Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 1, 1890.djvu/403

 Rh fall of the originators thereof. And with their fall has gone the folk-etymology theory of the origin of the early mythologies.

No one theory has taken the place of the sun-myths and the rest. A wise syncretism is taking the place of the single key that was to fit all wards. There are gods of the woods and of the fields, there are totem-gods and ancestral gods, the generative powers were worshipped, stocks and stones received their cult, even the sun and moon had their votaries. Few would nowadays be prepared to reduce all these forms of man’s reverence for the Divine to any one single principle. And even in details, the passion for explaining away the facts as given in ancient records is fast disappearing. When the sacrifice was given “as a sweet savour unto the Lord” the modern inquirer does not desire to explain this away. He thinks the ancient who spoke thus meant what he said, and no more or less. The results thus reached may often seem ludicrous, but they are not more so than facts observed every day in savage life. We ought not perhaps to be surprised to find that as man has risen from the beasts we can catch him at times in stages of mind which can be but little higher than the beast’s.

The hope that the study of comparative religion would throw some light on religion itself seems to be fading away. It seems, in fact, as if the mythological show has somewhat disappointed the sight-seers. They have been invited by eloquent showmen to enter and take their seats, and they would see what they would see. What they have seen has been a curtain covered with figures, some beautiful and some grotesque, but all of lower orders of art. Many have been the guesses as to the meaning of these figures, and as to what was behind the curtain. But the curtain has never been raised, and some among the audience are beginning to ask, “Is the curtain the picture, and is there nothing behind the veil, behind the veil?”

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