"Fear, as Lucretius said, was the first mother of the gods. Fear, above all, of death. Primitive life was beset with a thousand dangers, and seldom ended with natural decay; long before old age could come, violence or some strange disease carried off the great majority of men. Hence early man did not believe that death was ever natural” he attributed it to the operation of supernatural agencies. In the mythology of the natives of New Britain death came to men by an error of the gods. The good god Kambinana told his foolish brother Korvouva, “Go down to men and tell them to cast their skins; so shall they avoid death. But tell the serpents that they must henceforth die.” Korvouva mixed the messages; he delivered the secret of immortality to the snakes, and the doom of death to men. Many tribes thought that death was due to the shrinkage of the skin, and that man would be immortal if only he could moult."
Will Durant, Story of Civilization, Vol.1: Our Oriental Heritage, Ch.4, Section IV, Part 1, 1935
"Fear of death, wonder at the causes of chance events or unintelligible happenings, hope for divine aid and gratitude for good fortune, cooperated to generate religious belief. [...]"
Will Durant, Story of Civilization, Vol.1: Our Oriental Heritage, Ch.4, Section IV, Part 1, 1935
"[...] Primitive man marveled at the phantoms that he saw in sleep, and was struck with terror when he beheld, in his dreams, the figures of those whom he knew to be dead. He buried his dead in the earth to prevent their return; he buried victuals and goods with the corpse lest it should come back to curse him; sometimes he left to the dead the house in which death had come, while he himself moved on to another shelter; in some places he carried the body out of the house not through a door but through a hole in the wall, and bore it rapidly three times around the dwelling, so that the spirit might forget the entrance and never haunt the home.
Such experiences convinced early man that every living thing had a soul, or secret life, within it, which could be separated from the body in illness, sleep or death. [...] Not man alone but all things had souls; the external world was not insensitive or dead, it was intensely alive; if this were not so, thought primitive philosophy, nature would be full of inexplicable occurrences, like the motion of the sun, or the death- dealing lightning, or the whispering of the trees."
Will Durant, Story of Civilization, Vol.1: Our Oriental Heritage, Ch.4, Section IV, Part 1, 1935
"[...] To the primitive mind— and to the poet in all ages— mountains, rivers, rocks, trees, stars, sun, moon and sky are sacramentally holy things, because they are the outward and visible signs of inward and invisible souls. To the early Greeks the sky was the god Ouranos, the moon was Selene, the earth was Gaea, the sea was Poseidon, and everywhere in the woods was Pan. To the ancient Germans the forest primeval was peopled with genii, elves, trolls, giants, dwarfs and fairies; these sylvan creatures survive in the music of Wagner and the poetic dramas of Ibsen. The simpler peasants of Ireland still believe in fairies, and no poet or playwright can belong to the Irish literary revival unless he employs them. There is wisdom as well as beauty in this animism; it is good and nourishing to treat all things as alive. [...]"
Will Durant, Story of Civilization, Vol.1: Our Oriental Heritage, Ch.4, Section IV, Part 1, 1935
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