or faith. Appalled at his own insignificance amid the sublime mysteries
and awful immensities of nature, the shadows of his own mind become to
him real existences. As it is affirmed that the human skin, sensitive to
the effects of light, takes the photograph of the tree riven by
lightning, so, on the pagan mind lie in ineffaceable and exaggerated
grotesqueness the scars of impressions left by hereditary teaching, by
natural phenomena and by the memory of events and of landmarks. Out of
the soil of diseased imagination has sprung up a growth as terrible as
the drunkard's phantasies. The earthquake, flood, tidal wave, famine,
withering or devastating wind and poisonous gases, the geological
monsters and ravening bird, beast and fish, have their representatives
or supposed incarnations in mythical phantasms.

Frightful as these shadows of the mind appear, they are both very real
and, in a sense, very necessary to the ignorant man. He must have some
theory by which to explain the phenomena of nature and soothe his own
terrors. Hence he peoples the earth and water, not only with invisible
spirits more or less malevolent, but also with bodily presences usually
in terrific bestial form. To those who believe in one Spirit pervading,
ordering, governing all things, there is unity amid all phenomena, and
the universe is all order and beauty. To the mind which has not reached
this height of simplicity, instead of one cause there are many. The
diverse phenomena of nature are brought about by spirits innumerable,
warring and discordant. Instead of a unity to the mind, as of sun and
solar system, there is nothing but planets, asteroids and a constant
rain of shooting-stars.


Shamanism.