[137] Mr Max Müller, in his essay on "Semitic Monotheism," when opposing M. Renan's view that the monotheism of the Semitic race was instinctive, seems to say this still more explicitly--"He thunders and Dyaus thunders became synonymous expressions; and by the mere habit of speech He became Dyaus and Dyaus became He" ("Chips," i. 358). "At first the names of God, &c., were honest attempts at expressing or representing an idea which could never find adequate expression or representation.... If the Greeks had remembered that Zeus was but a name or symbol of the Deity, there would have been no more harm in calling God by that name than by any other" (359). It must be remembered that after the name of "Zeus," or "Dyaus," = sky, had been adopted, they still retained the conception of the Divine nature and personality, as is evidenced in the words of the oracle of Dodona--"[Greek: Zeùs ên, Zeus éstín, Zeus essetai ô megale Zeu],--He was, He is, He will be, O great Zeus!" Also (ii. 15) in the Orphic lines-- "Zeus is the beginning, Zeus the middle; Out of Zeus all things have been made." If we are agreed upon this, then I have no contention with Mr Max Müller; but with Max Müller as an auxiliary, I direct my argument to the attack of Dr Dollinger's position ("The Gentile and the Jew," I. B. ii. p. 64)--"The beginnings of Greek polytheism," viz., "the deification of Nature and her powers, or of particular sensible objects, _lay at the root of all the heathen religions_, as they _existed from old time_, amongst the nations now united under the Roman empire." According to Mr Lewes ("Hist. of Phil.," i. 44), it was Xenophanes who first confused the sky with the Deity--"Overarching him was the deep blue infinite vault, immovable and unchangeable, embracing him and all things--_that he proclaimed_ to be God." (Contrast the Peruvian tradition, _infra_, p. 304.) St Clement of Alexandria (Strom. v. p. 601, Max Müller, chapter i. p. 366.) says, on the contrary, that Xenophanes maintained that there was but "one God, and that he was not like unto men, either in body or mind." Take, again, the following passage from Mr Max Müller (p. 107)--"The idea of a young hero, whether he is called _Baldr_, or Sigurd, or Sigrit, or Achilles, or Meleager, or Kephalos, dying in the fulness of youth--a story so frequently told, localised, and individualised--was first suggested by the sun dying in all his youthful vigour, either at the end of a day, conquered by the powers of darkness, or at the end of the sunny season, stung by the thorn of winter." Here is a myth evidently very widely diffused. Let it be interpreted by what is told us at p. 108--