ABSTRACT
IN the more developed polytheistic systems the prominence given to the deification of the attributes of nature represent an interpretation of observed facts as these are understood at a particular level of culture. The natural order—the sun, the moon, the clouds, the winds, the seas and the rivers; everything in fact that comprises the material environment—is in a state of flux, and this is interpreted in terms of potency and act, very much as in the Aristotelian concept of motion; the reduction of a condition of potency to a condition of act. The process thought to bring about the transformation or change may be described as one of “personification” inasmuch as it assigns to natural phenomena powers analogous to those exercised by human beings, since only in this way, in the absence of knowledge to the contrary, can the behaviour of the objects in question be explained.
