His protests, however, did not avail to ward off the artificiality of the reign of Pope. Here are two lines from the "Essay on Man."
"Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutored mind
Sees God in clouds, or hears Him in the wind."
"Untutored!" The poor Indian could have taught Pope many things, and perhaps made a nobler man of him! For the poetry and mystic influence of the winds were experienced and expressed with a fullness of experience and feeling to which the town-bred poet was all too great a stranger. The range, the beauty and vigour of the myth of the four winds as developed among the native races of America (says Tylor) had scarcely a rival elsewhere in the mythology of the world. They evolved "the mystic quaternion"—the wild and cruel North Wind—the lazy South, the lover—the East Wind, the morning bringer—and the West, Mudjekeewis, the father of them all. Outside the quaternion were the dancing Pauppukkeewis, the Whirlwind, and the fierce and shifty hero, Monobozho, the North-West Wind. The spirit of these legends, if not their accurate detail, can be appreciated in Longfellow's "Hiawatha."
The magnificent imagery of the Hebrew psalmists should have given to Pope at least a touch of sympathy with "the untutored mind"; for they love to represent God making "the winds His messengers," or as Himself "flying on the wings of the wind." Or the prophet Ezekiel could have brought home to him some of the deeper thoughts that the winds have stirred in the soul of man. "Then said he unto me, Prophesy unto the wind, prophesy, son of man, and say to the wind: . . . Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live." The Indian undoubtedly lacked tuition, but not exactly of the kind his would-be tutor could bestow. Man, says Browning,
"imprints for ever
His presence on all lifeless things: the winds
Are henceforth voices, wailing or a shout,
A querulous mutter, or a quick gay laugh."
That is better. But why "lifeless"? Why "imprints"? Best is the Hebrew apostrophe—"come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe—that we may live. Give us of the life that is in you." And that is the mystic's prayer.
The winds of heaven were bound to make indelible impressions on the primitive mind. But few will be prepared for Max Müller's statement that the wind, next to fire, is the most important phenomenon in nature which has led to the conception of a divine being. But our surprise ceases when we realise how manifest and universal are the parts played by the wind in relation to man's weal or woe—they bring the rain, they drive the storm, they clear the air. The landsman knows much—the sailor more. Guy de Maupassant makes the sailor say, "Vous ne le (vent) connaissez point, gens de la terre! Nous autres, nous le connaissons plus que notre père ou que notre mère, cet invisible, ce terrible, ce capricieux, ce sournois, ce féroce. Nous l'aimons et nous le redoutons, nous savons ses malices et ses colères . . . car la lutte entre nous et lui ne s'interrompt jamais."
Wind-gods and wind-myths are practically of world-wide diffusion. Those of the American Indians have already been noted. Similar, if less striking and poetical, are those which prevail among the Polynesians and Maoris. Those of the Greeks and Romans are best known, but have abundant parallels in other lands. The Mâruts of the Vedic hymns are unequivocally storm-gods, who uproot forests and shatter rocks—strikers, shouters, warriors—though able anon to take the form of new-born babes. The Babylonians had their wind-gods, good and bad, created in the lower part of the heaven, and joining at times in the fateful fight against the dragon. And our Teutonic fathers had their storm-gods who were brave warriors, Odin, or Wodin, being the chief. Grimm thus sums up Wodin's characteristics. "He is the all-pervading and formative power, who bestows shape and beauty on man and all things, from whom proceeds the gift of song, and the management of war and victory, on whom at the same time depends the fertility of the soil, nay, wishing and all the highest gifts and blessings." We have here a typical transition. The abstract conception of "the all-pervading creative and formative power is evidently later than that of the storm-god, rushing through the air in the midst of the howling tempest—later even than that of the god who quaffs the draught of inspiration and shares it with seers, bards, and faithful fallen warriors. The idea of life or soul emerges, and frees itself from its cruder elements; the tempest god yields place to the All-Father, sitting on the throne of the world. The same evolution is seen in the case of the cloud-compelling Zeus. Nay, Jehovah Himself would seem to have been originally a god of storms, sitting above the canopy of the aerial water-flood, "making the clouds His chariot," and "walking upon the wings of the wind," His voice the thunder, His shaft the lightning. How strange and unexpected the transformations of these immanent ideas! Yet there is organic continuity throughout. So large is the place filled by the phenomena of the winds, that human imagination has not always stopped short at their mere personification or deification. In many American languages, we are told, the same word is used for storm and for god; so, too, with certain tribes in Central Africa. That is to say, the name for the storm-wind has become the general name for deity!
But how about the present? Can it be said that in the present day, among civilised peoples, the phenomena of the winds have any important part to play? An appeal to literature is decisive on the point. No description of open-air life, or even of life within doors where nature is not altogether shut out, can pass over the emotional influences of the winds. They sob, they moan, they sigh; they rustle, roar, or bellow; they exhilarate or depress; they suggest many and varied trains of thought.
"Blow, blow, thou winter wind,
Thou art not so unkind
As man's ingratitude"—