This elemental fire is in itself a divine rational process, the harmony of which constitutes the law of the universe.
He was an admirer of Marx's learning and analytical power, but he would never submit to the tyrannical pedantry of Marx's school and stood up for an elemental awaking of revolutionary instincts.
Moreover, the soul approaches most nearly to perfection when it is least differentiated from elemental fire; it follows that "while we live our souls are dead within us, but when we die our souls are restored to life."
Thus the ghost of the hero or medicine man of a kin or tribe may be raised to divine rank, while again - the doctrine of spirits once developed, and spirits once allotted to the great elemental forces and phenomena of nature, sky, thunder, the sea, the forests - we have the beginnings of departmental deities, such as Agni, god of fire; Poseidon, god of the sea; Zeus, god of the sky - though in recent theories Zeus appears to be regarded as primarily the god of the oak tree, a spirit of vegetation.
The general conclusion is that many of the Greek deities were originally elemental, the elements being personified in accordance with the laws of savage imaginations.
