United States or Tuvalu ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The principles of philological interpretation are an indispensable aid to us in detecting the hidden meaning of many a legend in which the powers of nature are represented in the guise of living and thinking persons; but before we can get at the secret of the myth-making tendency itself, we must leave philology and enter upon a psychological study.
But the nymphs of that stream were dead, slain by philosophical questioning. The new poetic myth-making that still showed the influence of an old habit of mind was apt to be rather self-conscious and diffident, ending in something resembling the pathetic fallacy. Epicureanism on the other hand by employing the theory of evolution was able to unite man and nature once more.
On the whole, one is sometimes inclined to doubt whether any great movement ever makes itself felt in the world, without dating first from some powerful personality or group of personalities, ROUND which the idealizing and myth-making genius of mankind tends to crystallize. But one must not even here be too certain. It is obvious, in fact, that the WHOLE of the last chapter of St.
Already in the oldest alchemistic manuals one operation is called the grave of Osiris. Here more clearly than anywhere else we see the masonic symbolism combined with the myth of the first parents or creation myth. No matter where it acts, the myth-making power never seems willing to belie its laws. Also the tree growing out of the grave or the body of the dead ancestor is not wanting.
He had taken a firm stand against the views of the younger school, who seek to banish the Exodus of the Jews from the province of history and represent it as a later production of the myth-making popular mind; a theory we both believed untenable. For thousands of years the story of the Exodus has lived in the minds of numberless people as something actual, and it still retains its vitality.
For the incomprehensible the Supernatural is the only accounting. These things are products of man's myth-making capacity and desire. With the advancement of knowledge this capacity and desire become atrophied, but spring into life again in the presence of a popular stimulant.
What becomes of these imaginative, inquisitive, myth-making, light-hearted, tender-hearted, and altogether charming young adventurers who start out so gayly to explore the wonder-world? The solemn answer comes, "They after a while are grown-up." Did you ever meditate on that catastrophe which we speak of as being "grown-up"? Habit has dulled our perception of the absurd anti-climax involved in it.
Indeed, the entrance of Chinese philosophical and abstract ideas seemed to paralyze the Japanese imagination. Not only did myth-making, on its purely æsthetic and non-utilitarian side cease almost at once, but such myths as were formed were for direct business purposes and with a transparent tendency.
He had taken a firm stand against the views of the younger school, who seek to banish the Exodus of the Jews from the province of history and represent it as a later production of the myth-making popular mind; a theory we both believed untenable. For thousands of years the story of the Exodus has lived in the minds of numberless people as something actual, and it still retains its vitality.
To the Greeks of the myth-making age the creature, half man, half horse, added but one more wonder to the vast store the world already contained. The currency of this fable shows us very clearly how great was the impression which the horse made upon primitive peoples.
Word Of The Day