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In fact, their conception of clever persons parthenogenetically bringing forth complete original cosmogonies by dint of sheer "brilliancy" is part of that ignorant credulity which is the despair of the honest philosopher, and the opportunity of the religious impostor. It is this credulity that drives me to help my critics out with Major Barbara by telling them what to say about it.
The man who makes shoes, as well as he who makes laws and he who makes poems; the builder of houses, with the builder of theologies or cosmogonies; the engineer, as well as the artist, all work under the rays of this illuminator; and, other things being equal, he excels all others on whose work those rays shine with the most sustained and penetrative force.
To firmly grasp the Bible for a talisman, as Ulysses did the sprig of moly, and to stand in the Pantheon of the universe, examining every shattered idol and crumbling, denied altar, where worshipping humanity had bowed; to tear the veil from oracles and sibyls, and show the world that the true, good and beautiful of all theogonies and cosmogonies, of every system of religion that had waxed and waned since the gray dawn of time, could be traced to Moses and to Jesus, seemed to her a mission grander far than the conquest of empires, and infinitely more to be desired than the crown and heritage of Solomon.
These and other cosmogonies which the Chinese have devised, though it is necessary to note their existence in order to give a just idea of their cosmological speculations, need not, as I said, detain us long; and the reason why they need not do so is that, in the matter of cosmogony, the P'an Ku legend and the yin-yang system with its monistic elaboration occupy virtually the whole field of the Chinese mental vision.
Perhaps Asgard, translated from mythic into scientific language, means the Zodiacal Light, and the Bridge Bifröst, the Milky Way. How curious, to trace in the grotesque mythic cosmogonies of India, Greece, and Scandinavia, modern geology, botany, chemistry, etc., the vast and brutal giants of the Eddas and other old mythic scriptures being recognized as impersonations of the forces of Nature!
Sir, if that liquid had held life in it the Vatican would have trembled to hear it, and there would have been anxious questionings and ominous whisperings in the halls of Lambeth palace! The accepted cosmogonies on trial, sir! Traditions, sanctities, creeds, ecclesiastical establishments, all shaking to know whether my little sixpenny flask of fluid looks muddy or not!
The fact that she knew nothing of that traditional ignorance which for ages has taken the name of knowledge that record of the foolish cosmogonies upon which have been built the philosophies and the social systems of the blundering creature Man the fact that she knew nothing of these gave an especial piquancy to everything she said.
It would be ridiculous to say that the fate of religious feeling is really involved in the fate of grotesque cosmogonies and theosophies framed in the infancy of men's knowledge of nature; for history shows us quite the contrary. Religious feeling has survived the heliocentric theory and the discoveries of geologists; and it will be none the worse for the establishment of Darwinism.
It is a beautiful and instructive portion of our symbolism, this connection of darkness and light, and well deserves a further investigation. "Genesis and the cosmogonies," says Portal, "mention the antagonism of light and darkness. The form of this fable varies according to each nation, but the foundation is everywhere the same.
Reader, I have given you this chapter of ancient cosmogonies under the conviction that a bare statement of them must convince any one of either the ignorance or dishonesty of infidels who claim that Moses learned all that he gave in his cosmogony from the ancient cosmogonies. How was it that Moses avoided all their errors and extravagance?
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