and it becomes the chief instrument of civilization. But if we strive to picture to ourselves the state of the savage's mind on his first acquaintance with fire and its properties we shall find him utterly at a loss to account for. How will he regard this nimble, playful being, so bright and yet so fearful in its ravages. Of the laws of chemical action he has of course no conception, but he has sometimes seen the lightning strike into the wood of the tree, and now from the same wood he evokes the semblance of the lightning. He is twirling two dry sticks between his hands; of a sudden, a lambent flame shoots forth, seizes the wood, makes away with it, and leaves nothing but blackened cinders behind. Whence did it come, whither has it vanished? Here was a new mystery; a spiritual presence, latent in trees and stones; kindly and beneficent at times, then again hostile and fiercely destructive.
The mystery of the preparation of fire is celebrated in the ancient hymns of the Vedah. We there find its birth from the friction of the double sticks described, and its properties rehearsed in reverent language. It is invoked like any superior spirit to bless its votaries, and to protect them from harm. The important role ascribed to fire in the sacred usages of the ancients, is well-known, and the origin of fire worship apparent.
The theory of dreams, to which we have referred on a previous occasion, contributed in like manner, to extend the boundaries of the world of mystery. Convinced that he bore within himself an airy counterfeit of self, the savage attributed the same species of possession to things animate and inanimate alike. Why should not beasts and rivers and stones have their ghosts like man? Moreover, as to the ghosts of the human dead, no one could tell where they might take up their abode. They might be anywhere and everywhere. Their countless legions surrounded the living in all places. They were heard shouting in the echo among the hills; they were seen to ride past on the midnight gale. Often they assumed the shape of birds and reptiles and beasts of prey. Those creatures were singled out with a preference, whose movements and habits suggested the idea of mystery. Thus the owl was supposed to harbor an evil spirit, and the serpent was worshipped because of its stealthy, gliding motion, its venomous bite, and the fascination in its eye. Serpent worship existed the world over. Traces of it are preserved in the literature of the Greeks and Romans, and it was practised even among the Hebrews, as the Books of Kings attest. Among certain African tribes it is still customary to keep huge serpents in temples, and priests are dedicated to their service. Powerful animals also, such as the bear, the lion and the tiger, were sometimes supposed to contain the ghosts of departed chieftains, and were revered accordingly.
If we remember the unfriendly relations supposed to subsist between the living and the dead, we may conceive the state of alarm in which our primitive ancestors must have passed their lives on beholding themselves thus beset on every side, with ghosts or demons in disguise. A thousand fabulous terrors haunted their imagination. Wherever they turned they suspected lurking foes; spirits were in the earth, in the air, in birds, in animals, in reptiles, in trees. They could not move a step without infringing on the boundaries of the spirit realm. Every object the least extraordinary in size, or shape, or color, appeared to them the token of some demon's presence, and was worshipped in consequence, not on its own account, but because of the mystery which it suggested.
In this manner Fetishism arose. The fetish worshipper leaves his hut in the morning, sees some bright pebble glistening on his path, lifts it from the ground and says, this shall be my fetish. If he succeeds in the business of the day, he places the little object in a shrine, gilds it, brings it food, addresses his prayers to it; if it fails, it is cast aside. Again, if after a little time the fetish ceases to fulfil his wishes, he breaks it and drags it in the mire by way of punishment.
Such are a few of the gross and grotesque conceptions to which the religion of mystery has given birth. It is true, to the educated mind of the present day they will appear the very reverse of sublime. But greatness is relative, and our own loftier conceptions of the sublime are but the slow result of a long process of growth and development.
THE RELIGION OF POWER
It has often been said that fear is the beginning of religion; a statement of this kind however, cannot be accepted, without serious qualification. There is a sense of kinship with the great, in whatever form it may appear, of which even the meanest are susceptible. A nation worships the hero who ruins it; and slaves will take a certain pride in the superiority of their masters. It is not fear so much as admiration of might which makes men servants of the mighty. The first tyrants on earth were, in all likelihood, strong, agile, and brave men, possessing in an extraordinary degree, the qualities which all others coveted. They won applause, they were looked up to as natural leaders, and the arm of force maintained what the esteem of their fellows had accorded in the first instance. There is a touch of the sublime even in the rudest adoration of force.
In the second stage of religious development, which we are now approaching, the theory of possession discussed in the above, was extended to the heavenly bodies, and the sun, moon and stars were endowed with the attributes of personal beings. Hence the origin of the great gods. As the sun is the most conspicuous body in the heavens, the sun god figures as the central deity in every pantheon. The various phases through which the luminary passes are represented in distinct personalities. We find gods of the rising sun and of the setting sun; gods of the sun of spring, summer and winter, gods also of the cloud-enshrouded sun, that battles with the storm giants.
Since the hosts of heaven were supposed to be beings allied in nature to ourselves, the action and interaction of the meteoric phenomena was ascribed to personal motives, and the ingenuity of the primitive philosophers was exhausted in finding plausible pretexts to explain their attractions and repulsions, their seeming friendships and hostilities. Thus arose the quaint and fanciful myths with which the traditions of antiquity abound. Those problems which the modern mind seeks to settle with the help of scientific investigation, the limited experience of an earlier age was barely competent to attack, and it covered with some pretty fiction, the difficulties which it could not solve. The genealogy and biography of the sun-god formed the main theme of all mythologies.
The daily progress of the sun through the heavens, is described as follows: Each morning the golden crowned god leaves his golden palace in the East, deep down below the ocean's waves; he mounts his golden chariot, drawn by fiery steeds. A rosy fingered maiden opens the purple gate of day, upward rush the steeds through blinding mist along the steep ascent of heaven, down they plunge at evening into the cooling waters of the sea; the naiads await the deity and bear him backward to his orient home.
Again the fair youth Adonis is said to come out of the forest, where nymphs had nurtured him. Venus and he hunt in joyous company through wood and dale. One day Adonis is slain; the blood that trickled from his wounds has turned the roses red, and the tender anemones have sprung from the tears that love wept when she beheld his fall. The young god who comes out of the forest is Spring; for a time he disports joyously on earth, with love for his companion, but his term of life is quickly ended. Spring dies, but ever returns anew. Among the Syrian women it was customary for a long period to observe the festival of the Adoneiah; with every sign of grief they first bemoaned the god's untimely death; they beat their breasts, cut off the rich luxuriance of their hair; showed upon his effigy the marks of the wounds he had received; bound him with linen bands, anointed him with costly oil and spices, and then buried him. On the seventh day the cry was heard, Adonis lives, Adonis is resurrected from the grave. The story of a young god typical of the Spring who suffers a premature death, and after a time resurrects from the grave is well known in the mythologies of other nations.
The progress of the sun through the seasons is thus personified. The rays of the sun are described as the locks of the sun-god's hair. When the sun's heat waxes, these locks increase in abundance, when it wanes they diminish, until in mid-winter the head of the sun-god is entirely bald. At this season the god is supposed to be exceedingly weak, and his eye, bright in the summer, is now become blind. He is far from his home, and subject to the power of his enemies, the wintry storms. These traits recur in the familiar Hebrew myth of Samson. The word Samson means sun; he is bound with ropes, as is also the sun-god among the Polynesians. The secret of his strength is in his hair. Shorn of this
