Themis, a study of the social origins of Greek ... - Warburg Institute

ix] Sequence of Earth, Metarsia and Meteora 391
or firmament ; and lastly the heavenly bodies. If our conclusions are correct,
the cultivator has universally followed the same order in his theological
speculations. Beginning with the gods of the earth, he has advanced to the
atmospheric powers or gods of the weather, powers which are at first conceived
as dwelling on particular mountains, but are ultimately disengaged from the
earth, and formed into a distinct class. He next infers that these important
powers are subject to powers higher still, powers which regulate the winds
and the rains, compelling them to recur at regular intervals, and through
them exercising an ultimate control over the production of food and whatever
else affects human life and fortune on earth. These powers are the sun, the
moon and the stars. When this point has been reached the cycle is complete.
No further progress, none at least on the old lines, is possible.
Mr Payne carefully guards his statement against all excess
When it is said that man has begun by worshipping the terrestrial
powers and has advanced successively to the worship of the atmospheric and
the celestial, it is by no means meant that he does not, in the very earliest
stages of advancement, recognize the wind and the rain, the sun and the
moon, as objects exercising influence over his fortunes ; for such objects
naturally awaken even in the savage mind the instincts of fear and veneration.
What is meant is that the atmospheric and stellar powers take a prominent
place in the incorporated family of men and gods, bound together by the
covenant of sacrifice at a later period than the gods of the earth. The
recognition of these powers as benevolent ones belongs to the stage of
artificial food-production.
As to the sequence moon and sun rather than sun and moon
and the cause of this sequence Mr Payne is equally explicit :
:
The worship of the moon naturally precedes that of the sun, because a
connection is traced between the lunar phenomena and the food-supply in an
earlier stage than that in which a connection is traced between the food-supply
and the solar phenomena. The different seasons of the year bring with them
different supplies of natural force.. ..The approach and duration of the periods
in which these different supplies are provided is measured by the successive
re- appearances and gradual changes of the moon. Hence apparently the savage
naturally regards the moon as the cause of these successive supplies of food 2 .
To all the beneficent aspects and relations of the moon as
insisted on by all authorities we may add perhaps, in the making
of man's early religion, some touch of spectral terror of the remote
dull staring thing
:
Setebos, Setebos, Setebos,
Thinketh he dwelleth in the cold of the moon.
In Mr Payne's sequence one step on the ladder from earth to
heaven is what may be called the 'weather.' He adopts in fact
without knowing it a distinction at which the Stoic philosophers
arrived and which is very convenient for religion, the distinction
1 Op. cit. i. p. 493.
2 In some parts of the world the successive moons or months are called by the
name of the plants that appear in them.
: