344 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [VoL. VI, 
I am the lime, the keep, the master and the sketch. 
The gable and the corner-stone, the tree and its decay. 
Iam the stag, the lion, the lamb, too, and the wolf, 
The shepherd am I, who brings all thing's into one fold. 
The chain of beings I am, I am the ring of worlds, 
I am the leader of creation’s steps, the rise am I, the fall, 
I am what is and what is not....I am the soul in all.” 
Another lesson, too, we may perhaps learn from our rapid review of 
the attitude towards nature of primitive man. The Aztecs of old 
Mexico thought, like the ancient Greeks (some of them, at least) that 
man was of the same immortal substance as the gods; that when the 
universe shall perish, even the gods will pass out of existence. And 
everywhere in the world we find some traces of a belief in immortality, 
in some form or shape, a desire to be forever. This hunger for existence, 
this longing to be through endless time a conscious part of all-embracing 
nature, this hope to preserve personality is the second great article in 
the faith of primitive man. It may be going too far, when Dr. Brinton 
tells us: 
«To the primitive man, as we know him, the sense of individual power, 
that which metaphysicians call ‘ free will, was very present. The strong, 
the mighty, was what excited his admiration above all else. His ideal 
was the man who could do what he wished or willed to do. The savage 
acknowledges no theoretic limit to the will any more than does the 
religious enthusiast. It can move mountains and consume rivers. It 
can act at indefinite distances and its force is measureless. In the 
religion of ancient Egypt, the highest gods could be made to serve the 
will of a man did he but use the proper formula of command.” (Sczence, 
IV., 1896, p. 488.) 
But, in the best sense,some such ideal is the dearest hope of the race. 
To feel and to know that human energy, human act, human thought, 
human aspiration are as eternal as the earth, the sea, the sky, the stars, 
as God himself, that the activities and the genius of man, the productions 
of his deepest soul, his innermost being, diffuse themselves throughout 
the entire universe, and, like the poet’s concept of the world-travelled 
Ulysses, “ become a part of all they meet ”—is a race-old wished-for goal, 
It is the primitive correlate of the bidding of the great founder of Chris- 
tianity : “ Be ye perfect even as your Father in Heaven is perfect.” 
If you will permit me so to express it, the study of the nature-lore of 
primitive man, suggests, nay establishes, as the two great foundation 
stones of religion the knowledge of the immanence of God and the hope 
of the permanence of man. 
