70 SENECA FICTION, LEGENDS, AND MYTHS [ETH. iXN. 32 



Whatever, therefore, the final terms are in which men at any time 

 and phice define their deities, the premises of their reasoning about 

 them is always quite the same — namely, to define the unknown man 

 in terms of the known men themselves — but this known quantiti/, 

 man, is variable and inconstant, changing with time and place. All 

 powers and functions and attributes of mind and body, inherent in 

 man and distinctive of him — no matter whether beneficent or evil^ 

 men imputed to their gods in more or less idealized form. 



Guided b}' inchoate reascmiiig. the crude thinking of unscientific 

 minds, all early men, responsive to external stimuli and the internal 

 yearning for truth, ascribed to their gods and spirits not only all 

 human functions and attributes measurably idealized, but also all 

 their arts and social and religious institutions were likewise attrib- 

 uted, probablj^ quite unconsciously, to their gods and deities. These 

 anthropic features and activities and anthropopathic mind were not 

 ascribed, of course, to other men, but rather to the so-called " first 

 people" — the personified, animated and humanized phenomena and 

 processes of nature, of the environments of their experience. Thus, 

 the social and institutional organization of the gods becomes a some- 

 what idealized epitome or refiex of the human society as it existed 

 and exists among the people in whose minds these divine organiza- 

 tions had their origin. By so doing men painted, either consciously 

 or unconsciously, in their religious activities and in their god-lore 

 a faithful picture of the earliest culture and civilization of their own 

 ethnic progenitors. 



Hence, when authentic historical records are wanting the student 

 may by close and sympathetic analysis and interpretation of the 

 myths and the religion of a people acquire a fairly accurate knowl- 

 edge of the history and culture of such a people. In this manner, 

 indeed, the gods verily become the reveaJers of all history and the 

 teachers of the arts and crafts and industries and the true founders 

 of the institutions — human and divine — to that people. In this in- 

 teraction of the human mind with the forces and phenomena of Ufa 

 and environing nature lies the true source of inspiration and proph- 

 ecy. The history of the gods is the history of man. Because the 

 gods, in general, symbolize universal processes in life and nature 

 they and their attributes and fiuictions in time become more or less 

 highly idealized creations of the conscious, the subconscious, and the 

 superconscious thinking of men. 



The lesson of these myths and legends is that man is other thtin 

 the material world; that while he is in it he is not of it; that while 

 he feels nature's elemental activities impelling him and impinging 

 on his senses, his apprehensive yearning heart sees the beckoning 

 finger of a higher and nobler destiny. 



