The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

18 The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

from the outset, and the endeavour to interpret it with bald
literality, and to see in it the fossilised ideas and practices of the
past, would end in nothing but failure. Christianity is not the only
religion which has consciously employed parable for inculcating
the truths it professes to teach. Buddhism has done the same, and
the“Parables of Buddhagosha”have had a wider influence than
all the other volumes of the Buddhist Canon.
Survivals there undoubtedly are in theological language as in
all other forms of language, and one of the hardest tasks of the
student of ancient religion is to determine where they really exist.
Is the symbolism embodied in a word or an expression of primary
[017] or secondary origin? Was it from the very beginning a symbol
and metaphor intended to be but the sensuous channel through
which some perception of divine truth could be conveyed to us, or
does it reflect the manners and thought of an earlier age of society,
which has acquired a symbolical significance with the lapse of
centuries? When the primitive Aryan gave the Being whom he
worshipped the name of Dyaus, from a root which signified“to
be bright,”did he actually see in the bright firmament the divinity
he adored, or was the title a metaphorical one expressive only of
the fact that the power outside himself was bright and shining
like the sun? The Babylonians pictured their gods in the image of
man: did Babylonian religion accordingly begin with the worship
of deified ancestors, or were the human figures mere symbols
and images denoting that the highest conception man could form
of his creator was that of a being like himself? The answer to
these questions, which it has been of late years the fashion to
seek in modern savagery, is inconclusive. It has first to be proved
that modern savagery is not due to degeneration rather than to
arrested development, and that the forefathers of the civilised
nations of the ancient world were ever on the same level as the
savage of to-day. In fact the savage of to-day is not, and cannot
be, a representative of primitive man. If the ordinary doctrine of
development is right, primitive man would have known nothing