and that among the Hurons the Evil principle is the grand mother of the Good:[1] the Night is the mother or grandmother, or, in general, the ancestress of the Day. Here religious dualism has not quite put off the character of its origin in Mythology. On the other hand, the Iranic system at a very early age (that of the Avesta) elevated Dualism into the region of pure morals, and yet at a later (the epic period) formed out of the original myth the localised story of the war of Zohak against Ferîdûn.[2]
That Dualism as a religious conception is a further development of the myth, and not first excited by the moral problem of the strife of the good against the evil, becomes evident also from the consideration of a peculiar form of dualistic religion which we find in many Semitic nations. We here frequently find a deity regarded as male, who has a corresponding female to represent, as it were, the reverse side of the same natural force, and then the two forces unite to produce a natural phenomenon. So, for instance, Sun and Earth, Baal and Mylitta, the factors of procreation. This likewise is a dualistic tendency, in which however the two deities are not represented as mutually hostile. We are justified in placing this phenomenon in the chapter on Dualism, because two such deities in the course of history are often joined together into one.[3] Now this side of dualistic religion can be traced back only to Mythology as its source and point of departure. The Hebrew myth of Judah and Tamar, which we shall consider further on (Chap. V., §14), exhibits a mythical prototype of such dualistic views of religion.
- ↑ Waitz, Anthropologie der Naturvölker, III. 183.
- ↑ See Roth in the Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft, 1848, II. 217; Albrecht Weber, Akademische Vorlesungen über indische Literaturgeschichte, Berlin 1852, p. 35.
- ↑ See Kuenen, The Religion of Israel, London 1874, I. 226.
