I call to mind
another similar myth. In it a mother is also said to have brought forth
twins, or a pair of twins, and to have paid for them with her life.
Again the one is described as the bright, the other as the dark twin;
again it is said that they struggled one with the other for the mastery.
Scholars, likewise, have interpreted the mother to mean the Dawn, the
twins either Light and Darkness, or the Four Winds. Yet this is not
Algonkin theology; nor is it at all related to that of the Iroquois. It
is the story of Sarama in the Rig Veda, and was written in Sanscrit,
under the shadow of the Himalayas, centuries before Homer.
Such uniformity points not to a common source in history, but in
psychology. Man, chiefly cognizant of his soul through his senses,
thought with an awful horror of the night which deprived him of the use
of one and foreshadowed the loss of all. Therefore _light_ and _life_
were to him synonymous; therefore all religions promise to lead
"From night to light,
From night to heavenly light;"
therefore He who rescues is ever the Light of the World; therefore it is
said "to the upright ariseth light in darkness;" therefore everywhere
the kindling East, the pale Dawn, is the embodiment of his hopes and the
centre of his reminiscences.
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