Concerning the first no nation ever
hesitated. All agree that before time began _water_ held all else in
solution, covered and concealed everything. The reasons for this assumed
priority of water have been already touched upon. Did a tribe dwell near
some great sea others can be imagined. The land is limited, peopled,
stable; the ocean fluctuating, waste, boundless. It insatiably swallows
all rains and rivers, quenches sun and moon in its dark chambers, and
raves against its bounds as a beast of prey. Awe and fear are the
sentiments it inspires; in Aryan tongues its synonyms are the _desert_
and the _night_.[194-1] It produces an impression of immensity,
infinity, formlessness, and barren changeableness, well suited to a
notion of chaos. It is sterile, receiving all things, producing nothing.
Hence the necessity of a creative power to act upon it, as it were to
impregnate its barren germs. Some cosmogonies find this in one, some in
another personification of divinity. Commonest of all is that of the
wind, or its emblem the bird, types of the breath of life.
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