In other words, animal and plant gods tend to become
purely anthropomorphic. When they have become wholly or nearly so,
the animals and plants which were at first the deities themselves,
still retain a vague and ill-understood connexion with the
anthropomorphic gods who have developed out of them. The origin of
the relationship between the deity and the animal or plant having
been forgotten, various stories are invented to explain it. These
explanations may follow one of two lines according as they are based
on the habitual or on the exceptional treatment of the sacred animal
or plant. The sacred animal was habitually spared, and only
exceptionally slain; and accordingly the myth might be devised to
explain either why it was spared or why it was killed. Devised for
the former purpose, the myth would tell of some service rendered to
the deity by the animal; devised for the latter purpose, the myth
would tell of some injury inflicted by the animal on the god. The
reason given for sacrificing goats to Dionysus exemplifies a myth of
the latter sort.
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