are dealing was no mere favourite of a goddess, but one with whose
life and well-being the ordinary processes of Nature, whether animal
or vegetable, were closely and intimately concerned. In fact the
central figure of these rites, by whatever name he may be called, is
the somewhat elusive and impersonal entity, who represents in
anthropomorphic form the principle of animate Nature, upon whose
preservation, and unimpaired energies, the life of man, directly, and
indirectly, depends.[13]

Before proceeding to examine these rites there is one point, to which
I have alluded earlier, in another connection, upon which our minds
must be quite clear, i.e., the nature of the injury suffered. Writers
upon the subject are of one accord in considering the usual account to
be but a euphemistic veiling of the truth, while the close relation
between the stories of Adonis and Attis, and the practices associated
with the cult, place beyond any shadow of a doubt the fact that the
true reason for this universal mourning was the cessation, or
suspension, by injury or death, of the reproductive energy of the god
upon whose virile activity vegetable life directly, and human life
indirectly, depended.[14] What we have need to seize and to insist
upon is the overpowering influence which the sense of Life, the need
for Life, the essential Sanctity of the Life-giving faculty, exercised
upon primitive religions. Vellay puts this well when he says: "En
realite c'est sur la conception de la vie physique, consideree dans son
origine, et dans son action, et dans le double principe qui l'anime,
que repose tout le cycle religieux des peuples Orientaux de
l'Antiquite."[15]

Professor von Schroeder says even more precisely and emphatically:
"In der Religion der Arischen Urzeit ist Alles auf Lebensbejahung