Page:Greek and Roman Mythology.djvu/24

 10 GREEK AND ROMAN MYTHOLOGY 7. Go forth, go forth by the ancient paths whither our fathers of old have gone. | Both kings exhilarated with the sweet oblation, Yama and heavenly Varuna thou wilt see. 8. Meet with the fathers, with Yama, with the reward (in store for thee) in highest heaven. | Leaving what is sinful come back home : possessing full life meet a (new) body. 9. Go away (ye mourners), go apart and disperse from here. The fathers have made this place for him, | adorned with days, with waters, with nights. Yama gives to him a resting-place. 2. ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE CONCEPTION OF THE DIVINITIES OF NATURE 10. The inborn impulse in man to endeavor to compre- hend the causal connection of all phenomena observed by him could not long confine itself to the events that concern his own person. Before long he began to con- sider also the world of nature, in which he lives, and whose influence he feels. A child attributes the property of life to the objects surrounding him, as soon as they appear to exert any active influence. So, by one who is as yet but a simple child of nature, everything that exerts any power is regarded as endowed with life, because activity, in connection with its own peculiar motion and productiveness, appears to him as the chief characteristic of a living being. Soon, however, he per- ceives that the apparent activity belonging to things without life is frequently produced by living beings hid- den from view. Through this experience he reaches the point of presupposing in general for every exercise of power a living being as the author, upon whose particu- lar form and fashion he decides according to the nature of the operation of the force in each case. Thus fancy gradually peopled the whole world of nature in which man lived so far as activity, motion, and productive-