You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Man is an animal with a predilection for ethics. If we collect data from all the quarters of the globe we must find, behind an apparent diversity of forms, a marked unity in content. This unity is manifested not only in the universal tendency to classify phenomena, to regard them as good and bad apart from their pleasure or pain content or even reversing that content,1 but also in an agreement regarding the phenomena to be grouped within these categories. The student of religion will also find that certain attributes or activities of supernatural beings strike him as sublime, while other attributes or aspects of the same beings or creeds the student as a naïve observer would qualify as grotesque or obscene. It is still more surprising to find that our own attitude on this subject roughly corresponds to that of the believers themselves. The Pitchentara regard their sky beings as good obviously because of their nonsexual nature while the "badness" of the demons of the same tribe cannot be separated from their phallic attributes.
As we are about to study the genesis of some primitive "high gods" it is inevitable to begin with a quotation from Andrew Lang, who first introduced this subject into anthropological discussion.
"Where relatively high moral attributes are assigned to a Being, I have called the result 'Religion', where the same being acts like Zeus in Greek fable, plays silly or obscene tricks, is lustful or false, I have spoken of Myth… I am arguing that the two classes of ideas arise from two separate human moods; moods as different and distinct as lust and love… I am arguing that as far as our information goes, the nobler set of ideas is as ancient as the lower."2