At a certain stage of
development men seem to have imagined that the means of averting the
threatened calamity were in their own hands, and that they could
hasten or retard the flight of the seasons by magic art. Accordingly
they performed ceremonies and recited spells to make the rain to
fall, the sun to shine, animals to multiply, and the fruits of the
earth to grow. In course of time the slow advance of knowledge,
which has dispelled so many cherished illusions, convinced at least
the more thoughtful portion of mankind that the alternations of
summer and winter, of spring and autumn, were not merely the result
of their own magical rites, but that some deeper cause, some
mightier power, was at work behind the shifting scenes of nature.
They now pictured to themselves the growth and decay of vegetation,
the birth and death of living creatures, as effects of the waxing or
waning strength of divine beings, of gods and goddesses, who were
born and died, who married and begot children, on the pattern of
human life.
Thus the old magical theory of the seasons was displaced, or rather
supplemented, by a religious theory.
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