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Updated: June 1, 2025


He is not worshiped he is regarded rather as the explanation of phenomena, a genuine product of early cosmogonic science. For the Koryaks of Northeastern Siberia the "Big Grandfather" is an arranger of all things out of preëxisting material; the Chukchee, on the other hand, regard as creator a benevolent being residing in the zenith.

+956+. Of the great religions the Chinese may be passed by in the present sketch; its form leaves no place for mythology; its virtual monotheism excludes lesser supernatural figures as actors in the drama of human life. +957+. The Persian cosmogonic myths are merely statements of great facts without biographical features.

It need hardly be added that with all the similarities in the various cosmogonic systems the diversities among different peoples are as numerous as the differences of surroundings and character. This conception is a simple and natural explanation of the supposed extraordinary powers of the personages in question.

Still another type of myth is associated with cosmogony and natural phenomena. It is probable that more extended research would disclose a complete cosmogonic myth to replace the somewhat fragmentary material here offered. The number of explanatory animal tales thus far collected is surprisingly small. Doubtless there are many more to be gathered.

All the problems that the socialists proposed to themselves, cosmogonic visions, revery and mysticism being cast aside, can be reduced to two principal problems. First problem: To produce wealth. Second problem: To share it. The first problem contains the question of work. The second contains the question of salary. In the first problem the employment of forces is in question.

+964+. Teutonic mythology is largely cosmogonic or cosmologic, not without shrewd portraitures and attractive episodes, but never reaching the point of artistic roundness and grace. The adventures of Odin, Thor, Loki, and other divine persons reflect for the most part the daring and savagery of the viking age, though there are kindly features and an occasional touch of humor.

In that dim Niflheim, for instance, with its well-springs of the waters of the upper world confusedly bubbling, and its metallic ore-veins, and dusk, vaporous atmosphere, whence issued the old Nibelungen heroes of the great Teutonic epos, there is much that is suggestive. May not one discover in this old cosmogonic myth a dim hint of the nebular hypothesis of creation, as it is called?

The same thing is true, perhaps, of Zeus and Jupiter in their character of rain-gods as all-sufficient divine patrons they would be dispensers of all blessings, including rain; they seem, however, to have been originally gods of the sky, and thus naturally the special guardians of rain. +316+. Great masses of water have given rise to myths, mostly cosmogonic.

+959+. All Semitic myths of which we have records are cosmogonic or sociologic or, in some late forms, theological constructions. It is Babylonia that has furnished the greater part of the material, perhaps all of it. The stories preserved give little or no portraiture of divine persons it is always cosmic phenomena that are described, and gods and heroes are introduced simply as actors.

All attempts of this kind, as those of Vischer and Hartmann, fully and correctly to understand the language of facts on the one side and to reject on the other the necessary conclusion to which it leads namely, the acknowledgment of a creative intelligence above the facts, and having an end in view only increase in like manner as the above-quoted cosmogonic idea of Lange by the monstrosities of reasoning to which they lead, the power of demonstration for that which they undertake to contest.

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