arkness are
the two great principles of existence, the one of animate, the
other of inanimate nature. He held that soul and life are every
day shed from the sun upon all objects open to his beams. For
such doctrines as these he was denounced as practically an
atheist! Fortunately the times have changed, though we have
still much to learn in the way of rational tolerance and
sympathetic receptivity.

Who shall say how old is this idea of two distinct, and generally
opposing principles, the light and the dark? The Babylonian
cosmology carries us a long way back, but not to the beginning
of such mystical conceptions. For in that cosmology Marduk is
a well-developed god of light, with Tiamat as his antithesis, the
goddess of the dark, and the nature and course of the deadly
contest between them has taken form in a well-defined series of
myths.

One of the most obvious emotional effects of darkness is to
inspire fear, and there are few who have not in some degree and
on some occasions experienced a sense of discomfort in the
dark--a chill, or a shrinking, which in certain cases, especially
with children, may amount to terror. It is possible that we have
here, as is often contended, an organic reminiscence of the
experience of our remote ancestors. Certainly it is not difficult
for us to sympathise with the primitive dread of darkness, nor to
understand the transition to the conception of darkness as a
hostile power. But there is also an element which may be
regarded as simply personal and individual--a natural
anticipation of unknown dangers, and a sense of helplessness
should the apprehensions be realised. There is, moreover, an
element of a still more directly mystical character, that which
Everett describes as a feeling that in the darkness the familiar
world is swept away and that we are touching the limits of the
natural. Hence the chill of the unknown and supernatural.

However this may be, the fact remains that from the earliest
known times, there have been powers of darkness set over
against the powers of light; and the conflict between them has
suggested with exceptional vividness the conflict between good
and evil. The opening verses of the Bible, with their chaos and
darkness, and the sublime command--"Let there be light"--are in
line with a vast body of primitive myth and speculation which
represents the good God as the Creator of light, or as light itself
over against the dark. The mysticism of the prolog