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With each enlargement of the tragic sense a new god is born. This is to say that the gods that hold sway for a certain time and in a certain place correspond to man's limited comprehension—not of metaphysical reality—but of the concrete realities of social life. As man becomes increasingly aware of the countless actual conditions of his existence, he must redefine the symbolic meaning of his gods in the light of his new insights. If the old gods reflect conditions of life that have been altered, or if they are found to represent a too-narrow vision of the real, then they are no longer satisfying psychologically, and must be replaced. Hence it is in mythology as in real life that, over and over again, the god-king must die.1
The gods, and the divine priests and kings who are thought to embody them on earth, suffice only for a spell, as long as they reassure us that they symbolize in their divine being a balance between the various aspects of social reality, as it is understood at the time. The moment man becomes aware that his own destiny is no different from that of other men within his growing ken, and that to the knowledge of his own suffering is to be added the tragic freight of the sufferings of others, hitherto unknown and outside the circle of empathic response, he transcends the symbolic limits of his gods, and is ready for a fresh revelation.
From this vantage point one can no longer share the general view that the mortality of the gods, one by one and in their separate guises, is brought about for the purposes of sympathetic magic; in