[102] The whole
fabric of comparative mythology, as at present constituted,
and as described above, in the first of these papers, rests
upon the postulate that the earliest religion was pure
fetichism.
[101] "Il Sol, dell aurea luce eterno forte." Tasso,
Gerusalemme, XV. 47; ef. Dante, Paradiso, X. 28.
[102] The Aryans were, however, doubtless better off than the
tribes of North America. "In no Indian language could the
early missionaries find a word to express the idea of God.
Manitou and Oki meant anything endowed with supernatural
powers, from a snake-skin or a greasy Indian conjurer up to
Manabozho and Jouskeha. The priests were forced to use a
circumlocution,--`the great chief of men,' or 'he who lives in
the sky.' " Parkman, Jesuits in North America, p. lxxix. "The
Algonquins used no oaths, for their language supplied none;
doubtless because their mythology had no beings sufficiently
distinct to swear by." Ibid, p. 31.
In the unsystematic nature-worship of the old Aryans the gods
are presented to us only as vague powers, with their nature
and attributes dimly defined, and their relations to each
other fluctuating and often contradictory. There is no
theogony, no regular subordination of one deity to another.
The same pair of divinities appear now as father and daughter,
now as brother and sister, now as husband and wife; and again
they quite lose their personality, and are represented as mere
natural phenomena.
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