The Daily state journal. [volume] (Alexandria, Va.) 1868-1874, 1871-01-21


That prosaic and coldly rational temper
with which modern men are wont to regard
natural phenomena was in early times un-
known. We have come to regard all
events as taking place regularly, In strict
conformity to law; whatever our official
theories may be, we inssinctively take this
view of things. But our primitive ances-
tors knew nothing about laws of nature,
nothing about physical forces, nothing
about tho relations of cause and effect,
nothing about the necessary regularity
of things. There was time in the
history Of mankind when these things
had never been inquired into, and when no
congratulations about them had been
framed, tested, or established. There was
no conception of an order of nature, aud
therefore no distinct conception of super
natural order of things. There was no
belief in miracles as infractions of natural
laws but there was belief in the occur
renee of wonderful events too mighty to
have been brought about by ordinary
means. There was an unlimited capacity
for believing and fancying, because fancy
and belief had not yet been checked and
headed off in various directions by estat-
lished rules Of experience. Physical science
is very late acquisition of the hui
man mind, but we are already
sufficiently imbued with it to be
almost completely disabled from compre-
bending the thoughts of our ancestors
elbow Finn cosmogonists could have be-
lieved the earth and heaven to be made
out of severed egg, the upper concave
shell representing heaven, the yolk being
earth, and the crystal surrounding fluid
the circumambient ocean, is to us incom-
prehensible; and yet it remains fact that
they did SO regard them. How the
Scandinavans could have supposed the
mountains to be the Wondering bones Of
a mighty Jotun, and the earth to be
his fostering flesh, we cannot conceive yet
such theory was solemly taught and ac-
cepted. How the ancient Indians could
regard the rain-clouds as cows with full
udders MIXED by the winds of heaven is
beyond our comprehension, and yet their
Veda contains indisputable testimony to
the fact that they were SO regarded" We
have only to read Mr.. Barring Gould's
book of GLORIOUS Myths" from which
have just quoted, or TO dip into Mr..
Thorne's great treatise on Northern
Mythology, to realize how vast is
the difference between our standpoint
and that from which, in the later
Middle Ages, our immediate fore-fathers
regarded things. The frightful superstition
of werewolves is a good instance. 10
those days it was firmly believed that.men
could be, and were 10 the habit of being,
transformed into wolves 1t was believed
that women might bring forth snakes or
poodle-dogs. twas believed that if a man
had his side pierced in battle, you could |
cure him by nursing the sword which in
hicted the wound. GAS late as 1900
German writer would illustrate thunder
storm destroying crop of corn by pic
ture of dragon devouring the produce of
the field with his flaming tongue and iron |
teeth"
The only force they knew was the force
of which they were directly conscious
the force of WILL Accordingly, they
imagined all the outward world to be en-
dowed with volition, and to be directed by
it. They personifed everything-sky,
clouds, thunder. sun, moon, ocean, earth
quake, whlrlwind. The comparatively
enlightened Athenians of the age Of Peri
kles addressed the sky as a person,
and prayed to it to rain upon their gar
dens And for calling the moon mass of
dead matter, Anaxagoras came near losing
his life. To the ancients the moon was
not lifeless ball of stones and clods it
was the honored huntress, Artemis, cours-
ing through the upper ether, or bathing
herself in the clear lake or it was Aph-
rodite, protectress of lovers, born of the
sea foam in the East near Cyprus. The
clouds were no bodies of vaporized water
they were cows with swelling udders,
driven to the milking by Hermes, the sum-
mer wind; or great sheep with moist
heeces, slain by the unerring arrows Of
Bellerophon, the sun or swan maidens, fit
tering the armament, Valkyries lowering
over the battlefield to receive the souls Of
falling heroes or, again, they were mighty
mountains piled one above another, in
whose cavernous recesses the divining-
wand of the storm-god Thor, revealed hid
den treasures. The yellow haired sun,
Phoibos, drove westerly all day in his
flaming chariot or perhaps, as Meleagros,
retired for while in disgust from the
sight of men welded at eventide the
violet light (Oinone, Iole), which he had
forsaken in the morning; sank, as Herakles,
upon blazing funeral-pyre, or, like
Agamemnon, persisted in blood-stained
bath; Or as the fish-god, Dagon, swan
nightly through the subterranean waters,
to appear eastward again at day-break.
Sometimes Phaeton, his rash, inexperienced !
son, would take the reins and drive the solar
chariot too near the earth causing the
fruits to perish, and the grass to wither,
and the wells to dry up. Sometimes, too,
the great all-Seeing divinity, in his wrath
at the impiety of men, would shoot down
his scorchipg arrows, causing pestilence to
spread over the land. Still other concep- !
tions clustered around the sun. Now it !
was the wonderful treasure-house, into
which no one could look and lives and :
again it was Ixion himself, bound on the
fiery wheel in punishment for violence Of
fered to Here, the queen of the blue air. i
The, Wilmington IN. O. Journal learns !
that the widow of Mr.. John Taylor, of o
Robson county, who was so brutally muir :
Tered few days since by the outlaw,