>>40811417 (OP)
A college in the State of Ohio has adopted for its motto the phrase "Orient Thyself", oriente nosce (alt: te nosce). This significant admonition to Western youth represents one requirement for finding truth in the science of Mythology. Through neglect of it, the glowing personifications of the East have, too generally, migrated to the West, only to find it a Medusa, turning them to stone. Our prosaic literalism changes their ideals to idols.
The time has come when we just learn, rather, to see ourselves in them. Out of an age and civilization where we live in constant recognition of Natural forces, we may transport ourselves to a period and region where no sophisticated eye has looked upon Nature: the sun is a chariot drawn by shining steeds and driven by a refulgent deity, the stars ascend and move by arbitrary power or command, a tree is the bower of a spirit, the fountain leaps from the urn of a Naiad.
In such gay costumes did the laws of Nature hold their carnival... until Science struck the hour of their unmasking. The costumes and masks have, with us, become materials for studying the history of the human mind. But, to know them, we must translate our senses back into that phase of our own early existence, so far as is consistent with carrying our culture with us
Without conceding too much to solar mythology, it may pronounced tolerably clear that the earliest emotion of worship was borne out of the wonder with which Man looked up to the heavens above him.
The splendors of the morning and evening, the azure vault, painted with frscoes of cloud or blackened by the storm, the night, crowned with constellations,... these awakened imagination, inspired awe, kindled admiration, and, at length, adoration in the Being who had reached this intervals in which his eye was lifted above the Earth.
