The causes of this change (of which I think an explanation is due) are as follows. […] The praises which it has received from Mr. […] Athena Polias feeding the serpent which reared Erichthonios. […] It is the opinion of one of the ablest mythologists of the present day, that there is a certain stage in the culture of a people in which the mythic is the natural mode of representation, to which men are led by a kind of necessity, and in which they act almost unconsciously. […] The system of Theocrasy which we have already mentioned frequently confounded deities who were originally distinct, but it sometimes only re-united those which were really the same, but which had been separated in the progress of time.