Читать книгу Outlines of Universal History, Designed as a Text-book and for Private Reading - George Park Fisher - Страница 15

The polytheistic religions are in themselves a highly interesting part of the history of mankind. In the multiform character that belongs to them we find reflected the peculiar traits of the several peoples among whom they have arisen. The history of religion stands in a close connection with the development of the fine arts—architecture and sculpture, painting, music, and also poetry. The earliest rhythmical utterance was in hymns to the gods. To worship, all the arts are largely indebted for their birth and growth. This, however, is only one of the ways in which religion is interwoven with the rise and progress of civilization.

By mythology; we mean the collective beliefs of any tribe or nation respecting deities or semi-divine personages. Recent studies in language, or the science of comparative philology, have thrown light on the origin of mythology, and upon the affinities of different polytheistic religions with one another. Among various nations belonging to the same family (as, for example, the peoples of the Aryan race), names of gods, and, to some extent, qualities and deeds attributed to them, have been identified. Myths are found to have traveled in different guises from land to land. At the same time, these discoveries have given rise to much unverified theory and conjecture. Too much stress has been laid, by certain writers, on mistakes in language as a source of mythology. In the primitive stage of language, all nouns had a gender, either male or female; and verbs, even auxiliary verbs, it is alleged, expressed activity of some sort. On the basis of these facts it has been inferred, that, at a later day, figurative expressions, descriptive of natural changes, were taken as literal; as if one should interpret the saying, "the sun follows the dawn," as meaning that one person pursues another. By this kind of misunderstanding, it has been thought, a throng of mythological tales arose. By some it is held that the names of animals, which had been given to ancestors, were interpreted literally by their savage descendants, or that traditions of having come from a certain mountain or river caused these natural objects to be mistakenly regarded as actual progenitors. These suggestions are of very limited value in solving the problem of the origin of the ethnic religions. Much, however, has been learned from observing the rites and beliefs of existing savage nations. Not a few religious notions and ceremonies, once in vogue among cultivated heathen peoples, may be plausibly considered a survival from a more remote and barbarous condition of society.