Individual historic figures, seen through the mists of time, walk
before our eyes in the dawn. Long before history was written men lived
and did striking deeds. Heroic memories and traditions of such
distinguished men passed in the form of fireside tales from one
generation to another through many centuries. Now they come to us,
doubtless hugely exaggerated and so far away from their originals as to
be unrecognisable, and yet, after all, based upon things that happened.
For the stories have living touches in them which put blood into the
glorious and ghostly figures, and when we come upon a piece of genuine
human nature there is no possibility of mistaking it. This thing has
been born, not manufactured: nor has any portrait that is lifelike been
drawn without some model. Thus, through all the mist and haze of the
past, we see men and women walking in the twilight--dim and uncertain
forms indeed, yet stately and heroic.
Now all this has a bearing upon the main subject of our present study.
Meteorology and astronomy are indeed noble sciences, but the proper
study of mankind is man. While, no doubt, the sources of all early
folk-lore are composite, yet it matters greatly for the student of these
things whether the beginnings of religious thought were merely in the
clouds, or whether they had their roots in the same earth whereon we
live and labour.
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