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The ancient religion of the Arabs rises little higher than animistic polydaemonism.

Perhaps, however, we should rather use the word 'polydaemonism' than 'polytheism.'

And the difference between the two stages of polydaemonism and polytheism is not merely limited to the fact that the beings worshipped have proper names in the later stage, and had none in the earlier.

It is then as polydaemonism passes into polytheism, as the beings of the one come to acquire personal names and personal history, and so to become the gods of the other, that mythology arises.

Indeed, the process which constitutes the change from polydaemonism to polytheism consists in the process, or rather is the process, by which the spirits, the personal beings, worshipped in tree, or sky, or cloud, or wind, or fire came gradually to be anthropomorphised—to be invested with human parts and passions and to be addressed like human beings with proper names.