evaporating the other, any more than I destroy myself by cutting off my finger; I was in my finger,—­something of me at least was; I had a power over it and felt pain in it, though I am still as much myself when it is gone.  So there may be a power in the water which is not water, but to which the water is as a body;—­which can strike with it, move in it, suffer in it, yet not be destroyed with it.  This something, this Great Water Spirit, I must not confuse with the waves, which are only its body. They may flow hither and thither, increase or diminish. That must be invisible—­imperishable—­a god.  So of fire also; those rays which I can stop, and in the midst of which I cast a shadow, cannot be divine, nor greater than I. They cannot feel, but there may be something in them that feels,—­a glorious intelligence, as much nobler and more swift than mine, as these rays, which are its body, are nobler and swifter than my flesh;—­the spirit of all light, and truth, and melody, and revolving hours.”

It was easy to conceive, farther, that such spirits should be able to assume at will a human form, in order to hold intercourse with men, or to perform any act for which their proper body, whether of fire, earth, or air, was unfitted.  And it would have been to place them beneath, instead of above, humanity, if, assuming the form of man, they could not also have tasted his pleasures.  Hence the easy step to the more or less material ideas of deities, which are apt at first to shock us, but which are indeed only dishonourable so far as they represent the gods as false and unholy.  It is not the materialism, but the vice, which degrades the conception; for the materialism itself is never positive or complete.  There is always some sense of exaltation in the spiritual and immortal body; and of a power proceeding from the visible form through all the infinity of the element ruled by the particular god.  The precise nature of the idea is well seen in the passage of the Iliad which describes the river Scamander defending the Trojans against Achilles.[76] In order to remonstrate with the hero, the god assumes a human form, which nevertheless is in some way or other instantly recognized by Achilles as that of the river-god:  it is addressed at once as a river, not as a man; and its voice is the voice of a river “out of the deep whirlpools."[77] Achilles refuses to obey its commands; and from the human form it returns instantly into its natural or divine one, and endeavours to overwhelm him with waves.  Vulcan defends Achilles, and sends fire against the river, which suffers in its water-body, till it is able to bear no more.  At last even the “nerve of the river,” or “strength of the river” (note the expression), feels the fire, and this “strength of the river” addresses Vulcan in supplications for respite.  There is in this precisely the idea of a vital part of the river-body, which acted and felt, and which, if the fire reached, it was death,