genuine belief in a living Power, to whom men stand in the relation of children to a father; but in both, this faith struggles to find utterance in names denoting purely sensuous objects, and thus furnishing the germ of a sensuous mythology. Hence the developement of religious faith and of a true theology would go on side by side with the growth of an indiscriminate anthropomorphism, until the contrast became so violent as to call forth the indignant protests of men like Sokrates and Pindar, Euripides and Plato. Yet this contrast, as throwing us back upon the analysis of words, has enabled us to unlock the doors before which the most earnest seekers of ancient times groped in vain, and to trace almost from their very source all the streams of human thought.
Condition of society in the Greek heroic age.This antagonism reached its highest point among the Hellenic tribes. From this point therefore we may most reasonably work back to that indefinitely earlier condition of thought in which "the first attempts were being made at expressing the simplest conceptions by means of a language most simple, most sensuous, and most unwieldy."[1] The Iliad and Odyssey exhibit a state of society which has long since emerged from mere brutishness and barbarism. It has its fixed order and its recognised gradations, a system of law with judges to administer it, and a public opinion which sets itself against some faults and vices not amenable to legal penalties. It brings before us men who, if they retain, in their occasional ferocity, treachery, and malice, characteristics which belong to the savage, yet recognise the majesty of law and submit themselves to its government—who are obedient, yet not servile—who care for other than mere brute forces, who recognise the value of wise words and prudent counsels, and in the right of uttering them give the earnest of a yet higher and more developed freedom. It shows to us men who own the sanctity of an oath and acknowledge the duty of executing true judgment between man and man; who, if they are fierce in fight, yet abhor mutilation, torture, and unseemly insult, and are willing to recognise merit in an enemy not less readily than in a friend. Above all, it tells us of men who in their home life are honest and truthful, who make no pretension of despising human sympathy and setting lightly by kindness, gentleness, and love. If here and there we get glimpses of a charity which seeks a wider range,[2] yet the love of wife and children and brethren is the rule and not the exception; and everywhere, in striking contrast with Athenian society in the days ofPage:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/34
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MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS.
BOOK I.
