[The Myths of the New World by Daniel G. Brinton]@TWC D-Link book
The Myths of the New World

CHAPTER II
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Moral dualism can only arise in minds where the ideas of good and evil are not synonymous with those of pleasure and pain, for the conception of a wholly good or a wholly evil nature requires the use of these terms in their higher, ethical sense.

The various deities of the Indians, it may safely be said in conclusion, present no stronger antithesis in this respect than those of ancient Greece and Rome.
FOOTNOTES: [44-1] But there is no ground for the most positive of philosophers to reject the doctrine of innate ideas when put in a certain way.

The instincts and habits of the lower animals by which they obtain food, migrate, and perpetuate their kind, are in obedience to particular congenital impressions, and correspond to definite anatomical and morphological relations.

No one pretends their knowledge is experimental.
Just so the human cerebrum has received, by descent or otherwise, various sensory impressions peculiar to man as a species, which are just as certain to guide his thoughts, actions, and destiny, as is the cerebrum of the insectivorous aye-aye to lead it to hunt successfully for larvae.
[45-1] _Die Kunst im Zusammenhang der Culturentwickelung_, i.pp.

50, 252.
[46-1] I offer these derivations with a certain degree of reserve, for such an extraordinary similarity in the sound of these words is discoverable in North and portions of South America, that one might almost be tempted to claim for them one original form.


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