The Golden Bough (Third Edition, Vol. 7 of 12) - Mirrors

4 The Golden Bough (Third Edition, Vol. 7 of 12)[viii]That they should invest these resources with an atmosphere ofwonder and awe, often indeed with a halo of divinity, is nomatter for surprise. The circle of human knowledge, illuminatedby the pale cold light of reason, is so infinitesimally small, thedark regions of human ignorance which lie beyond that luminousring are so immeasurably vast, that imagination is fain to step upto the border line and send the warm, richly coloured beams ofher fairy lantern streaming out into the darkness; and so, peeringinto the gloom, she is apt to mistake the shadowy reflections ofher own figure for real beings moving in the abyss. In short,few men are sensible of the sharp line that divides the knownfrom the unknown; to most men it is a hazy borderland whereperception and conception melt indissolubly into one. Hence tothe savage the ghosts of dead animals and men, with which hisimagination peoples the void, are hardly less real than the solidshapes which the living animals and men present to his senses;and his thoughts and activities are nearly as much absorbed bythe one as by the other. Of him it may be said with perhaps evengreater truth than of his civilised brother, “What shadows we are,and what shadows we pursue!”But having said so much in this book of the misty glory whichthe human imagination sheds round the hard material realitiesof the food supply, I am unwilling to leave my readers underthe impression, natural but erroneous, that man has created mostof his gods out of his belly. That is not so, at least that isnot my reading of the history of religion. Among the visible,tangible, perceptible elements by which he is surrounded—andit is only of these that I presume to speak—there are others thanthe merely nutritious which have exerted a powerful influencein touching his imagination and stimulating his energies, and sohave contributed to build up the complex fabric of religion. Tothe preservation of the species the reproductive faculties are noless essential than the nutritive; and with them we enter on a verydifferent sphere of thought and feeling, to wit, the relation of