Demeter, or Apollo did so, on a certain occasion. About that occasion a
myth was framed, and finally there was no profligacy, cruelty, or
absurdity of which the God was not guilty. Yet, all the time, he
punished adultery, inhospitality, perjury, incest, cannibalism, and other
excesses, of which, in legend, he was always setting the example. We
know from Xenophanes, Plato, and St. Augustine how men's consciences were
tormented by this unceasing contradiction: this overgrowth of myth on the
stock of an idea originally noble. It is thus that I would attempt to
account for the contradictory conceptions of Zeus, for example.

As to Apollo, I do not think that mythologists determined to find, in
Apollo, some deified aspect of Nature, have laid stress enough on his
counterparts in savage myth. We constantly find, in America, in the
Andaman Isles, and in Australia, that, subordinate to the primal Being,
there exists another who enters into much closer relations with mankind.
He is often concerned with healing and with prophecy, or with the
inspiration of conjurers or shamans. Sometimes he is merely an
underling, as in the case of the Massachusetts Kiehtan, and his more
familiar subordinate, Hobamoc. {30} But frequently this go-between of
God and Man is (like Apollo) the _Son_ of the primal Being (often an
unbegotten Son) or his Messenger (Andaman, Noongaburrah, Kurnai,
Kamilaroi, and other Australian tribes). He reports to the somewhat
otiose primal Being about men's conduct, and he sometimes superintends
the Mysteries. I am disposed to regard the prophetic and oracular Apollo
(who, as the Hymn to Hermes tells us, alone knows the will of Father
Zeus) as the Greek modification of this personage in savage theology.
Where this Son is found in Australia, I by no means regard him as a
savage refraction from Christian teaching about a mediator, for Christian
teaching, in fact, has not been accepted, least of all by the highly
conservative sorcerers, or shamans, or wirreenuns of the tribes. European