Individualism in tradition

There is a natural, widespread, characteristic tendency of the naive world view to attribute any valuable or important, significant invention to the personality as the creator of it. So, already the primitive myth creates the image of the “savior of mankind”, who brought fire, invented weapons and tools, introduced religious ceremonies, a cult.

For some reason, events that are more deeply imprinted in people's memory, the saga also links up with the names of individual heroes. Even the Chinese had their former rulers considered the creators of their ancient culture, in a remarkable fusion of images of the mythical savior and fairytale hero. One of these rulers created, according to Chinese tradition, a language, another invented a letter, the third introduced agriculture. In later times, the place of these epic heroes is replaced by the chosen people. Thus, for example, the biblical tale of the creation of the world and of the times of the patriarchs also goes to meet the primitive need for explanation, which, in turn, itself serves as the main pillar of such ideas.

In the eyes of modern science, however, this role of the Israeli people has long been played; but among the other ancient peoples of the East to this day are the successors of the Israelites in their claims to the title of the first cultural people. The difference - not in favor of these subsequent nations - only in the fact that none of them could, so indisputably as the people of the Old Testament, assert their right to primacy. In addition, opinions about where culture originated changed, for the most part, according to where the research of interested scientists went or, in those cases where a particular view was becoming more widespread, according to the country that was attracted the attention of the academic world.

Thus, India, Egypt, Babylonia were consistently considered the cradle of the highest spiritual acquisitions of mankind, and to some extent they are still considered. Of course, this change of views has full justification in the results of a progressive study of antiquity. But the tendency to consider such a cradle of culture as the starting point of any religion, art and science is at the same time, perhaps, an unconscious return to a circle of biblical ideas about the origin; but such an idea, thought through to the end, inevitably leads to the least acceptable of all theories about the origin of culture, to the theory of invention.