What meaning had his surroundings to primeval man when eye and ear could be directed from the prior claims of the body? (See MYTHOLOGY). In his first outlook upon the world man was altogether ignorant of the character of nature's real powers by which from the very beginnings of human life he was circum-environed. Poorly endowed with rea son and blunt of sense-ception, he beholds the cold wave sweep from the north ; and rivers and lakes he sees freeze over. Great forests are buried under a white mantle of snows. Piercing winds almost congeal the very life-fluids of man himself ; while his source of food — the lakes and streams — lie strongly encased in a carapace of ice. Another time the sky assumes the dull appearance of a dome of brass. Midsummer heat pours down its beams upon the sands; and fiery blasts heated in a desert furnace destroy a scanty vegetation. And the fruits of the earth shrivel before the eyes of famishing men. Consider but one pas sage the Bible, one originating in com paratively civilized times, under an experience, as when the voice of Tehovah sounded amidst the bursting forth of a mighty natural con vulsion: IA thick cloud was upon the mount. The smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace. There were thunders and lightning's. And the voice of the trumpet exceeding loud. The Lord descended upon the mountain in fire, and the mountain quaked greatly.).
This word-pitcure comes from Exodus. It details, we think, a gigantic volcanic eruption. Mount Sinai was a volcano. How much more terrifying must have been the vrandeur inci dent to such an experience in the soul of a poor, half-clad savage during the progress of a similar event? He stands nearby while light ning shivers a great tree and rends the skull of his companion. To a savage all nature's powers bring pain or joy, health or sickness, life or death. His well-being is involved in the answer he gives to his questions how? and why? No wonder then if at first man's attitude of awe degenerates into slavish fear, when he presumed to confront the worlds and question them. And yet withal we find that throughout the whole mythologic period of uscience,v man's sole measure of things was himself.
History in so far as it affects the inner life does not exhibit one continuous ascent. It reveals not alone rise and growth of creative effort in the philosophic field but likewise en suing periods of exhaustion. It is in this way that it comes about that one finds recurring periods during which the human spirit manifests itself in tradition-guided behavior alone rather than in aspiration after philosophic formu lation of its cosmic relations. It is only when again the human spirit retires into itself to take deeper root that new relations are perceived which need expression and explanation.
Even for the period, that of mythological philosophy, this is true. And as a consequence one may easily discriminate four phases of polytheistic thought. In one, perhaps this repre sents the earliest phase, everything presented to the savage mind is conceived of as alive.
An or living magic power inheres in everything; every object is possessed of will and design. Rocks, trees, animals and men think and speak-so the earliest philosophers testify in their earliest myths. All the bright stars of heaven, the snow-clad mountains, bubbling springs, rivers, all are possessed of will and design. In this stage, every insoluble event and object is a god.
Thereupon follows a period when the savage philosopher no longer attributes life indiscriminately to all inanimate nature. But all the powers and attributes recognized in self-examination he transfers, attributing them to animals. Nowhere is the line drawn between man and beast. Men are zootheists, they worship beasts. And all the gods are animals. Zootheism persisted down to comparatively re cent times. What but representatives of these gods are the gigantic zoomorphs in Yucatan and the animal-headed gods of Egypt and Assyria? And indeed there was even a scaly fellow in Paradise! Survivals of the time when all the gods were animals, and all natural proc esses were the doings of animal god.., are not difficult to find in mythologies.
In a third period a gulf is placed between man and all the lower animals. Animal gods are either dethroned or assume a subordinate station. Thereupon all nature's powers, all phenomena, are deified; and in the deification, anthropomorphized also. It is during this period that man worships the gods of the sun, moon, air, dawn, a deity of the darkness or one of night. Anthropomorphism is not absent from the Bible. In Genesis we find God walking about the Garden of Eden. With His own hands He fashions man and closes the door of the ark. He even breaths his own breath into man's nostrils, and makes unsuccessful ex periments with animals! He scents the sacrifice of Noah. And. Othin-like, appears to Abraham and Lot in the guise of a wayfarer; or, as an angel calls directly out of heaven, God, in Genesis, verily speaks in all respects as does one man to another! Finally a fourth, the highest, period of primitive philosophy is reached. During it, mental, moral and societal characteristics are personified, and thereupon deified. Thus was born the idea of a god of war, a ood of love, a god of revelry, a god of plenty. These gods differ from all older nature gods chiefly in that they possess distinctively psychical charac teristics. Many of them are among the first gods.