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Science Fiction Collector, v. 2, issue 6, May 1937
Page 14
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Wayward Myths The First of a Series of Articles by Claire P. Beck The tool-making animal found time to gaze. awed, upon the misty sunrise. He tried to interpret his fear of the ubiquitous thunder. He made an attempt to fathom his relationship to the evidences of nature, and built tales that tried to unlock the doors of the unknown. Soft minds, free of the Influences of nature, striving only for ways and mean the better to seek out grubs or withstand the charges of wild beasts, created about themselves the stories of gods and demons, myths that result only from the freedom of Ignorance. The Earth was a waterbound lump of soil with the top smoothed off, save where some giant had kicked the dust or piled mountains atop each other in his climb to the sky. The rumble in the sky, to the primitive man, was the snarl of a great beast, who might pounce from the sky and swallow him up at any moment. The pulver of the Earth was caused by a fettered monster beyond the distant hills, who stirred in his bondage, cursing his eternal captivity. Simple tales, the early ones, for man's relation to himself was merely personal. He had not the confusion of leadership, commerce, or morals to add fire to his Imagination. But his abstract views could not last for long. The Moon became a queen; the wind, a fleeting lover. As civilization advanced, the myth changed; man continued to weave Into It the Increasing complexities of his life, until eventually clever politicians had converted It to religion. But the myth remains a fascination study, if no longer a belief. It is proof that man has not changed with the centuries. Hyperborea, the Isles of the Blest, of Greek fable, still have their counterparts in the life of everyone. The myth is but an imaginative projection of the sins and exploits of human life...and the library shelves groan today. In the sad reaches of the past, when the art of writing was still unknown, or in its infancy; when reading was a rite—Iong before the Chinaman arranged his porcelain types or the German cut his matrices—the bard was the historian, and through him has come our only knowledge of the ages that have gone. Mythology, then, in an uncertain study of the world too old for us to know about. In the dying stories of the Central Americans lies an indefinite connection with the land of Atlantis, whose white towers have loomed before the eyes of many moderns; whose robed priests have measured the corridors of our minds. Mythology is an intriguing study...And when we read of the exploits of Lemminkainen, and dream of the ghosts which breath over eroded dolmen fields, let us not dream also of a future being's wonder over a strip of macadam highway or a pile of rust and concrete, lest we forget the world about us, and become the subjects of jest. * (Excepting the science of archaeology.) page 14
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Wayward Myths The First of a Series of Articles by Claire P. Beck The tool-making animal found time to gaze. awed, upon the misty sunrise. He tried to interpret his fear of the ubiquitous thunder. He made an attempt to fathom his relationship to the evidences of nature, and built tales that tried to unlock the doors of the unknown. Soft minds, free of the Influences of nature, striving only for ways and mean the better to seek out grubs or withstand the charges of wild beasts, created about themselves the stories of gods and demons, myths that result only from the freedom of Ignorance. The Earth was a waterbound lump of soil with the top smoothed off, save where some giant had kicked the dust or piled mountains atop each other in his climb to the sky. The rumble in the sky, to the primitive man, was the snarl of a great beast, who might pounce from the sky and swallow him up at any moment. The pulver of the Earth was caused by a fettered monster beyond the distant hills, who stirred in his bondage, cursing his eternal captivity. Simple tales, the early ones, for man's relation to himself was merely personal. He had not the confusion of leadership, commerce, or morals to add fire to his Imagination. But his abstract views could not last for long. The Moon became a queen; the wind, a fleeting lover. As civilization advanced, the myth changed; man continued to weave Into It the Increasing complexities of his life, until eventually clever politicians had converted It to religion. But the myth remains a fascination study, if no longer a belief. It is proof that man has not changed with the centuries. Hyperborea, the Isles of the Blest, of Greek fable, still have their counterparts in the life of everyone. The myth is but an imaginative projection of the sins and exploits of human life...and the library shelves groan today. In the sad reaches of the past, when the art of writing was still unknown, or in its infancy; when reading was a rite—Iong before the Chinaman arranged his porcelain types or the German cut his matrices—the bard was the historian, and through him has come our only knowledge of the ages that have gone. Mythology, then, in an uncertain study of the world too old for us to know about. In the dying stories of the Central Americans lies an indefinite connection with the land of Atlantis, whose white towers have loomed before the eyes of many moderns; whose robed priests have measured the corridors of our minds. Mythology is an intriguing study...And when we read of the exploits of Lemminkainen, and dream of the ghosts which breath over eroded dolmen fields, let us not dream also of a future being's wonder over a strip of macadam highway or a pile of rust and concrete, lest we forget the world about us, and become the subjects of jest. * (Excepting the science of archaeology.) page 14
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