Pagan and Christian Creeds [57]
speak, accidentally, in one place, and then has travelled (owing to some inherent plausibility) over the rest of the world, is of course one that commends itself readily at first; but on closer examination the practical difficulties it presents are certainly very great. These include the migrations of customs and myths in quite early ages of the earth across trackless oceans and continents, and between races and peoples absolutely incapable of understanding each other. And if to avoid these difficulties it is assumed that the present human race all proceeds from one original stock which radiating from one centre--say in South-Eastern Asia[2]--overspread the world, carrying its rites and customs with it, why, then we are compelled to face the difficulty of supposing this radiation to have taken place at an enormous time ago (the continents being then all more or less conjoined) and at a period when it is doubtful if any religious rites and customs at all existed; not to mention the further difficulty of supposing all the four or five hundred languages now existing to be descended from one common source. The far tradition of the Island of Atlantis seems to afford a possible explanation of the community of rites and customs between the Old and New World, and this without assuming in any way that Atlantis (if it existed) was the original and SOLE cradle of the human race.[3] Anyhow it is clear that these origins of human culture must be of extreme antiquity, and that it would not be wise to be put off the track of the investigation of a possible common source merely by that fact of antiquity.
[1] See A. Lang's Myth, Ritual and Religion, vol. ii.
[2] See Hastings, Encycl. Religion and Ethics, art. "Ethnology."
[3] E. J. Payne, History of the New World called America (vol. i, p. 93) says: "It is certain that Europe and America once formed a single continent," but inroads of the sea "left a vast island or peninsula stretching from Iceland to the Azores--which gradually disappeared." Also he speaks (i. 93) of the "Miocene Bridge" between Siberia and the New World.
A second supposition, however, is (2) that the natural psychological evolution of the human mind has in the various times and climes led folk of the most diverse surroundings and heredity--and perhaps even sprung from separate anthropoid stocks--to develop their social and religious ideas along the same general lines--and that even to the extent of exhibiting at times a remarkable similarity in minute details. This is a theory which commends itself greatly to a deeper and more philosophical consideration; but it brings us up point-blank against another most difficult question (which we have already raised), namely, how to account for extremely rude and primitive peoples in the far past, and on the very borderland of the animal life, having been SUSCEPTIBLE to the germs of great religious ideas (such as we have mentioned) and having been instinctively--though not of course by any process of conscious reasoning--moved to express them in symbols and rites and ceremonials, and (later no doubt) in myths and legends, which satisfied their FEELINGS and sense of fitness--though they may not have known WHY-- and afterwards were capable of being taken up and embodied in the great philosophical religions.
This difficulty almost compels us to a view of human knowledge which has found supporters among some able thinkers--the view, namely, that a vast store of knowledge is already contained in the subconscious mind of man (and the animals) and only needs the provocation of outer experience to bring it to the surface; and that in the second stage of human psychology this process of crude and piecemeal externalization is taking place, in preparation for the final or third stage in which the knowledge will be re-absorbed and become direct and intuitional on a high and harmonious plane--something like the present intuition of the animals as we perceive it on the animal plane. However this general subject is one on which I shall touch again, and I do not propose to dwell
[1] See A. Lang's Myth, Ritual and Religion, vol. ii.
[2] See Hastings, Encycl. Religion and Ethics, art. "Ethnology."
[3] E. J. Payne, History of the New World called America (vol. i, p. 93) says: "It is certain that Europe and America once formed a single continent," but inroads of the sea "left a vast island or peninsula stretching from Iceland to the Azores--which gradually disappeared." Also he speaks (i. 93) of the "Miocene Bridge" between Siberia and the New World.
A second supposition, however, is (2) that the natural psychological evolution of the human mind has in the various times and climes led folk of the most diverse surroundings and heredity--and perhaps even sprung from separate anthropoid stocks--to develop their social and religious ideas along the same general lines--and that even to the extent of exhibiting at times a remarkable similarity in minute details. This is a theory which commends itself greatly to a deeper and more philosophical consideration; but it brings us up point-blank against another most difficult question (which we have already raised), namely, how to account for extremely rude and primitive peoples in the far past, and on the very borderland of the animal life, having been SUSCEPTIBLE to the germs of great religious ideas (such as we have mentioned) and having been instinctively--though not of course by any process of conscious reasoning--moved to express them in symbols and rites and ceremonials, and (later no doubt) in myths and legends, which satisfied their FEELINGS and sense of fitness--though they may not have known WHY-- and afterwards were capable of being taken up and embodied in the great philosophical religions.
This difficulty almost compels us to a view of human knowledge which has found supporters among some able thinkers--the view, namely, that a vast store of knowledge is already contained in the subconscious mind of man (and the animals) and only needs the provocation of outer experience to bring it to the surface; and that in the second stage of human psychology this process of crude and piecemeal externalization is taking place, in preparation for the final or third stage in which the knowledge will be re-absorbed and become direct and intuitional on a high and harmonious plane--something like the present intuition of the animals as we perceive it on the animal plane. However this general subject is one on which I shall touch again, and I do not propose to dwell