Myth, Ritual and Religion, Volume 1

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Longmans, Green, and Company, 1899 - Religion - 719 pages
 

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Page 339 - Social progress means a checking of the cosmic process at every step and the substitution for it of another, which may be called the ethical process; the end of which is not the survival of those who may happen to be the fittest, in respect of the whole of the conditions which obtain, but of those who are ethically the best.
Page 157 - There is an universal tendency among mankind to conceive all beings like themselves, and to transfer to every object, those qualities, with which they are familiarly acquainted, and of which they are intimately conscious.
Page 212 - I am a poet, my father is a doctor, and my mother is a grinder of corn.
Page 65 - These two writers take no account of the singular " dichotomous " divisions, as of Kumite and Kroki, but they draw attention to the groups of kindred which derive their surnames from animals, plants, and the like. " The origin of these family names," says Sir George Grey, " is attributed by the natives to different causes. . . . One origin frequently assigned by the natives is, that they were derived from some vegetable or animal 'being very common in the district which the family inhabited.
Page 101 - Seeing a Tatungolung very lame, I asked him what was the matter ' He said, " Some fellow has put bottle in my foot." I asked him to let me see it. I found he was probably suffering from acute rheumatism. He explained that some enemy must have found his foot track, and have buried in it a piece of broken bottle.
Page 89 - Man's craving to know the causes at work in each event he witnesses, the reasons why each state of things he surveys is such as it is and no other, is no product of high civilisation, but a characteristic of his race down to its lowest stages. Among rude savages it is already an intellectual appetite, whose satisfaction claims many of the moments not engrossed by war or sport, food or sleep.
Page 235 - When the gods performed a sacrifice with Purusha, as the oblation, the spring was its butter, the summer its fuel, and the autumn its (accompanying) offering. 7. This victim, Purusha, born in the beginning, they immolated on the sacrificial grass.
Page 58 - ... what men's eyes behold is but the instrument to be used or the material to be shaped, while behind it there stands some prodigious but yet half-human creature, who grasps it with his hands or blows it with his breath. The basis on which such ideas as these are built is not to be narrowed down to poetic fancy and transformed metaphor. They rest upon a broad philosophy of nature ; early and crude, indeed, but thoughtful, consistent, and quite really and seriously meant.
Page 5 - The two moods are present, and in conflict, through the whole religious history of the human race. They stand as near each other, and as far apart, as Love and Lust. It will later be shown that even some of the most backward savages make a perhaps half-conscious distinction between their mythology and their religion. As to the former, they are communicative ; as to the latter, they jealously guard their secret in sacred mysteries.
Page 244 - These two worlds, heaven and earth, were once joined. Subsequently they were separated (according to one account, by Indra, who thus plays the part of Cronus and of Tane Mahuta). " Heaven and earth," says Dr. Muir, " are regarded as the parents not only of men, but of the gods also, as appears from the various texts where they are designated by the epithet Devapatre, ' having gods for their children...

About the author (1899)

Andrew Lang was born at Selkirk in Scotland on March 31, 1844. He was a historian, poet, novelist, journalist, translator, and anthropologist, in connection with his work on literary texts. He was educated at Edinburgh Academy, St. Andrews University, and Balliol College, Oxford University, becoming a fellow at Merton College. His poetry includes Ballads and Lyrics of Old France (1872), Ballades in Blue China (1880--81), and Grass of Parnassus (1888--92). His anthropology and his defense of the value of folklore as the basis of religion is expressed in his works Custom and Myth (1884), Myth, Ritual and Religion (1887), and The Making of Religion (1898). He also translated Homer and critiqued James G. Frazer's views of mythology as expressed in The Golden Bough. He was considered a good historian, with a readable narrative style and knowledge of the original sources including his works A History of Scotland (1900-7), James VI and the Gowrie Mystery (1902), and Sir George Mackenzie (1909). He was one of the most important collectors of folk and fairy tales. His collections of Fairy books, including The Blue Fairy Book, preserved and handed down many of the better-known folk tales from the time. He died of angina pectoris on July 20, 1912.

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