But other races than the Aryan were less inclined to embellish and humanize nature. The imagination worked less freely to add to the visible aspect of things. The consequence of this thinness of reaction was, that the mind rested in things as they appeared, although it could not desist from assigning to them capacities and powers which were superhuman. Nature was at least instinct with will, even while this vaguely stirring will did not clothe itself in definite forms. Man believed { 23} himself surrounded by forces which affected him for good and evil; he felt himself immersed in an ocean of life, yet he could not discern any forms back of that which he saw with his bodily eyes. Perhaps these other races had less of the dramatic in their composition, less of that genial delight in far-fetched analogies and the free play of ideas.
As time passed, the first stage of mythology with its simple naturalism and its relative lack of imaginative elements gave way to a more human stage. Myths of the next world came to the front, and man became more and more concerned with his salvation in an afterlife. Comparative religion has proven how widespread was the belief in some sort of immortality. The Orphic cults in Greece, the Osiris and Isis cult in Egypt, the worship of Attis and Adonis in Syria, the purification and communion ceremonies of Mithraism, all turned about the idea of a secret means of salvation. A common set of ideas developed in the Mediterranean basin and found expression in liturgies and phrases of a striking similarity. The god dies and is resurrected; the virgin goddess gives birth to a son; the members of a religious community eat of their god and gain strength from the sacred meal. The Church Fathers were aware of these similarities and sought to explain away their resemblances with the Christian ritual by means of the theory that the Devil had blasphemously imitated Christian rites and doctrines. Research has shown that this theory of parody is entirely unhistorical. The fact is, that Christianity borrowed its ritual from the cults among which it grew up. For instance, the belief in the death and resurrection of a savior-god was very { 24} prevalent in Tarsus, Paul's own city. The Attis mysteries were celebrated at a season which corresponded to the end of our Lenten period and the beginning of Easter. They were preceded by fasting and began with lamentations, "the votaries gathering in sorrow around the bier of the dead divinity; then followed the resurrection, and the risen god gave hope of salvation to the mystic brotherhood, and the whole service closed with the feast of rejoicing, the Hilaria." There can be little doubt that this whole cycle of ideas represents a development of the primitive ritual of eating the sacred animal or plant in spring in order to foster the re-birth of man's necessities. From this germ sprang reflective ideas of atonement and communion and immortality.