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SECTION XII.
The Theogony of the Creative Gods.
To thoroughly comprehend the idea underlying every ancient
Cosmology necessitates the study and comparative analysis of all the
great religions of antiquity;
for it is only by this method that the rootidea
can be made plain. Exact Science, could it soar so high, in
tracing the operations of Nature to their ultimate and original sources,
would call this idea the Hierarchy of Forces. The original, transcendental
and philosophical conception was one. But as systems
began to reflect more and more with every age the idiosyncrasies of
nations, and as the latter, after separating, settled into distinct groups,
each evolving along its own national or tribal groove, the main idea
gradually became veiled by the overgrowth of human fancy. While in
some countries the Forces, or rather the intelligent Powers of Nature,
received divine honours to which they were hardly entitled, in others
as now in Europe and the other civilized lands—the very thought of
such Forces being endowed with intelligence seems absurd, and is
proclaimed unscientific. Therefore one finds relief in such statements
as are found in the Introduction to Asgard ayid the Gods; "Tales and
Traditions of our Northern Ancestors," edited by W. S. W. Anson, who
says
Although in Central Asia, or on the banks of the Indus, in the Land of the
Pyramids, and in the Greek and Italian peninsulas, and even in the North, whither
Kelts, Teutons and Slavs wandered, the religious conceptions of the people have
taken different forms, yet their common origin is still perceptible. We point out
this connection between the stories of the Gods, and the deep thought contained in
them, and their importance, in order that the reader may see that it is not a magic
world of erratic fancy which opens out before him, but that . . . Life and Nature
formed the basis of the existence and action of these divinities.*
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