The Golden Bough; the Generative Power of Religion.

'IN the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.'

   'Come, press nearer to the fire.'

   'And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.'

   Said the young enquirer to the elder tale-bearer, 'How dost thou know it, Venerable? Did God write it down for thee?'

   'He did, young thinker, look to the sky. That is His scroll and see, the stars are His writing.'

   One usually quiet gatherer of middle age said something, to the surprise of the assembly. 'The tales of God are the tales of men, but all the tales of men are truly the tales of God.'

   Then another young listener, scrutinising the bone of meat which he had now consumed, wise with wine and confident in conceit, entered the dialogue. 'So, may I tell thee all a tale of flying men and talking books, of people moving and living in the light projected onto a cave wall, and of the healing of all diseases? Do I speak for God or for fools?'

   A loyal acolyte of the Venerable looked to him anxiously and hopefully, as a few friends of the young man laughed disrespectfully but self-consciously.

   'God speaks for thee my son. The fabulous is a story not of the impossible but of the irregular, and our humour at it is a measure of our uncertainty, to which we respond by mutual social comforting, by laughter.'

   'He does not believe in thy stories, Venerable.'

   'Nay, I do not understand them. When have I ever seen a persuasive serpent, or heard the Lord talk to me except through the Venerable?'

   'Thy ancestors,' the old seer gravely replied, 'spoke once with each other of this when I was thy age. They forgot my presence and became more amiable than awful with dining. "These stories," one said to another, "have never demanded credulity, as the story, Booz, thou told to me this morning that thy cousin had slaughtered thy heifer. They do not have any ordinary value as the common place and believable, they have only an extraordinary value as the inspired and legendary. For I never hear them but my mind is set to thought and imagination which thing, whenever that I hear the common tales of our daily affairs, I am never made to feel."

   "And what is beneath and above the tale? That is what the tale is really telling, which was my grandfather's saying to me. For there is more generative power in a single unwieldy legend than in an hundred rounded lessons."'