The Distinctive Messages of the Old Religions (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from The Distinctive Messages of the Old Religions

Regulated by the grandeur of the object. On the contrary, with the full perception of the visible universe, he begins by selecting for worship pre cisely those things which are not fitted to attract the eye, which, when they do attract the eye, are conspicuous by their want of beauty. These are facts patent and undeniable, but they are none the less suggestive, and they do not seem to me to have received adequate attention. For, the point to be considered is, that amidst this almost universal canonisation of the universe there is one object which the primitive man does not canonise - his own soul. He canonises the souls 'of others; he worships the spirits of his ancestors; but it never occurs to him to how his head in reverence to that mysterious life which dwells within his own breast. Why is this? The life within him is the nearest object to him in all the universe, the only object in all the universe of which he has any real know ledge. One would naturally have expected that with the dawn of the tendency to worship, the earliest object of his adoration would have been precisely that mysterious life which manifested it self in contact with all other things, and without whose contact no other thing could be perceived. Why is it that the primitive man turns away from that which is nearest to him and bestows the gift of divinity originally upon those objects which are seemingly the most alien to his own nature - upon.

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