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with matter. The spirit
is
not "at home" in the realm of matter.
Against
all
vitalistic theories Goldberg insists on the sovereignty of
life in the natural universe. The principle of life connects spirit and
the realm of matter. Therefore the element of life is dominant in
the texture of nature. Biology is, rightly understood, a trans-empir–
ical science. Biology
is
metaphysics. Even if life manifests itself in
the empirical realm, the laws of biology have their origin beyond
the physical realm. These origins, constituting the "well springs" of
life, are the gods of the mythical age.
The gods are the" "biological centers" of the various races of
mankind. Goldberg
is
the first after Hegel and Schelling to
try
a
philosophic interpretation of polytheism: the god of one people is
distinguished from the god of another people by the difference in
biological centers. Every people which is a genuine kin-community
has one (or several interconnected) biological centers. The idea of
a god
is
for Goldberg not related to the abstract idea of "humanity"
but essentially connected with the idea of a people. The god has
for the unity of the people a "biological" meaning. Mythology
is
therefore not a collection of ethnological phantasmagoria but teaches
us something about the actual relation of a people to its "biological"
center.
The relation between the god and the people
is
a covenant. It
is
therefore not unilateral.
Also,
the people have an important
bio~
logical role for the gods. The members of the clan are a potential
field for the divine power and the people as an entity serve as an
instrument through which the divine power manifests itself.
The primordial equation (peoples=gods) pertinent for the in–
terpretation of myth limits the power of the gods to ancient times.
For only antiquity has known peoples that are concretely related to
their biological center. The amalgamation of races, the dissolving
of nations in the modern period, reflects the growing fixation of
human society upon the system of natural laws, culminating in a
technology that destroys the last remnants of communities potent in
rite and myth. In such a situation only philosophy can break the
universal domination of natural laws.
In the covenant between the people and their god a specific
boundary
is
constituted, the historical territory in which the god
and the people meet. The god
is
also the power of the land. The
