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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Myths and Myth-Makers by John Fiske: man,--he was an insane cannibal, whose monstrous appetite, due
to the machinations of the Devil, showed its power over his
physical organism by changing the shape of it. The barbaric
werewolf is the product of a lower and simpler kind of
thinking. There is no diabolism about him; for barbaric races,
while believing in the existence of hurtful and malicious
fiends, have not a sufficiently vivid sense of moral abnormity
to form the conception of diabolism. And the cannibal craving,
which to the mediaeval European was a phenomenon so strange as
to demand a mythological explanation, would not impress the
barbarian as either very exceptional or very blameworthy.
Myths and Myth-Makers |
