The child's world is alert and alive, governed by rules of response and command, not by physical laws: a portentous continuum of consciousness, endow… - Joseph Campbell

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Engraved portrait of Joseph Campbell, facing left

The child's world is alert and alive, governed by rules of response and command, not by physical laws: a portentous continuum of consciousness, endowed with purpose and intent, either resistant or responsive to the child itself.

This infantile notion of a world governed by moral rather than physical laws, kept under control by a superordinated parental personality instead of impersonal physical forces, and oriented to the weal and woe of man, is an illusion that dominates men's thoughts all over the world.

The sense then, of this world as an undifferentiated continuum of simultaneously subjective and objective experience (Participation), which is all alive (Animism), and which was created by a superior being (Artificialism), may be said to constitute the frame of reference of all childhood experience no matter where in the world.

No small wonder then, that the above Three Principles are precisely those most represented in the mythologies and religious systems of the whole world.

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About Joseph Campbell

Joseph Campbell (26 March 1904 – 30 October 1987) was an American professor, writer, and orator most famous for his work in the fields of comparative mythology and comparative religion.

Biography information from Wikiquote · Portrait adapted from Wikimedia Commons, Joan Halifax (CC BY)

Also Known As

Birth Name: Joseph John Campbell Smith
Alternative Names: Joseph John Campbell Joseph Cambell

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In one of the Upanishads it says, when the glow of a sunset holds you and you say 'Aha,' that is the recognition of the divinity. And when you say 'Aha' to an art object, that is a recognition of divinity. And what divinity is it? It is your divinity, which is the only divinity there is. We are all phenomenal manifestations of a divine will to live, and that will and the consciousness of life is one in all of us, and that is what artwork expresses.

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