When the first savage saw his hut destroyed by a bolt of lightning, he
fell down upon his face in terror. He had no conception of natural
forces, of laws of electricity; he saw this event as the act of an
individual intelligence. To-day we read about fairies and demons,
dryads and fauns and satyrs, Wotan and Thor and Vulcan, Freie and
Flora and Ceres, and we think of all these as pretty fancies,
play-products of the mind; losing sight of the fact that they were
originally meant with entire seriousness--that not merely did ancient
man believe in them, but was forced to believe in them, because the
mind must have an explanation of things that happen, and an individual
intelligence was the only explanation available. The story of the hero
who slays the devouring dragon was not merely a symbol of day and
night, of summer and winter; it was a literal explanation of the
phenomena, it was the science of early times.

Men imagined supernatural powers such as they could comprehend. If the
lightning god destroyed a hut, obviously it must be because the owner
of the hut had given offense; so the owner must placate the god, using
those means which would be effective in the quarrels of men--presents
of roast meats and honey and fresh fruits, of wine and gold and jewels
and women, accompanied by friendly words and gestures of submission.
And when in spite of all things the natural evil did not cease, when
the people continued to die of pestilence, then came the opportunity
for hysterical or ambitious persons to discover new ways of
penetrating the mind of the god. There would be dreamers of dreams and
seers of visions and hearers of voices; readers of the entrails of
beasts and interpreters of the flight of birds; there would be burning
bushes and stone tablets on mountain-tops, and inspired words dictated
to aged disciples on lonely islands. There would arise special castes
of men and women, learned in these sacred matters; and these priestly