Erynnyes rule the fates of men, and may be said to sap the vital forces of the guilty; they cleave to them, excite and stimulate them to madness until death comes.  The ancient and mysterious mythical tradition of the strife between the old gods and the new was astutely used by AEschylus to teach us how the terrible vengeance of the Eumenides gradually gave place to a gentler and more humane law; just as the primitive despotism of Zeus was gradually transformed into a providential and moral rule of the universe.

Sophocles attained to a higher degree of perfection in the paths of gentleness.  No ancient poet has spoken more nobly of the Deity, although his language is altogether polytheistic.  He shows the highest reverence to the gods, whose power and laws rule all human life.  On them all things depend, both good and evil, nor could any one violate with impunity the eternal order of things.  No act or thought escapes the gods; they are the source of wisdom and happiness.  Man must meekly comply with their precepts, and must offer up his pains and sorrows to Zeus.

These utterances of the ancient poets never go beyond the range of polytheism, yet they show how far intrinsic morality and truth were developed, even by the imaginative and mythical faculty of the human mind, during the gradual historical evolution of the race.  The plurality of gods appears to be the manifestation of the divine principle; their action on the world lost almost all trace of arbitrary power and of their former versatility and caprice.  The superstition of polytheism remained, but it had an inward tendency to more rational conceptions and principles.

From this brief notice, as well as from the remarks which preceded it, it appears how the evolution of myth, from its beginning and in its historic course, led to a more perfect, although empiric acquaintance with the world, and with the moral principles and civilization of peoples.  The logical faculty by which the development is gradually effected is the same by which from another point of view science becomes possible.

We have clearly demonstrated the indisputable fact that the absolute condition of intrinsic animal perception, and consequently of the primary perception of man, was the animation and vivification of the things and phenomena perceived.  This primary acquaintance with things depended on their spontaneous resolution into active and personal subjects.  Nor could it be otherwise.  Although the scientific idea or notion of objective reality in itself could not be grasped by simple animal intelligence, the impression of the thing perceived was necessarily that of a subjectivity resembling that of the observer, not indeed in outward form and figure but in intrinsic power, whatever might be the extrinsic form and figure of the object or phenomenon.

The original condition of animals, and of man himself in his primordial life and consciousness, is and was the intrinsic personification of the things perceived:  from this source the human intellect slowly and with difficulty attained to science, by virtue of that psychical reduplication which has been so often mentioned.