In Greek mythology, on the other hand,
Demeter is viewed rather as the deity of the corn than as the spirit
immanent in it. The process of thought which leads to the change
from the one mode of conception to the other is anthropomorphism, or
the gradual investment of the immanent spirits with more and more of
the attributes of humanity. As men emerge from savagery the tendency
to humanise their divinities gains strength; and the more human
these become the wider is the breach which severs them from the
natural objects of which they were at first merely the animating
spirits or souls. But in the progress upwards from savagery men of
the same generation do not march abreast; and though the new
anthropomorphic gods may satisfy the religious wants of the more
developed intelligences, the backward members of the community will
cling by preference to the old animistic notions. Now when the
spirit of any natural object such as the corn has been invested with
human qualities, detached from the object, and converted into a
deity controlling it, the object itself is, by the withdrawal of its
spirit, left inanimate; it becomes, so to say, a spiritual vacuum.
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