Handbook of American Indians north of Mexico / edited by Frederick Webb Hodge.
- Date:
- 1907-1910
Licence: In copyright
Credit: Handbook of American Indians north of Mexico / edited by Frederick Webb Hodge. Source: Wellcome Collection.
986/1000 (page 968)
![MYTHOLOGY [ B. A. E. rile constant struggle of man with his physical environment to secure welfare was a warfare against elements ever defi- nitely and vividly personified and hu- manized hy him, thus unconsciouslv making his surroundings quite unreal', though felt to be real; and his struggle with his environment was a ceaseless strife with animals and plants and trees in like manner ever mythically personi- iied and humanized hy him ; and, linally, his tireless struggle with other men for sujiremacy and welfare was therefore ty])ical, not only fundamentally and i>rac- tically, hut also mythically and ideally; and so this never-ceasing struggle was an abiding, all-jiervading, all-transforming theme of his thoughts, and an ever-im- pending, ever-absorbing business of his life, suffered and impelled by his cease- less yearning for welfare. An environment^woukl have been re- garded l)v savage men very differently from what it would be by the cultured mind of to-day. To the former the bodies and elements composing it were regarded as beings, indeed as man-beings, and the operations of nature were ascribed to the action of the diverse magic powers, or ormdas, exercised hy these beings rather than to the forces of nature; so that the action and interaction of the bodies and elemental princij)les of nature were regarded as the result of the working of nund)erless beings through their oren- das. Among most known tribes in North America the earth is I'egarded as a humanized being in ]>erson and form, every particle of whose body is living substance and potent with the quick- ening power of life, which is bestowed on all who feed upon her. They that feed upon her are the plants and the trees, who are indeed beings living and having a being because they receive life substance from the earth, hence they are like the primal beings endowed with mind and volition, to whom j)rayer ((]. v.) may be offered, since they rule and dispose in their several jurisdictions unless they are overcome by some more j)owerful oroida. Now, a prayer is psychologically the ex- pression of the fact that the petitioner in need is unable to secure what is reipiired for the welfare, or in distress to prevent what will result in the ill-fare, of himself or his kind. The substance of the j)rayer merely tells in what direction or in what respect this inability exists. In turn, the animals and men live on the products of the trees and jdants, by which means they renew life and gain the <|uickening power of life, indii’ectly from the earth-mother, and thus by a metajdior they are said to have come up out of the earth. .Vs the giver of life, the earth is regarded affec- tionately and is calleil iVlother, but as the taker of life ana thedevourer of their dead bodies, she is regarded as wicked and a cannihal. In the science of opinions mythology is found to be a fruitful held in which to gather data regarding the origin and growth of human concepts relating to man and the world around him. A study of the birth and evolution of the concept's of the human mind indicates clearly that the beginnings of conventional forms and ideas and their variations along the lines of their development are almost never (piite so simi)le, or rather (juite so direct, as they may seem—are seldom, even in the beginning, the direct ])roduct c^f the environmental resource and exigency act- ing together so immediately and so ex- clusively of mental agency as students are apt to assume. As a rule they are rather the ])roduct f>f these things—these factors and conditions of environment acting very indirectly and sometimes very subtly and conq)lexly—through the con- dition of mind wrouglit by long-coiitinued life and experience therein, or, again, act- ing through the state of mind borne over from one environment to another. It is the part of wisdom to he more cau- tious in deriving ideas aTid concepts, arts, or even technic forms of a ])eo])le too in- stantly, too directly, from the environ- ing natural objects or elements they may simulate or resemble. The motive, if not for the choice, at least for the])crsist- ency, of a given mode of a concept in re- lation to any objective factor is always a psychic rea.«on, not a mere lirst-hand' in- fluence of environment or of accident in the ])opularsense of this term. This dis- position of the “mere accident” or “chance” hyjwthesis of origins disptds many perplexities in the formation of ex- act judgment concerning comparative data, in the identitications of cognate forms and concepts among widely sej>a- rated ])eo])les; for instance, in the drawing of sound inferences particularly regard- ing their common or generic, s])ecitic or exceptional, origin and growth, as shown by the data in (luestion. .Vs it is evident that independent proc- esses and diverse factors cond)ine<l can not be alike in every ]>articular in widely separatc'd parts of the world, there is found a means for determinijig, through minuti' differences in similarity, rather than through general similarities alone, howsoever striking they may appear, whether such forms are related, whether or not they havtui common genesiswhence they have iidierited aught in common. Hence caution makes it incumbent on students to beware of the alluring fallacy lurking in the fre(iuentlyre])eate<l epigram that “human nature is everywhere the same. ’ ’ The nature of men differs widely](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b24881739_0986.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
