... but one can easily see how it led to such an advance. What may be called the personal aspects of the gods were less accentuated. The very fact that no particular god could in many cases be specified entailed, as a consequence, that the views held of the gods gained in abstractness. The general thought of one's dependence upon these supernatural powers, without further specification, superinduced a grouping of the gods under a common aspect, as the directors of man's fate. In short, the notion of deity, not indeed as a unit, but as a collective idea, begins to dawn in ... — The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
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