With what superior understanding could they now gaze up into the sky, and snap their fingers scornfully at its former azure mystery! No wonder that the artist who could come forward with such an interpretation became a god! And no wonder that in strong nations gods and men are one! The fact that the explanation was not a true one, according to our notions, did not matter in the least.
History not only reveals, but also proves that lies are not necessarily hostile to existence.
For thousands of years the human race not only lived, but also flourished with the lie of the Ptolemaic theory of the heavens on their tongue.
For centuries men thrived and multiplied, believing that the lightning was Jehovah's anger, and that the rainbow was Jehovah's reminder of a certain solemn covenant by which He promised never again to destroy all life on earth by a flood.
I do not wish to imply that these two beliefs are false. For my part, I would prefer to believe them, rather than accept the explanations of these phenomena which modern science offers me. Still, the fact remains that these two Judaic explanations have been exploded by modern science, though the question whether, as explanations, they are superior to modern science, scarcely requires a moment's consideration.
At any rate they were the work of an artist, and when we think of the joy they must have spread among wondering mankind, we cannot wonder that such an artist was made a god. It was an artist, too, who created the unchanging thing;[45] who created every kind of permanency, i.e. Stability out of Evolution, and among other unchangeable things, the soul of man, which was perhaps the greatest artistic achievement that has ever been accomplished.
And this Man-God who created Being—that is to say, a stable world, a world which can be reckoned with, and in which the incessant kaleidoscopic character of things is entirely absent—this same Man-God who found the earth "without form" and "void," and whose magnificent Spirit "moved upon the face of the waters"; when people grew too weak to look upon him as their brother and God at the same time,[46] was relegated to his own world, and from a great distance they now pray to him and worship him and say: "For Thine is the Kingdom, the Power and the Glory, For ever and ever. Amen."
"For ever and ever;" this was something they could not say of the world as it is; and the thought of stability and of Being was a delight to them.
It may be difficult for us to picture how great the rejoicings must have been which followed upon every fresh ordering and arranging of the universe, every fresh interpretation of the world in the terms of man.
Perhaps only a few people to-day, who are beginning to cast dubious glances at Life, and to question even the justification of man's existence, may be able to form some conception of the thrill that must have passed through an ancient community, when one of its higher men uprose and ordered and adjusted Life for them, and, in so ordering it, transfigured it.