Man cannot escape the belief that behind all
form is one essence; but the moment he would seize and define it, it
eludes his grasp, and by a sorcery more sadly ludicrous than that which
blinded Titania, he worships not the Infinite he thinks but a base idol
of his own making. As in the Zend Avesta behind the eternal struggle of
Ormuzd and Ahriman looms up the undisturbed and infinite Zeruana
Akerana, as in the pages of the Greek poets we here and there catch
glimpses of a Zeus who is not he throned on Olympus, nor he who takes
part in the wrangles of the gods, but stands far off and alone, one yet
all, "who was, who is, who will be," so the belief in an Unseen Spirit,
who asks neither supplication nor sacrifice, who, as the natives of
Texas told Joutel in 1684, "does not concern himself about things here
below,"[54-1] who has no name to call him by, and is never a figure in
mythology, was doubtless occasionally present to their minds. It was
present not more but far less distinctly and often not at all in the
more savage tribes, and no assertion can be more contrary to the laws of
religious progress than that which pretends that a purer and more
monotheistic religion exists among nations devoid of mythology.
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