(_β_) We must, however, at once insist on the further fact that the Greeks never regarded mere Nature as itself divine. On the contrary, they retained the definite conception that what was purely natural was not divine. This is partly contained, if unexpressed, in what their gods actually are, in part also it is expressly stated so by themselves. Plutarch, for example, in his essay upon Isis and Osiris, refers incidentally to the modes of interpretation current of myths and divinities. Osiris and Isis belong to the Egyptian theogony, and had yet more of the natural element for their content than the Greek gods, who correspond to them; they merely express the longing and conflict to escape out of the circle of Nature to that of Spirit. In later times they were very highly honoured in Rome, and the mysteries allied with them were of great importance. Yet for all that it is Plutarch's view that it would be an interpretation beneath the level of the subject to think of explaining them as sun, earth, or water. Only that which in the sun, Earth, and so forth, is without measure or co-ordination, defective or superfluous, can strictly be referred to the natural elements, and all that is good and conformable to order is as exclusively a work of Isis, and the rational principle, the λόγoς, a work of Osiris. It is not, therefore, the natural as such which is adduced as the substantive content of these gods, but the spiritual principle, the universal, λόγoς, reason, conformity to law.
By virtue of this insight into the spiritual nature of the gods, the more definite elements of Nature, then, had also among the Greeks been differentiated from the later gods. We have, it is true, grown accustomed to associate Helios and Selene, to take two examples, with Apollo and Diana: in Homer, however, they are presented as distinct. The same remark applies to Oceanos and others.
(_γ_) But in the _third_ place an echo still lingers in the new gods of the natural powers, whose operative energies themselves belong to the spiritual individuality of the gods. We have already indicated, at an earlier stage, the basis of this positive connection of the spiritual and natural in the ideal of classical art, and may limit our observations here to a few illustrations.