A
recent well-known theologian wrote to his sister: "I am naturally a
cannibal, and I find now my true vocation to be in the South Sea
Islands, not after your plan, to be Arnold to a troop of savages, but to
be one of them, where they are all selfish, lazy, and brutal." It is
this universality of paganism which gives its main interest to such a
study as the present. Paganism is a constant and not a temporary or
local phase of human life and thought, and it has very little to do with
the question of what particular dogmas a man may believe or reject.
Thus, for example, although the Greek is popularly accepted as the type
of paganism and the Christian of idealism, yet the lines of that
distinction have often been reversed. Christianity has at times become
hard and cold and lifeless, and has swept away primitive national
idealisms without supplying any new ones. The Roman ploughman must have
missed the fauns whom he had been accustomed to expect in the thicket at
the end of his furrow, when the new faith told him that these were
nothing but rustling leaves. When the swish of unseen garments beside
the old nymph-haunted fountain was silenced, his heart was left lonely
and his imagination impoverished.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25