Nowhere has it manifested its
inefficiency more palpably than in America. One writer, while thus
explaining the religions of the tribes of colder regions and higher
latitudes, denies sun worship among the natives of hot climates; another
asserts that only among the latter did it exist at all; while a third
lays down the maxim that the religion of the red race everywhere "was
but a modification of Sun or Fire worship."[141-1] All such sweeping
generalizations are untrue, and must be so. No one key can open all the
arcana of symbolism. Man devised means as varied as nature herself to
express the idea of God within him. The sun was but one of these, and
not the first nor the most important. Fear, said the wise Epicurean,
first made the gods. The sun with its regular course, its kindly warmth,
its beneficent action, no wise inspires that sentiment. It conjures no
phantasms to appal the superstitious fancy, and its place in primitive
mythology is conformably inferior. The myths of the Eskimos and
northern Athapascas omit its action altogether.
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