demands explanation.

To be still more explicit, we may draw up a brief list of the chief
problems in the legendary stories attached to the old religions of
the world--the problems which it is our special purpose to notice.
First we have, in the myths of all races, the most grotesque
conceptions of the character of gods when mythically envisaged.
Beings who, in religion, leave little to be desired, and are spoken
of as holy, immortal, omniscient, and kindly, are, in myth,
represented as fashioned in the likeness not only of man, but of
the beasts; as subject to death, as ignorant and impious.

Most pre-Christian religions had their "zoomorphic" or partially
zoomorphic idols, gods in the shape of the lower animals, or with
the heads and necks of the lower animals. In the same way all
mythologies represent the gods as fond of appearing in animal
forms. Under these disguises they conduct many amours, even with
the daughters of men, and Greek houses were proud of their descent
from Zeus in the shape of an eagle or ant, a serpent or a swan;
while Cronus and the Vedic Tvashtri and Poseidon made love as
horses, and Apollo as a dog. Not less wild are the legends about
the births of gods from the thigh, or the head, or feet, or armpits
of some parent; while tales describing and pictures representing
unspeakable divine obscenities were frequent in the mythology and
in the temples of Greece. Once more, the gods were said to possess
and exercise the power of turning men and women into birds, beasts,
fishes, trees, and stones, so that there was scarcely a familiar
natural object in the Greek world which had not once (according to
legend) been a man or a woman. The myths of the origin of the
world and man, again, were in the last degree childish and