The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c11.s3.18

v1.c11.s3.18

Usener’s views are not wholly convincing; his momentary gods¹ are not established by any historical evidence of value, and can only be regarded as a possible, but not necessary, stage of imagination. His Sondergötter are more real, and some gods of this type may be traced in Vedic religion.² But he certainly much exaggerated the value of his evidence which has been severely criticized for Greek, Roman, and Lithuanian religion by Farnell,³ Wissowa,⁴ and Warde Fowler⁵ among others. It is in fact plain that the elaboration of the Sondergötter often represents the priestly working up of simpler ideas, and that they are later developments of naturalism under the influence of animism, and not really primitive. Nor can the argument from names be treated as of decisive importance; in fact the disuse of a word may often rather be because it had become a divine name and, therefore, was too sacred for indiscriminate ordinary use. Allowance in the development of personality must be made for several other factors, the cult certainly in high measure. Wundt⁶ again insists on the importance of the hero as suggesting the development of the personal god, though he clearly exaggerates the importance of this factor. The practice of making images of the deity, which is in part an outcome of personification, at the same time must have aided in the development of that feature. Importance also must be attached to the influence of ethical considerations, though precisely how these operated is by no means easy to decide.