origin of an attitude is not
to explain it away. May it not be that these sentiments can be given
another setting and other objects?

While all races have passed through this myth-making {21} stage,
certain races have been more gifted, or else more favored by the
circumstances of their development. A vivid imagination, a relatively
complex society with different traditions, a diversified landscape, an
inviting climate, and a leisurely, yet vigorous life were necessary to
the highest efflorescence of this poetic power to weave human motives
into nature and into the conduct of supernatural powers conceived after
the manner of men. These conditions were fulfilled to a remarkable
degree among the Greeks, whose mythology constantly surprises us by its
richness, variety and delicacy. As the years rolled by, every striking
aspect of nature or of traditional ritual was interpreted in terms of
the passion, plan or caprice of some being, different from, yet by no
means alien to, man. The daring and beauty of the legends woven by
this race and the immensity of their range have made them the
admiration and wonder of other times more given to reflection than to
phantasy. The childhood of the race was productive in a memorable
fashion which has made art and literature forever its debtors.

In our admiration for Greek mythology, we must not forget that other
races and nations wove stories to account for human life and to
interpret those features of nature which aroused their fear, love or
wonder. Our own Northern mythology had its beauties and wild reaches
of imagination which made it, in certain regards, a fit rival of that
of the Mediterranean. The story of Balder, the joyous and kindly god
whom all things loved, is evidently the mythical form of the passing of
summer sunshine and the coming of winter with its darkness and gloom.
We must always remember that our remote ancestors interpreted their
world concretely, {22} and mainly in terms of human life, because they
had no abstract ideas at their command. Psychical and physical
concepts were interfused in their minds: prose and poetry, fact and
figure combined together without that feeling of disharmony which is so
distinctive of the modern mind. Nature welcomed personification, and
to read the conflict of light and darkness, warmth and cold, in terms
of human struggles and hates was the inevitable course for human
thought to take. The simple grandeur of many of these ta