In fact, the taunt of the psalmist against the images of the heathen--"Eyes have they, but they see not; they have ears, and yet they hear not"-- is not a merely rhetorical one, as it seems to us, but real and practical, if spoken to men who gave their gods ears and eyes that they might hear and see.
An imagination so entirely materialistic may belong to a more primitive stage than any we can find among the Greeks.

As soon as religion has reached the polytheistic stage the gods are regarded as travelling from image to image, just as they travel from temple to temple.

Even in AEschylus' _Eumenides_ it will be remembered that when Orestes, by the advice of Apollo, clasps as a suppliant the ancient image of Athena at Athens, the goddess comes flying from far away in the Troad when she hears the sound of his calling.

The exact relation of the goddess to the image is not, in all probability, very clearly realised; but, so far as one can trace it from the ritual procedure, what appears to be implied is that a suppliant will have a better chance of reaching the deity he addresses if he approaches one of the images preferred by that deity as the abode of his power; often there is one such image preferred to all others, as this early one of Athena at Athens.

The deity was not, therefore, regarded as immanent in any image--at least, in classical times; the gods lived in Olympus, or possibly visited from time to time the people whom they favoured, or went to the great festivals that were held in their honour.