The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c20.s1.3

v1.c20.s1.3

The nature of some of the abstract gods is perfectly plain; they are human faculties made divine, such as wrath or faith. There seems no distinction of principle between the act of mind which makes these passions divine, and that which makes external things or rather activities into gods: that the latter process comes before the former is only in keeping with the development of the self-consciousness of man, which appears to be at first directed on the external world, and then to be reflected upon the internal world in the normal sense of these terms. But deification of this sort seems to have been practised into the Indo-Iranian period, and, therefore, is not a new feature of the Vedic religion.