestations in the universe, than the attributes ascribed to this substance and to the inhabitants of the universe. In other words, what sort of a society does the universe constitute? What sort of social relation more or less moral between the various members are derivable from the fundamental tie which binds them to the principle which is immanent in all of them? That is the great problem for which the others simply constitute a preparation. The problem is to interpret the true foundation of beings and of being, independently of numerical, logical, and even metaphysical relations. Well, such an interpretation cannot be other than psychological and moral. Psychologically, power was the first and essential attribute of divinity, and this power was conceived as redoubtable. Intelligence, knowledge, foreknowledge, were only at a later period ascribed to the gods. And finally, divine morality, under the twofold aspects of justice and goodness, is a very late conception indeed. We shall see it develop side by side with the development of the systems of practical morals that are incident to religion. CHAPTER III. RELIGIOUS MORALS. I. The laws which regulate the social relations between gods and men—Morality and immorality in primitive religions—Extension of friendly and hostile relations to the sphere of the gods—Primitive inability in matters of conscience, as in matters of art, to distinguish the great from the monstrous.