t in the extreme and eternal Splendor. I think Jefferies, when
he asked that question with which I have begun this chapter, was in some
sense subconsciously, if not quite consciously, aware of the answer. His
frequent references to the burning blazing sun throughout The Story of
the Heart seem to be an indication of his real deep-down attitude of
mind.

(1) See, in the same connection, Plato's allegory of the Cave,
Republic, Book vii.

The shadow-figures of the creeds and theogonies pass away truly like
ephemeral dreams; but to say that time spent in their study is wasted,
is a mistake, for they have value as being indications of things much
more real than themselves, namely, of the stages of evolution of the
human mind. The fact that a certain god-figure, however grotesque and
queer, or a certain creed, however childish, cruel, and illogical, held
sway for a considerable time over the hearts of men in any corner or
continent of the world is good evidence that it represented a real
formative urge at the time in the hearts of those good people, and
a definite stage in their evolution and the evolution of humanity.
Certainly it was destined to pass away, but it was a step, and a
necessary step in the great process; and certainly it was opaque and
brutish, but it is through the opaque things of the world, and not
through the transparent, that we become aware of the light.

It may be worth while to give instances of how some early rituals and
creeds, in themselves apparently barbarous or preposterous, were really
the indications of important moral and social conceptions evolving in
the heart of man. Let us take, first, the religious customs connected
with the ideas of Sacrifice and of Sin, of which such innumerable
examples are now to be found in the modern books on Anthropology. If we
assume, as I have done more than once, that the earliest state of Man
was one in which he did not consciously separate himself from the world,
animate and inanimate, which surrounded him, then (as I have also said)
it was perfectly natural for him to take some animal which bulked large
on his horizon--some food-animal for instance--and to pay respect to it
as the benefactor of his tribe, its far-back ancestor and totem-symbol;
or, seeing the boundless blessing of the cornfields, to believe in
some kind of spirit of the corn (not exactly a god but rather a magical
ghost) which, reincarnated every year, sprang up to save mankind
from fami