The multitude of myths about giants perhaps testifies to an historical perception of the secular reduction of our powers and abilities. The living feel like dwarfs in comparison with the dead and the fortunate. Even the most superficial reading of Thucydides, for example, creates an impression that his contemporaries were somehow bigger in size. Upon some reflection one realizes that it is actually us who are less than full-grown, and that Athenians and Spartans must have felt very much like us today in relation to their ancestors. Perhaps this is why we sometimes experience envy toward the animals, the giants of many millennia ago? Perhaps this is why the mammals abhor the reptiles?

Addendum I (April 29, 1995)

There is a trace of genius in the premonition that regression goes beyond the threshold of humanity, let alone history. Extended to its logical conclusions, this premonition sheds some light on the very origin of life and the irrepressible yearning for death.

Addendum II (April 4, 1998)

Intrinsic religiosity—a state of mind incited by belief in forces perceived as supernatural that demand placation—is embedded far less in the finer emotions than in vague and instinctively grounded fears and anxieties. Primevally, that mental state appears to have originated as a means of expressing or relieving tensions through the subconscious generalization of their specific causes. Reactions to these were apt to be intensified at the social level, and to be projected onto inanimate and animate objects that commanded attention in one way or another, eventually as numina. In the course of hominid evolution the choice of a particular animal to symbolize deep emotion was bound to be whimsical yet subject to the vicissitudes of livelihood and the composition of the local fauna, with game animals and formidable species of reptiles, raptorial birds and fierce carnivores holding an edge in the competition.

From Balaji Mundkur’s “Human Animality, the Mental Imagery of Fear, and Religiosity” in Tim Ingold, ed., What is an Animal? London and New York: Routledge, 1988, p. 177.

Addendum III (December 11, 2000)

Which is why, of course, Benjamin Franklin’s proposal for the bird to symbolize the new nation never had a chance. In retrospect, his argument was almost comical. The turkey is indeed useful, but it falls short of symbolizing any emotions, let alone the deep ones. These are inseparable from danger and fear and wishful thinking. Oh, the eagle. If it does not survive out there, in the polluted heights, it certainly will in our hearts, just above our stomachs stuffed to the brim with the silly old turkey.