Excerpt from The Birth and Growth of Myth

Man, in his first outlook upon Nature, was altogether ignorant of the character of the forces by which he was environed ignorant of that unvarying relation be tween effect and cause which it needed the experience of ages and the generaliza tions therefrom to apprehend, and to ex press as laws of nature. He had not even the intellectual resource of later times in inventing miracle to explain where the necessary relation between events seemed broken or absent.

His first attitude was that of wonder. Mingled with fear - fear as instinctive as the dread of the brute for him. The sole measure Of things was himself; couse quently, everything that moved or that had power of movement, did so because it was alive. A personal life and will was attributed to sun, moon, clouds, river, waterfall, ocean, and tree, and the vary ing phenomena of the sky at dawn or noonday, at gray eve or black-clouded night, were the manifestation of the con trolling life that dwelt in all. In a thou sand different forms this conception was expressed. The thunder was the roar of a mighty beast; the lightning a serpent darting at its prey, an angry eye flashing, the storm demon's outshot forked tongue; the rainbow a thirsty monster; the water spout a long-tailed dragon. This was not a pretty or powerful conceit, not im agery, but an explanation. The men who thus spoke of these phenomena meant precisely what they said. What does the savage know about heat, light, sound, electricity, and the other modes of mo tion through which the Proteus force be yond our ken is manifest? How many persons who have enjoyed a liberal education can give correct answer, if asked Off-hand, explaining how glaciers are born of the sunshine, and why-two sounds, travelling in opposite directions at equal velocities, interfere and cause silence? I have been su rised at the number of young men, ailing from schools of renown, who have given me the most ludicrous replies when asked the cause of day and light, and the dis tance of the earth from the sun.

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