Other theogonies such as the Scandinavian and the Greek are very similar in type to the Hindoo. The principal feature of them all is this of physical generation and production; but not one of them plunges so headlong into the subject or in general displays such caprice and impropriety in the images of its invention as the Hindoo. The theogony of Hesiod is in particular far more intelligible and succinct, so that at least one knows where one is, and is clear as to the general significance; and this is so because the impression is far more pronounced that the form and external embodiment of the myth is set forth by the narrator as something external. The mythos starts in this case[54] with Chaos, Erebos, Eros, and Gaia. The Earth (Gaia) brings forth Uranos of her own accord, and then is mother by him of the mountains, sea, and so forth, also of Cronos and the Cyclops, Centimani[55], whom Uranos, however, shortly after birth incarcerates in Tartaros. Gaia thereupon induces Cronos to castrate Uranos. The deed is accomplished. And from the blood that falls on the Earth spring to life the Erinnyes and the Giants. The castrated member is caught by the sea, and from the sea's foam arises Cytherea. In all this description the outlines are more clearly and decisively drawn. And we are thereby carried beyond the circle of mere gods of Nature.
3. If we endeavour now to seize some point where the transition is emphasized to the stage of real symbolism, we shall find the same already in the first beginnings of Hindoo imagination. That is to say, however preoccupied the Hindoo imagination may be in its efforts to contort the sensuous phenomenon into a plurality of Divinities, a preoccupation which no other people has displayed with anything like the same exhaustless scope and countless transformations, yet from another point of view in many of its visions and narratives it remains throughout constant to that spiritual abstraction of a God supreme over all, in contrast with whom the particular, sensuous, and phenomenal is undivine, inadequate, and consequently is apprehended as something negative, something which has finally to be cancelled. For, as we have from the first noticed, it is precisely this continual involution of one side on the other which constitutes the fundamental type of the Hindoo imagination, and makes it for ever incapable of finding a true principle of reconciliation. The art is consequently never tired of representing, in every imaginable way, the surrender of the sensuous and the power of spiritual abstraction and self-absorption. Of this kind are the representations of toilsome mortifications and profound meditations, of which not merely the most ancient epical poems, such as the "Râmâyana" and the "Mahâbhârata," but also many other works of art furnish most important examples. No doubt many of these self-chastisements are undergone on grounds of ambition, or at least with a view to definite objects, which do conduct the devotee to the highest and most final union with Brahman, and to the mortification of everything carnal and finite. An object of this kind is the endeavour to secure the power of a Brahmin; but even in this there is always the fact present to consciousness that the expiation and the continuance of a meditation that is ever more and more diverted from the objects of sense will raise the devotee over his birth-place in a particular caste, no less than help him resist the power of Nature and the gods of Nature. For this reason, that prince of Divinities of this class, Indras, opposes most signally strenuous aspirants, and strives to entice them away; or, in the case where all his seductions fail, he invokes assistance from the supreme gods lest the entire heaven fall into confusion.