The historian traces the birth of arts, science, and
government to man's dependence on nature and his fellows for the means
of self-preservation. Not that man receives these endowments from
without, but that the stern step-mother, Nature, forces him by threats
and stripes to develop his own inherent faculties. So with religion: The
idea of God does not, and cannot, proceed from the external world, but,
nevertheless, it finds its _historical_ origin also in the desperate
struggle for life, in the satisfaction of the animal wants and passions,
in those vulgar aims and motives which possessed the mind of the
primitive man to the exclusion of everything else.
There is an ever present embarrassment in such inquiries. In dealing
with these matters beyond the cognizance of the senses, the mind is
forced to express its meaning in terms transferred from sensuous
perceptions, or under symbols borrowed from the material world. These
transfers must be understood, these symbols explained, before the real
meaning of a myth can be reached.
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