Forlong - Rivers of Life

Preface. xxxv
but especially of the mystical Phœnix or Solar Eras of Egypt and the East. The
ebb and flow of this tide is shown on the Chart by light broad bands embracing a
width of one hundred years. From this it will be soon that we are now in the midst of
one which has witnessed the denationalizing of Buddhism in the far East after a reign
of some eighteen hundred years, and which threatens Christianity in the same way
after a duration of less than a thousand years in Central and Northem Europe.
It is hoped that the classification and arrangement here made of old. beliefs,
ideas and symboisms, will enable the religious student to enter with more assur-
ance upon new fields of research without being any longer pulled up or having
lamely to halt at the threshold of temples, unable to assign their right place to the
gods and myths which continually cross his path.
The Chart has, it is believed, been made suitable for general use in all schools
where classics are taught. It is neither orthodox nor heterodox, but as far as
possible simply historical, though showing most of the usually accepted legends and
legendary characters referred to in our ordinary histories.
Unfortunately it has proved impossible to similarly write these volumes. They
are for the student and searcher after the Roots of Faiths, and may perhaps be thought
in certain parts to come, as it were, under the category of medical works, treating of
the radical diseases of early and many existing religions. They deal necessarily with
those ideas and figures which the rude man first too grossly symbolized and worshiped;
for he prayed like us all for those objects he had most at heart; and these are still not
far from the real worship of the world. He besought “the Great Father,” “Creator”
aud “Fertilizer” to bestow upon him and his, all worldly prosperity. which with the
ancient, meant simply fertility in his house and fields, flocka and herds.
All the sacred writings of mankind, and more especially the Christian Bible,
abound with matter quite unfit for the general render, and such is often need-
lessly prurient and immodest having no direct relation to worship or religion, with
which alone the present volumes are concerned. Here are only to be found bona
fide worships, not indecencies in lives or histories, but the fervid religion of earnest
and pious men and women. Nevertheless unavoidable allusions have frequently to
be made to sensuous but popular God-ideas which every student of religions must
well consider. As a very learned author lately wrote, 1 “We have been obliged to go
back to an. epoch in which idealism was still in the cradle, while physical life was in
1 The Zoology of Mythology. By Angelo de Gubernatis, Professor of Sanskrit, etc., in the University
of Florence.