40

Speculation on usages.  Countless prescriptions of custom hastily read off from some unique strange occurence very soon became incomprehensible; the intention behind them could be ascertained with as little certainty as could the nature of the punishment which would follow their transgression; doubts existed even as to the performance of the ceremonial  but inasmuch as there was vast speculation about it, the object of such speculation increased in value and precisely the most absurd aspect of a usage at length passed over into the holiest sanctity. Do not think lightly of the human energy expended over the millennia in this way, and least of all of the effect of this speculation over usages! We have here arrived at the tremendous exercise ground of the intellect  it is not only that the religions were woven here: this is also the venerable if dreadful prehistoric world of science, here is where the poet, the thinker, the physician, the lawgiver first grew. Fear of the incomprehensible which in an ambiguous way demanded ceremonies of us gradually passed over into the stimulus of the hard to comprehend, and where one did not know how to explain one learned to create.