Page:Genesis I-II- (IA genesisiii00grot).pdf/87

By philosophy we mean, after all, an explanation of ourselves and the world in which we are.^[1] The range of meaning in words is so great that ordinarily we conceal under this term one knows not how much that is mysterious, and that may even ben held unnecessary. But somthing of a philosophy we all of us attain to, as the natural result of our sense impressions, and our inherited ideas. We shall find past philosophies of our own race embedded in our mythologies and for those of savage nations, we must look to their existing explanations of phenomena, physical and mental, as they are conceived of by them.

At the outset we find that the Hebrews were originally worshippers of nature. Under the name Baal, they personified the Sun. The name Baal lost in time its connection with the Sun and was used as the proper name for a Deity, and one who struggled for preference in men's minds with Yahveh or Jehovah. The progress to the undivided supremacy of Yahveh has been traced by Kuenen at length. It is sufficient to note here that Yahveh was not at first the exclusive God, which he afterwards became mainly through the exertions of the prophets and preachers, who were, above all thigns, teachers of morals and a purer conduct. And there is this to be said that, at this earliest time, the ninth century before Christ, when we Yahvism and Nature worship contending for supremacy in the religion of the Hebrews, there was no such contention among Aryan peoples unless we interpret the struggle between Brahmism and Buddhism as such. The early Greeks and Persians had, indeed, disputes among philosophers, but they them-