Along with the growth of the mysteries went the introduction of more ethical standards of conduct. Ritual purity suggested the idea of spiritual purity. This ethicizing of myth is very apparent in Greece. By the time of the dramatists, moral judgments had become more severe, and the gods were looked upon as guardians of the moral law; and yet this view was tragically thwarted by much of the old tradition. The savage inheritance and the later moral idealism found themselves in conflict. The consequence was the gradual weakening of the older myths and the welcoming of new cults.
Ethical growth is usually in large measure unconscious. Man reads ideas into the world around him before he becomes conscious that they are his own. His own development is thus reflected in the pantheon with which he has peopled nature. Zeus is at first the thunderer and the cloud-gatherer; finally he represents { 25} justice and those kingly qualities which social growth stresses. Poets and philosophers refine away the grosser myths which shock the taste of a more advanced social level. When we compare the conceptions of Euripides, of Plato, of Cleanthes, of Marcus Aurelius, with the conduct of the Homeric gods, we realize the distance traveled by the mind of man along ethical lines. Man is now a builder of ideals. Yet the cosmic setting for these ideals is virtually unchanged; the framework of man's universe has remained much the same. It is at heart a realm of personal agents with which man is in communication.
In all the nations which advanced in civilization, this transformation within mythology makes itself felt. Ormuzd, the Persian god, passes from a personification of the sunlight in its battle with darkness to a spiritual deity who is the guardian of all the virtues. Indra, the Vedic god, is likewise at first the sky through which the clouds move, and is later conceived as the creator and sustainer of the world. The same process reveals itself in Egyptian mythology for we pass from Ra, the sun deity, to Neph and Pthah who represent creative energies and to Osiris, the god of truth and goodness. Thus there is in mythology a universal movement, from the visible aspects of nature as personified, to supernal beings back of nature, protecting what is thought of as highest and noblest in human conduct. The setting remains constant while new wine is poured into the old bottles. _The truth of the matter is that man grew faster ethically than he did intellectually_. Philosophy and science were far harder to achieve than glimpses of justice and kindness. The very growth of society in numbers forced man to adapt his conduct to a { 26} social life and to have regard to his neighbors. The ideals advocated by Confucius, Buddha, Plato, Hosea and Jesus are as noble as our own. But advance in knowledge and its presuppositions is more revolutionary and extraordinary because more artificial and more alien to the psychological prejudices of the mass of the people. Ethics, like religion, remained for ages peacefully within the mythological setting which primitive man unconsciously constructed.