The ancient philosophers found in mythology many ideas which, if
not originally derived from nature, were easily transferred to
her—such, for example, as love or hate, corresponding to
attraction or repulsion; or the conception of necessity allied
both to the regularity and irregularity of nature; or of chance,
the nameless or unknown cause; or of justice, symbolizing the law
of compensation; are of the Fates and Furies, typifying the fixed
order or the extraordinary convulsions of nature. Their own
interpretations of Homer and the poets were supposed by them to
be the original meaning. Musing in themselves on the phenomena of
nature, they were relieved at being able to utter the thoughts of
their hearts in figures of speech which to them were not figures,
and were already consecrated by tradition. Hesiod and the Orphic
poets moved in a region of half-personification in which the
meaning or principle appeared through the person. In their vaster
conceptions of Chaos, Erebus, Aether, Night, and the like, the
first rude attempts at generalization are dimly seen. The Gods
themselves, especially the greater Gods, such as Zeus, Poseidon,
Apollo, Athene, are universals as well as individuals. They were
gradually becoming lost in a common conception of mind or God.
They continued to exist for the purposes of ritual or of art; but
from the sixth century onwards or even earlier there arose and
gained strength in the minds of men the notion of ‘one God,
greatest among Gods and men, who was all sight, all hearing, all
knowing’ (Xenophanes).