Before considering the classical and Neo-platonic Greek speculations
commonly regarded as Pantheistic, we may do well to recall to mind the
immense difference between the established habit of theological thought
in our day, and the vague, or at best, poetically vivid ideas of the
ancients. For the long tradition of nearly two thousand years, which has
made monotheism to us almost as fixed an assumption as that of our own
individuality, was entirely wanting in this case. Not that the idea of
one supreme God had never been suggested. But it was not the Hebrew or
Christian idea that was occasionally propounded; for in the ethnic mind
it was rarely, if ever, regarded as inconsistent with polytheism; and
consequently it verged on Pantheism. "Consequently," I say, because such
monotheism as existed had necessarily to explain the innumerable minor
deities as emanations from, or manifestations of the supreme God. And
though such conscious attempts at reconciliation of beliefs in many gods
and in one Supreme were confined to a small minority of meditative
priests and speculative philosophers, yet really, the combination was
implicit in the sort of polytheistic religion which possessed the
family affections and patriotic associations of the early Greek world.

[Sidenote: Not the Material Figure but the Divinity Suggested was the
Object of Worship.]

For though we may find a difficulty in ridding ourselves of a prejudice
wrought into the tissue of our early faith by the nursery lessons of
childhood, it was not the graven or molten image which was really
worshipped by the devout, but that form of superhuman power which, by
local accident, had been identified with the "idol." If, indeed, we
supposed every "idolator" to have received definite religious teaching,
analogous to that with which we ourselves were imbued in youth, we might
well find his attitude inconceivable. But he had nothing of the kind. He