one, and thinks of a personal Creator.[1] Many persons have had the good fortune to be present at the child's sudden awakening to this problem and his immediate solution of it by the assumption of a great Maker conceived vaguely as a human being. A child notices a curiously made stone, and asks who made it. He is told that it was formed in the stream by the water. Then suddenly he throws out in quick succession questions that are as much exclamations of astonishment as queries: "Who made the streams? Who made the mountains? Who made the earth?" If children five years old begin of themselves to inquire into the origin of the world, one must admit the presence of such queries in the mind of the most intelligent individuals of the lowest tribes.
The Great Maker or Makers usually take on a human shape, probably because men and not animals are to primitive man the constructors of things. The nests of birds and lairs of animals are no better than the huts of the savage himself, and animals make no implements of any sort. The making of weapons and other necessary objects is one of primitive man's vital occupations. One may well suppose, therefore, that, when he thought of the making of things about him, he placed the Great Maker in the human rather than in the animal group. Nevertheless, it is not impossible that in some cases the Great Maker should have assumed an animal form.
In many primitive societies certain names supposed to designate high personal Gods have been found by later
- ↑ Before her eighth year, Helen Keller, who is blind, deaf, and mute, had begun to ask questions regarding the origin of things and of herself. Her teacher, Miss Sullivan, thought it preferable to delay an explanation, and told her that she was too young to understand. Her inquiries became more and more urgent. In May, 1890, (she was born in June, 1880), she wrote on her tablet,—"Who made the earth and the seas, and everything? What makes the sun hot? Where was I before I came to mother?" See Miss Sullivan's report of 1891 (p. 370), republished in the supplement to The Story of My Life, by Helen Keller, (1903). It is not uncommon for a normal child to puzzle about these questions from his fifth year or even earlier.
