Page:Myths of the Hindus & Buddhists.djvu/36

Myths of the Hindus & Buddhists What we miss through all the poetry of this gradual Aryanizing is the element of awe—for this, though present, is perpetually growing less. The Aryan mind is essentially an organizing mind, always increasingly scientific, increasingly rational in its outlook upon things. The colour and caprice that make early mythologies so rich in stimulus for the imagination are almost always the contribution of older and more childlike races. To humanity, in its first morning-hours, there seemed to be in the animal something of the divine. Its inarticulateness, not then so far removed from man's own speech, constituted an oracle. Its hidden ways of life and sudden flashings forth upon the path were supernatural. The dim intelligence that looked out from between its eyes seemed like a large benevolence, not to be compassed or fathomed by mortal thought. And who could tell what was the store of wisdom garnered behind the little old face of the grey ape out of the forest, or hoarded by the coiled snake in her hole beside the tree?

The Attraction of the Animal

With all a child's power of wonder, the thought of man played about the elephant and the eagle, the monkey and the lion. Many tribes and races had each its own mystic animal, half worshipped as a god, half suspected of being an ancestor. With the rise of the great theological systems all this will be regimented and organized. From being gods themselves the mythical half-human creatures will descend, to become the vehicles and companions of gods. One of these will be mounted on the peacock, another on the swan. One will be carried by the bull, another by the goat. But in this very fact there will be an implicit declaration of the divine associations of the 16