Now, this idea about the arrows is itself very significant of the mental
attitude of primitive man, and of the way that mental attitude has
coloured all subsequent thinking and superstition upon this very
subject. Curiously enough, to the present day the conception of the
thunderbolt is essentially one of a _bolt_--that is to say, an arrow, or
at least an arrowhead. All existing thunderbolts (and there are plenty
of them lying about casually in country houses and local museums) are
more or less arrow-like in shape and appearance; some of them, indeed,
as we shall see by-and-by, are the actual stone arrowheads of primitive
man himself in person. Of course the noble savage was himself in the
constant habit of shooting at animals and enemies with a bow and arrow.
When, then, he tried to figure to himself the angry god, seated in the
storm-clouds, who spoke with such a loud rumbling voice, and killed
those who displeased him with his fiery darts, he naturally thought of
him as using in his cloudy home the familiar bow and arrow of this
nether planet. To us nowadays, if we were to begin forming the idea for
ourselves all over again _de novo_, it would be far more natural to
think of the thunder as the noise of a big gun, of the lightning as the
flash of the powder, and of the supposed 'bolt' as a shell or bullet.
There is really a ridiculous resemblance between a thunderstorm and a
discharge of artillery. But the old conception derived from so many
generations of primitive men has held its own against such mere modern
devices as gunpowder and rifle balls; and none of the objects commonly
shown as thunderbolts are ever round: they are distinguished, whatever
their origin, by the common peculiarity that they more or less closely
resemble a dart or arrowhead.
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