Similarly, rites observed in the morning to
help the sun to rise, and in spring to wake the dreaming earth from
her winter sleep, will invariably appear to be crowned with success,
at least within the temperate zones; for in these regions the sun
lights his golden lamp in the east every morning, and year by year
the vernal earth decks herself afresh with a rich mantle of green.
Hence the practical savage, with his conservative instincts, might
well turn a deaf ear to the subtleties of the theoretical doubter,
the philosophic radical, who presumed to hint that sunrise and
spring might not, after all, be direct consequences of the punctual
performance of certain daily or yearly ceremonies, and that the sun
might perhaps continue to rise and trees to blossom though the
ceremonies were occasionally intermitted, or even discontinued
altogether. These sceptical doubts would naturally be repelled by
the other with scorn and indignation as airy reveries subversive of
the faith and manifestly contradicted by experience. "Can anything
be plainer," he might say, "than that I light my twopenny candle on
earth and that the sun then kindles his great fire in heaven? I
should be glad to know whether, when I have put on my green robe in
spring, the trees do not afterwards do the same? These are facts
patent to everybody, and on them I take my stand.
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