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46
MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS.
46
BOOK I.
exalted, even while it assumed more and more a strictly human form. The result would be a polytheism of anthropomorphous gods, in which the chief divinities would be the heaven and the sun. To the former, as covering and shielding all things, would be assigned those attributes which almost make us look on the Olympian Zeus and the Teutonic Alfadir as faint reflexions of Him who has made and loves mankind. But neither for the majesty of Zeus or Odin, nor for the unsullied purity of Phoibos Apollôn, of Athênê, or of Artemis, need we look further than to mythical phrases, which spoke once of Dyaus, Varuna, or Indra.
