Mr. Fiske then takes up this theory: that all men, being puzzled by this daily phenomenon of light and darkness, day and night, and having no “scientific faith” to guide them, and nothing better (Mr. Fiske will pardon us this little bit of heresy against the XIXth century) to supply its place, set to thinking and endeavoring to solve this tremendous problem. They were all a dreadful sort of people all the world over: they “knew nothing about laws of nature, nothing about physical forces, nothing about the relations of cause and effect, nothing about the necessary regularity of things.” As a set-off against all these “nothings,” they possessed a something in the shape of “an unlimited capacity for believing and fancying, because fancy and belief had not yet been checked and headed off in various directions by established rules of experience.” To all of which, and a great deal more of the same nature, we feel very much inclined to append that awkward Q. E. D. of the geometry which somebody would tag on to the end of those beautiful propositions at school, and which our professor terrified us by translating, “Which must be proved.”
Mr. Fiske, then, having set this profound and eternal conundrum before the crazed intellects of the human race, which were gifted, according to him, with nothing but this “unlimited capacity for believing and fancying”—one would imagine that there might have been room for Revelation here; but Revelation, of course, clashes with “scientific faith,” and is therefore a myth in Mr. Fiske’s eyes—what were the poor beings to do but endow everything, particularly the sun, with the “volition” which they felt within themselves? How or why this must have been so Mr. Fiske fails to explain, or indeed that it was so at all. However, just for argument’s sake, let us take his word for it, though by so doing we are false to scientific faith. Mr. Fiske’s proposition, then, runs thus: Given the sun, and given the people with eyes to gaze at the sun, the people must necessarily have endowed the sun with “volition,” and worshipped the sun as a god. Once more, Q. E. D.
Hence Mr. Fiske proceeds to argue: “The conception of infallible skill in archery, which underlies such a great variety of myths and popular fairy-tales, is originally derived from the inevitable victory of the sun over his enemies, the demons of night, winter, and tempest. Arrows and spears which never miss their mark, swords from whose blow no armor can protect, are invariably the weapons of solar divinities or heroes.” Consequently, Mr. Fiske is cruel enough to knock on the head a considerable number of fictitious characters who were much better known and loved by us years ago than many real characters to-day. He levels his shaft tipped with scientific faith, whiz!—and down drop William Tell, William of Cloudeslee, Beth-Gellert, Jack and the Beanstalk, Roland, Sir Bedivere, Ulysses, Achilles, Balder the Beautiful, Hercules, and a whole host of other famous heroes—or rather they mount, for one and all represented the sun, and were types and figures of his solar majesty.
Well, though we grieve to say it, it may be so; but the consolation is still left us that, even if it be so, “it’s of no consequence,” as our old friend Mr. Toots was wont sagaciously to remark. There is so much of reality around us, and so much real sham, to speak a paradox, to wing with our arrows, to shoot at all our lifelong and make no visible impression on, that we have neither time, nor inclination, nor patience to bother our brains with wire-drawn theories as to whether Tell was Tell or the sun; whether a man ever performed the impossible feat of piercing an apple, which happened to be on his boy’s head, with a shaft or not, or whether a dog was killed by its master in mistake. Such things may serve to amuse children or people who can find nothing better to occupy their time. So far there is nothing to object to in it. But when a man takes every imaginable story, collects them all as he would old fossils, and tickets each off with a bad explanation, or throws them together into a bag, as it were, and, charlatan-like, shakes them all up in order to see if by any chance they might tumble out in a shape antagonistic to Christianity, a work which, in view of the many realities around us, is rubbish at the best, becomes in Mr. Fiske’s hands rubbish at the worst.
For he does not hold to his tether; he will go out of his way to drag religion into a place where, if it must enter, it shows itself, as always, full of majesty, and beauty, and sublime truth, but not a thing of ridicule, as this writer, by hint, and innuendo, and insinuating little foot-note, and sly little chuckle, and weak little laugh, and wit of the very smallest, would make it.
“The religious myths of antiquity, and the fireside legends of ancient and modern times, have their common roots in the mental habits of primeval humanity. They are the earliest recorded utterances of men concerning the visible phenomena of the world into which they were born.”
Now, there is nothing particularly startling in this passage; it is just such an one as the reader might or might not assent to, being really utterly careless on the subject. He would scarcely stop to inquire how far Mr. Fiske’s “religious myths of antiquity” extended. There is a seemingly unconscious vagueness about the phrase that allows it to pass without question. And Mr. Fiske’s theories, if we may dignify them by such a title, run on smoothly enough in killing Beth-Gellert for the thousandth time, and bringing his powerful mind and the infallible test of his “scientific faith” to bear on old nursery jingles—such, for instance, as:
“Jack and Jill went up the hill
To get a pail of water;
Jack fell down and broke his crown,
And Jill came tumbling after.”
“This may read like mere nonsense,” says Mr. Fiske. Again we agree with him it may; but the rising smile fades on the lip when met by the solemn assurance immediately following: “But there is a point of view from which it may be safely said that there is very little absolute nonsense in the world.”