Show 174 STUDENT LIFE for chariot of the god Apollo drawn scientific hypotheses accounting folthe origin of matter and life if by fiery steeds across the heavens to sink in the great ocean stream at lowed to their logical conclusions in absurdities night and be carried by the current result alike “The ideal of perfection whether of the ocean back to the East He made his daily trip to light the of power or of wisdom or of jusearth for the benefit of man He tice or of goodness or of beauty veiled his face with clouds when is always beyond man that is he He can conceive a perfection beyond displeased with his subjects His idea of shot his arrows (the sun’s rays) man’s attainment causation has led his intelligence to into the Grecian camp at Ilium of a final cause producing such intense heat that the conception thousands perished in punishment which he calls God Naturally his for their crimes The phenomena ideal adheres to this intellectual of thunder lightning and the winds concept and in the final cause he were they believed governed by seeks to focus all his conceptions of thus God comes to separate great spirits But it was perfection and as necessary to account for the be regarded as almighty the perfection of justice of goodsmall things as the great and primitive man walking through “the ness and of beauty” all-wi- se forest primeval” and by the “sylvan streams” heard the rustle of the leaves and the musical murmur of the brook It would not do to think of his great and powerful gods as manifesting themselves in such gentle unassuming ways so in his imagination he saw the forest inhabited by tiny harmless spirits and the running water the home of numerous nymphs and lesser deities It was his only way to account for the origin of things Yet tlixs was really a secondary cause and if he concerned himself with the origin of his gods he was compelled to give up in despair Then as now the nature and origin of God was involved in complete In that obscurity and mystery advanceregard we have made little ment for the best religious theories as well as the most accredited semi-di-vi- ne Consider now Germanic mythology Our ancestors prior to their conversion to Christianity were a warlike seafaring piratical horde of Might was right and the hero — — the battlefield the great warrior was the ideal of perfection Thor they worshipped as the deity who controlled the thunder and the tempests but Saxneat was their god of tear and heaven where the heroic and brave of this earth should be rewarded in immortality battlefield a was perpetual Through all eternity the favored day in spirits would spend every wounds Each night their battle would be healed and at daybreak every man would be refreshed and sound ready for the contests of the day On account of women’s being unable to engage in warfare on earth it was doubtful in their |