4' THE history of a people," writes Wellhausen, " does not admit of being carried back of the people itself into a time when they did not exist." It is nevertheless true that the task of a nation's historian is not fully and faithfully performed until he has sought to present, as accurately as he may be able, the antecedents and beginnings out of which the nation came into being. For such a presentation he will naturally find no records upon which to depend. Records imply a national life already begun, and organized more or less completely. Yet he will usually find most interesting material, in greater or less abundance, out of which to frame his theory concerning the influences and the personalities that contributed to forming the nation's life.Peoples, like children, early begin to question about the external world of men and things with which they have to do. If they do not find an older brother to answer these questions, they will frame for themselves an answer in which imagination will naturally play an active part. The sun becomes the flaming chariot of Phaebus, the far-darter, who pierces the earth with his scorching arrows as he drives across the sky. The lurid flames of the volcano are the forge fires of the mighty smith who dwells in its interior. The clouds are white-fleeced sheep, slain by the arrows of the sun; or cows driven to milking by the summer wind. Or they are " mighty mountains, piled one above another, in whose cavernous recesses the divining-wand of the storm-god revealed hidden treasures."I Some of the questions asked are the same that engross the attention of all generations of men and which concern the highest and the most profound interests of mankind. Whence came
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