CHAPTER XXXIX.

EXPLANATION. After what we have seen concerning the numerous virgin-born, crucified and resurrected Saviours, believed on in the Pagan world for so many centuries before the time assigned for the birth of the Christian Saviour, the questions naturally arise: were they real personages? did they ever exist in the flesh? whence came these stories concerning them? have they a foundation in truth, or are they simply creations of the imagination? The _historical_ theory--according to which _all_ the persons mentioned in mythology were once real human beings, and the legends and fabulous traditions relating to them were merely the additions and embellishments of later times--which was so popular with scholars of the last century, has been altogether abandoned. Under the historical point of view the gods are mere deified mortals, either heroes who have been deified after their death, or Pontiff-chieftains who have passed themselves off for gods, and who, it is gratuitously supposed, found people stupid enough to believe in their pretended divinity. This was the manner in which, formerly, writers explained the mythology of nations of antiquity; but a method that pre-supposed an historical Crishna, an historical Osiris, an historical Mithra, an historical Hercules, an historical Apollo, or an historical Thor, was found untenable, and therefore, does not, at the present day, stand in need of a refutation. As a writer of the early part of the present century said: "We shall never have an ancient history worthy of the perusal of men of common sense, till we cease treating poems as history, and send back such personages as Hercules, Theseus, Bacchus, etc., to the heavens, whence their history is taken, and whence they never descended to the earth." The historical theory was succeeded by the _allegorical_ theory, which supposes that all the myths of the ancients were _allegorical_ and _symbolical_, and contain some moral, religious, or philosophical truth or historical fact under the form of an allegory, which came in process of time to be understood literally. In the preceding pages we have spoken of the several virgin-born, crucified and resurrected Saviours, as real personages. We have attributed to these individuals words and acts, and have regarded the words and acts recorded in the several sacred books from which we have quoted, as said and done by them. But in doing this, we have simply used the language of others. These gods and heroes were not real personages; _they are merely personifications of the_ SUN. As Prof. Max Müller observes in his Lectures on the Science of Religion: "One of the earliest objects that would strike and stir the mind of man, and for which a _sign_ or a _name_ would soon be wanted, is surely the _Sun_.[467:1] It is very hard for us to realize the feelings with which the first dwellers on the earth looked upon the Sun, or to understand fully what they meant by a morning prayer or a morning sacrifice. Perhaps there are few people who have watched a sunrise more than once or twice in their life; few people who have ever known the meaning of a morning prayer, or a morning sacrifice. But think of man at the very dawn of time. . . . think of the Sun awakening the eyes of man from sleep, and his mind from slumber! Was not the sunrise to him the first wonder, the first beginning of all reflection, all thought, all philosophy? Was it not to him the first revelation, the first beginning of all trust, of all religion? . . . . "Few nations only have preserved in their ancient poetry some remnants of the natural awe with which the earlier dwellers on the earth saw that brilliant being slowly rising from out of the darkness of the night, raising itself by its own might higher and higher, till it stood triumphant on the arch of heaven, and then descended and sank down in its fiery glory into the dark abyss of the heaving and hissing sea. In the hymns of the _Veda_, the poet still wonders whether the Sun will rise again; he asks how he can climb the vault of heaven? why he does not fall back? why there is no dust on his path? And when the rays of the morning rouse him from sleep and call him back to new life, when he sees the Sun, as he says, stretching out his golden arms to bless the world and rescue it from the terror of darkness, he exclaims, 'Arise, our life, our spirit has come back! the darkness is gone, the light approaches.'" Many years ago, the learned Sir William Jones said: "We must not be surprised at finding, on a close examination, that the characters of all the Pagan deities, male and female, melt into each other, and at last into one or two; for it seems as well founded opinion, that the whole crowd of gods and goddesses of ancient Rome, and modern Varanes, mean only the powers of nature, and principally those of the SUN, expressed in a variety of ways, and by a multitude of fanciful names."[467:2] Since the first learned president of the Royal Asiatic Society paved the way for the science of _comparative mythology_, much has been learned on this subject, so that, as the Rev. George W. Cox remarks, "recent discussions on the subject seem to justify the conviction that the foundations of the science of _comparative mythology_ have been firmly laid, and that its method is unassailable."[468:1] If we wish to find the gods and goddesses of the ancestors of our race, we must look to the sun, the moon, the stars, the sky, the earth, the sea, the dawn, the clouds, the wind, &c., _which they personified and worshiped_. That these have been the gods and goddesses of all nations of antiquity, is an established fact.[468:2] The words which had denoted the sun and moon would denote not merely living things but living persons. From personification to deification the steps would be but few; and the process of disintegration would at once furnish the materials for a vast fabric of mythology. All the expressions which had attached a living force to natural objects would remain as the description of personal and anthropomorphous gods. Every word would become an attribute, and all ideas, once grouped around a simple object, would branch off into distinct personifications. The sun had been the lord of light, the driver of the chariot of the day; he had toiled and labored for the sons of men, and sunk down to rest, after a hard battle, in the evening. But now the lord of light would be Phoibos Apollon, while Helios would remain enthroned in his fiery chariot, and his toils and labors and death-struggles would be transferred to Hercules. The violet clouds which greet his rising and his setting would now be represented by herds of cows which feed in earthly pastures. There would be other expressions which would still remain as floating phrases, not attached to any definite deities. These would gradually be converted into incidents in the life of heroes, and be woven at length into systematic narratives. Finally, these gods or heroes, and the incidents of their mythical career, would receive each "a local habitation and a name." _These would remain as genuine history, when the origin and meaning of the words had been either wholly or in part forgotten._ For the proofs of these assertions, the Vedic poems furnish indisputable evidence, that such as this was the origin and growth of Greek and Teutonic mythology. In these poems, the names of many, perhaps of most, of the Greek gods, indicate natural objects which, if endued with life, have not been reduced to human personality. In them Daphne is still simply the morning twilight ushering in the splendor of the new born sun; the cattle of Helios there are still the light-colored clouds which the dawn leads out into the fields of the sky. There the idea of Hercules has not been separated from the image of the toiling and struggling sun, and the glory of the life-giving Helios has not been transferred to the god of Delos and Pytho. In the Vedas the myths of Endymion, of Kephalos and Prokris, Orpheus and Eurydike, are exhibited in the form of detached mythical phrases, which furnished for each their germ. The analysis may be extended indefinitely: but the conclusion can only be, that in the Vedic language we have the foundation, not only of the glowing legends of Hellas, but of the dark and sombre mythology of the Scandinavian and the Teuton. Both alike have grown up chiefly from names which have been grouped around the sun; but the former has been grounded on those expressions which describe the recurrence of day and night, the latter on the great tragedy of nature, in the alternation of summer and winter. Of this vast mass of solar myths, some have emerged into independent legends, others have furnished the groundwork of whole epics, others have remained simply as floating tales whose intrinsic beauty no poet has wedded to his verse.[469:1] "The results obtained from the examination of language in its several forms leaves no room for doubt that the general system of mythology has been traced to its fountain head. We can no longer shut our eyes to the fact that there was a stage in the history of human speech, during which all the abstract words in constant use among ourselves were utterly unknown, when men had formed no notions of virtue or prudence, of thought and intellect, of slavery or freedom, but spoke only of the man who was strong, who could point the way to others and choose one thing out of many, of the man who was not bound to any other and able to do as he pleased. "That even this stage was not the earliest in the history of language is now a growing opinion among philologists; but for the _comparison_ of legends current in different countries it is not necessary to carry the search further back. Language without words denoting abstract qualities implies a condition of thought in which men were only awakening to a sense of the objects which surrounded them, and points to a time when the world was to them full of strange sights and sounds, some beautiful, some bewildering, some terrific, when, in short, they knew little of themselves beyond the vague consciousness of their existence, and nothing of the phenomena of the world without. _In such a state they could but attribute to all that they saw or touched or heard, a life which was like their own in its consciousness, its joys, and its sufferings._ That power of sympathizing with nature which we are apt to regard as the peculiar gift of the poet was then shared alike by all. This sympathy was not the result of any effort, it was inseparably bound up with the words which rose to their lips. It implied no special purity of heart or mind; it pointed to no Arcadian paradise where shepherds knew not how to wrong or oppress or torment each other. We say that the morning light rests on the mountains; they said that the sun was greeting his bride, as naturally as our own poet would speak of the sunlight clasping the earth, or the moonbeams as kissing the sea. "We have then before us a stage of language corresponding to a stage in the history of the human mind _in which all sensible objects were regarded as instinct with a conscious life_. The varying phases of that life were therefore described as truthfully as they described their own feelings or sufferings; and hence every phase became a picture. But so long as the conditions of their life remained unchanged, they knew perfectly what the picture meant, and ran no risk of confusing one with another. Thus they had but to describe the things which they saw, felt, or heard, in order to keep up an inexhaustible store of phrases faithfully describing the facts of the world from their point of view. This language was indeed the result of an observation not less keen than that by which the inductive philosopher extorts the secrets of the natural world. Nor was its range much narrower. Each object received its own measure of attention, and no one phenomenon was so treated as to leave no room for others in their turn. They could not fail to note the changes of days and years, of growth and decay, of calm and storm; _but the objects which so changed were to them living things, and the rising and setting of the sun, the return of winter and summer, became a drama in which the actors were their enemies or their friends_. "That this is a strict statement of facts in the history of the human mind, philology alone would abundantly prove; but not a few of these phrases have come down to us in their earliest form, and point to the long-buried stratum of language of which they are the fragments. _These relics exhibit in their germs the myths which afterwards became the legends of gods and heroes with human forms, and furnished the groundwork of the epic poems, whether of the eastern or the western world._ "The mythical or mythmaking language of mankind had no partialities; and if the career of the _Sun_ occupies a large extent of the horizon, we cannot fairly simulate ignorance of the cause. Men so placed would not fail to put into words the thoughts or emotions roused in them by the varying phases of that mighty world on which we, not less than they, feel that our life depends, although we may know something more of its nature. "Thus grew up a multitude of expressions which described the sun as the child of the night, as the destroyer of the darkness, as the lover of the dawn and the dew--of phrases which would go on to speak of him as killing the dew with his spears, and of forsaking the dawn as he rose in the heaven. The feeling that the fruits of the earth were called forth by his warmth would find utterance in words which spoke of him as the friend and the benefactor of man; while the constant recurrence of his work would lead them to describe him as a being constrained to toil for others, as doomed to travel over many lands, and as finding everywhere things on which he could bestow his love or which he might destroy by his power. His journey, again, might be across cloudless skies, or amid alternations of storm and calm; his light might break fitfully through the clouds, or be hidden for many a weary hour, to burst forth at last with dazzling splendor as he sank down in the western sky. He would thus be described as facing many dangers and many enemies, none of whom, however, may arrest his course; as sullen, or capricious, or resentful; as grieving for the loss of the dawn whom he had loved, or as nursing his great wrath and vowing a pitiless vengeance. Then as the veil was rent at eventide, they would speak of the chief, who had long remained still, girding on his armor; or of the wanderer throwing off his disguise, and seizing his bow or spear to smite his enemies; of the invincible warrior whose face gleams with the flush of victory when the fight is over, as he greets the fair-haired Dawn who closes, as she had begun, the day. To the wealth of images thus lavished on the daily life and death of the Sun there would be no limit. He was the child of the morning, or her husband, or her destroyer; he forsook her and he returned to her, either in calm serenity or only to sink presently in deeper gloom. "So with other sights and sounds. The darkness of night brought with it a feeling of vague horror and dread; the return of daylight cheered them with a sense of unspeakable gladness; and thus the Sun who scattered the black shade of night would be the mighty champion doing battle with the biting snake which lurked in its dreary hiding-place. But as the Sun accomplishes his journey day by day through the heaven, the character of the seasons is changed. The buds and blossoms of spring-time expand in the flowers and fruits of summer, and the leaves fall and wither on the approach of winter. Thus the daughter of the earth would be spoken of as dying or as dead, as severed from her mother for five or six weary months, not to be restored to her again until the time for her return from the dark land should once more arrive. But as no other power than that of the Sun can recall vegetation to life, this child of the earth would be represented as buried in a sleep from which the touch of the Sun alone could arouse her, when he slays the frost and cold which lie like snakes around her motionless form. "_That these phrases would furnish the germs of myths or legends teeming with human feeling, as soon as the meaning of the phrases were in part or wholly forgotten, was as inevitable as that in the infancy of our race men should attribute to all sensible objects the same kind of life which they were conscious of possessing themselves._" Let us compare the history of the _Saviour_ which we have already seen, with that of the _Sun_, as it is found in the _Vedas_. We can follow in the _Vedic_ hymns, step by step, the development which changes the _Sun_ from a mere luminary into a "_Creator_," "_Preserver_," "_Ruler_," and "_Rewarder of the World_"--in fact, into a _Divine or Supreme Being_. The first step leads us from the mere light of the Sun to that light which in the morning wakes man from sleep, and seems to give new life, not only to man, but to the whole of nature. He who wakes us in the morning, who recalls all nature to new life, is soon called "_The Giver of Daily Life_." Secondly, by another and bolder step, the Giver of Daily Light and Life becomes the giver of light and life in general. _He who brings light and life to-day, is the same who brought light and life on the first of days._ As light is the beginning of the day, so light was the beginning of creation, and the Sun, from being a mere light-bringer or life-giver, becomes a Creator, and, if a Creator, then soon also a Ruler of the World. Thirdly, as driving away the dreaded darkness of the night, and likewise as fertilizing the earth, the Sun is conceived as a "Defender" and kind "Protector" of all living things. Fourthly, the Sun sees everything, both that which is good and that which is evil; and how natural therefore that the evil-doer should be told that the sun sees what no human eye may have seen, and that the innocent, when all other help fails him, should appeal to the sun to attest his guiltlessness! Let us examine now, says Prof. Müller, from whose work we have quoted the above, a few passages (from the _Rig-Veda_) illustrating every one of these perfectly natural transitions. "In hymn vii. we find the Sun invoked as '_The Protector of everything that moves or stands, of all that exists_.'" "Frequent allusion is made to the Sun's power of seeing everything. The stars flee before the all-seeing Sun, like thieves (R. V. vii.). He sees the right and the wrong among men (Ibid.). He who looks upon the world, knows also all the thoughts in men (Ibid.)." "As the Sun sees everything and knows everything, he is asked to forget and forgive what he alone has seen and knows (R. V. iv.)." "The Sun is asked to drive away illness and bad dreams (R. V. x.)." "Having once, and more than once, been invoked as the life-bringer, the Sun is also called the breath or life of all that moves and rests (R. V. i.); and lastly, he becomes _the maker of all things_, by whom all the worlds have been brought together (R. V. x.), and . . . Lord of man and of all living creatures." "He is the God among gods (R. V. i.); he is the divine leader of all the gods (R. V. viii.)." "He alone rules the whole world (R. V. v.). The laws which he has established are firm (R. V. iv.), and the other gods not only praise him (R. V. vii.), but have to follow him as their leader (R. V. v.)."[473:1] That the history of _Christ_ Jesus, the Christian Saviour,--"the true _Light_, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world,"[473:2]--is simply the history of the _Sun_--the real Saviour of mankind--is demonstrated beyond a doubt from the following indisputable facts: