Page:The Religion of the Veda.djvu/183

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Transparent and Opaque Gods 167

right direction. An unusually unsympathetic sceptic will not ﬁnd it hard to rest his feet upon some pro- jecting ledge of doubt, and all history cries out that we must not try to dislodge sceptics by violence. Every middle-aged student of Comparative Mythoh ogy and Comparative Philology recalls the time when even the most complex myths were blandly ex— plained as nature processes; nothing in that line could be too fanciful and fa1*~fetc11ed to ﬁnd adher» ents. No cock might crow in a fairy-tale without becoming party to an involved and profound sun~ myth. We have all sobered much; there is now, perhaps, too much insistence upon the element of uncertainty which goes With the term “.probable,” no matter how closely the probable may approach certainty.

Tho two Agvins, the Dioscuri, are translucent gods. They harbor some phenomenon of morning light as one part of their dual character. The other is probably the corresponding phenomenon at eve. But just what this duality is we were unable to say.ll It is something to have limited this brilliant Indo- European myth so far, and to ﬁnd behind it reason rather than idle fancy. The god Varuna, as we have seen, belongs also to this class; for better or for

worse interpretation will turn to some phenomenon

1See above, p. 11:6.