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+The Project Gutenberg's Etext Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1
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+Title:  Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1
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+Author:  Andrew Lang
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+September, 2001  [Etext #2832]
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+
+MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION
+
+by Andrew Lang
+
+
+
+
+Volume One
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+PREFACE TO NEW IMPRESSION.
+
+PREFACE TO NEW EDITION.
+
+CHAPTER I. -- SYSTEMS OF MYTHOLOGY.
+
+Definitions of religion--Contradictory evidence--"Belief in
+spiritual beings"--Objection to Mr. Tylor's definition--Definition
+as regards this argument--Problem: the contradiction between
+religion and myth--Two human moods--Examples--Case of Greece--
+Ancient mythologists--Criticism by Eusebius--Modern mythological
+systems--Mr. Max Muller--Mannhardt.
+
+
+CHAPTER II. -- NEW SYSTEM PROPOSED.
+
+Chapter I. recapitulated--Proposal of a new method: Science of
+comparative or historical study of man--Anticipated in part by
+Eusebius, Fontenelle, De Brosses, Spencer (of C. C. C., Cambridge),
+and Mannhardt--Science of Tylor--Object of inquiry: to find
+condition of human intellect in which marvels of myth are parts of
+practical everyday belief--This is the savage state--Savages
+described--The wild element of myth a survival from the savage
+state--Advantages of this method--Partly accounts for wide
+DIFFUSION as well as ORIGIN of myths--Connected with general
+theory of evolution--Puzzling example of myth of the water-
+swallower--Professor Tiele's criticism of the method--
+Objections to method, and answer to these--See Appendix B.
+
+
+CHAPTER III. -- THE MENTAL CONDITION OF SAVAGES--CONFUSION WITH
+                NATURE--TOTEMISM.
+
+The mental condition of savages the basis of the irrational element
+in myth--Characteristics of that condition: (1) Confusion of all
+things in an equality of presumed animation and intelligence;
+(2) Belief in sorcery; (3) Spiritualism; (4) Curiosity; (5) Easy
+credulity and mental indolence--The curiosity is satisfied, thanks
+to the credulity, by myths in answer to all inquiries--Evidence for
+this--Mr. Tylor's opinion--Mr. Im Thurn--Jesuit missionaries'
+Relations--Examples of confusion between men, plants, beasts and
+other natural objects--Reports of travellers--Evidence from
+institution of totemism--Definition of totemism--Totemism in
+Australia, Africa, America, the Oceanic Islands, India, North Asia--
+Conclusions: Totemism being found so widely distributed, is a proof
+of the existence of that savage mental condition in which no line
+is drawn between men and the other things in the world.  This
+confusion is one of the characteristics of myth in all races.
+
+
+CHAPTER IV. -- THE MENTAL CONDITION OF SAVAGES--MAGIC--
+               METAMORPHOSIS--METAPHYSIC--PSYCHOLOGY.
+
+Claims of sorcerers--Savage scientific speculation--Theory of
+causation--Credulity, except as to new religious ideas--"Post hoc,
+ergo propter hoc"--Fundamental ideas of magic--Examples:
+incantations, ghosts, spirits--Evidence of rank and other
+institutions in proof of confusions of mind exhibited in magical
+beliefs.
+
+
+CHAPTER V. -- NATURE MYTHS.
+
+Savage fancy, curiosity and credulity illustrated in nature myths--
+In these all phenomena are explained by belief in the general
+animation of everything, combined with belief in metamorphosis--Sun
+myths, Asian, Australian, African, Melanesian, Indian, Californian,
+Brazilian, Maori, Samoan--Moon myths, Australian, Muysca, Mexican,
+Zulu, Macassar, Greenland, Piute, Malay--Thunder myths--Greek and
+Aryan sun and moon myths--Star myths--Myths, savage and civilised,
+of animals, accounting for their marks and habits--Examples of
+custom of claiming blood kinship with lower animals--Myths of
+various plants and trees--Myths of stones, and of metamorphosis
+into stones, Greek, Australian and American--The whole natural
+philosophy of savages expressed in myths, and survives in folk-lore
+and classical poetry; and legends of metamorphosis.
+
+
+CHAPTER VI. -- NON-ARYAN MYTHS OF THE ORIGIN OF THE WORLD AND OF MAN.
+
+Confusions of myth--Various origins of man and of things--Myths of
+Australia, Andaman Islands, Bushmen, Ovaherero, Namaquas, Zulus,
+Hurons, Iroquois, Diggers, Navajoes, Winnebagoes, Chaldaeans,
+Thlinkeets, Pacific Islanders, Maoris, Aztecs, Peruvians--
+Similarity of ideas pervading all those peoples in various
+conditions of society and culture.
+
+
+CHAPTER VII. -- INDO-ARYAN MYTHS--SOURCES OF EVIDENCE.
+
+Authorities--Vedas--Brahmanas--Social condition of Vedic India--
+Arts--Ranks--War--Vedic fetishism--Ancestor worship--Date of Rig-
+Veda Hymns doubtful--Obscurity of the Hymns--Difficulty of
+interpreting the real character of Veda--Not primitive but
+sacerdotal--The moral purity not innocence but refinement.
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII. -- INDIAN MYTHS OF THE ORIGIN OF THE WORLD AND OF MAN.
+
+Comparison of Vedic and savage myths--The metaphysical Vedic
+account of the beginning of things--Opposite and savage fable of
+world made out of fragments of a man--Discussion of this hymn--
+Absurdities of Brahmanas--Prajapati, a Vedic Unkulunkulu or Qat--
+Evolutionary myths--Marriage of heaven and earth--Myths of Puranas,
+their savage parallels--Most savage myths are repeated in Brahmanas.
+
+
+CHAPTER IX. -- GREEK MYTHS OF THE ORIGIN OF THE WORLD AND MAN.
+
+The Greeks practically civilised when we first meet them in Homer--
+Their mythology, however, is full of repulsive features--The
+hypothesis that many of these are savage survivals--Are there other
+examples of such survival in Greek life and institutions?--Greek
+opinion was constant that the race had been savage--Illustrations
+of savage survival from Greek law of homicide, from magic,
+religion, human sacrifice, religious art, traces of totemism, and
+from the mysteries--Conclusion: that savage survival may also be
+expected in Greek myths.
+
+
+CHAPTER X. -- GREEK COSMOGONIC MYTHS.
+
+Nature of the evidence--Traditions of origin of the world and man--
+Homeric, Hesiodic and Orphic myths--Later evidence of historians,
+dramatists, commentators--The Homeric story comparatively pure--The
+story in Hesiod, and its savage analogues--The explanations of the
+myth of Cronus, modern and ancient--The Orphic cosmogony--Phanes
+and Prajapati--Greek myths of the origin of man--Their savage
+analogues.
+
+
+CHAPTER XI. -- SAVAGE DIVINE MYTHS.
+
+The origin of a belief in GOD beyond the ken of history and of
+speculation--Sketch of conjectural theories--Two elements in all
+beliefs, whether of backward or civilised races--The Mythical and
+the Religious--These may be coeval, or either may be older than the
+other--Difficulty of study--The current anthropological theory--
+Stated objections to the theory--Gods and spirits--Suggestion that
+savage religion is borrowed from Europeans--Reply to Mr. Tylor's
+arguments on this head--The morality of savages.
+
+
+
+PREFACE TO NEW IMPRESSION.
+
+
+When this book first appeared (1886), the philological school of
+interpretation of religion and myth, being then still powerful in
+England, was criticised and opposed by the author.  In Science, as
+on the Turkish throne of old, "Amurath to Amurath succeeds"; the
+philological theories of religion and myth have now yielded to
+anthropological methods.  The centre of the anthropological
+position was the "ghost theory" of Mr. Herbert Spencer, the
+"Animistic" theory of Mr. E. R. Tylor, according to whom the
+propitiation of ancestral and other spirits leads to polytheism,
+and thence to monotheism.  In the second edition (1901) of this
+work the author argued that the belief in a "relatively supreme
+being," anthropomorphic was as old as, and might be even older,
+than animistic religion.  This theory he exhibited at greater
+length, and with a larger collection of evidence, in his Making of
+Religion.
+
+Since 1901, a great deal of fresh testimony as to what Mr. Howitt
+styles the "All Father" in savage and barbaric religions has
+accrued.  As regards this being in Africa, the reader may consult
+the volumes of the New Series of the Journal of the Anthropological
+Institute, which are full of African evidence, not, as yet,
+discussed, to my knowledge, by any writer on the History of
+Religion.  As late as Man, for July, 1906, No. 66, Mr. Parkinson
+published interesting Yoruba legends about Oleron, the maker and
+father of men, and Oro, the Master of the Bull Roarer.
+
+From Australia, we have Mr. Howitt's account of the All Father in
+his Native Tribes of South-East Australia, with the account of the
+All Father of the Central Australian tribe, the Kaitish, in North
+Central Tribes of Australia, by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen (1904),
+also The Euahlayi Tribe, by Mrs. Langley Parker (1906).  These
+masterly books are indispensable to all students of the subject,
+while, in Messrs. Spencer and Gillen's work cited, and in their
+earlier Native Tribes of Central Australia, we are introduced to
+savages who offer an elaborate animistic theory, and are said to
+show no traces of the All Father belief.
+
+The books of Messrs. Spencer and Gillen also present much evidence
+as to a previously unknown form of totemism, in which the totem is
+not hereditary, and does not regulate marriage.  This prevails
+among the Arunta "nation," and the Kaitish tribe.  In the opinion
+of Mr. Spencer (Report Australian Association for Advancement of
+Science, 1904) and of Mr. J. G. Frazer (Fortnightly Review,
+September, 1905), this is the earliest surviving form of totemism,
+and Mr. Frazer suggests an animistic origin for the institution.  I
+have criticised these views in The Secret of the Totem (1905), and
+proposed a different solution of the problem.  (See also "Primitive
+and Advanced Totemism" in Journal of the Anthropological Institute,
+July, 1906.)  In the works mentioned will be found references to
+other sources of information as to these questions, which are still
+sub judice.  Mrs. Bates, who has been studying the hitherto almost
+unknown tribes of Western Australia, promises a book on their
+beliefs and institutions, and Mr. N. W. Thomas is engaged on a
+volume on Australian institutions.  In this place the author can
+only direct attention to these novel sources, and to the promised
+third edition of Mr. Frazer's The Golden Bough.
+
+A. L.
+
+
+
+PREFACE TO NEW EDITION.
+
+
+The original edition of Myth, Ritual and Religion, published in
+1887, has long been out of print.  In revising the book I have
+brought it into line with the ideas expressed in the second part of
+my Making of Religion (1898) and have excised certain passages
+which, as the book first appeared, were inconsistent with its main
+thesis.  In some cases the original passages are retained in notes,
+to show the nature of the development of the author's opinions.  A
+fragment or two of controversy has been deleted, and chapters xi.
+and xii., on the religion of the lowest races, have been entirely
+rewritten, on the strength of more recent or earlier information
+lately acquired.  The gist of the book as it stands now and as it
+originally stood is contained in the following lines from the
+preface of 1887: "While the attempt is made to show that the wilder
+features of myth survive from, or were borrowed from, or were
+imitated from the ideas of people in the savage condition of
+thought, the existence--even among savages--of comparatively pure,
+if inarticulate, religious beliefs is insisted on throughout".  To
+that opinion I adhere, and I trust that it is now expressed with
+more consistency than in the first edition.  I have seen reason,
+more and more, to doubt the validity of the "ghost theory," or
+animistic hypothesis, as explanatory of the whole fabric of
+religion; and I present arguments against Mr. Tylor's contention
+that the higher conceptions of savage faith are borrowed from
+missionaries.[1]  It is very possible, however, that Mr. Tylor has
+arguments more powerful than those contained in his paper of 1892.
+For our information is not yet adequate to a scientific theory of
+the Origin of Religion, and probably never will be.  Behind the
+races whom we must regard as "nearest the beginning" are their
+unknown ancestors from a dateless past, men as human as ourselves,
+but men concerning whose psychical, mental and moral condition we
+can only form conjectures.  Among them religion arose, in
+circumstances of which we are necessarily ignorant.  Thus I only
+venture on a surmise as to the germ of a faith in a Maker (if I am
+not to say "Creator") and Judge of men.  But, as to whether the
+higher religious belief, or the lower mythical stories came first,
+we are at least certain that the Christian conception of God, given
+pure, was presently entangled, by the popular fancy of Europe, in
+new Marchen about the Deity, the Madonna, her Son, and the
+Apostles.  Here, beyond possibility of denial, pure belief came
+first, fanciful legend was attached after.  I am inclined to
+surmise that this has always been the case, and, in the pages on
+the legend of Zeus, I show the processes of degeneration, of
+mythical accretions on a faith in a Heaven-God, in action.  That
+"the feeling of religious devotion" attests "high faculties" in
+early man (such as are often denied to men who "cannot count up to
+seven"), and that "the same high mental faculties . . . would
+infallibly lead him, as long as his reasoning powers remained
+poorly developed, to various strange superstitions and customs,"
+was the belief of Mr. Darwin.[2]  That is also my view, and I note
+that the lowest savages are not yet guilty of the very worst
+practices, "sacrifice of human beings to a blood-loving God," and
+ordeals by poison and fire, to which Mr. Darwin alludes.  "The
+improvement of our science" has freed us from misdeeds which are
+unknown to the Andamanese or the Australians.  Thus there was, as
+regards these points in morals, degeneracy from savagery as society
+advanced, and I believe that there was also degeneration in
+religion.  To say this is not to hint at a theory of supernatural
+revelation to the earliest men, a theory which I must, in limine
+disclaim.
+
+
+[1] Tylor, "Limits of Savage Religion."  Journal of the
+Anthropological Institute, vol. xxi.
+
+[2] Descent of Man, p. 68, 1871.
+
+
+In vol. ii. p. 19 occurs a reference, in a note, to Mr. Hartland's
+criticism of my ideas about Australian gods as set forth in the
+Making of Religion.  Mr. Hartland, who kindly read the chapters on
+Australian religion in this book, does not consider that my note on
+p. 19 meets the point of his argument.  As to the Australians, I
+mean no more than that, AMONG endless low myths, some of them
+possess a belief in a "maker of everything," a primal being, still
+in existence, watching conduct, punishing breaches of his laws,
+and, in some cases, rewarding the good in a future life.  Of course
+these are the germs of a sympathetic religion, even if the being
+thus regarded is mixed up with immoral or humorous contradictory
+myths.  My position is not harmed by such myths, which occur in all
+old religions, and, in the middle ages, new myths were attached to
+the sacred figures of Christianity in poetry and popular tales.
+
+Thus, if there is nothing "sacred" in a religion because wild or
+wicked fables about the gods also occur, there is nothing "sacred"
+in almost any religion on earth.
+
+Mr. Hartland's point, however, seems to be that, in the Making of
+Religion, I had selected certain Australian beliefs as especially
+"sacred" and to be distinguished from others, because they are
+inculcated at the religious Mysteries of some tribes.  His aim,
+then, is to discover low, wild, immoral myths, inculcated at the
+Mysteries, and thus to destroy my line drawn between religion on
+one hand and myth or mere folk-lore on the other.  Thus there is a
+being named Daramulun, of whose rites, among the Coast Murring, I
+condensed the account of Mr. Howitt.[1]  From a statement by Mr.
+Greenway[2] Mr. Hartland learned that Daramulun's name is said to
+mean "leg on one side" or "lame".  He, therefore, with fine humour,
+speaks of Daramulun as "a creator with a game leg," though when
+"Baiame" is derived by two excellent linguists, Mr. Ridley and Mr.
+Greenway, from Kamilaroi baia, "to make," Mr. Hartland is by no
+means so sure of the sense of the name.  It happens to be
+inconvenient to him!  Let the names mean what they may, Mr.
+Hartland finds, in an obiter dictum of Mr. Howitt (before he was
+initiated), that Daramulun is said to have "died," and that his
+spirit is now aloft.  Who says so, and where, we are not
+informed,[3] and the question is important.
+
+
+[1] J. A. I., xiii. pp. 440-459.
+
+[2] Ibid., xxi. p. 294.
+
+[3] Ibid., xiii. p. 194.
+
+
+For the Wiraijuri, IN THEIR MYSTERIES, tell a myth of cannibal
+conduct of Daramulun's, and of deceit and failure of knowledge in
+Baiame.[1]  Of this I was unaware, or neglected it, for I
+explicitly said that I followed Mr. Howitt's account, where no such
+matter is mentioned.  Mr. Howitt, in fact, described the Mysteries
+of the Coast Murring, while the narrator of the low myths, Mr.
+Matthews, described those of a remote tribe, the Wiraijuri, with
+whom Daramulun is not the chief, but a subordinate person.  How Mr.
+Matthews' friends can at once hold that Daramulun was "destroyed"
+by Baiame (their chief deity), and also that Daramulun's voice is
+heard at their rites, I don't know.[2]   Nor do I know why Mr.
+Hartland takes the myth of a tribe where Daramulun is "the evil
+spirit who rules the night,"[3] and introduces it as an argument
+against the belief of a distant tribe, where, by Mr. Howitt's
+account, Daramulun is not an evil spirit, but "the master" of all,
+whose abode is above the sky, and to whom are attributed powers of
+omnipotence and omnipresence, or, at any rate, the power "to do
+anything and to go anywhere. . . .  To his direct ordinances are
+attributed the social and moral laws of the community."[4]  This is
+not "an evil spirit"!  When Mr. Hartland goes for scandals to a
+remote tribe of a different creed that he may discredit the creed
+of the Coast Murring, he might as well attribute to the Free Kirk
+"the errors of Rome".  But Mr. Hartland does it![5]  Being "cunning
+of fence" he may reply that I also spoke loosely of Wiraijuri and
+Coast Murring as, indifferently, Daramulunites.  I did, and I was
+wrong, and my critic ought not to accept but to expose my error.
+The Wiraijuri Daramulun, who was annihilated, yet who is "an evil
+spirit that rules the night," is not the Murring guardian and
+founder of recognised ethics.
+
+
+[1] J. A. I., xxv. p. 297.
+
+[2] Ibid., May, 1895, p. 419.
+
+[3] Ibid.
+
+[4] Ibid., xiii. pp. 458, 459.
+
+[5] Folk-Lore, ix., No. iv., p. 299.
+
+
+But, in the Wiraijuri mysteries, the master, Baiame, deceives the
+women as to the Mysteries!  Shocking to US, but to deceive the
+women as to these arcana, is, to the Australian mind in general,
+necessary for the safety of the world.  Moreover, we have heard of
+a lying spirit sent to deceive prophets in a much higher creed.
+Finally, in a myth of the Mystery of the Wiraijuri, Baiame is not
+omniscient.  Indeed, even civilised races cannot keep on the level
+of these religious conceptions, and not to keep on that level is--
+mythology.  Apollo, in the hymn to Hermes, sung on a sacred
+occasion, needs to ask an old vine-dresser for intelligence.
+Hyperion "sees all and hears all," but needs to be informed, by his
+daughters, of the slaughter of his kine.  The Lord, in the Book of
+Job, has to ask Satan, "Whence comest thou?"  Now for the sake of
+dramatic effect, now from pure inability to live on the level of
+his highest thought, man mythologises and anthropomorphises, in
+Greece or Israel, as in Australia.
+
+It does not follow that there is "nothing sacred" in his religion.
+Mr. Hartland offers me a case in point.  In Mrs. Langloh Parker's
+Australian Legendary Tales (pp. 11, 94), are myths of low
+adventures of Baiame.  In her More Australian Legendary Tales (pp.
+84-99), is a very poetical and charming aspect of the Baiame
+belief.  Mr. Hartland says that I will "seek to put" the first set
+of stories out of court, as "a kind of joke with no sacredness
+about it".  Not I, but the Noongahburrah tribe themselves make this
+essential distinction.  Mrs. Langloh Parker says:[1] "The former
+series" (with the low Baiame myths) "were all such legends as are
+told to the black picaninnies; among the present are some they
+would not be allowed to hear, touching as they do on sacred things,
+taboo to the young".  The blacks draw the line which I am said to
+seek to draw.
+
+
+[1] More Legendary Tales, p. xv.
+
+
+In yet another case[1] grotesque hunting adventures of Baiame are
+told in the mysteries, and illustrated by the sacred temporary
+representations in raised earth.  I did not know it; I merely
+followed Mr. Howitt.  But I do not doubt it.  My reply is, that
+there was "something sacred" in Greek mysteries, something
+purifying, ennobling, consoling.  For this Lobeck has collected
+(and disparaged) the evidence of Pindar, Sophocles, Cicero and many
+others, while even Aristophanes, as Prof. Campbell remarks, says:
+"We only have bright sun and cheerful life who have been initiated
+and lived piously in regard to strangers and to private
+citizens".[2]  Security and peace of mind, in this world and for
+the next, were, we know not how, borne into the hearts of Pindar
+and Sophocles in the Mysteries.  Yet, if we may at all trust the
+Fathers, there were scenes of debauchery, as at the Mysteries of
+the Fijians (Nanga) there was buffoonery ("to amuse the boys," Mr.
+Howitt says of some Australian rites), the story of Baubo is only
+one example, and, in other mysteries than the Eleusinian, we know
+of mummeries in which an absurd tale of Zeus is related in
+connection with an oak log.  Yet surely there was "something
+sacred" in the faith of Zeus!  Let us judge the Australians as we
+judge Greeks.  The precepts as to "speaking the straightforward
+truth," as to unselfishness, avoidance of quarrels, of wrongs to
+"unprotected women," of unnatural vices, are certainly communicated
+in the Mysteries of some tribes, with, in another, knowledge of the
+name and nature of "Our Father," Munganngaur.  That a Totemistic
+dance, or medicine-dance of Emu hunting, is also displayed[3] at
+certain Mysteries of a given tribe, and that Baiame is spoken of as
+the hero of this ballet, no more deprives the Australian moral and
+religious teaching (at the Mysteries) of sacred value, than the
+stupid indecency whereby Baubo made Demeter laugh destroys the
+sacredness of the Eleusinia, on which Pindar, Sophocles and Cicero
+eloquently dwell.  If the Australian mystae, at the most solemn
+moment of their lives, are shown a dull or dirty divine ballet
+d'action, what did Sophocles see, after taking a swim with his pig?
+Many things far from edifying, yet the sacred element of religious
+hope and faith was also represented.  So it is in Australia.
+
+
+[1] J. A. I., xxiv. p. 416.
+
+[2] Religion in Greek Literature, p. 259. It is to be regretted
+that the learned professor gives no references.  The Greek
+Mysteries are treated later in this volume.
+
+[3] See A picture of Australia, 1829, p. 264.
+
+
+These studies ought to be comparative, otherwise they are
+worthless.  As Mr. Hartland calls Daramulun "an eternal Creator
+with a game leg" who "died," he may call Zeus an "eternal father,
+who swallowed his wife, lay with his mother and sister, made love
+as a swan, and died, nay, was buried, in Crete".  I do not think
+that Mr. Hartland would call Zeus "a ghost-god" (my own phrase), or
+think that he was scoring a point against me, if I spoke of the
+sacred and ethical characteristics of the Zeus adored by Eumaeus in
+the Odyssey.  He would not be so humorous about Zeus, nor fall into
+an ignoratio elenchi.  For my point never was that any Australian
+tribe had a pure theistic conception unsoiled and unobliterated by
+myth and buffoonery.  My argument was that AMONG their ideas is
+that of a superhuman being, unceasing (if I may not say eternal), a
+maker (if I may not say a Creator), a guardian of certain by no
+means despicable ethics, which I never proclaimed as supernormally
+inspired!  It is no reply to me to say that, in or out of
+Mysteries, low fables about that being are told, and buffooneries
+are enacted.  For, though I say that certain high ideas are taught
+in Mysteries, I do not think I say that in Mysteries no low myths
+are told.
+
+I take this opportunity, as the earliest, to apologise for an error
+in my Making of Religion concerning a passage in the Primitive
+Culture of my friend Mr. E. B. Tylor.  Mr. Tylor quoted[1] a
+passage from Captain John Smith's History of Virginia, as given in
+Pinkerton, xiii. pp. 13-39, 1632.  In this passage no mention
+occurs of a Virginian deity named Ahone but "Okee," another and
+more truculent god, is named.  I observed that, if Mr. Tylor had
+used Strachey's Historie of Travaile (1612), he would have found "a
+slightly varying copy" of Smith's text of 1632, with Ahone as
+superior to Okee.  I added in a note (p. 253): "There is a
+description of Virginia, by W. Strachey, including Smith's remarks
+published in 1612.  Strachey interwove some of this work with his
+own MS. in the British Museum."  Here, as presently will be shown,
+I erred, in company with Strachey's editor of 1849, and with the
+writer on Strachey in the Dictionary of National Biography.  What
+Mr. Tylor quoted from an edition of Smith in 1632 had already
+appeared, in 1612, in a book (Map of Virginia, with a description
+of the Countrey) described on the title-page as "written by Captain
+Smith," though, in my opinion, Smith may have had a collaborator.
+There is no evidence whatever that Strachey had anything to do with
+this book of 1612, in which there is no mention of Ahone.  Mr.
+Arber dates Strachey's own MS. (in which Ahone occurs) as of 1610-
+1615.[2]  I myself, for reasons presently to be alleged, date the
+MS. mainly in 1611-1612. If Mr. Arber and I are right, Strachey
+must have had access to Smith's MS. before it was published in
+1612, and we shall see how he used it.  My point here is that
+Strachey mentioned Ahone (in MS.) before Smith's book of 1612 was
+published.  This could not be gathered from the dedication to Bacon
+prefixed to Strachey's MS., for that dedication cannot be earlier
+that 1618.[3]  I now ask leave to discuss the evidence for an early
+pre-Christian belief in a primal Creator, held by the Indian tribes
+from Plymouth, in New England, to Roanoke Island, off Southern
+Virginia.
+
+
+[1] Prim. Cult. ii. p. 342.
+
+[2] Arber's Smith, p. cxxxiii.
+
+[3] Hakluyt Society, Strachey, 1849, pp. xxi., xxii.
+
+
+THE GOD AHONE.
+
+An insertion by a manifest plagiary into the work of a detected
+liar is not, usually, good evidence.  Yet this is all the evidence,
+it may be urged, which we have for the existence of a belief, in
+early Virginia, as to a good Creator, named Ahone.  The matter
+stands thus: In 1607-1609 the famed Captain John Smith endured and
+achieved in Virginia sufferings and adventures.  In 1608 he sent to
+the Council at home a MS. map and description of the colony.  In
+1609 he returned to England (October).  In May, 1610, William
+Strachey, gent., arrived in Virginia, where he was "secretary of
+state" to Lord De la Warr.  In 1612 Strachey and Smith were both in
+England.  In that year Barnes of Oxford published A Map of
+Virginia, with a description, etc., "written by Captain Smith,"
+according to the title-page.  There was annexed a compilation from
+various sources, edited by "W. S.," that is, NOT William Strachey,
+but Dr. William Symonds.  In the same year, 1612, or in 1611,
+William Strachey wrote his Historie of Travaile into Virginia
+Britannia, at least as far as page 124 of the Hakluyt edition of
+1849.[1]
+
+
+[1] For proof see p. 24. third line from foot of page, where 1612
+is indicated.  Again, see p. 98, line 5, where "last year" is dated
+as "1610, about Christmas," which would put Strachey's work at this
+point as actually of 1611; prior, that is, to Smith's publication.
+Again, p. 124, "this last year, myself being at the Falls" (of the
+James River), "I found in an Indian house certain clawes . . .
+which I brought away and into England".
+
+
+If Strachey, who went out with Lord De la Warr as secretary in
+1610, returned with him (as is likely), he sailed for England on
+28th March, 1611.  In that case, he was in England in 1611, and the
+passages cited leave it dubious whether he wrote his book in 1611,
+1612, or in both years.[1]
+
+
+[1] Mr. Arber dates the MS. "1610-1615," and attributes to Strachey
+Laws for Virginia, 1612.
+
+
+Strachey embodies in his work considerable pieces of Smith's Map of
+Virginia and Description, written in 1608, and published in 1612.
+He continually deserts Smith, however, adding more recent
+information, reflections and references to the ancient classics,
+with allusions to his own travels in the Levant.  His glossary is
+much more extensive than Smith's, and he inserts a native song of
+triumph over the English in the original.[1]  Now, when Strachey
+comes to the religion of the natives[2] he gives eighteen pages
+(much of it verbiage) to five of Smith's.[3]  What Smith (1612)
+says of their chief god I quote, setting Strachey's version (1611-
+1612) beside it.
+
+
+[1] Strachey, pp. 79-80.  He may have got the song from Kemps or
+Machumps, friendly natives.
+
+[2] Pp. 82-100.
+
+[3] Arber, pp. 74-79.
+
+
+SMITH (Published, 1612).
+
+But their chiefe God they worship is the Diuell.  Him they call
+Oke, and serue him more of feare than loue.  They say they haue
+conference with him, and fashion themselues as neare to his shape
+as they can imagine.  In their Temples, they have his image euile
+favouredly carved, and then painted, and adorned with chaines,
+copper, and beades; and couered with a skin, in such manner as the
+deformity may well suit with such a God.  By him is commonly the
+sepulcher of their Kings.
+
+
+STRACHEY (Written, 1611-12).
+
+But their chief god they worship is no other, indeed, then the
+divell, whome they make presentments of, and shadow under the forme
+of an idoll, which they entitle Okeus, and whome they worship as
+the Romans did their hurtful god Vejovis, more for feare of harme
+then for hope of any good; they saie they have conference with him,
+and fashion themselves in their disguisments as neere to his shape
+as they can imagyn.  In every territory of a weroance is a temple
+and a priest, peradventure two or thrie; yet happie doth that
+weroance accompt himself who can detayne with him a Quiyough-
+quisock, of the best, grave, lucky, well instructed in their
+misteryes, and beloved of their god; and such a one is noe lesse
+honoured then was Dianae's priest at Ephesus, for whome they have
+their more private temples, with oratories and chauneells therein,
+according as is the dignity and reverence of the Quiyough-quisock,
+which the weroance wilbe at charge to build upon purpose, sometyme
+twenty foote broad and a hundred in length, fashioned arbour wyse
+after their buylding, having comonly the dore opening into the
+east, and at the west end a spence or chauncell from the body of
+the temple, with hollow wyndings and pillers, whereon stand divers
+black imagies, fashioned to the shoulders, with their faces looking
+down the church, and where within their weroances, upon a kind of
+biere of reedes, lye buryed; and under them, apart, in a vault low
+in the ground (as a more secrett thing), vailed with a matt, sitts
+their Okeus, an image ill-favouredly carved, all black dressed,
+with chaynes of perle, the presentment and figure of that god (say
+the priests unto the laity, and who religiously believe what the
+priests saie) which doth them all the harme they suffer, be yt in
+their bodies or goods, within doores or abroad; and true yt is many
+of them are divers tymes (especyally offendors) shrewdly scratched
+as they walke alone in the woods, yt may well be by the subtyle
+spirit, the malitious enemy to mankind, whome, therefore, to
+pacefie and worke to doe them good (at least no harme) the priests
+tell them they must do these and these sacrifices unto [them] of
+these and these things, and thus and thus often, by which meanes
+not only their owne children, but straungers, are sometimes
+sacrificed unto him: whilst the great god (the priests tell them)
+who governes all the world, and makes the sun to shine, creating
+the moone and stars his companyons, great powers, and which dwell
+with him, and by whose virtues and influences the under earth is
+tempered, and brings forth her fruiets according to her seasons,
+they calling Ahone; the good and peaceable god requires no such
+dutyes, nor needes be sacrificed unto, for he intendeth all good
+unto them, and will doe noe harme, only the displeased Okeus,
+looking into all men's accions, and examining the same according to
+the severe scale of justice, punisheth them with sicknesse, beats
+them, and strikes their ripe corn with blastings, stormes, and
+thunder clapps, stirrs up warre, and makes their women falce unto
+them.  Such is the misery and thraldome under which Sathan hath
+bound these wretched miscreants.
+
+
+I began by calling Strachey a plagiary.  The reader will now
+observe that he gives far more than he takes.  For example, his
+account of the temples is much more full than that of Smith, and he
+adds to Smith's version the character and being of Ahone, as what
+"the priests tell them".  I submit, therefore, that Strachey's
+additions, if valid for temples, are not discredited for Ahone,
+merely because they are inserted in the framework of Smith.  As far
+as I understand the matter, Smith's Map of Virginia (1612) is an
+amended copy, with additions, by Smith or another writer of that
+description, which he sent home to the Council of Virginia, in
+November, 1608.[1]  To the book of 1612 was added a portion of
+"Relations" by different hands, edited by W. S., namely, Dr.
+Symonds.  Strachey's editor, in 1849, regarded W. S. as Strachey,
+and supposed that Strachey was the real author of Smith's Map of
+Virginia, so that, in his Historie of Travaile, Strachey merely
+took back his own.  He did not take back his own; he made use of
+Smith's MS., not yet published, if Mr. Arber and I rightly date
+Strachey's MS. at 1610-15, or 1611-12.  Why Strachey acted thus it
+is possible to conjecture.  As a scholar well acquainted with
+Virginia, and as Secretary for the Colony, he would have access to
+Smith's MS. of 1608 among the papers of the Council, before its
+publication.  Smith professes himself "no scholer".[2]  On the
+other hand, Strachey likes to show off his Latin and Greek.  He has
+a curious, if inaccurate, knowledge of esoteric Greek and Roman
+religious antiquities, and in writing of religion aims at a
+comparative method.  Strachey, however, took the trouble to copy
+bits of Smith into his own larger work, which he never gave to the
+printers.
+
+
+[1] Arber, p. 444.
+
+[2] Arber, p. 442.
+
+
+Now as to Ahone.  It suits my argument to suppose that Strachey's
+account is no less genuine than his description of the temples
+(illustrated by a picture by John White, who had been in Virginia
+in 1589), and the account of the Great Hare of American mythology.[1]
+This view of a Virginian Creator, "our chief god" "who takes upon
+him this shape of a hare," was got, says Strachey, "last year,
+1610," from a brother of the Potomac King, by a boy named Spilman,
+who says that Smith "sold" him to Powhattan.[2]  In his own brief
+narrative Spelman (or Spilman) says nothing about the Cosmogonic
+Legend of the Great Hare.  The story came up when Captain Argoll was
+telling Powhattan's brother the account of creation in Genesis
+(1610).
+
+
+[1]  Strachey, p. 98-100.
+
+[2] "Spilman's Narrative," Arber, cx.-cxiv.
+
+
+Now Strachey's Great Hare is accepted by mythologists, while Ahone
+is regarded with suspicion.  Ahone does not happen to suit
+anthropological ideas, the Hare suits them rather better.
+Moreover, and more important, there is abundant corroborative
+evidence for Oke and for the Hare, Michabo, who, says Dr. Brinton,
+"was originally the highest divinity recognised by them, powerful
+and beneficent beyond all others, maker of the heavens and the
+world," just like Ahone, in fact.  And Dr. Brinton instructs us
+that Michabo originally meant not Great Hare, but "the spirit of
+light".[1]  Thus, originally, the Red Men adored "The Spirit of
+Light, maker of the heavens and the world".  Strachey claims no
+more than this for Ahone.  Now, of course, Dr. Brinton may be
+right.  But I have already expressed my extreme distrust of the
+philological processes by which he extracts "The Great Light;
+spirit of light," from Michabo, "beyond a doubt!"  In my poor
+opinion, whatever claims Michabo may have as an unique creator of
+earth and heaven--"God is Light,"--he owes his mythical aspect as a
+Hare to something other than an unconscious pun.  In any case,
+according to Dr. Brinton, Michabo, regarded as a creator, is
+equivalent to Strachey's Ahone.  This amount of corroboration,
+valeat quantum, I may claim, from the Potomac Indians, for the
+belief in Ahone on the James River.  Dr. Brinton is notoriously not
+a believer in American "monotheism".[2]
+
+
+[1] Myths of the New World, p. 178.
+
+[2] Myths of the New World, p. 53.
+
+
+The opponents of the authenticity of Ahone, however, will certainly
+argue: "For Oke, or Oki, as a redoubted being or spirit, or general
+name for such personages, we have plentiful evidence, corroborating
+that of Smith.  But what evidence as to Ahone corroborates that of
+Strachey?"  I must confess that I have no explicit corroborative
+evidence for Ahone, but then I have no accessible library of early
+books on Virginia.  Now it is clear that if I found and produced
+evidence for Ahone as late as 1625, I would be met at once with the
+retort that, between 1610 and 1625, Christian ideas had contaminated
+the native beliefs.  Thus if I find Ahone, or a deity of like
+attributes, after a very early date, he is of no use for my purpose.
+Nor do I much expect to find him.  But do we find Winslow's
+Massachusetts God, Kiehtan, named AFTER 1622 ("I only ask for
+information"), and if we don't, does that prevent Mr. Tylor from
+citing Kiehtan, with apparent reliance on the evidence?[1]
+
+
+[1] Primitive Culture, ii. p. 342.
+
+
+Again, Ahone, though primal and creative, is, by Strachey's
+account, a sleeping partner.  He has no sacrifice, and no temple or
+idol is recorded.  Therefore the belief in Ahone could only be
+discovered as a result of inquiry, whereas figures of Oke or Okeus,
+and his services, were common and conspicuous.[1]  As to Oke, I
+cannot quite understand Mr. Tylor's attitude.  Summarising Lafitau,
+a late writer of 1724, Mr. Tylor writes: "The whole class of
+spirits or demons, known to the Caribs by the name of cemi, in
+Algonkin as manitu, in Huron as oki, Lafitau now spells with
+capital letters, and converts them each into a supreme being".[2]
+Yet in Primitive Culture, ii., 342, 1891, Mr. Tylor had cited
+Smith's Okee (with a capital letter) as the "chief god" of the
+Virginians in 1612.  How can Lafitau be said to have elevated oki
+into Oki, and so to have made a god out of "a class of spirits or
+demons," in 1724, when Mr. Tylor had already cited Smith's Okee,
+with a capital letter and as a "chief god," in 1612?  Smith,
+rebuked for the same by Mr. Tylor, had even identified Okee with
+the devil.  Lafitau certainly did not begin this erroneous view of
+Oki as a "chief god" among the Virginians.  If I cannot to-day
+produce corroboration for a god named Ahone, I can at least show
+that, from the north of New England to the south of Virginia, there
+is early evidence, cited by Mr. Tylor, for a belief in a primal
+creative being, closely analogous to Ahone.  And this evidence, I
+think, distinctly proves that such a being as Ahone was within the
+capacity of the Indians in these latitudes.  Mr. Tylor must have
+thought in 1891 that the natives were competent to a belief in a
+supreme deity, for he said, "Another famous native American name
+for the supreme deity is Oki".[3]  In the essay of 1892, however,
+Oki does not appear to exist as a god's name till 1724.  We may
+now, for earlier evidence, turn to Master Thomas Heriot, "that
+learned mathematician" "who spoke the Indian language," and was
+with the company which abandoned Virginia on 18th June, 1586.  They
+ranged 130 miles north and 130 miles north-west of Roanoke Island,
+which brings them into the neighbourhood of Smith's and Strachey's
+country.  Heriot writes as to the native creeds: "They believe that
+there are many gods which they call Mantoac, but of different sorts
+and degrees.  Also that there is one chiefe God that hath beene
+from all eternitie, who, as they say, when he purposed first to
+make the world, made first other gods of a principall order, to be
+as instruments to be used in the Creation and Government to follow,
+and after the Sunne, Moone and Starres as pettie gods, and the
+instruments of the other order more principall. . . . They thinke
+that all the gods are of humane shape," and represent them by
+anthropomorphic idols.  An idol, or image, "Kewasa" (the plural is
+"Kewasowok"), is placed in the temples, "where they worship, pray
+and make many offerings".  Good souls go to be happy with the gods,
+the bad burn in Popogusso, a great pit, "where the sun sets".  The
+evidence for this theory of a future life, as usual, is that of men
+who died and revived again, a story found in a score of widely
+separated regions, down to our day, when the death, revival and
+revelation occurred to the founder of the Arapahoe new religion of
+the Ghost Dance.  The belief "works for righteousness".  "The
+common sort . . . have great care to avoyde torment after death,
+and to enjoy blesse," also they have "great respect to their
+Governors".
+
+
+[1] Okee's image, as early as 1607, was borne into battle against
+Smith, who captured the god (Arber, p. 393).  Ahone was not thus en
+evidence.
+
+[2] Journal of Anthrop. Inst., Feb., 1892, pp. 285, 286.
+
+[3] Prim. Cult,, ii. p. 342.
+
+
+This belief in a chief god "from all eternitie" (that is, of
+unexplained origin), may not be convenient to some speculators, but
+it exactly corroborates Strachey's account of Ahone as creator with
+subordinates.  The evidence is of 1586 (twenty-six years before
+Strachey), and, like Strachey, Heriot attributes the whole scheme
+of belief to "the priestes".  "This is the sum of their religion,
+which I learned by having speciall familiaritie with some of their
+priests."[1]  I see no escape from the conclusion that the
+Virginians believed as Heriot says they did, except the device of
+alleging that they promptly borrowed some of Heriot's ideas and
+maintained that these ideas had ever been their own.  Heriot
+certainly did not recognise the identity.  "Through conversing with
+us they were brought into great doubts of their owne [religion],
+and no small admiration of ours; of which many desired to learne
+more than we had the meanes for want of utterance in their language
+to expresse."  So Heriot could not be subtle in the native tongue.
+Heriot did what he could to convert them: "I did my best to make
+His immortall glory knowne".  His efforts were chiefly successful
+by virtue of the savage admiration of our guns, mathematical
+instruments, and so forth.  These sources of an awakened interest
+in Christianity would vanish with the total destruction and
+discomfiture of the colony, unless a few captives, later massacred,
+taught our religion to the natives.[2]
+
+
+[1] According to Strachey, Heriot could speak the native language.
+
+[2] Heriot's Narrative, pp. 37-39. Quaritch, London, 1893.
+
+
+I shall cite another early example of a New England deity akin to
+Ahone, with a deputy, a friend of sorcerers, like Okee.  This
+account is in Smith's General History of New England, 1606-1624.
+We sent out a colony in 1607; "they all returned in the yeere
+1608," esteeming the country "a cold, barren, mountainous rocky
+desart".  I am apt to believe that they did not plant the
+fructifying seeds of grace among the natives in 1607-1608.  But the
+missionary efforts of French traders may, of course, have been
+blessed; nor can I deny that a yellow-haired man, whose corpse was
+found in 1620 with some objects of iron, may have converted the
+natives to such beliefs as they possessed.  We are told, however,
+that these tenets were of ancestral antiquity.  I cite E. Winslow,
+as edited by Smith (1623-24):--
+
+"Those where is this Plantation [New Plymouth] say Kiehtan[1] made
+all the other Gods: also one man and one woman, and with them all
+mankinde, but how they became so dispersed they know not.  They say
+that at first there was no king but Kiehtan, that dwelleth far
+westerly above the heavens, whither all good men go when they die,
+and have plentie of all things.  The bad go thither also and knock
+at the door, but ['the door is shut'] he bids them go wander in
+endless want and misery, for they shall not stay there.  They never
+saw Kiehtan,[2] but they hold it a great charge and dutie that one
+race teach another; and to him they make feasts and cry and sing
+for plenty and victory, or anything that is good.
+
+
+[1] In 1873 Mr. Tylor regarded Dr. Brinton's etymology of Kiehtan
+as = Kittanitowit = "Great Living Spirit," as "plausible".  In his
+edition of 1891 he omits this etymology.  Personally I entirely
+distrust the philological theories of the original sense of old
+divine names as a general rule.
+
+[2] "They never saw Kiehtan."  So, about 1854, "The common answer
+of intelligent black fellows on the Barwon when asked if they know
+Baiame . . . is this: 'Kamil zaia zummi Baiame, zaia winuzgulda';
+'I have not seen Baiame, I have heard or perceived him'.  If asked
+who made the sky, the earth, the animals and man, they always answer
+'Baiame'."  Daramulun, according to the same authority in Lang's
+Queensland, was the familiar of sorcerers, and appeared as a
+serpent.  This answers, as I show, to Hobamock the subordinate power
+to Kiehtan in New England and to Okee, the familiar of sorcerers in
+Virginia.  (Ridley, J. A. I., 1872, p. 277.)
+
+
+"They have another Power they call Hobamock, which we conceive the
+Devill, and upon him they call to cure their wounds and diseases;
+when they are curable he persuades them he sent them, because they
+have displeased him; but, if they be mortal, then he saith,
+'Kiehtan sent them'; which makes them never call on him in their
+sickness.  They say this Hobamock appears to them sometimes like a
+man, a deer, or an eagle, but most commonly like a snake; not to
+all but to their Powahs to cure diseases, and Undeses . . . and
+these are such as conjure in Virginia, and cause the people to do
+what they list."  Winslow (or rather Smith editing Winslow here),
+had already said, "They believe, as do the Virginians, of many
+divine powers, yet of one above all the rest, as the Southern
+Virginians call their chief god Kewassa [an error], and that we now
+inhabit Oke. . . .  The Massachusetts call their great god
+Kiehtan."[1]
+
+
+[1] Arber, pp. 767, 768.
+
+
+Here, then, in Heriot (1586), Strachey (1611-12) and Winslow
+(1622), we find fairly harmonious accounts of a polydaemonism with
+a chief, primal, creative being above and behind it; a being
+unnamed, and Ahone and Kiehtan.
+
+Is all this invention?  Or was all this derived from Europeans
+before 1586, and, if so, from what Europeans?  Mr. Tylor, in 1873,
+wrote, "After due allowance made for misrendering of savage
+answers, and importation of white men's thoughts, it can hardly be
+judged that a divine being, whose characteristics are often so
+unlike what European intercourse would have suggested, and who is
+heard of by such early explorers among such distant tribes, could
+be a deity of foreign origin".  NOW, he "can HARDLY be ALTOGETHER a
+deity of foreign origin".[1]  I agree with Mr. Tylor's earlier
+statement.  In my opinion Ahone--Okeus, Kiehtan--Hobamock,
+correspond, the first pair to the usually unseen Australian Baiame
+(a crystal or hypnotic vision of Baiame scarcely counts), while the
+second pair, Okeus and Hobamock, answer to the Australian familiars
+of sorcerers, Koin and Brewin; the American "Powers" being those of
+peoples on a higher level of culture.  Like Tharramulun where
+Baiame is supreme, Hobamock appears as a snake (Asclepius).
+
+
+[1] Prim. Cult., ii. 340, 1873, 1892.
+
+
+For all these reasons I am inclined to accept Strachey's Ahone as a
+veritable element in Virginian belief.  Without temple or service,
+such a being was not conspicuous, like Okee and other gods which
+had idols and sacrifices.
+
+As far as I see, Strachey has no theory to serve by inventing
+Ahone.  He asks how any races "if descended from the people of the
+first creation, should maintain so general and gross a defection
+from the true knowledge of God".  He is reduced to suppose that, as
+descendants of Ham, they inherit "the ignorance of true godliness."
+(p. 45).  The children of Shem and Japheth alone "retained, until
+the coming of the Messias, the only knowledge of the eternal and
+never-changing Trinity".  The Virginians, on the other hand, fell
+heir to the ignorance, and "fearful and superstitious instinct of
+nature" of Ham (p. 40).  Ahone, therefore, is not invented by
+Strachey to bolster up a theory (held by Strachey), of an inherited
+revelation, or of a sensus numinis which could not go wrong.
+Unless a proof be given that Strachey had a theory, or any other
+purpose, to serve by inventing Ahone, I cannot at present come into
+the opinion that he gratuitously fabled, though he may have
+unconsciously exaggerated.
+
+What were Strachey's sources?  He was for nine months, if not more,
+in the colony: he had travelled at least 115 miles up the James
+River, he occasionally suggests modifications of Smith's map, he
+refers to Smith's adventures, and his glossary is very much larger
+than Smith's; its accuracy I leave to American linguists.  Such a
+witness, despite his admitted use of Smith's text (if it is really
+all by Smith throughout) is not to be despised, and he is not
+despised in America.[1]  Strachey, it is true, had not, like Smith,
+been captured by Indians and either treated with perfect kindness
+and consideration (as Smith reported at the time), or tied to a
+tree and threatened with arrows, and laid out to have his head
+knocked in with a stone; as he alleged sixteen years later!
+Strachey, not being captured, did not owe his release (1) to the
+magnanimity of Powhattan, (2) to his own ingenious lies, (3) to the
+intercession of Pocahontas, as Smith, and his friends for him, at
+various dates inconsistently declared.  Smith certainly saw more of
+the natives at home: Strachey brought a more studious mind to what
+he could learn of their customs and ideas; and is not a convicted
+braggart.  I conjecture that one of Strachey's sources was a native
+named Kemps.  Smith had seized Kemps and Kinsock in 1609.  Unknown
+authorities (Powell? and Todkill?) represent these two savages as
+"the most exact villaines in the country".[2]  They were made to
+labour in fetters, then were set at liberty, but "little desired
+it".[3]  Some "souldiers" ran away to the liberated Kemps, who
+brought them back to Smith.[4]  Why Kemps and his friend are called
+"two of the most exact villains in the country" does not appear.
+Kemps died "of the surveye" (scurvey, probably) at Jamestown, in
+1610-11.  He was much made of by Lord De la Warr, "could speak a
+pretty deal of our English, and came orderly to church every day to
+prayers".  He gave Strachey the names of Powhattan's wives, and
+told him, truly or not, that Pocahontas was married, about 1610, to
+an Indian named Kocoum.[5]  I offer the guess that Kemps and
+Machumps, who came and went from Pocahontas, and recited an Indian
+prayer which Strachey neglected to copy out, may have been among
+Strachey's authorities.  I shall, of course, be told that Kemps
+picked up Ahone at church.  This did not strike Strachey as being
+the fact; he had no opinion of the creed in which Ahone was a
+factor, "the misery and thraldome under which Sathan has bound
+these wretched miscreants".  According to Strachey, the priests,
+far from borrowing any part of our faith, "feare and tremble lest
+the knowledge of God, and of our Saviour Jesus Christ be taught in
+these parts".
+
+
+[1] Arber, cxvii.  Strachey mentions that (before his arrival in
+Virginia) Pocahontas turned cart-wheels, naked, in Jamestown, being
+then under twelve, and not yet wearing the apron.  Smith says she
+was ten in 1608, but does not mention the cart-wheels.  Later, he
+found it convenient to put her age at twelve or thirteen in 1608.
+Most American scholars, such as Mr. Adams, entirely distrust the
+romantic later narratives of Smith.
+
+[2] The Proeeedings, etc., by W. S. Arber, p. 151.
+
+[3] Ibid., p. 155.
+
+[4] Ibid., p. 157.
+
+[5] Strachey, pp. 54, 55.
+
+
+Strachey is therefore for putting down the priests, and, like Smith
+(indeed here borrowing from Smith), accuses them of sacrificing
+children.  To Smith's statement that such a rite was worked at
+Quiyough-cohanock, Strachey adds that Sir George Percy (who was
+with Smith) "was at, and observed" a similar mystery at Kecoughtan.
+It is plain that the rite was not a sacrifice, but a Bora, or
+initiation, and the parallel of the Spartan flogging of boys, with
+the retreat of the boys and their instructors, is very close, and,
+of course, unnoted by classical scholars except Mr. Frazer.
+Strachey ends with the critical remark that we shall not know all
+the certainty of the religion and mysteries till we can capture
+some of the priests, or Quiyough-quisocks.
+
+Students who have access to a good library of Americana may do more
+to elucidate Ahone.  I regard him as in a line with Kiehtan and the
+God spoken of by Heriot, and do not believe (1) that Strachey lied;
+(2) that natives deceived Strachey; (3) that Ahone was borrowed
+from "the God of Captain Smith".
+
+
+
+MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+SYSTEMS OF MYTHOLOGY.
+
+Definitions of religion--Contradictory evidence--"Belief in
+spiritual beings"--Objection to Mr. Tylor's definition--Definition
+as regards this argument--Problem: the contradiction between
+religion and myth--Two human moods--Examples--Case of Greece--
+Ancient mythologists--Criticism by Eusebius--Modern mythological
+systems--Mr. Max Muller--Mannhardt.
+
+
+The word "Religion" may be, and has been, employed in many different
+senses, and with a perplexing width of significance.  No attempt to
+define the word is likely to be quite satisfactory, but almost any
+definition may serve the purpose of an argument, if the writer who
+employs it states his meaning frankly and adheres to it steadily.
+An example of the confusions which may arise from the use of the
+term "religion" is familiar to students.  Dr. J. D. Lang wrote
+concerning the native races of Australia: "They have nothing
+whatever of the character of religion, or of religious observances,
+to distinguish them from the beasts that perish".  Yet in the same
+book Dr. Lang published evidence assigning to the natives belief in
+"Turramullun, the chief of demons, who is the author of disease,
+mischief and wisdom".[1]  The belief in a superhuman author of
+"disease, mischief and wisdom" is certainly a religious belief not
+conspicuously held by "the beasts"; yet all religion was denied to
+the Australians by the very author who prints (in however erroneous
+a style) an account of part of their creed.  This writer merely
+inherited the old missionary habit of speaking about the god of a
+non-Christian people as a "demon" or an "evil spirit".
+
+
+[1] See Primitive Culture, second edition, i. 419.
+
+
+Dr. Lang's negative opinion was contradicted in testimony published
+by himself, an appendix by the Rev. Mr. Ridley, containing evidence
+of the belief in Baiame.  "Those who have learned that 'God' is the
+name by which we speak of the Creator, say that Baiame is God."[1]
+
+
+[1] Lang's Queensland, p. 445, 1861.
+
+
+As "a minimum definition of religion," Mr. Tylor has suggested "the
+belief in spiritual beings".  Against this it may be urged that,
+while we have no definite certainty that any race of men is
+destitute of belief in spiritual beings, yet certain moral and
+creative deities of low races do not seem to be envisaged as
+"spiritual" at all.  They are regarded as EXISTENCES, as BEINGS,
+unconditioned by Time, Space, or Death, and nobody appears to have
+put the purely metaphysical question, "Are these beings spiritual
+or material?"[1]  Now, if a race were discovered which believed in
+such beings, yet had no faith in spirits, that race could not be
+called irreligious, as it would have to be called in Mr. Tylor's
+"minimum definition".  Almost certainly, no race in this stage of
+belief in nothing but unconditioned but not expressly spiritual
+beings is extant.  Yet such a belief may conceivably have existed
+before men had developed the theory of spirits at all, and such a
+belief, in creative and moral unconditioned beings, not alleged to
+be spiritual, could not be excluded from a definition of religion.[2]
+
+
+[1] See The Making of Religion, pp. 201-210.
+
+[2] "The history of the Jews, nay, the history of our own mind,
+proves to demonstration that the thought of God is a far easier
+thought, and a far earlier, than that of a spirit."  Father
+Tyrrell, S. J., The Month, October, 1898.  As to the Jews, the
+question is debated.  As to our own infancy, we are certainly
+taught about God before we are likely to be capable of the
+metaphysical notion of spirit.  But we can scarcely reason from
+children in Christian houses to the infancy of the race.
+
+
+For these reasons we propose (merely for the purpose of the present
+work) to define religion as the belief in a primal being, a Maker,
+undying, usually moral, without denying that the belief in
+spiritual beings, even if immoral, may be styled religious.  Our
+definition is expressly framed for the purpose of the argument,
+because that argument endeavours to bring into view the essential
+conflict between religion and myth.  We intend to show that this
+conflict between the religious and the mythical conception is
+present, not only (where it has been universally recognised) in the
+faiths of the ancient civilised peoples, as in Greece, Rome, India
+and Egypt, but also in the ideas of the lowest known savages.
+
+It may, of course, be argued that the belief in Creator is itself
+a myth.  However that may be, the attitude of awe, and of moral
+obedience, in face of such a supposed being, is religious in the
+sense of the Christian religion, whereas the fabrication of
+fanciful, humorous, and wildly irrational fables about that being,
+or others, is essentially mythical in the ordinary significance of
+that word, though not absent from popular Christianity.
+
+Now, the whole crux and puzzle of mythology is, "Why, having
+attained (in whatever way) to a belief in an undying guardian,
+'Master of Life,' did mankind set to work to evolve a chronique
+scandaleuse about HIM?  And why is that chronique the elaborately
+absurd set of legends which we find in all mythologies?"
+
+In answering, or trying to answer, these questions, we cannot go
+behind the beliefs of the races now most immersed in savage
+ignorance.  About the psychology of races yet more undeveloped we
+can have no historical knowledge.  Among the lowest known tribes we
+usually find, just as in ancient Greece, the belief in a deathless
+"Father," "Master," "Maker," and also the crowd of humorous,
+obscene, fanciful myths which are in flagrant contradiction with
+the religious character of that belief.  That belief is what we
+call rational, and even elevated.  The myths, on the other hand,
+are what we call irrational and debasing.  We regard low savages as
+very irrational and debased characters, consequently the nature of
+their myths does not surprise us.  Their religious conception,
+however, of a "Father" or "Master of Life" seems out of keeping
+with the nature of the savage mind as we understand it.  Still,
+there the religious conception actually is, and it seems to follow
+that we do not wholly understand the savage mind, or its unknown
+antecedents.  In any case, there the facts are, as shall be
+demonstrated.  However the ancestors of Australians, or Andamanese,
+or Hurons arrived at their highest religious conception, they
+decidedly possess it.[1]  The development of their mythical
+conceptions is accounted for by those qualities of their minds
+which we do understand, and shall illustrate at length.  For the
+present, we can only say that the religious conception uprises from
+the human intellect in one mood, that of earnest contemplation and
+submission: while the mythical ideas uprise from another mood, that
+of playful and erratic fancy.  These two moods are conspicuous even
+in Christianity.  The former, that of earnest and submissive
+contemplation, declares itself in prayers, hymns, and "the dim
+religious light" of cathedrals.  The second mood, that of playful
+and erratic fancy, is conspicuous in the buffoonery of Miracle
+Plays, in Marchen, these burlesque popular tales about our Lord and
+the Apostles, and in the hideous and grotesque sculptures on sacred
+edifices.  The two moods are present, and in conflict, through the
+whole religious history of the human race.  They stand as near each
+other, and as far apart, as Love and Lust.
+
+
+[1] The hypothesis that the conception was borrowed from European
+creeds will be discussed later.  See, too, "Are Savage Gods
+borrowed from Missionaries?"  Nineteenth Century, January, 1899.
+
+
+It will later be shown that even some of the most backward savages
+make a perhaps half-conscious distinction between their mythology
+and their religion.  As to the former, they are communicative; as
+to the latter, they jealously guard their secret in sacred
+mysteries.  It is improbable that reflective "black fellows" have
+been morally shocked by the flagrant contradictions between their
+religious conceptions and their mythical stories of the divine
+beings.  But human thought could not come into explicit clearness
+of consciousness without producing the sense of shock and surprise
+at these contradictions between the Religion and the Myth of the
+same god.  Of this we proceed to give examples.
+
+In Greece, as early as the sixth century B. C., we are all familiar
+with Xenophanes' poem[1] complaining that the gods were credited
+with the worst crimes of mortals--in fact, with abominations only
+known in the orgies of Nero and Elagabalus.  We hear Pindar
+refusing to repeat the tale which told him the blessed were
+cannibals.[2]  In India we read the pious Brahmanic attempts to
+expound decently the myths which made Indra the slayer of a
+Brahman; the sinner, that is, of the unpardonable sin.  In Egypt,
+too, we study the priestly or philosophic systems by which the
+clergy strove to strip the burden of absurdity and sacrilege from
+their own deities.  From all these efforts of civilised and pious
+believers to explain away the stories about their own gods we may
+infer one fact--the most important to the student of mythology--the
+fact that myths were not evolved in times of clear civilised
+thought.  It is when Greece is just beginning to free her thought
+from the bondage of too concrete language, when she is striving to
+coin abstract terms, that her philosophers and poets first find the
+myths of Greece a stumbling-block.
+
+
+[1] Ritter and Preller, Hist. Philos., Gothae, 1869, p. 82.
+
+[2] Olympic Odes, i., Myers's translation: "To me it is impossible
+to call one of the blessed gods a cannibal. . . .  Meet it is for a
+man that concerning the gods he speak honourably, for the reproach
+is less.  Of thee, son of Tantalus, I will speak contrariwise to
+them who have gone before me."  In avoiding the story of the
+cannibal god, however, Pindar tells a tale even more offensive to
+our morality.
+
+
+All early attempts at an interpretation of mythology are so many
+efforts to explain the myths on some principle which shall seem not
+unreasonable to men living at the time of the explanation.
+Therefore the pious remonstrances and the forced constructions of
+early thinkers like Xenophanes, of poets like Pindar, of all
+ancient Homeric scholars and Pagan apologists, from Theagenes of
+Rhegium (525 B. C.), the early Homeric commentator, to Porphyry,
+almost the last of the heathen philosophers, are so many proofs
+that to Greece, as soon as she had a reflective literature, the
+myths of Greece seemed impious and IRRATIONAL. The essays of the
+native commentators on the Veda, in the same way, are endeavours to
+put into myths felt to be irrational and impious a meaning which
+does not offend either piety or reason.  We may therefore conclude
+that it was not men in an early stage of philosophic thought (as
+philosophy is now understood)--not men like Empedocles and
+Heraclitus, nor reasonably devout men like Eumaeus, the pious
+swineherd of the Odyssey--who evolved the blasphemous myths of
+Greece, of Egypt and of India.  We must look elsewhere for an
+explanation.  We must try to discover some actual and demonstrable
+and widely prevalent condition of the human mind, in which tales
+that even to remote and rudimentary civilisations appeared
+irrational and unnatural would seem natural and rational.  To
+discover this intellectual condition has been the aim of all
+mythologists who did not believe that myth is a divine tradition
+depraved by human weakness, or a distorted version of historical
+events.
+
+Before going further, it is desirable to set forth what our aim is,
+and to what extent we are seeking an interpretation of mythology.
+It is not our purpose to explain every detail of every ancient
+legend, either as a distorted historical fact or as the result of
+this or that confusion of thought caused by forgetfulness of the
+meanings of language, or in any other way; nay, we must constantly
+protest against the excursions of too venturesome ingenuity.  Myth
+is so ancient, so complex, so full of elements, that it is vain
+labour to seek a cause for every phenomenon.  We are chiefly
+occupied with the quest for an historical condition of the human
+intellect to which the element in myths, regarded by us as
+irrational, shall seem rational enough.  If we can prove that such
+a state of mind widely exists among men, and has existed, that
+state of mind may be provisionally considered as the fount and
+ORIGIN of the myths which have always perplexed men in a reasonable
+modern mental condition.  Again, if it can be shown that this
+mental stage was one through which all civilised races have passed,
+the universality of the mythopoeic mental condition will to some
+extent explain the universal DIFFUSION of the stories.
+
+Now, in all mythologies, whether savage or civilised, and in all
+religions where myths intrude, there exist two factors--the factor
+which we now regard as rational, and that which we moderns regard
+as irrational.  The former element needs little explanation; the
+latter has demanded explanation ever since human thought became
+comparatively instructed and abstract.
+
+To take an example; even in the myths of savages there is much that
+still seems rational and transparent.  If savages tell us that some
+wise being taught them all the simple arts of life, the use of
+fire, of the bow and arrow, the barbing of hooks, and so forth, we
+understand them at once.  Nothing can be more natural than that man
+should believe in an original inventor of the arts, and should tell
+tales about the imaginary discoverers if the real heroes be
+forgotten.  So far all is plain sailing.  But when the savage goes
+on to say that he who taught the use of fire or who gave the first
+marriage laws was a rabbit or a crow, or a dog, or a beaver, or a
+spider, then we are at once face to face with the element in myths
+which seems to us IRRATIONAL.  Again, among civilised peoples we
+read of the pure all-seeing Varuna in the Vedas, to whom sin is an
+offence.  We read of Indra, the Lord of Thunder, borne in his
+chariot, the giver of victory, the giver of wealth to the pious;
+here once more all seems natural and plain.  The notion of a deity
+who guides the whirlwind and directs the storm, a god of battles, a
+god who blesses righteousness, is familiar to us and intelligible;
+but when we read how Indra drank himself drunk and committed
+adulteries with Asura women, and got himself born from the same
+womb as a bull, and changed himself into a quail or a ram, and
+suffered from the most abject physical terror, and so forth, then
+we are among myths no longer readily intelligible; here, we feel,
+are IRRATIONAL stories, of which the original ideas, in their
+natural sense, can hardly have been conceived by men in a pure and
+rational early civilisation.  Again, in the religions of even the
+lowest races, such myths as these are in contradiction with the
+ethical elements of the faith.
+
+If we look at Greek religious tradition, we observe the coexistence
+of the RATIONAL and the apparently IRRATIONAL elements.  The
+RATIONAL myths are those which represent the gods as beautiful and
+wise beings.  The Artemis of the Odyssey "taking her pastime in the
+chase of boars and swift deer, while with her the wild wood-nymphs
+disport them, and high over them all she rears her brow, and is
+easily to be known where all are fair,"[1] is a perfectly RATIONAL
+mythic representation of a divine being.  We feel, even now, that
+the conception of a "queen and goddess, chaste and fair," the
+abbess, as Paul de Saint-Victor calls her, of the woodlands, is a
+beautiful and natural fancy, which requires no explanation.  On the
+other hand, the Artemis of Arcadia, who is confused with the nymph
+Callisto, who, again, is said to have become a she-bear, and later
+a star; and the Brauronian Artemis, whose maiden ministers danced a
+bear-dance,[2] are goddesses whose legend seems unnatural, and
+needs to be made intelligible.  Or, again, there is nothing not
+explicable and natural in the conception of the Olympian Zeus as
+represented by the great chryselephantine statue of Zeus at
+Olympia, or in the Homeric conception of Zeus as a god who "turns
+everywhere his shining eyes, and beholds all things, and protects
+the righteous, and deals good or evil fortune to men.  But the Zeus
+whose grave was shown in Crete, or the Zeus who played Demeter an
+obscene trick by the aid of a ram, or the Zeus who, in the shape of
+a swan, became the father of Castor and Pollux, or the Zeus who
+deceived Hera by means of a feigned marriage with an inanimate
+object, or the Zeus who was afraid of Attes, or the Zeus who made
+love to women in the shape of an ant or a cuckoo, is a being whose
+myth is felt to be unnatural and bewildering.[3]  It is this
+IRRATIONAL and unnatural element, as Mr. Max Muller says, "the
+silly, senseless, and savage element," that makes mythology the
+puzzle which men have so long found it.  For, observe, Greek myth
+does not represent merely a humorous play of fancy, dealing with
+things religiously sacred as if by way of relief from the strained
+reverential contemplation of the majesty of Zeus.  Many stories of
+Greek mythology are such as could not cross, for the first time,
+the mind of a civilised Xenophanes or Theagenes, even in a dream.
+THIS was the real puzzle.
+
+
+[1] Odyssey, vi. 102.
+
+[2] [Greek word omitted]; compare Harpokration on this word.
+
+[3] These are the features in myth which provoke, for example, the
+wonder of Emeric-David.  "The lizard, the wolf, the dog, the ass,
+the frog, and all the other brutes so common on religious monuments
+everywhere, do they not all imply a THOUGHT which we must divine?"
+He concludes that these animals, plants, and monsters of myths are
+so many "enigmas" and "symbols" veiling some deep, sacred idea,
+allegories of some esoteric religious creed.  Jupiter, Paris, 1832,
+p. lxxvii.
+
+
+We have offered examples--Savage, Indian, and Greek--of that
+element in mythology which, as all civilised races have felt,
+demands explanation.
+
+To be still more explicit, we may draw up a brief list of the chief
+problems in the legendary stories attached to the old religions of
+the world--the problems which it is our special purpose to notice.
+First we have, in the myths of all races, the most grotesque
+conceptions of the character of gods when mythically envisaged.
+Beings who, in religion, leave little to be desired, and are spoken
+of as holy, immortal, omniscient, and kindly, are, in myth,
+represented as fashioned in the likeness not only of man, but of
+the beasts; as subject to death, as ignorant and impious.
+
+Most pre-Christian religions had their "zoomorphic" or partially
+zoomorphic idols, gods in the shape of the lower animals, or with
+the heads and necks of the lower animals.  In the same way all
+mythologies represent the gods as fond of appearing in animal
+forms.  Under these disguises they conduct many amours, even with
+the daughters of men, and Greek houses were proud of their descent
+from Zeus in the shape of an eagle or ant, a serpent or a swan;
+while Cronus and the Vedic Tvashtri and Poseidon made love as
+horses, and Apollo as a dog.  Not less wild are the legends about
+the births of gods from the thigh, or the head, or feet, or armpits
+of some parent; while tales describing and pictures representing
+unspeakable divine obscenities were frequent in the mythology and
+in the temples of Greece.  Once more, the gods were said to possess
+and exercise the power of turning men and women into birds, beasts,
+fishes, trees, and stones, so that there was scarcely a familiar
+natural object in the Greek world which had not once (according to
+legend) been a man or a woman.  The myths of the origin of the
+world and man, again, were in the last degree childish and
+disgusting.  The Bushmen and Australians have, perhaps, no story of
+the origin of species quite so barbarous in style as the anecdotes
+about Phanes and Prajapati which are preserved in the Orphic hymns
+and in the Brahmanas.  The conduct of the earlier dynasties of
+classical gods towards each other was as notoriously cruel and
+loathsome as their behaviour towards mortals was tricksy and
+capricious.  The classical gods, with all their immortal might,
+are, by a mythical contradiction of the religious conception,
+regarded as capable of fear and pain, and are led into scrapes as
+ludicrous as those of Brer Wolf or Brer Terrapin in the tales of
+the Negroes of the Southern States of America.  The stars, again,
+in mythology, are mixed up with beasts, planets and men in the same
+embroglio of fantastic opinion.  The dead and the living, men,
+beasts and gods, trees and stars, and rivers, and sun, and moon,
+dance through the region of myths in a burlesque ballet of Priapus,
+where everything may be anything, where nature has no laws and
+imagination no limits.
+
+Such are the irrational characteristics of myths, classic or
+Indian, European or American, African or Asiatic, Australian or
+Maori.  Such is one element we find all the world over among
+civilised and savage people, quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab
+omnibus.  It is no wonder that pious and reflective men have, in so
+many ages and in so many ways, tried to account to themselves for
+their possession of beliefs closely connected with religion which
+yet seemed ruinous to religion and morality.
+
+The explanations which men have given of their own sacred stories,
+the apologies for their own gods which they have been constrained
+to offer to themselves, were the earliest babblings of a science of
+mythology.  That science was, in its dim beginnings, intended to
+satisfy a moral need.  Man found that his gods, when mythically
+envisaged, were not made in his own moral image at its best, but in
+the image sometimes of the beasts, sometimes of his own moral
+nature at its very worst: in the likeness of robbers, wizards,
+sorcerers, and adulterers.  Now, it is impossible here to examine
+minutely all systems of mythological interpretation.  Every key has
+been tried in this difficult lock; every cause of confusion has
+been taken up and tested, deemed adequate, and finally rejected or
+assigned a subordinate place.  Probably the first attempts to shake
+off the burden of religious horror at mythical impiety were made by
+way of silent omission.  Thus most of the foulest myths of early
+India are absent, and presumably were left out, in the Rig-Veda.
+"The religious sentiment of the hymns, already so elevated, has
+discarded most of the tales which offended it, but has not
+succeeded in discarding them all."[1]  Just as the poets of the
+Rig-Veda prefer to avoid the more offensive traditions about Indra
+and Tvashtri, so Homer succeeds in avoiding the more grotesque and
+puerile tales about his own gods.[2]  The period of actual apology
+comes later.  Pindar declines, as we have seen, to accuse a god of
+cannibalism.  The Satapatha Brahmana invents a new story about the
+slaying of Visvarupa.  Not Indra, but Trita, says the Brahmana
+apologetically, slew the three-headed son of Tvashtri.  "Indra
+assuredly was free from that sin, for he is a god," says the Indian
+apologist.[3]  Yet sins which to us appear far more monstrous than
+the peccadillo of killing a three-headed Brahman are attributed
+freely to Indra.
+
+
+[1] Les Religions de l'Inde, Barth, p. 14. See also postea, "Indian
+Myths".
+
+[2] The reasons for Homer's reticence are probably different in
+different passages.  Perhaps in some cases he had heard a purer
+version of myth than what reached Hesiod; perhaps he sometimes
+purposely (like Pindar) purified a myth; usually he must have
+selected, in conformity with the noble humanity and purity of his
+taste, the tales that best conformed to his ideal.  He makes his
+deities reluctant to drag out in dispute old scandals of their
+early unheroic adventures, some of which, however, he gives, as the
+kicking of Hephaestus out of heaven, and the imprisonment of Ares
+in a vessel of bronze.  Compare Professor Jebb's Homer, p. 83:
+"whatever the instinct of the great artist has tolerated, at least
+it has purged these things away." that is, divine amours in bestial
+form.
+
+[3] Satapatha Brahmana, Oxford, 1882, vol. i. p. 47.
+
+
+While poets could but omit a blasphemous tale or sketch an apology
+in passing, it became the business of philosophers and of
+antiquarian writers deliberately to "whitewash" the gods of popular
+religion.  Systematic explanations of the sacred stories, whether
+as preserved in poetry or as told by priests, had to be provided.
+India had her etymological and her legendary school of mythology.[1]
+Thus, while the hymn SEEMED to tell how the Maruts were gods, "born
+together with the spotted deer," the etymological interpreters
+explained that the word for deer only meant the many-coloured lines
+of clouds.[2]  In the armoury of apologetics etymology has been the
+most serviceable weapon.  It is easy to see that by aid of etymology
+the most repulsive legend may be compelled to yield a pure or
+harmless sense, and may be explained as an innocent blunder, caused
+by mere verbal misunderstanding.  Brahmans, Greeks, and Germans have
+equally found comfort in this hypothesis.  In the Cratylus of Plato,
+Socrates speaks of the notion of explaining myths by etymological
+guesses at the meaning of divine names as "a philosophy which came
+to him all in an instant".  Thus we find Socrates shocked by the
+irreverence which styled Zeus the son of Cronus, "who is a proverb
+for stupidity".  But on examining philologically the name Kronos,
+Socrates decides that it must really mean Koros, "not in the sense
+of a youth, but signifying the pure and garnished mind".  Therefore,
+when people first called Zeus the son of Cronus, they meant nothing
+irreverent, but only that Zeus is the child of the pure mind or pure
+reason.  Not only is this etymological system most pious and
+consolatory, but it is, as Socrates adds, of universal application.
+"For now I bethink me of a very new and ingenious notion, . . . that
+we may put in and pull out letters at pleasure, and alter the
+accents."[3]
+
+
+[1] Rig-Veda Sanhita.  Max Muller, p. 59.
+
+[2] Postea, "Indian Divine Myths".
+
+[3] Jowett's Plato, vol. i. pp. 632, 670.
+
+
+Socrates, of course, speaks more than half in irony, but there is a
+certain truth in his account of etymological analysis and its
+dependence on individual tastes and preconceived theory.
+
+The ancient classical schools of mythological interpretation,
+though unscientific and unsuccessful, are not without interest.  We
+find philosophers and grammarians looking, just as we ourselves are
+looking, for some condition of the human intellect out of which the
+absurd element in myths might conceivably have sprung.  Very
+naturally the philosophers supposed that the human beings in whose
+brain and speech myths had their origin must have been philosophers
+like themselves--intelligent, educated persons.  But such persons,
+they argued, could never have meant to tell stories about the gods
+so full of nonsense and blasphemy.
+
+Therefore the nonsense and blasphemy must originally have had some
+harmless, or even praiseworthy, sense.  What could that sense have
+been?  This question each ancient mythologist answered in
+accordance with his own taste and prejudices, and above all, and
+like all other and later speculators, in harmony with the general
+tendency of his own studies.  If he lived when physical speculation
+was coming into fashion, as in the age of Empedocles, he thought
+that the Homeric poems must contain a veiled account of physical
+philosophy.  This was the opinion of Theagenes of Rhegium, who
+wrote at a period when a crude physicism was disengaging itself
+from the earlier religious and mythical cosmogonic systems of
+Greece.  Theagenes was shocked by the Homeric description of the
+battle in which the gods fought as allies of the Achaeans and
+Trojans.  He therefore explained away the affair as a veiled
+account of the strife of the elements.  Such "strife" was familiar
+to readers of the physical speculations of Empedocles and of
+Heraclitus, who blamed Homer for his prayer against Strife.[1]
+
+
+[1] Is. et Osir., 48.
+
+
+It did not occur to Theagenes to ask whether any evidence existed
+to show that the pre-Homeric Greeks were Empedoclean or Heraclitean
+philosophers.  He readily proved to himself that Apollo, Helios,
+and Hephaestus were allegorical representations, like what such
+philosophers would feign,--of fire, that Hera was air, Poseidon
+water, Artemis the moon, and the rest he disposed of in the same
+fashion.[1]
+
+
+[1] Scholia on Iliad, xx. 67.  Dindorf (1877), vol. iv. p. 231.
+"This manner of apologetics is as old as Theagenes of Rhegium.
+Homer offers theological doctrine in the guise of physical
+allegory."
+
+
+Metrodorus, again, turned not only the gods, but the Homeric heroes
+into "elemental combinations and physical agencies"; for there is
+nothing new in the mythological philosophy recently popular, which
+saw the sun, and the cloud, and the wind in Achilles, Athene, and
+Hermes.[1]
+
+
+[1] Grote, Hist, of Greece, ed. 1869, i. p. 404.
+
+
+In the Bacchae (291-297), Euripides puts another of the
+mythological systems of his own time into the mouth of Cadmus, the
+Theban king, who advances a philological explanation of the story
+that Dionysus was sewn up in the thigh of Zeus.  The most famous of
+the later theories was that of Euhemerus (316 B.C.).  In a kind of
+philosophical romance, Euhemerus declared that he had sailed to
+some No-man's-land, Panchaea, where he found the verity about
+mythical times engraved on pillars of bronze.  This truth he
+published in the Sacra Historia, where he rationalised the fables,
+averring that the gods had been men, and that the myths were
+exaggerated and distorted records of facts. (See Eusebius, Praep.
+E., ii 55.) The Abbe Banier (La Mythologie expliquee par
+l'Histoire, Paris, 1738, vol. ii. p. 218) attempts the defence of
+Euhemerus, whom most of the ancients regarded as an atheist.  There
+was an element of truth in his romantic hypothesis.[1]
+
+
+[1] See Block, Euhemere et sa Doctrine, Mons, 1876.
+
+
+Sometimes the old stories were said to conceal a moral, sometimes a
+physical, sometimes a mystical or Neo-platonic sort of meaning.  As
+every apologist interpreted the legends in his own fashion, the
+interpretations usually disagreed and killed each other.  Just as
+one modern mythologist sees the wind in Aeetes and the dawn in
+Medea, while another of the same school believes, on equally good
+evidence, that both Aeetes and Medea are the moon, so writers like
+Porphyry (270 A. D.) and Plutarch (60 A. D.) made the ancient
+deities types of their own favourite doctrines, whatever these
+might happen to be.
+
+When Christianity became powerful, the Christian writers naturally
+attacked heathen religion where it was most vulnerable, on the
+side of the myths, and of the mysteries which were dramatic
+representations of the myths.  "Pretty gods you worship," said the
+Fathers, in effect, "homicides, adulterers, bulls, bears, mice,
+ants, and what not."  The heathen apologists for the old religion
+were thus driven in the early ages of Christianity to various
+methods of explaining away the myths of their discredited religion.
+
+The early Christian writers very easily, and with considerable
+argumentative power, disposed of the apologies for the myths
+advanced by Porphyry and Plutarch.  Thus Eusebius in the
+Praeparatio Evangelica first attacks the Egyptian interpretations
+of their own bestial or semi-bestial gods.  He shows that the
+various interpretations destroy each other, and goes on to point
+out that Greek myth is in essence only a veneered and varnished
+version of the faith of Egypt.  He ridicules, with a good deal of
+humour, the old theories which resolved so many mythical heroes
+into the sun; he shows that while one system is contented to regard
+Zeus as mere fire and air, another system recognises in him the
+higher reason, while Heracles, Dionysus, Apollo, and Asclepius,
+father and child, are all indifferently the sun.
+
+Granting that the myth-makers were only constructing physical
+allegories, why did they wrap them up, asks Eusebius, in what WE
+consider abominable fictions?  In what state were the people who
+could not look at the pure processes of Nature without being
+reminded of the most hideous and unnatural offences?  Once more:
+"The physical interpreters do not even agree in their physical
+interpretations".  All these are equally facile, equally plausible,
+and equally incapable of proof.  Again, Eusebius argues, the
+interpreters take for granted in the makers of the myths an amount
+of physical knowledge which they certainly did not possess.  For
+example, if Leto were only another name for Hera, the character of
+Zeus would be cleared as far as his amour with Leto is concerned.
+Now, the ancient believers in the "physical phenomena theory" of
+myths made out that Hera, the wife of Zeus, was really the same
+person under another name as Leto, his mistress.  "For Hera is the
+earth" (they said at other times that Hera was the air), "and Leto
+is the night; but night is only the shadow of the earth, and
+therefore Leto is only the shadow of Hera."  It was easy, however,
+to prove that this scientific view of night as the shadow of earth
+was not likely to be known to myth-makers, who regarded "swift
+Night" as an actual person.  Plutarch, too, had an abstruse theory
+to explain the legend about the dummy wife,--a log of oak-wood,
+which Zeus pretended to marry when at variance with Hera.[1]
+
+
+[1] Pausanias, ix. 31.
+
+
+This quarrel, he said, was merely the confusion and strife of
+elements.  Zeus was heat, Hera was cold (she had already been
+explained as earth and air), the dummy wife of oak-wood was a tree
+that emerged after a flood, and so forth.  Of course, there was no
+evidence that mythopoeic men held Plutarchian theories of heat and
+cold and the conflict of the elements; besides, as Eusebius pointed
+out, Hera had already been defined once as an allegory of wedded
+life, and once as the earth, and again as the air, and it was
+rather too late to assert that she was also the cold and watery
+element in the world.  As for his own explanation of the myths,
+Eusebius holds that they descend from a period when men in their
+lawless barbarism knew no better than to tell such tales.  "Ancient
+folk, in the exceeding savagery of their lives, made no account of
+God, the universal Creator [here Eusebius is probably wrong] . . .
+but betook them to all manner of abominations.  For the laws of
+decent existence were not yet established, nor was any settled and
+peaceful state ordained among men, but only a loose and savage
+fashion of wandering life, while, as beasts irrational, they cared
+for no more than to fill their bellies, being in a manner without
+God in the world."  Growing a little more civilised, men, according
+to Eusebius, sought after something divine, which they found in the
+heavenly bodies.  Later, they fell to worshipping living persons,
+especially "medicine men" and conjurors, and continued to worship
+them even after their decease, so that Greek temples are really
+tombs of the dead.[1]  Finally, the civilised ancients, with a
+conservative reluctance to abandon their old myths (Greek text
+omitted), invented for them moral or physical explanations, like
+those of Plutarch and others, earlier and later.[2]
+
+
+[1] Praep. E., ii. 5.
+
+[2] Ibid., 6,19.
+
+
+As Eusebius, like Clemens of Alexandria, Arnobius, and the other
+early Christian disputants, had no prejudice in favour of Hellenic
+mythology, and no sentimental reason for wishing to suppose that
+the origin of its impurities was pure, he found his way almost to
+the theory of the irrational element in mythology which we propose
+to offer.
+
+Even to sketch the history of mythological hypothesis in modern
+times would require a book to itself.  It must suffice here to
+indicate the various lines which speculation as to mythology has
+pursued.
+
+All interpretations of myth have been formed in accordance with the
+ideas prevalent in the time of the interpreters.  The early Greek
+physicists thought that mythopoeic men had been physicists.
+Aristotle hints that they were (like himself) political
+philosophers.[1]  Neo-platonists sought in the myths for Neo-
+platonism; most Christians (unlike Eusebius) either sided with
+Euhemerus, or found in myth the inventions of devils, or a
+tarnished and distorted memory of the Biblical revelation.
+
+
+[1] Met., xi. 8,19.
+
+
+This was the theory, for example, of good old Jacob Bryant, who saw
+everywhere memories of the Noachian deluge and proofs of the
+correctness of Old Testament ethnology.[1]
+
+
+[1] Bryant, A New System, wherein an Attempt is made to Divest
+Tradition of Fable, 1774.
+
+
+Much the same attempt to find the Biblical truth at the bottom of
+savage and ancient fable has been recently made by the late M.
+Lenormant, a Catholic scholar.[1]
+
+
+[1] Les Origines de l'Histoire d'apres le Bible, 1880-1884.
+
+
+In the beginning of the present century Germany turned her
+attention to mythology.  As usual, men's ideas were biassed by the
+general nature of their opinions.  In a pious kind of spirit,
+Friedrich Creuzer sought to find SYMBOLS of some pure, early, and
+Oriental theosophy in the myths and mysteries of Greece.  Certainly
+the Greeks of the philosophical period explained their own myths as
+symbols of higher things, but the explanation was an after-
+thought.[1]  The great Lobeck, in his Aglaophamus (1829), brought
+back common sense, and made it the guide of his vast, his
+unequalled learning.  In a gentler and more genial spirit, C.
+Otfried Muller laid the foundation of a truly scientific and
+historical mythology.[2]  Neither of these writers had, like Alfred
+Maury,[3] much knowledge of the myths and faiths of the lower
+races, but they often seem on the point of anticipating the
+ethnological method.
+
+
+[1] Creuzer, Symbolik und Mythologie, 2d edit., Leipzig, 1836-43.
+
+[2] Introduction to a Scientific System of Mythology, English
+trans., London, 1844.
+
+[3] Histoire des Religions de la Grece Antique, Paris, 1857.
+
+
+When philological science in our own century came to maturity, in
+philology, as of old in physics and later in symbols, was sought
+the key of myths.  While physical allegory, religious and esoteric
+symbolism, verbal confusion, historical legend, and an original
+divine tradition, perverted in ages of darkness, have been the most
+popular keys in other ages, the scientific nineteenth century has
+had a philological key of its own.  The methods of Kuhn, Breal, Max
+Muller, and generally the philological method, cannot be examined
+here at full length.[1]  Briefly speaking, the modern philological
+method is intended for a scientific application of the old
+etymological interpretations.  Cadmus in the Bacchae of Euripides,
+Socrates in the Cratylus of Plato, dismiss unpalatable myths as the
+results of verbal confusion.  People had originally said something
+quite sensible--so the hypothesis runs--but when their descendants
+forgot the meaning of their remarks, a new and absurd meaning
+followed from a series of unconscious puns.[2]  This view was
+supported in ancient times by purely conjectural and impossible
+etymologies.  Thus the myth that Dionysus was sewn up in the THIGH
+of Zeus (Greek text omitted) was explained by Euripides as the
+result of a confusion of words.  People had originally said that
+Zeus gave a pledge (Greek text omitted) to Hera.  The modern
+philological school relies for explanations of untoward and other
+myths on similar confusions.  Thus Daphne is said to have been
+originally not a girl of romance, but the dawn (Sanskirt, dahana:
+ahana) pursued by the rising sun.  But as the original Aryan sense
+of Dahana or Ahana was lost, and as Daphne came to mean the laurel--
+the wood which burns easily--the fable arose that the tree had
+been a girl called Daphne.[3]
+
+
+[1] See Mythology in Encyclop. Brit. and in La Mythologie (A. L.),
+Paris, 1886, where Mr. Max Muller's system is criticised.  See also
+Custom and Myth and Modern Mythology.
+
+[2] That a considerable number of myths, chiefly myths of place
+names, arise from popular etymologies is certain: what is objected
+to is the vast proportion given to this element in myths.
+
+[3] Max Muller, Nineteenth Century, December, 1885; "Solar Myths,"
+January, 1886; Myths and Mythologists (A. L).  Whitney, Mannhardt,
+Bergaigne, and others dispute the etymology.  Or. and Ling.
+Studies, 1874, p. 160; Mannhardt, Antike Wald und Feld Kultus
+(Berlin, 1877), p. xx.; Bergaigne, La Religion Vedique, iii. 293;
+nor does Curtius like it much, Principles of Greek Etymology,
+English trans., ii. 92, 93; Modern Mythology (A. L.), 1897.
+
+
+This system chiefly rests on comparison between the Sanskrit names
+in the Rig-Veda and the mythic names in Greek, German, Slavonic,
+and other Aryan legends.  The attempt is made to prove that, in the
+common speech of the undivided Aryan race, many words for splendid
+or glowing natural phenomena existed, and that natural processes
+were described in a figurative style.  As the various Aryan
+families separated, the sense of the old words and names became
+dim, the nomina developed into numina, the names into gods, the
+descriptions of elemental processes into myths.  As this system has
+already been criticised by us elsewhere with minute attention, a
+reference to these reviews must suffice in this place.  Briefly, it
+may be stated that the various masters of the school--Kuhn, Max
+Muller, Roth, Schwartz, and the rest--rarely agree where agreement
+is essential, that is, in the philological foundations of their
+building.  They differ in very many of the etymological analyses of
+mythical names.  They also differ in the interpretations they put
+on the names, Kuhn almost invariably seeing fire, storm, cloud, or
+lightning where Mr. Max Muller sees the chaste Dawn.  Thus
+Mannhardt, after having been a disciple, is obliged to say that
+comparative Indo-Germanic mythology has not borne the fruit
+expected, and that "the CERTAIN gains of the system reduce
+themselves to the scantiest list of parallels, such as Dyaus = Zeus
+= Tius, Parjanya = Perkunas, Bhaga = Bog, Varuna = Uranos" (a
+position much disputed), etc.  Mannhardt adds his belief that a
+number of other "equations"--such as Sarameya = Hermeias, Saranyus
+= Demeter Erinnys, Kentauros = Gandharva, and many others--will not
+stand criticism, and he fears that these ingenious guesses will
+prove mere jeux d'esprit rather than actual facts.[1]  Many
+examples of the precarious and contradictory character of the
+results of philological mythology, many instances of "dubious
+etymologies," false logic, leaps at foregone conclusions, and
+attempts to make what is peculiarly Indian in thought into matter
+of universal application, will meet us in the chapters on Indian
+and Greek divine legends.[2]  "The method in its practical working
+shows a fundamental lack of the historical sense," says Mannhardt.
+Examples are torn from their contexts, he observes; historical
+evolution is neglected; passages of the Veda, themselves totally
+obscure, are dragged forward to account for obscure Greek mythical
+phenomena.  Such are the accusations brought by the regretted
+Mannhardt against the school to which he originally belonged, and
+which was popular and all-powerful even in the maturity of his own
+more clear-sighted genius.  Proofs of the correctness of his
+criticism will be offered abundantly in the course of this work.
+It will become evident that, great as are the acquisitions of
+Philology, her least certain discoveries have been too hastily
+applied in alien "matter," that is, in the region of myth.  Not
+that philology is wholly without place or part in the investigation
+of myth, when there is agreement among philologists as to the
+meaning of a divine name.  In that case a certain amount of light
+is thrown on the legend of the bearer of the name, and on its
+origin and first home, Aryan, Greek, Semitic, or the like.  But how
+rare is agreement among philologists!
+
+
+[1] Baum und Feld Kultus, p. xvii.  Kuhn's "epoch-making" book is
+Die Herabkunft des Feuers, Berlin, 1859.  By way of example of the
+disputes as to the original meaning of a name like Prometheus,
+compare Memoires de la Societe de Linguistique de Paris, t. iv. p.
+336.
+
+[2] See especially Mannhardt's note on Kuhn's theories of Poseidon
+and Hermes, B. u. F. K., pp. xviii., xix., note 1.
+
+
+"The philological method," says Professor Tiele,[1] "is inadequate
+and misleading, when it is a question of discovering the ORIGIN of
+a myth, or the physical explanation of the oldest myths, or of
+accounting for the rude and obscene element in the divine legends
+of civilised races.  But these are not the only problems of
+mythology.  There is, for example, the question of the GENEALOGICAL
+relations of myths, where we have to determine whether the myths of
+peoples whose speech is of the same family are special modifications
+of a mythology once common to the race whence these peoples have
+sprung.  The philological method alone can answer here."  But this
+will seem a very limited province when we find that almost all
+races, however remote and unconnected in speech, have practically
+much the same myths.
+
+
+[1] Rev. de l'Hist. des Rel., xii. 3, 260, Nov., Dec., 1885.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+NEW SYSTEM PROPOSED.
+
+Chapter I. recapitulated--Proposal of a new method: Science of
+comparative or historical study of man--Anticipated in part by
+Eusebius, Fontenelle, De Brosses, Spencer (of C. C. C., Cambridge),
+and Mannhardt--Science of Tylor--Object of inquiry: to find
+condition of human intellect in which marvels of myth are parts of
+practical everyday belief--This is the savage state--Savages
+described--The wild element of myth a survival from the savage
+state--Advantages of this method--Partly accounts for wide
+DIFFUSION as well as ORIGIN of myths--Connected with general
+theory of evolution--Puzzling example of myth of the water-
+swallower--Professor Tiele's criticism of the method--Objections
+to method, and answer to these--See Appendix B.
+
+
+The past systems of mythological interpretation have been briefly
+sketched.  It has been shown that the practical need for a
+reconciliation between RELIGION and MORALITY on one side, and the
+MYTHS about the gods on the other, produced the hypotheses of
+Theagenes and Metrodorus, of Socrates and Euemerus, of Aristotle
+and Plutarch.  It has been shown that in each case the reconcilers
+argued on the basis of their own ideas and of the philosophies of
+their time.  The early physicist thought that myth concealed a
+physical philosophy; the early etymologist saw in it a confusion of
+language; the early political speculator supposed that myth was an
+invention of legislators; the literary Euhemerus found the secret
+of myths in the course of an imaginary voyage to a fabled island.
+Then came the moment of the Christian attacks, and Pagan
+philosophers, touched with Oriental pantheism, recognised in myths
+certain pantheistic symbols and a cryptic revelation of their own
+Neo-platonism.  When the gods were dead and their altars fallen,
+then antiquaries brought their curiosity to the problem of
+explaining myth.  Christians recognised in it a depraved version of
+the Jewish sacred writings, and found the ark on every mountain-top
+of Greece.  The critical nineteenth century brought in, with
+Otfried Muller and Lobeck, a closer analysis; and finally, in the
+sudden rise of comparative philology, it chanced that philologists
+annexed the domain of myths.  Each of these systems had its own
+amount of truth, but each certainly failed to unravel the whole web
+of tradition and of foolish faith.
+
+Meantime a new science has come into existence, the science which
+studies man in the sum of all his works and thoughts, as evolved
+through the whole process of his development.  This science,
+Comparative Anthropology, examines the development of law out of
+custom; the development of weapons from the stick or stone to the
+latest repeating rifle; the development of society from the horde
+to the nation.  It is a study which does not despise the most
+backward nor degraded tribe, nor neglect the most civilised, and it
+frequently finds in Australians or Nootkas the germ of ideas and
+institutions which Greeks or Romans brought to perfection, or
+retained, little altered from their early rudeness, in the midst of
+civilisation.
+
+It is inevitable that this science should also try its hand on
+mythology.  Our purpose is to employ the anthropological method--
+the study of the evolution of ideas, from the savage to the
+barbarous, and thence to the civilised stage--in the province of
+myth, ritual, and religion.  It has been shown that the light of
+this method had dawned on Eusebius in his polemic with the heathen
+apologists.  Spencer, the head of Corpus, Cambridge (1630-93), had
+really no other scheme in his mind in his erudite work on Hebrew
+Ritual.[1]  Spencer was a student of man's religions generally, and
+he came to the conclusion that Hebrew ritual was but an expurgated,
+and, so to speak, divinely "licensed" adaptation of heathen customs
+at large.  We do but follow his guidance on less perilous ground
+when we seek for the original forms of classical rite and myth in
+the parallel usages and legends of the most backward races.
+
+
+[1] De Legibus Hebraeorum Ritualibus, Tubingae, 1782.
+
+
+Fontenelle in the last century, stated, with all the clearness of
+the French intellect, the system which is partially worked out in
+this essay--the system which explains the irrational element in
+myth as inherited from savagery.  Fontenelle's paper (Sur l'Origine
+des Fables) is brief, sensible, and witty, and requires little but
+copious evidence to make it adequate.  But he merely threw out the
+idea, and left it to be neglected.[1]
+
+
+[1] See Appendix A., Fontenelle's Origine des Fables.
+
+
+Among other founders of the anthropological or historical school of
+mythology, De Brosses should not be forgotten.  In his Dieux
+Fetiches (1760) he follows the path which Eusebius indicated--the
+path of Spencer and Fontenelle--now the beaten road of Tylor and
+M'Lennan and Mannhardt.
+
+In anthropology, in the science of Waitz, Tylor, and M'Lennan, in
+the examination of man's faith in the light of his social, legal,
+and historical conditions generally, we find, with Mannhardt, some
+of the keys of myth.  This science "makes it manifest that the
+different stages through which humanity has passed in its
+intellectual evolution have still their living representatives
+among various existing races.  The study of these lower races is an
+invaluable instrument for the interpretation of the survivals from
+earlier stages, which we meet in the full civilisation of
+cultivated peoples, but whose origins were in the remotest
+fetichism and savagery."[1]
+
+
+[1] Mannhardt op. cit. p. xxiii.
+
+
+It is by following this road, and by the aid of anthropology and of
+human history, that we propose to seek for a demonstrably actual
+condition of the human intellect, whereof the puzzling qualities of
+myth would be the natural and inevitable fruit.  In all the earlier
+theories which we have sketched, inquirers took it for granted that
+the myth-makers were men with philosophic and moral ideas like
+their own--ideas which, from some reason of religion or state, they
+expressed in bizarre terms of allegory.  We shall attempt, on the
+other hand, to prove that the human mind has passed through a
+condition quite unlike that of civilised men--a condition in which
+things seemed natural and rational that now appear unnatural and
+devoid of reason, and in which, therefore, if myths were evolved,
+they would, if they survived into civilisation, be such as
+civilised men find strange and perplexing.
+
+Our first question will be, Is there a stage of human society and
+of the human intellect in which facts that appear to us to be
+monstrous and irrational--facts corresponding to the wilder
+incidents of myth--are accepted as ordinary occurrences of everyday
+life?  In the region of romantic rather than of mythical invention
+we know that there is such a state.  Mr. Lane, in his preface to
+the Arabian Nights, says that the Arabs have an advantage over us
+as story-tellers.  They can introduce such incidents as the change
+of a man into a horse, or of a woman into a dog, or the intervention
+of an Afreet without any more scruple than our own novelists feel in
+describing a duel or the concealment of a will.  Among the Arabs the
+agencies of magic and of spirits are regarded as at least as
+probable and common as duels and concealments of wills seem to be
+thought by European novelists.  It is obvious that we need look no
+farther for the explanation of the supernatural events in Arab
+romances.  Now, let us apply this system to mythology.  It is
+admitted that Greeks, Romans, Aryans of India in the age of the
+Sanskrit commentators, and Egyptians of the Ptolemaic and earlier
+ages, were as much puzzled as we are by the mythical adventures of
+their gods.  But is there any known stage of the human intellect in
+which similar adventures, and the metamorphoses of men into animals,
+trees, stars, and all else that puzzles us in the civilised
+mythologies, are regarded as possible incidents of daily human life?
+Our answer is, that everything in the civilised mythologies which we
+regard as irrational seems only part of the accepted and natural
+order of things to contemporary savages, and in the past seemed
+equally rational and natural to savages concerning whom we have
+historical information.[1]  Our theory is, therefore, that the
+savage and senseless element in mythology is, for the most part, a
+legacy from the fancy of ancestors of the civilised races who were
+once in an intellectual state not higher, but probably lower, than
+that of Australians, Bush-men, Red Indians, the lower races of South
+America, and other worse than barbaric peoples.  As the ancestors of
+the Greeks, Aryans of India, Egyptians and others advanced in
+civilisation, their religious thought was shocked and surprised by
+myths (originally dating from the period of savagery, and natural in
+that period, though even then often in contradiction to morals and
+religion) which were preserved down to the time of Pausanias by
+local priesthoods, or which were stereotyped in the ancient poems of
+Hesiod and Homer, or in the Brahmanas and Vedas of India, or were
+retained in the popular religion of Egypt.  This theory recommended
+itself to Lobeck.  "We may believe that ancient and early tribes
+framed gods like unto themselves in action and in experience, and
+that the allegorical softening down of myths is the explanation
+added later by descendants who had attained to purer ideas of
+divinity, yet dared not reject the religion of their ancestors."[2]
+The senseless element in the myths would, by this theory, be for the
+most part a "survival"; and the age and condition of human thought
+whence it survived would be one in which our most ordinary ideas
+about the nature of things and the limits of possibility did not yet
+exist, when all things were conceived of in quite other fashion; the
+age, that is, of savagery.
+
+
+[1] We have been asked to DEFINE a savage.  He cannot be defined in
+an epigram, but by way of choice of a type:--
+
+1.  In material equipment the perfect savage is he who employs
+tools of stone and wood, not of metal; who is nomadic rather than
+settled; who is acquainted (if at all) only with the rudest forms
+of the arts of potting, weaving, fire-making, etc.; and who derives
+more of his food from the chase and from wild roots and plants than
+from any kind of agriculture or from the flesh of domesticated
+animals.
+
+2.  In psychology the savage is he who (extending unconsciously to
+the universe his own implicit consciousness of personality) regards
+all natural objects as animated and intelligent beings, and,
+drawing no hard and fast line between himself and the things in the
+world, is readily persuaded that men may be metamorphosed into
+plants, beasts and stars; that winds and clouds, sun and dawn, are
+persons with human passions and parts; and that the lower animals
+especially may be creatures more powerful than himself, and, in a
+sense, divine and creative.
+
+3.  In religion the savage is he who (while often, in certain
+moods, conscious of a far higher moral faith) believes also in
+ancestral ghosts or spirits of woods and wells that were never
+ancestral; prays frequently by dint of magic; and sometimes adores
+inanimate objects, or even appeals to the beasts as supernatural
+protectors.
+
+4.  In society the savage is he who (as a rule) bases his laws on
+the well-defined lines of totemism--that is, claims descent from or
+other close relation to natural objects, and derives from the
+sacredness of those objects the sanction of his marriage
+prohibitions and blood-feuds, while he makes skill in magic a claim
+to distinguished rank.
+
+Such, for our purpose, is the savage, and we propose to explain the
+more "senseless" factors in civilised mythology as "survivals" of
+these ideas and customs preserved by conservatism and local
+tradition, or, less probably, borrowed from races which were, or
+had been, savage.
+
+[2] Aglaoph., i. 153.  Had Lobeck gone a step farther and examined
+the mental condition of veteres et priscae gentes, this book would
+have been, superfluous.  Nor did he know that the purer ideas were
+also existing among certain low savages.
+
+
+It is universally admitted that "survivals" of this kind do account
+for many anomalies in our institutions, in law, politics, society,
+even in dress and manners.  If isolated fragments of earlier ages
+abide in these, it is still more probable that other fragments will
+survive in anything so closely connected as is mythology with the
+conservative religious sentiment and tradition.  Our object, then,
+is to prove that the "silly, savage, and irrational" element in the
+myths of civilised peoples is, as a rule, either a survival from
+the period of savagery, or has been borrowed from savage neighbours
+by a cultivated people, or, lastly, is an imitation by later poets
+of old savage data.[1]  For example, to explain the constellations
+as metamorphosed men, animals, or other objects of terrestrial life
+is the habit of savages,[2]--a natural habit among people who
+regard all things as on one level of personal life and intelligence.
+When the stars, among civilised Greeks or Aryans of India, are also
+popularly regarded as transformed and transfigured men, animals and
+the like, this belief may be either a survival from the age when the
+ancestors of Greeks and Indians were in the intellectual condition
+of the Australian Murri; or the star-name and star-myth may have
+been borrowed from savages, or from cultivated peoples once savage
+or apt to copy savages; or, as in the case of the Coma Berenices, a
+poet of a late age may have invented a new artificial myth on the
+old lines of savage fancy.
+
+
+[1] We may be asked why do savages entertain the irrational ideas
+which survive in myth?  One might as well ask why they eat each
+other, or use stones instead of metal.  Their intellectual powers
+are not fully developed, and hasty analogy from their own
+unreasoned consciousness is their chief guide.  Myth, in Mr.
+Darwin's phrase, is one of the "miserable and indirect consequences
+of our highest faculties".  Descent of Man, p. 69.
+
+[2] See Custom and Myth, "Star-Myths".
+
+
+This method of interpreting a certain element in mythology is, we
+must repeat, no new thing, though, to judge from the protests of
+several mythologists, it is new to many inquirers.  We have seen
+that Eusebius threw out proposals in this direction; that Spencer,
+De Brosses, and Fontenelle unconsciously followed him; and we have
+quoted from Lobeck a statement of a similar opinion.  The whole
+matter has been stated as clearly as possible by Mr. B. B. Tylor:--
+
+"Savages have been for untold ages, and still are, living in the
+myth-making stage of the human mind.  It was through sheer
+ignorance and neglect of this direct knowledge how and by what
+manner of men myths are really made that their simple philosophy
+has come to be buried under masses of commentator's rubbish. . ."[1]
+Mr. Tylor goes on thus (and his words contain the gist of our
+argument): "The general thesis maintained is that myth arose in
+the savage condition prevalent in remote ages among the whole human
+race; that it remains comparatively unchanged among the rude modern
+tribes who have departed least from these primitive conditions,
+while higher and later civilisations, partly by retaining its
+actual principles, and partly by carrying on its inherited results
+in the form of ancestral tradition, continued it not merely in
+toleration, but in honour".[2]  Elsewhere Mr. Tylor points out that
+by this method of interpretation we may study myths in various
+stages of evolution, from the rude guess of the savage at an
+explanation of natural phenomena, through the systems of the higher
+barbarisms, or lower civilisations (as in ancient Mexico), and the
+sacerdotage of India, till myth reaches its most human form in
+Greece.  Yet even in Greek myth the beast is not wholly cast out,
+and Hellas by no means "let the ape and tiger die".  That Mr. Tylor
+does not exclude the Aryan race from his general theory is plain
+enough.[3]  "What is the Aryan conception of the Thunder-god but a
+poetic elaboration of thoughts inherited from the savage stage
+through which the primitive Aryans had passed?"[4]
+
+
+[1] Primitive Culture, 2nd edit., i. p. 283.
+
+[2] Op. cit., p. 275.
+
+[3] Primitive Culture, 2nd edit., ii. 265.
+
+[4] Pretty much the same view seems to be taken by Mr. Max Muller
+(Nineteenth Century, January, 1882) when he calls Tsui Goab (whom
+the Hottentots believe to be a defunct conjuror) "a Hottentot Indra
+or Zeus".
+
+
+The advantages of our hypothesis (if its legitimacy be admitted)
+are obvious.  In the first place, we have to deal with an actual
+demonstrable condition of the human intellect.  The existence of
+the savage state in all its various degrees, and of the common
+intellectual habits and conditions which are shared by the backward
+peoples, and again the survival of many of these in civilisation,
+are indubitable facts.  We are not obliged to fall back upon some
+fanciful and unsupported theory of what "primitive man" did, and
+said, and thought.  Nay, more; we escape all the fallacies
+connected with the terms "primitive man".  We are not compelled (as
+will be shown later)[1] to prove that the first men of all were
+like modern savages, nor that savages represent primitive man.  It
+may be that the lowest extant savages are the nearest of existing
+peoples to the type of the first human beings.  But on this point
+it is unnecessary for us to dogmatise.  If we can show that,
+whether men began their career as savages or not, they have at
+least passed through the savage status or have borrowed the ideas
+of races in the savage status, that is all we need.  We escape from
+all the snares of theories (incapable of historical proof) about
+the really primeval and original condition of the human family.
+
+
+[1] Appendix B.
+
+
+Once more, our theory naturally attaches itself to the general
+system of Evolution.  We are enabled to examine mythology as a
+thing of gradual development and of slow and manifold modifications,
+corresponding in some degree to the various changes in the general
+progress of society.  Thus we shall watch the barbaric conditions of
+thought which produce barbaric myths, while these in their turn are
+retained, or perhaps purified, or perhaps explained away, by more
+advanced civilisations.  Further, we shall be able to detect the
+survival of the savage ideas with least modification, and the
+persistence of the savage myths with least change, among the classes
+of a civilised population which have shared least in the general
+advance.  These classes are, first, the rustic peoples, dwelling far
+from cities and schools, on heaths or by the sea; second, the
+conservative local priesthoods, who retain the more crude and
+ancient myths of the local gods and heroes after these have been
+modified or rejected by the purer sense of philosophers and national
+poets.  Thus much of ancient myth is a woven warp and woof of three
+threads: the savage donnee, the civilised and poetic modification of
+the savage donnee, the version of the original fable which survives
+in popular tales and in the "sacred chapters" of local priesthoods.
+A critical study of these three stages in myth is in accordance with
+the recognised practice of science.  Indeed, the whole system is
+only an application to this particular province, mythology, of the
+method by which the development either of organisms or of human
+institutions is traced.  As the anomalies and apparently useless and
+accidental features in the human or in other animal organisms may be
+explained as stunted or rudimentary survivals of organs useful in a
+previous stage of life, so the anomalous and irrational myths of
+civilised races may be explained as survivals of stories which, in
+an earlier state of thought and knowledge, seemed natural enough.
+The persistence of the myths is accounted for by the well-known
+conservatism of the religious sentiment--a conservatism noticed even
+by Eusebius.  "In later days, when they became ashamed of the
+religious beliefs of their ancestors, they invented private and
+respectful interpretations, each to suit himself.  For no one dared
+to shake the ancestral beliefs, as they honoured at a very high rate
+the sacredness and antiquity of old associations, and of the
+teaching they had received in childhood."[1]
+
+
+[1] Praep. E., ii. 6, 19.
+
+
+Thus the method which we propose to employ is in harmony both with
+modern scientific procedure and with the views of a clear-sighted
+Father of the Church.  Consequently no system could well be less
+"heretical" and "unorthodox".
+
+The last advantage of our hypothesis which need here be mentioned
+is that it helps to explain the DIFFUSION no less than the ORIGIN
+of the wild and crazy element in myth.  We seek for the origin of
+the savage factor of myth in one aspect of the intellectual
+condition of savages.  We say "in one aspect" expressly; to guard
+against the suggestion that the savage intellect has no aspect but
+this, and no saner ideas than those of myth.  The DIFFUSION of
+stories practically identical in every quarter of the globe may be
+(provisionally) regarded as the result of the prevalence in every
+quarter, at one time or another, of similar mental habits and
+ideas.  This explanation must not be pressed too hard nor too far.
+If we find all over the world a belief that men can change
+themselves and their neighbours into beasts, that belief will
+account for the appearance of metamorphosis in myth.  If we find a
+belief that inanimate objects are really much on a level with man,
+the opinion will account for incidents of myth such as that in
+which the wooden figure-head of the Argo speaks with a human voice.
+Again, a widespread belief in the separability of the soul or the
+life from the body will account for the incident in nursery tales
+and myths of the "giant who had no heart in his body," but kept his
+heart and life elsewhere.  An ancient identity of mental status and
+the working of similar mental forces at the attempt to explain the
+same phenomena will account, without any theory of borrowing, or
+transmission of myth, or of original unity of race, for the world-
+wide diffusion of many mythical conceptions.
+
+But this theory of the original similarity of the savage mind
+everywhere and in all races will scarcely account for the world-
+wide distribution of long and intricate mythical PLOTS, of
+consecutive series of adroitly interwoven situations.  In presence
+of these long romances, found among so many widely severed peoples,
+conjecture is, at present, almost idle.  We do not know, in many
+instances, whether such stories were independently developed, or
+carried from a common centre, or borrowed by one race from another,
+and so handed on round the world.
+
+This chapter may conclude with an example of a tale whose DIFFUSION
+may be explained in divers ways, though its ORIGIN seems
+undoubtedly savage.  If we turn to the Algonkins, a stock of Red
+Indians, we come on a popular tradition which really does give
+pause to the mythologist.  Could this story, he asks himself, have
+been separately invented in widely different places, or could the
+Iroquois have borrowed from the Australian blacks or the Andaman
+Islanders?  It is a common thing in most mythologies to find
+everything of value to man--fire, sun, water--in the keeping of
+some hostile power.  The fire, or the sun, or the water is then
+stolen, or in other ways rescued from the enemy and restored to
+humanity.  The Huron story (as far as water is concerned) is told
+by Father Paul Le Jeune, a Jesuit missionary, who lived among the
+Hurons about 1636.  The myth begins with the usual opposition
+between two brothers, the Cain and Abel of savage legend.  One of
+the brothers, named Ioskeha, slew the other, and became the father
+of mankind (as known to the Red Indians) and the guardian of the
+Iroquois.  The earth was at first arid and sterile, but Ioskeha
+destroyed the gigantic frog which had swallowed all the waters, and
+guided the torrents into smooth streams and lakes.[1]
+
+
+[1] Relations de la Nouvelle France, 1636, p. 103 (Paris, Cramoisy,
+1637).
+
+
+Now where, outside of North America, do we find this frog who
+swallowed all the water?  We find him in Australia.
+
+"The aborigines of Lake Tyers," remarks Mr. Brough Smyth, "say that
+at one time there was no water anywhere on the face of the earth.
+All the waters were contained in the body of a huge frog, and men
+and women could get none of them.  A council was held, and . . . it
+was agreed that the frog should be made to laugh, when the waters
+would run out of his mouth, and there would be plenty in all
+parts."
+
+To make a long story short, all the animals played the jester
+before the gigantic solemn frog, who sat as grave as Louis XV.  "I
+do not like buffoons who don't make me laugh," said that majestical
+monarch.  At last the eel danced on the tip of his tail, and the
+gravity of the prodigious Batrachian gave way.  He laughed till he
+literally split his sides, and the imprisoned waters came with a
+rush.  Indeed, many persons were drowned, though this is not the
+only Australian version of the Deluge.
+
+The Andaman Islanders dwell at a very considerable distance from
+Australia and from the Iroquois, and, in the present condition of
+the natives of Australia and Andaman, neither could possibly visit
+the other.  The frog in the Andaman version is called a toad, and
+he came to swallow the waters in the following way:  One day a
+woodpecker was eating honey high up in the boughs of a tree.  Far
+below, the toad was a witness of the feast, and asked for some
+honey.  "Well, come up here, and you shall have some," said the
+woodpecker.  "But how am I to climb?"  "Take hold of that creeper,
+and I will draw you up," said the woodpecker; but all the while he
+was bent on a practical joke.  So the toad got into a bucket he
+happened to possess, and fastened the bucket to the creeper.  "Now,
+pull!"  Then the woodpecker raised the toad slowly to the level of
+the bough where the honey was, and presently let him down with a
+run, not only disappointing the poor toad, but shaking him
+severely.  The toad went away in a rage and looked about him for
+revenge.  A happy thought occurred to him, and he drank up all the
+water of the rivers and lakes.  Birds and beasts were perishing,
+woodpeckers among them, of thirst.  The toad, overjoyed at his
+success, wished to add insult to the injury, and, very
+thoughtlessly, began to dance in an irritating manner at his foes.
+But then the stolen waters gushed out of his mouth in full volume,
+and the drought soon ended.  One of the most curious points in this
+myth is the origin of the quarrel between the woodpecker and the
+toad.  The same beginning--the tale of an insult put on an animal
+by hauling up and letting him down with a run--occurs in an African
+Marchen.[1]
+
+
+[1] Brough Smyth, Aborigines of Victoria, i. 429, 430; Brinton,
+American Hero Myths, i. 55.  Cf. also Relations de la Nouvelle
+France, 1636, 1640, 1671; [Sagard, Hist. du Canada, 1636, p. 451;]
+Journal Anthrop. Inst., 1881.
+
+
+Now this strangely diffused story of the slaying of the frog which
+had swallowed all the water seems to be a savage myth of which the
+more heroic conflict of Indra with Vrittra (the dragon which had
+swallowed all the waters) is an epic and sublimer version.[1]  "The
+heavenly water, which Vrittra withholds from the world, is usually
+the prize of the contest."
+
+
+[1] Ludwig, Der Rig-Veda, iii. p. 337.  See postea, "Divine Myths
+of India".
+
+
+The serpent of Vedic myth is, perhaps, rather the robber-guardian
+than the swallower of the waters, but Indra is still, like the
+Iroquois Ioskeha, "he who wounds the full one".[1]  This example of
+the wide distribution of a myth shows how the question of
+diffusion, though connected with, is yet distinct from that of
+origin.  The advantage of our method will prove to be, that it
+discovers an historical and demonstrable state of mind as the
+origin of the wild element in myth.  Again, the wide prevalence in
+the earliest times of this mental condition will, to a certain
+extent, explain the DISTRIBUTION of myth.  Room must be left, of
+course, for processes of borrowing and transmission, but how
+Andamanese, Australians and Hurons could borrow from each other is
+an unsolved problem.
+
+
+[1] Gubernatis, Zoological Myth. ii. 395, note 2.  "When Indra
+kills the serpent he opens the torrent of the waters" (p. 393).
+See also Aitareya Brahmana, translated by Haug, ii. 483.
+
+
+Finally, our hypothesis is not involved in dubious theories of
+race.  To us, myths appear to be affected (in their origins) much
+less by the race than by the stage of culture attained by the
+people who cherish them.  A fight for the waters between a
+monstrous dragon like Vrittra and a heroic god like Indra is a
+nobler affair than a quarrel for the waters between a woodpecker
+and a toad.  But the improvement and transfiguration, so to speak,
+of a myth at bottom the same is due to the superior culture, not to
+the peculiar race, of the Vedic poets, except so far as culture
+itself depends on race.  How far the purer culture was attained to
+by the original superiority of the Aryan over the Andaman breed, it
+is not necessary for our purpose to inquire.  Thus, on the whole,
+we may claim for our system a certain demonstrable character, which
+helps to simplify the problems of mythology, and to remove them
+from the realm of fanciful guesses and conflicting etymological
+conjectures into that of sober science.  That these pretensions are
+not unacknowledged even by mythologists trained in other schools is
+proved by the remarks of Dr. Tiele.[1]
+
+
+[1] Rev. de l'Hist. des Rel., "Le Mythe de Cronos," January, 1886.
+Dr. Tiele is not, it must be noted, a thorough adherent of our
+theory.  See Modern Mythology: "The Question of Allies".
+
+
+Dr. Tiele writes: "If I were obliged to choose between this method"
+(the system here advocated) "and that of comparative philology, it
+is the former that I would adopt without the slightest hesitation.
+This method alone enables us to explain the fact, which has so
+often provoked amazement, that people so refined as the Greeks, . . .
+or so rude, but morally pure, as the Germans, . . . managed to
+attribute to their gods all manner of cowardly, cruel and
+disorderly conduct.  This method alone explains the why and
+wherefore of all those strange metamorphoses of gods into beasts
+and plants, and even stones, which scandalised philosophers, and
+which the witty Ovid played on for the diversion of his
+contemporaries.  In short, this method teaches us to recognise in
+all those strange stories the survivals of a barbaric age, long
+passed away, but enduring to later times in the form of religious
+traditions, of all traditions the most persistent. . . .  Finally,
+this method alone enables us to explain the origin of myths,
+because it endeavours to study them in their rudest and most
+primitive shape, thus allowing their true significance to be much
+more clearly apparent than it can be in the myths (so often
+touched, retouched, augmented and humanised) which are current
+among races arrived at a certain degree of culture."
+
+The method is to this extent applauded by a most competent
+authority, and it has been warmly accepted by a distinguished
+French school of students, represented by M. Gaidoz.  But it is
+obvious that the method rests on a double hypothesis: first, that
+satisfactory evidence as to the mental conditions of the lower and
+backward races is obtainable; second, that the civilised races
+(however they began) either passed through the savage state of
+thought and practice, or borrowed very freely from people in that
+condition.  These hypotheses have been attacked by opponents; the
+trustworthiness of our evidence, especially, has been assailed.  By
+way of facilitating the course of the exposition and of lessening
+the disturbing element of controversy, a reply to the objections
+and a defence of the evidence has been relegated to an Appendix.[1]
+Meanwhile we go on to examine the peculiar characteristics of the
+mental condition of savages and of peoples in the lower and upper
+barbarisms.
+
+
+[1] Appendix B.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE MENTAL CONDITION OF SAVAGES--CONFUSION WITH NATURE--TOTEMISM.
+
+
+The mental condition of savages the basis of the irrational element
+in myth--Characteristics of that condition: (1) Confusion of all
+things in an equality of presumed animation and intelligence;
+(2) Belief in sorcery; (3) Spiritualism; (4) Curiosity; (5) Easy
+credulity and mental indolence--The curiosity is satisfied, thanks
+to the credulity, by myths in answer to all inquiries--Evidence for
+this--Mr. Tylor's opinion--Mr. Im Thurn--Jesuit missionaries'
+Relations--Examples of confusion between men, plants, beasts and
+other natural objects--Reports of travellers--Evidence from
+institution of totemism--Definition of totemism--Totemism in
+Australia, Africa, America, the Oceanic Islands, India, North Asia--
+Conclusions: Totemism being found so widely distributed, is a proof
+of the existence of that savage mental condition in which no line
+is drawn between men and the other things in the world.  This
+confusion is one of the characteristics of myth in all races.
+
+
+We set out to discover a stage of human intellectual development
+which would necessarily produce the essential elements of myth.  We
+think we have found that stage in the condition of savagery.  We
+now proceed to array the evidence for the mental processes of
+savages.  We intend to demonstrate the existence in practical
+savage life of the ideas which most surprise us when we find them
+in civilised sacred legends.
+
+For the purposes of this inquiry, it is enough to select a few
+special peculiarities of savage thought.
+
+1.  First we have that nebulous and confused frame of mind to which
+all things, animate or inanimate, human, animal, vegetable, or
+inorganic, seem on the same level of life, passion and reason.  The
+savage, at all events when myth-making, draws no hard and fast line
+between himself and the things in the world.  He regards himself as
+literally akin to animals and plants and heavenly bodies; he
+attributes sex and procreative powers even to stones and rocks, and
+he assigns human speech and human feelings to sun and moon and
+stars and wind, no less than to beasts, birds and fishes.[1]
+
+
+[1] "So fasst auch das Alterthum ihren Unterschied von den Menschen
+ganz anders als die spatere Zeit."--Grimm, quoted by Liebrecht, Zur
+Volkskunde, p. 17.
+
+
+2. The second point to note in savage opinion is the belief in
+magic and sorcery.  The world and all the things in it being
+vaguely conceived of as sensible and rational, obey the commands of
+certain members of the tribe, chiefs, jugglers, conjurors, or what
+you will.  Rocks open at their order, rivers dry up, animals are
+their servants and hold converse with them.  These magicians cause
+or heal diseases, and can command even the weather, bringing rain
+or thunder or sunshine at their will.[1]  There are few
+supernatural attributes of "cloud-compelling Zeus" or of Apollo
+that are not freely assigned to the tribal conjuror.  By virtue,
+doubtless, of the community of nature between man and the things in
+the world, the conjuror (like Zeus or Indra) can assume at will the
+shape of any animal, or can metamorphose his neighbours or enemies
+into animal forms.
+
+
+[1] See Roth in North-West Central Queensland Aborigines, chapter
+xii., 1897.
+
+
+3. Another peculiarity of savage belief naturally connects itself
+with that which has just been described.  The savage has very
+strong ideas about the persistent existence of the souls of the
+dead.  They retain much of their old nature, but are often more
+malignant after death than they had been during life.  They are
+frequently at the beck and call of the conjuror, whom they aid with
+their advice and with their magical power.  By virtue of the close
+connection already spoken of between man and the animals, the souls
+of the dead are not rarely supposed to migrate into the bodies of
+beasts, or to revert to the condition of that species of creatures
+with which each tribe supposes itself to be related by ties of
+kinship or friendship.  With the usual inconsistency of mythical
+belief, the souls of the dead are spoken of, at other times, as if
+they inhabited a spiritual world, sometimes a paradise of flowers,
+sometimes a gloomy place, which mortal men may visit, but whence no
+one can escape who has tasted of the food of the ghosts.
+
+4. In connection with spirits a far-reaching savage philosophy
+prevails.  It is not unusual to assign a ghost to all objects,
+animate or inanimate, and the spirit or strength of a man is
+frequently regarded as something separable, capable of being
+located in an external object, or something with a definite
+locality in the body.  A man's strength and spirit may reside in
+his kidney fat, in his heart, in a lock of his hair, or may even be
+stored by him in some separate receptacle.  Very frequently a man
+is held capable of detaching his soul from his body, and letting it
+roam about on his business, sometimes in the form of a bird or
+other animal.
+
+5. Many minor savage beliefs might be named, such as the common
+faith in friendly or protecting animals, and the notion that
+"natural deaths" (as we call them) are always UNNATURAL, that death
+is always caused by some hostile spirit or conjuror.  From this
+opinion comes the myth that man is naturally not subject to death:
+that death was somehow introduced into the world by a mistake or
+misdeed is a corollary.  (See "Myths of the Origin of Death" in
+Modern Mythology.)
+
+6. One more mental peculiarity of the savage mind remains to be
+considered in this brief summary.  The savage, like the civilised
+man, is curious.  The first faint impulses of the scientific spirit
+are at work in his brain; he is anxious to give himself an account
+of the world in which he finds himself.  But he is not more curious
+than he is, on occasion, credulous.  His intellect is eager to ask
+questions, as is the habit of children, but his intellect is also
+lazy, and he is content with the first answer that comes to hand.
+"Ils s'arretent aux premieres notions qu'ils en ont," says Pere
+Hierome Lalemant.[1]  "Nothing," says Schoolcraft, "is too
+capacious (sic) for Indian belief."[2]  The replies to his
+questions he receives from tradition or (when a new problem arises)
+evolves an answer for himself in the shape of STORIES.  Just as
+Socrates, in the Platonic dialogues, recalls or invents a myth in
+the despair of reason, so the savage has a story for answer to
+almost every question that he can ask himself.  These stories are
+in a sense scientific, because they attempt a solution of the
+riddles of the world.  They are in a sense religious, because there
+is usually a supernatural power, a deus ex machina, of some sort to
+cut the knot of the problem.  Such stories, then, are the science,
+and to a certain extent the religious tradition, of savages.[3]
+
+
+[1] Relations de la Nouvelle France, 1648, p. 70.
+
+[2] Algic Researches, i. 41.
+
+[3] "The Indians (Algonkins) conveyed instruction--moral,
+mechanical and religious--through traditionary fictions and
+tales."--Schoolcraft, Algic Researches, i. 12.
+
+
+Now these tales are necessarily cast in the mould of the savage
+ideas of which a sketch has been given.  The changes of the
+heavenly bodies, the processes of day and night, the existence of
+the stars, the invention of the arts, the origin of the world (as
+far as known to the savage), of the tribe, of the various animals
+and plants, the origin of death itself, the origin of the
+perplexing traditional tribal customs, are all accounted for in
+stories.  At the same time, an actual divine Maker is sometimes
+postulated.  The stories, again, are fashioned in accordance with
+the beliefs already named: the belief in human connection with and
+kinship with beasts and plants; the belief in magic; the belief in
+the perpetual possibility of metamorphosis or "shape shifting"; the
+belief in the permanence and power of the ghosts of the dead; the
+belief in the personal and animated character of all the things in
+the world, and so forth.
+
+No more need be said to explain the wild and (as it seems to us
+moderns) the irrational character of savage myth.  It is a jungle
+of foolish fancies, a walpurgis nacht of gods and beasts and men
+and stars and ghosts, all moving madly on a level of common
+personality and animation, and all changing shapes at random, as
+partners are changed in some fantastic witches' revel.  Such is
+savage mythology, and how could it be otherwise when we consider
+the elements of thought and belief out of which it is mainly
+composed?  We shall see that part of the mythology of the Greeks or
+the Aryans of India is but a similar walpurgis nacht, in which an
+incestuous or amorous god may become a beast, and the object of his
+pursuit, once a woman, may also become a beast, and then shift
+shapes to a tree or a bird or a star.  But in the civilised races
+the genius of the people tends to suppress, exclude and refine away
+the wild element, which, however, is never wholly eliminated.  The
+Erinyes soon stop the mouth of the horse of Achilles when he
+begins, like the horse in Grimm's Goose Girl, to hold a sustained
+conversation.[1]  But the ancient, cruel, and grotesque savage
+element, nearly overcome by Homer and greatly reduced by the Vedic
+poets, breaks out again in Hesiod, in temple legends and Brahmanic
+glosses, and finally proves so strong that it can only be subdued
+by Christianity, or rather by that break between the educated
+classes and the traditional past of religion which has resulted
+from Christianity.  Even so, myth lingers in the folk-lore of the
+non-progressive classes of Europe, and, as in Roumania, invades
+religion.
+
+
+[1] Iliad, xix. 418.
+
+
+We have now to demonstrate the existence in the savage intellect of
+the various ideas and habits which we have described, and out of
+which mythology springs.  First, we have to show that "a nebulous
+and confused state of mind, to which all things, animate or
+inanimate, human, animal, vegetable or inorganic, seem on the same
+level of life, passion and reason," does really exist.[1]  The
+existence of this condition of the intellect will be demonstrated
+first on the evidence of the statements of civilised observers,
+next on the evidence of the savage institutions in which it is
+embodied.
+
+
+[1] Creuzer and Guigniaut, vol. i. p. 111.
+
+
+The opinion of Mr. Tylor is naturally of great value, as it is
+formed on as wide an acquaintance with the views of the lower races
+as any inquirers can hope to possess.  Mr. Tylor observes: "We have
+to inform ourselves of the savage man's idea, which is very different
+from the civilised man's, of the nature of the lower animals. . . .
+The sense of an absolute psychical distinction between man and
+beast, so prevalent in the civilised world, is hardly to be found
+among the lower races."[1]  The universal attribution of "souls" to
+all things--the theory known as "Animism"--is another proof that the
+savage draws no hard and fast line between man and the other things
+in the world.  The notion of the Italian country-people, that
+cruelty to an animal does not matter because it is not a "Christian,"
+has no parallel in the philosophy of the savage, to whom all objects
+seem to have souls, just as men have.  Mr. Im Thurn found the
+absence of any sense of a difference between man and nature a
+characteristic of his native companions in Guiana.  "The very
+phrase, 'Men and other animals,' or even, as it is often expressed,
+'Men and animals,' based as it is on the superiority which civilised
+man feels over other animals, expresses a dichotomy which is in no
+way recognised by the Indian. . . .  It is therefore most important
+to realise how comparatively small really is the difference between
+men in a state of savagery and other animals, and how completely
+even such difference as exists escapes the notice of savage men. . .
+It is not, therefore, too much to say that, according to the view
+of the Indians, other animals differ from men only in bodily form
+and in their various degrees of strength; in spirit they do not
+differ at all."[2]  The Indian's notion of the life of plants and
+stones is on the same level of unreason, as we moderns reckon
+reason.  He believes in the spirits of rocks and stones, undeterred
+by the absence of motion in these objects.  "Not only many rocks,
+but also many waterfalls, streams, and indeed material objects of
+every sort, are supposed each to consist of a body and a spirit, as
+does man."[3]  It is not our business to ask here how men came by
+the belief in universal animation.  That belief is gradually
+withdrawn, distinctions are gradually introduced, as civilisation
+and knowledge advance.  It is enough for us if the failure to draw a
+hard and fast line between man and beasts, stones and plants, be
+practically universal among savages, and if it gradually disappears
+before the fuller knowledge of civilisation.  The report which Mr.
+Im Thurn brings from the Indians of Guiana is confirmed by what
+Schoolcraft says of the Algonkin races of the northern part of the
+continent.  "The belief of the narrators and listeners in every wild
+and improbable thing told helps wonderfully in the original stories,
+in joining all parts together.  The Indian believes that the whole
+visible and invisible creation is animated. . . .  To make the
+matter worse, these tribes believe that animals of the lowest as
+well as highest class in the chain of creation are alike endowed
+with reasoning powers and faculties.  As a natural conclusion they
+endow birds, beasts and all other animals with souls."[4]  As an
+example of the ease with which the savage recognises consciousness
+and voluntary motion even in stones, may be cited Kohl's account of
+the beliefs of the Objibeways.[5]  Nearly every Indian has
+discovered, he says, an object in which he places special
+confidence, and to which he sacrifices more zealously than to the
+Great Spirit.  The "hope" of Otamigan (a companion of the traveller)
+was a rock, which once advanced to meet him, swayed, bowed and went
+back again.  Another Indian revered a Canadian larch, "because he
+once heard a very remarkable rustling in its branches".  It thus
+appears that while the savage has a general kind of sense that
+inanimate things are animated, he is a good deal impressed by their
+conduct when he thinks that they actually display their animation.
+In the same way a devout modern spiritualist probably regards with
+more reverence a table which he has seen dancing and heard rapping
+than a table at which he has only dined.  Another general statement
+of failure to draw the line between men and the irrational creation
+is found in the old Jesuit missionary Le Jeune's Relations de la
+Nouvelle France.[6]  "Les sauvages se persuadent que non seulement
+les hommes et les autres animaux, mais aussi que toutes les autres
+choses sont animees."  Again: "Ils tiennent les poissons
+raisonnables, comme aussi les cerfs".  In the Solomon Islands, Mr.
+Romilly sailed with an old chief who used violent language to the
+waves when they threatened to dash over the boat, and "old Takki's
+exhortations were successful".[7]  Waitz[8] discovers the same
+attitude towards the animals among the negroes.  Man, in their
+opinion, is by no means a separate sort of person on the summit of
+nature and high above the beasts; these he rather regards as dark
+and enigmatic beings, whose life is full of mystery, and which he
+therefore considers now as his inferiors, now as his superiors.  A
+collection of evidence as to the savage failure to discriminate
+between human and non-human, animate and inanimate, has been brought
+together by Sir John Lubbock.[9]
+
+
+[1] Primitive Culture, i. 167-169.
+
+[2] Among the Indians of Guiana (1883), p. 350.
+
+[3] Op. Cit., 355.
+
+[4] Schoolcraft, Algic Researches, i. 41.
+
+[5] Kohl, Wanderings Round Lake Superior, pp. 58, 59; Muller,
+Amerikan Urrelig., pp. 62-67.
+
+[6] 1636, p. 109.
+
+[7] Western Pacific, p. 84.
+
+[8] Anthropologie der Natur-Volker, ii. 177.
+
+[9] Origin of Civilisation, p. 33.  A number of examples of this
+mental attitude among the Bushmen will be found in chap. v.,
+postea.
+
+
+To a race accustomed like ourselves to arrange and classify, to
+people familiar from childhood and its games with "vegetable,
+animal and mineral," a condition of mind in which no such
+distinctions are drawn, any more than they are drawn in Greek or
+Brahmanic myths, must naturally seem like what Mr. Max Muller calls
+"temporary insanity".  The imagination of the savage has been
+defined by Mr. Tylor as "midway between the conditions of a
+healthy, prosaic, modern citizen, and of a raving fanatic, or of a
+patient in a fever-ward".  If any relics of such imagination
+survive in civilised mythology, they will very closely resemble the
+productions of a once universal "temporary insanity".  Let it be
+granted, then, that "to the lower tribes of man, sun and stars,
+trees and rivers, winds and clouds, become personal, animate
+creatures, leading lives conformed to human or animal analogies,
+and performing their special functions in the universe with the aid
+of limbs like beasts, or of artificial instruments like men; or
+that what men's eyes behold is but the instrument to be used or the
+material to be shaped, while behind it there stands some prodigious
+but yet half-human creature, who grasps it with his hands or blows
+it with his breath.  The basis on which such ideas as these are
+built is not to be narrowed down to poetic fancy and transformed
+metaphor.  They rest upon a broad philosophy of nature; early and
+crude, indeed, but thoughtful, consistent, and quite really and
+seriously meant."[1]
+
+
+[1] Primtive Culture, i. 285.
+
+
+For the sake of illustration, some minor examples must next be
+given of this confusion between man and other things in the world,
+which will presently be illustrated by the testimony of a powerful
+and long diffused set of institutions.
+
+The Christian Quiches of Guatemala believe that each of them has a
+beast as his friend and protector, just as in the Highlands "the
+dog is the friend of the Maclaines".  When the Finns, in their epic
+poem the Kalewala, have killed a bear, they implore the animal to
+forgive them.  "Oh, Ot-so," chant the singers, "be not angry that
+we come near thee.  The bear, the honey-footed bear, was born in
+lands between sun and moon, and he died, not by men's hands, but of
+his own will."[1]  The Red Men of North America[2] have a tradition
+showing how it is that the bear does not die, but, like Herodotus
+with the sacred stories of the Egyptian priests, Mr. Schoolcraft
+"cannot induce himself to write it out".[3]  It is a most curious
+fact that the natives of Australia tell a similar tale of THEIR
+"native bear".  "He did not die" when attacked by men.[4]  In parts
+of Australia it is a great offence to skin the native bear, just as
+on a part of the west coast of Ireland, where seals are
+superstitiously regarded, the people cannot be bribed to skin them.
+In New Caledonia, when a child tries to kill a lizard, the men warn
+him to "beware of killing his own ancestor".[5]  The Zulus spare to
+destroy a certain species of serpents, believed to be the spirits
+of kinsmen, as the great snake which appeared when Aeneas did
+sacrifice was held to be the ghost of Anchises.  Mexican women[6]
+believed that children born during an eclipse turn into mice.  In
+Australia the natives believe that the wild dog has the power of
+speech; whoever listens to him is petrified; and a certain spot is
+shown where "the wild dog spoke and turned the men into stone";[7]
+and the blacks run for their lives as soon as the dog begins to
+speak.  What it said was "Bones".
+
+
+[1] Kalewala, in La Finlande, Leouzon Le Duc (1845), vol. ii. p.
+100; cf. also the Introduction.
+
+[2] Schoolcraft, v. 420.
+
+[3] See similar ceremonies propitiatory of the bear in Jewett's
+Adventures among the Nootkas, Edinburgh, 1824.
+
+[4] Brough Smyth, i. 449.
+
+[5] J. J. Atkinson's MS.
+
+[6] Sahagun, ii. viii. 250; Bancroft, iii. 111.  Compare stories of
+women who give birth to animals in Melusine, 1886, August-November.
+The Batavians believe that women, when delivered of a child, are
+frequently delivered at the same time of a young crocodile as a
+twin. Hawkesworth's Voyages, iii. 756.  Liebrecht, Zur Volkskunde,
+p. 17 et seq.
+
+[7] Brough Smyth, Aborigines of Victoria, i. 497.
+
+
+These are minor examples of a form of opinion which is so strong
+that it is actually the chief constituent in savage society.  That
+society, whether in Ashantee or Australia, in North America or
+South Africa, or North Asia or India, or among the wilder tribes of
+ancient Peru, is based on an institution generally called
+"totemism".  This very extraordinary institution, whatever its
+origin, cannot have arisen except among men capable of conceiving
+kinship and all human relationships as existing between themselves
+and all animate and inanimate things.  It is the rule, and not the
+exception, that savage societies are founded upon this belief.  The
+political and social conduct of the backward races is regulated in
+such matters as blood-feud and marriage by theories of the actual
+kindred and connection by descent, or by old friendship, which men
+have in common with beasts, plants, the sun and moon, the stars,
+and even the wind and the rain.  Now, in whatever way this belief
+in such relations to beasts and plants may have arisen, it
+undoubtedly testifies to a condition of mind in which no hard and
+fast line was drawn between man and animate and inanimate nature.
+The discovery of the wide distribution of the social arrangements
+based on this belief is entirely due to Mr. J. F. M'Lennan, the
+author of Primitive Marriage.  Mr. M'Lennan's essays ("The Worship
+of Plants and Animals," "Totems and Totemism") were published in
+the Fortnightly Review, 1869-71.  Any follower in the footsteps of
+Mr. M'Lennan has it in his power to add a little evidence to that
+originally set forth, and perhaps to sift the somewhat uncritical
+authorities adduced.[1]
+
+
+[1] See also Mr. Frazer's Totemism, and Golden Bough, with chapter
+on Totemism in Modern Mythology.
+
+
+The name "Totemism" or "Totamism" was first applied at the end of
+the last century by Long[1] to the Red Indian custom which
+acknowledges human kinship with animals.  This institution had
+already been recognised among the Iroquois by Lafitau,[2] and by
+other observers.  As to the word "totem," Mr. Max Muller[3] quotes
+an opinion that the interpreters, missionaries, Government
+inspectors, and others who apply the name totem to the Indian
+"family mark" must have been ignorant of the Indian languages, for
+there is in them no such word as totem.  The right word, it
+appears, is otem; but as "totemism" has the advantage of possessing
+the ground, we prefer to say "totemism" rather than "otemism".  The
+facts are the same, whatever name we give them.  As Mr. Muller says
+himself,[4] "every warrior has his crest, which is called his
+totem";[5] and he goes on to describe a totem of an Indian who died
+about 1793.  We may now return to the consideration of "otemism" or
+totemism.  We approach it rather as a fact in the science of
+mythology than as a stage in the evolution of the modern family
+system.  For us totemism is interesting because it proves the
+existence of that savage mental attitude which assumes kindred and
+alliance between man and the things in the world.  As will
+afterwards be seen, totemism has also left its mark on the
+mythologies of the civilised races.  We shall examine the
+institution first as it is found in Australia, because the
+Australian form of totemism shows in the highest known degree the
+savage habit of confusing in a community of kinship men, stars,
+plants, beasts, the heavenly bodies, and the forces of Nature.  When
+this has once been elucidated, a shorter notice of other totemistic
+races will serve our purpose.
+
+
+[1] Voyages and Travels, 1791.
+
+[2] Moeurs des Sauvages (1724), p. 461.
+
+[3] Academy, December 15, 1883.
+
+[4] Selected Essays (1881), ii. 376.
+
+[5] Compare Mr. Max Muller's Contributions to the Science of
+Mythology.
+
+
+The society of the Murri or black fellows of Australia is divided
+into local tribes, each of which possesses, or used to possess, and
+hunt over a considerable tract of country.  These local tribes are
+united by contiguity, and by common local interests, but not
+necessarily by blood kinship.  For example, the Port Mackay tribe,
+the Mount Gambier tribe, the Ballarat tribe, all take their names
+from their district.  In the same way we might speak of the people
+of Strathclyde or of Northumbria in early English history.  Now,
+all these local tribes contain an indefinite number of stocks of
+kindred, of men believing themselves to be related by the ties of
+blood and common descent.  That descent the groups agree in
+tracing, not from some real or idealised human parent, but from
+some animal, plant, or other natural object, as the kangaroo, the
+emu, the iguana, the pelican, and so forth. Persons of the pelican
+stock in the north of Queensland regard themselves as relations of
+people of the same stock in the most southern parts of Australia.
+The creature from which each tribe claims descent is called "of the
+same flesh," while persons of another stock are "fresh flesh".  A
+native may not marry a woman of "his own flesh"; it is only a woman
+of "fresh" or "strange" flesh he may marry.  A man may not eat an
+animal of "his own flesh"; he may only eat "strange flesh".  Only
+under great stress of need will an Australian eat the animal which
+is the flesh-and-blood cousin and protector of his stock.[1]
+(These rules of marriage and blood, however, do not apply among the
+Arunta of Central Australia, whose Totems (if Totems they should be
+called) have been developed on very different lines.[2])  Clearer
+evidence of the confusion between man and beast, of the claiming of
+kin between man and beast, could hardly be.
+
+
+[1] Dawson, Aborigines, pp. 26, 27; Howitt and Fison, Kamilaroi and
+Kurnai, p. 169.
+
+[2] Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia.
+
+
+But the Australian philosophy of the intercommunion of Nature goes
+still farther than this.  Besides the local divisions and the
+kindred stocks which trace their descent from animals, there exist
+among many Australian tribes divisions of a kind still unexplained.
+For example, every man of the Mount Gambier local tribe is by birth
+either a Kumite or a Kroki.  This classification applies to the
+whole of the sensible universe.  Thus smoke and honeysuckle trees
+belong to the division Kumite, and are akin to the fishhawk stock
+of men.  On the other hand, the kangaroo, summer, autumn, the wind
+and the shevak tree belong to the division Kroki, and are akin to
+the black cockatoo stock of men.  Any human member of the Kroki
+division has thus for his brothers the sun, the wind, the kangaroo,
+and the rest; while any man of the Kumite division and the crow
+surname is the brother of the rain, the thunder, and the winter.
+This extraordinary belief is not a mere idle fancy--it influences
+conduct.  "A man does not kill or use as food any of the animals of
+the same subdivision (Kroki or Kumite) with himself, excepting when
+hunger compels, and then they express sorrow for having to eat
+their wingong (friends) or tumanang (their flesh).  When using the
+last word they touch their breasts, to indicate the close
+relationship, meaning almost a portion of themselves.  To
+illustrate:  One day one of the blacks killed a crow.  Three or four
+days afterwards a Boortwa (a man of the crow surname and stock),
+named Larry, died.  He had been ailing for some days, but the
+killing of his wingong (totem) hastened his death."[1]  Commenting
+on this statement, Mr. Fison observes: "The South Australian savage
+looks upon the universe as the Great Tribe, to one of whose
+divisions he himself belongs; and all things, animate and
+inanimate, which belong to his class are parts of the body
+corporate whereof he himself is part".  This account of the
+Australian beliefs and customs is borne out, to a certain extent,
+by the evidence of Sir George Grey,[2] and of the late Mr. Gideon
+Scott Lang.[3]  These two writers take no account of the singular
+"dichotomous" divisions, as of Kumite and Kroki, but they draw
+attention to the groups of kindred which derive their surnames from
+animals, plants, and the like.  "The origin of these family names,"
+says Sir George Grey, "is attributed by the natives to different
+causes. . . .  One origin frequently assigned by the natives is,
+that they were derived from some vegetable or animal being very
+common in the district which the family inhabited."  We have seen
+from the evidence of Messrs. Fison and Howitt that a more common
+native explanation is based on kinship with the vegetable or plant
+which bestows the family surname.  Sir George Gray mentions that
+the families use their plant or animal as a crest or kobong
+(totem), and he adds that natives never willingly kill animals of
+their kobong, holding that some one of that species is their
+nearest friend.  The consequences of eating forbidden animals vary
+considerably.  Sometimes the Boyl-yas (that is, ghosts) avenge the
+crime.  Thus when Sir George Grey ate some mussels (which, after
+all, are not the crest of the Greys), a storm followed, and one of
+his black fellow improvised this stave:--
+
+
+     Oh, wherefore did he eat the mussels?
+     Now the Boyl-yas storms and thunders make;
+     Oh, wherefore would he eat the mussels?
+
+
+[1] Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 169.
+
+[2] Travels, ii. 225.
+
+[3] Lang, Lecture on Natives of Australia, p. 10.
+
+
+There are two points in the arrangements of these stocks of kindred
+named from plants and animals which we shall find to possess a high
+importance.  No member of any such kindred may marry a woman of the
+same name and descended from the same object.[1]  Thus no man of
+the Emu stock may marry an Emu woman; no Blacksnake may marry a
+Blacksnake woman, and so forth.  This point is very strongly put by
+Mr. Dawson, who has had much experience of the blacks.  "So
+strictly are the laws of marriage carried out, that, should any
+sign of courtship or affection be observed between those 'of one
+flesh,' the brothers or male relatives of the woman beat her
+severely."  If the incestuous pair (though not in the least related
+according to our ideas) run away together, they are "half-killed";
+and if the woman dies in consequence of her punishment, her partner
+in iniquity is beaten again.  No "eric" or blood-fine of any kind
+is paid for her death, which carries no blood-feud.  "Her
+punishment is legal."[2]  This account fully corroborates that of
+Sir George Grey.[3]
+
+
+[1] Taplin, The Nerrinyeri. p. 2.  "Every tribe, regarded by them
+as a family, has its ngaitge, or tutelary genius or tribal symbol,
+in the shape of some bird, beast, fish, reptile, insect, or
+substance.  Between individuals of the same tribe no marriage can
+take place."  Among the Narrinyeri kindred is reckoned (p. 10) on
+the father's side.  See also (p. 46) ngaitge = Samoan aitu.  "No
+man or woman will kill their ngaitge," except with precautions, for
+food.
+
+[2] Op. cit., p. 28.
+
+[3] Ibid., ii. 220.
+
+
+Our conclusion is that the belief in "one flesh" (a kinship shared
+with the animals) must be a thoroughly binding idea, as the notion
+is sanctioned by capital punishment.
+
+Another important feature in Australian totemism strengthens our
+position.  The idea of the animal kinship must be an ancient one in
+the race, because the family surname, Emu, Bandicoot, or what not,
+and the crest, kobong, or protecting and kindred animal, are
+inherited through the mother's side in the majority of stocks.
+This custom, therefore, belongs to that early period of human
+society in which the woman is the permanent and recognised factor
+in the family while male parentage is uncertain.[1]  One other
+feature of Australian totemism must be mentioned before we leave
+the subject.  There is some evidence that in certain tribes the
+wingong or totem of each man is indicated by a tattooed
+representation of it upon his flesh.  The natives are very
+licentious, but men would shrink from an amour with a woman who
+neither belonged to their own district nor spoke their language,
+but who, in spite of that, was of their totem.  To avoid mistakes,
+it seems that some tribes mark the totem on the flesh with incised
+lines.[2]  The natives frequently design figures of some kind on
+the trees growing near the graves of deceased warriors.  Some
+observers have fancied that in these designs they recognised the
+totem of the dead men; but on this subject evidence is by no means
+clear.  We shall see that this primitive sort of heraldry, this
+carving or painting of hereditary blazons, is common among the Red
+Men of America.[3]
+
+
+[1] Cf. Bachofen, Das Mutterrecht; M'Lennan, Primitive Marriage,
+passim; Encycl. Brit. s. v. Family.
+
+[2] Fison, op. cit., p. 66.
+
+[3] Among other recent sources see Howitt in "Organisation of
+Australian Tribes" (Transactions of Royal Society of Victoria,
+1889), and Spencer and Gillen, Natives of Central Australia.  In
+Central Australia there is a marked difference in the form of
+Totemism.
+
+
+Though a large amount of evidence might be added to that already
+put forward, we may now sum up the inferences to be drawn from the
+study of totemism in Australia.  It has been shown (1) that the
+natives think themselves actually akin to animals, plants, the sun,
+and the wind, and things in general; (2) that those ideas influence
+their conduct, and even regulate their social arrangements, because
+(3) men and women of the kinship of the same animal or plant may
+not intermarry, while men are obliged to defend, and in case of
+murder to avenge, persons of the stock of the family or plant from
+which they themselves derive their family name.  Thus, on the
+evidence of institutions, it is plain that the Australians are (or
+before the influence of the Europeans became prevalent were) in a
+state of mind which draws no hard and fast line between man and the
+things in the world.  If, therefore, we find that in Australian
+myth, men, gods, beasts, and things all shift shapes incessantly,
+and figure in a coroboree dance of confusion, there will be nothing
+to astonish us in the discovery.  The myths of men in the Australian
+intellectual condition, of men who hold long conversations with the
+little "native bear," and ask him for oracles, will naturally and
+inevitably be grotesque and confused.[1]
+
+
+[1] Brough Smyth, i. 447, on MS. authority of W. Thomas.
+
+
+It is "a far cry" from Australia to the West Coast of Africa, and
+it is scarcely to be supposed that the Australians have borrowed
+ideas and institutions from Ashantee, or that the people of
+Ashantee have derived their conceptions of the universe from the
+Murri of Australia.  We find, however, on the West African Coast,
+just as we do in Australia, that there exist large local divisions
+of the natives.  These divisions are spoken of by Mr. Bowditch (who
+visited the country on a mission in 1817) as nations, and they are
+much more populous and powerful (as the people are more civilised)
+than the local tribes of Australia.  Yet, just as among the local
+tribes of Australia, the nations of the West African Coast are
+divided into stocks of kindred, each STOCK having its representatives
+in each NATION.  Thus an Ashantee or a Fantee may belong to the same
+stock of kindred as a member of the Assin or Akini nation.  When an
+Ashantee of the Annona stock of kindred meets a Warsaw man of the
+same stock they salute and acknowledge each other as brothers.  In
+the same way a Ballarat man of the Kangaroo stock in Australia
+recognises a relative in a Mount Gambier man who is also a Kangaroo.
+Now, with one exception, all the names of the twelve stocks of West
+African kindreds, or at least all of them which Mr. Bowditch could
+get the native interpreters to translate, are derived from animals,
+plants and other natural objects, just as in Australia.[1]  Thus
+Quonna is a buffalo, Abrootoo is a cornstalk, Abbradi a plantain.
+Other names are, in English, the parrot, the wild cat, red earth,
+panther and dog.  Thus all the natives of this part of Africa are
+parrots, dogs, buffaloes, panthers, and so forth, just as the
+Australians are emus, iguanas, black cockatoos, kangaroos, and the
+rest.  It is remarkable that there is an Incra stock, or clan of
+ants, in Ashantee, just as there was a race of Myrmidons, believed
+to be descended from or otherwise connected with ants, in ancient
+Greece. Though Bowditch's account of these West African family
+divisions is brief, the arrangement tallies closely with that of
+Australia.  It is no great stretch of imagination to infer that the
+African tribes do, or once did, believe themselves to be of the
+kindred of the animals whose names they bear.[2]  It is more or less
+confirmatory of this hypothesis that no family is permitted to use
+as food the animal from which it derives its name.  We have seen
+that a similar rule prevails, as far as hunger and scarcity of
+victuals permit it to be obeyed, among the natives of Australia.
+The Intchwa stock in Ashantee and Fantee is particularly unlucky,
+because its members may not eat the dog, "much relished by native
+epicures, and therefore a serious privation".  Equally to be pitied
+were the ancient Egyptians, who, if they belonged to the district of
+the sheep, might not eat mutton, which their neighbours, the
+Lycopolitae, devoured at pleasure.  These restrictions appear to be
+connected with the almost universal dislike of cannibals to eat
+persons of their own kindred except as a pious duty.  This law of
+the game in cannibalism has not yet been thoroughly examined, though
+we often hear of wars waged expressly for the purpose of securing
+food (human meat), while some South American tribes actually bred
+from captive women by way of securing constant supplies of permitted
+flesh.[3]  When we find stocks, then, which derive their names from
+animals and decline to eat these animals, we may at least SUSPECT
+that they once claimed kinship with the name-giving beasts.  The
+refusal to eat them raises a presumption of such faith.  Old
+Bosman[4] had noticed the same practices.  "One eats no mutton,
+another no goat's flesh, another no beef, swine's flesh, wild fowl,
+cocks with white feathers, and they say their ancestors did so from
+the beginning of the world."
+
+
+[1] The evidence of native interpreters may be viewed with
+suspicion.  It is improbable, however, that in 1817 the
+interpreters were acquainted with the totemistic theory of
+mythologists, and deliberately mistranslated the names of the
+stocks, so as to make them harmonise with Indian, Australian, and
+Red Indian totem kindreds.  This, indeed, is an example where the
+criterion of "recurrence" or "coincidence" seems to be valuable.
+Bowditch's Mission to Ashantee (1873), p. 181.
+
+[2] This view, however, does not prevail among the totemistic
+tribes of British Columbia, for example.
+
+[3] Cieza de Leon (Hakluyt Society), p. 50.  This amazing tale is
+supported by the statement that kinship went by the female side (p.
+49); the father was thus not of the kin of his child by the alien
+woman.  Cieza was with Validillo in 1538.
+
+[4] In Pinkerton, xvi. 400.
+
+
+While in the case of the Ashantee tribes, we can only infer the
+existence of a belief in kinship with the animals from the presence
+of the other features of fully developed totemism (especially from
+the refusal to eat the name-giving animal), we have direct evidence
+for the opinion in another part of Africa, among the Bechuanas.[1]
+Casalis, who passed twenty-three years as a missionary in South
+Africa, thus describes the institution: "While the united
+communities usually bear the name of their chief or of the district
+which they inhabit" (local tribes, as in Australia), "each stock
+(tribu) derives its title from an animal or a vegetable.  All the
+Bechuanas are subdivided thus into Bakuenas (crocodile-men),
+Batlapis (men of the fish), Banarer (of the buffalo), Banukus
+(porcupines), Bamoraras (wild vines), and so forth.  The Bakuenas
+call the crocodile their father, sing about him in their feasts,
+swear by him, and mark the ears of their cattle with an incision
+which resembles the open jaws of the creature."  This custom of
+marking the cattle with the crest, as it were, of the stock, takes
+among some races the shape of deforming themselves, so as the more
+to resemble the animal from which they claim descent.  "The chief
+of the family which holds the chief rank in the stock is called
+'The Great Man of the Crocodile'.  Precisely in the same way the
+Duchess of Sutherland is styled in Gaelic 'The Great Lady of the
+Cat,'" though totemism is probably not the origin of this title.
+
+
+[1] E. Casalis, Les Bassoutos, 1859.
+
+
+Casalis proceeds: "No one would dare to eat the flesh or wear the
+skin of the animal whose name he bears.  If the animal be
+dangerous--the lion, for example--people only kill him after
+offering every apology and asking his pardon.  Purification must
+follow such a sacrifice."  Casalis was much struck with the
+resemblance between these practices and the similar customs of
+North American races.  Livingstone's account[1] on the whole
+corroborates that of Casalis, though he says the Batau (tribe of
+the lion) no longer exists.  "They use the word bina 'to dance,' in
+reference to the custom of thus naming themselves, so that when you
+wish to ascertain what tribe they belong to, you say, 'What do you
+dance?'  It would seem as if this had been part of the worship of
+old."  The mythological and religious knowledge of the Bushmen is
+still imparted in dances; and when a man is ignorant of some myth
+he will say, "I do not dance that dance," meaning that he does not
+belong to the guild which preserves that particular "sacred
+chapter".[2]
+
+
+[1] Missionary Travels (1857), p. 13.
+
+[2] Orpen, Cape Monthly Magazine, 1872.
+
+
+Casalis noticed the similarity between South African and Red Indian
+opinion about kinship with vegetables and beasts.  The difficulty
+in treating the Red Indian belief is chiefly found in the abundance
+of the evidence.  Perhaps the first person who ever used the word
+"totemism," or, as he spells it, "totamism," was (as we said) Mr.
+Long, an interpreter among the Chippeways, who published his
+Voyages in 1791.  Long was not wholly ignorant of the languages, as
+it was his business to speak them, and he was an adopted Indian.
+The ceremony of adoption was painful, beginning with a feast of
+dog's flesh, followed by a Turkish bath and a prolonged process of
+tattooing.[1]  According to Long,[2] "The totam, they conceive,
+assumes the form of some beast or other, and therefore they never
+kill, hurt, or eat the animal whose form they think this totam
+bears".  One man was filled with religious apprehensions, and gave
+himself up to the gloomy belief of Bunyan and Cowper, that he had
+committed the unpardonable sin, because he dreamed he had killed
+his totem, a bear.[3]  This is only one example, like the refusal
+of the Osages to kill the beavers, with which they count cousins,[4]
+that the Red Man's belief is an actual creed, and does influence
+his conduct.
+
+
+[1] Long, pp. 46-49.
+
+[2] Ibid., p. 86.
+
+[3] Ibid., p. 87.
+
+[4] Schoolcraft, i. 319.
+
+
+As in Australia, the belief in common kin with beasts is most
+clearly proved by the construction of Red Indian society.  The
+"totemistic" stage of thought and manners prevails.  Thus
+Charlevoix says,[1] "Plusieurs nations ont chacune trois familles
+ou tribus principales, AUSSI ANCIENNES, A CE QU'IL PAROIT, QUE LEUR
+ORIGINE.  Chaque tribu porte le nom d'un animal, et la nation
+entiere a aussi le sien, dont elle prend le nom, et dont la figure
+est sa marque, ou, se l'on veut, ses armoiries, on ne signe point
+autrement les traites qu'en traceant ces figures."  Among the
+animal totems Charlevoix notices porcupine, bear, wolf and turtle.
+The armoiries, the totemistic heraldry of the peoples of Virginia,
+greatly interested a heraldic ancestor of Gibbon the historian,[2]
+who settled in the colony.  According to Schoolcraft,[3] the totem
+or family badge, of a dead warrior is drawn in a reverse position
+on his grave-post.  In the same way the leopards of England are
+drawn reversed on the shield of an English king opposite the
+mention of his death in old monkish chronicles.  As a general
+rule,[4] persons bearing the same totem in America cannot
+intermarry.  "The union must be between various totems."  Moreover,
+as in the case of the Australians, "the descent of the chief is in
+the female line".  We thus find among the Red Men precisely the
+same totemistic regulations as among the Aborigines of Australia.
+Like the Australians, the Red Men "never" (perhaps we should read
+"hardly ever") eat their totems.  Totemists, in short, spare the
+beasts that are their own kith and kin.  To avoid multiplying
+details which all corroborate each other, it may suffice to refer
+to Schoolcraft for totemism among the Iowas[5] and the Pueblos;[6]
+for the Iroquois, to Lafitau, a missionary of the early part of the
+eighteenth century.  Lafitau was perhaps the first writer who ever
+explained certain features in Greek and other ancient myths and
+practices as survivals from totemism.  The Chimera, a composite
+creature, lion, goat and serpent, might represent, Lafitau thought,
+a league of three totem tribes, just as wolf, bear and turtle
+represented the Iroquois League.
+
+
+[1] Histoire de la France-Nouvelle, iii. 266.
+
+[2] Introductio ad Latinam Blasoniam, by John Gibbon, Blue Mantle,
+London, 1682.  "The dancers, were painted some party per pale, gul
+and sab, some party per fesse of the same colours;" whence Gibbon
+concluded "that heraldry was ingrafted naturally into the sense of
+the humane race".
+
+[3] Vol. i. p. 356.
+
+[4] Schoolcraft, v. 73.
+
+[5] Ibid., iii. 268.
+
+[6] Ibid., iv. 86.
+
+
+The martyred Pere Rasles, again, writing in 1723,[1] says that one
+stock of the Outaonaks claims descent from a hare ("the great hare
+was a man of prodigious size"), while another stock derive their
+lineage from the carp, and a third descends from a bear; yet they
+do not scruple, after certain expiatory rites, to eat bear's flesh.
+Other North American examples are the Kutchin, who have always
+possessed the system of totems.[2]
+
+
+[1] Kip's Jesuits in America i. 33.
+
+[2] Dall's Alaska, pp. 196-198.
+
+
+It is to be noticed, as a peculiarity of Red Indian totemism which
+we have not observed (though it may exist) in Africa, that certain
+stocks claim relations with the sun.  Thus Pere Le Petit, writing
+from New Orleans in 1730, mentions the Sun, or great chief of the
+Natchez Indians.[1]  The totem of the privileged class among the
+Natchez was the sun, and in all myths the sun is regarded as a
+living being, who can have children, who may be beaten, who bleeds
+when cut, and is simply on the same footing as men and everything
+else in the world.  Precisely similar evidence comes from South
+America.  In this case our best authority is almost beyond
+suspicion.  He knew the native languages well, being himself a
+half-caste.  He was learned in the European learning of his time;
+and as a son of the Incas, he had access to all surviving Peruvian
+stores of knowledge, and could collect without difficulty the
+testimonies of his countrymen.  It will be seen[2] that Don
+Garcilasso de la Vega could estimate evidence, and ridiculed the
+rough methods and fallacious guesses of Spanish inquirers.
+Garcilasso de la Vega was born about 1540, being the son of an Inca
+princess and of a Spanish conqueror.  His book, Commentarias
+Reales,[3] was expressly intended to rectify the errors of such
+Spanish writers as Acosta.  In his account of Peruvian religion,
+Garcilasso distinguishes between the beliefs of the tribes previous
+to the rise of the Inca empire and the sun-worship of the Incas.
+But it is plain, from Garcilasso's own account and from other
+evidence, that under the Incas the older faiths and fetichisms
+survived, in subordination to sun-worship, just as Pagan
+superstitions survived in custom and folk-lore after the official
+recognition of Christianity.  Sun-worship, in Peru, and the belief
+in a Supreme Creator there, seem even, like Catholicism in Mexico,
+China and elsewhere, to have made a kind of compromise with the
+lower beliefs, and to have been content to allow a certain amount
+of bowing down in the temples of the elder faiths.  According,
+then, to Garcilasso's account of Peruvian totemism, "An Indian was
+not looked upon as honourable unless he was descended from a
+fountain, river,[4] or lake, or even from the sea, OR FROM A WILD
+ANIMAL, such as a bear, lion, tiger, eagle, or the bird they call
+cuntur (condor), or some other bird of prey ".[5]  A certain amount
+of worship was connected with this belief in kinship with beasts
+and natural objects.  Men offered up to their totems "what they
+usually saw them eat".[6]  On the seacoasts "they worshipped
+sardines, skates, dog-fish, and, for want of larger gods,
+crabs. . . .  There was not an animal, how vile and filthy soever,
+that they did not worship as a god," including "lizards, toads and
+frogs."  Garcilasso (who says they ate the fish they worshipped)
+gives his own theory of the origin of totemism.  In the beginning
+men had only sought for badges whereby to discriminate one human
+stock from another.  "The one desired to have a god different from
+the other. . . .  They only thought of making one different from
+another."  When the Inca emperors began to civilise the totemistic
+stocks, they pointed out that their own father, the sun, possessed
+"splendour and beauty" as contrasted with "the ugliness and filth of
+the frogs and other vermin they looked upon as gods".[7]  Garcilasso,
+of course, does not use the North American word totem (or ote or
+otem) for the family badge which represented the family ancestors.
+He calls these things, as a general rule, pacarissa.  The sun was the
+pacarissa of the Incas, as it was of the chief of the Natchez.  The
+pacarissa of other stocks was the lion, bear, frog, or what not.
+Garcilasso accounts for the belief accorded to the Incas, when they
+claimed actual descent from the sun, by observing[8] that "there
+were tribes among their subjects who professed similar fabulous
+descents, though they did not comprehend how to select ancestors so
+well as the Incas, but adored animals and other low and earthly
+objects".  As to the fact of the Peruvian worship of beasts, if more
+evidence is wanted, it is given, among others, by Cieza de Leon,[9]
+who contrasts the adoration of the Roman gods with that offered in
+Peru to brutes.  "In the important temple of Pacha-camac (the
+spiritual deity of Peru) they worshipped a she-fox or vixen and an
+emerald."  The devil also "appeared to them and spoke in the form of
+a tiger, very fierce".  Other examples of totemism in South America
+may be studied in the tribes on the Amazon.[10]  Mr. Wallace found
+the Pineapple stock, the Mosquitoes, Woodpeckers, Herons, and other
+totem kindreds.  A curious example of similar ideas is discovered
+among the Bonis of Guiana.  These people were originally West Coast
+Africans imported as slaves, who have won their freedom with the
+sword.  While they retain a rough belief in Gadou (God) and Didibi
+(the devil), they are divided into totem stocks with animal names.
+The red ape, turtle and cayman are among the chief totems.[11]
+
+
+[1] Kip, ii. 288.
+
+[2] Appendix B.
+
+[3] See translation in Hakluyt Society's Collection.
+
+[4] Like many Greek heroes.  Odyssey, iii. 489. "Orsilochus, the
+child begotten of Alpheus."
+
+[5] Comm. Real., i. 75.
+
+[6] Ibid., 53.
+
+[7] Ibid., 102.
+
+[8] Ibid., 83.
+
+[9] Cieza de Leon (Hakluyt Society), p. 183.
+
+[10] Acuna, p. 103; Wallace, Travels on Amazon (1853), pp. 481-506.
+
+[11] Crevaux, Voyages dans l'Amerique du Sud, p. 59.
+
+
+After this hasty examination of the confused belief in kinship with
+animals and other natural objects which underlies institutions in
+Australia, West and South Africa, North and South America, we may
+glance at similar notions among the non-Aryan races of India.  In
+Dalton's Ethnology of Bengal,[1] he tells us that the Garo clans
+are divided into maharis or motherhoods.  Children belong to the
+mahari of the mother, just as (in general) they derive their stock
+name and totem from the mother's side in Australia and among the
+North American Indians.  No man may marry (as among the Red Indians
+and Australians) a woman belonging to his own stock, motherhood or
+mahari.  So far the maharis of Bengal exactly correspond to the
+totem kindred.  But do the Maharis also take their names from
+plants and animals, and so forth?  We know that the Killis, similar
+communities among the Bengal Hos and Mundos, do this.[2]  "The
+Mundaris, like the Oraons, adopt as their tribal distinction the
+name of some animal, and the flesh of that animal is tabooed to
+them as food; for example, the eel, the tortoise."  This is exactly
+the state of things in Ashanti.  Dalton mentions also[3] a princely
+family in Nagpur which claims descent from "a great hooded snake".
+Among the Oraons he found[4] tribes which might not eat young mice
+(considered a dainty) or tortoises, and a stock which might not eat
+the oil of the tree which was their totem, nor even sit in its
+shade. "The family or tribal names" (within which they may not
+marry) "are usually those of animals or plants, and when this is
+the case, the flesh of some part of the animal or the fruit of the
+tree is tabooed to the tribe called after it."
+
+
+[1] Dalton, p. 63.
+
+[2] Ibid., p. 189.
+
+[3] Ibid., p. 166.
+
+[4] Ibid., p. 254.
+
+
+An excellent sketch of totemism in India is given by Mr. H. H.
+Risley of the Bengal Civil Service:--[1]
+
+
+[1] The Asiatic Quarterly, No. 3, Essay on "Primitive Marriage in
+Bengal."
+
+
+"At the bottom of the social system, as understood by the average
+Hindu, stands a large body of non-Aryan castes and tribes, each of
+which is broken up into a number of what may be called totemistic
+exogamous septs.  Each sept bears the name of an animal, a tree, a
+plant, or of some material object, natural or artificial, which the
+members of that sept are prohibited from killing, eating, cutting,
+burning, carrying, using, etc."[1]
+
+
+[1] Here we may note that the origin of exogamy itself is merely
+part of a strict totemistic prohibition.  A man may not "use" an
+object within the totem kin, nor a woman of the kin.  Compare the
+Greek idiom [Greek text omitted].
+
+
+Mr. Risley finds that both Kolarians, as the Sonthals, and
+Dravidians, as the Oraons, are in this state of totemism, like the
+Hos and Mundas.  It is most instructive to learn that, as one of
+these tribes rises in the social scale, it sloughs off its totem,
+and, abandoning the common name derived from bird, beast, or plant,
+adopts that of an eponymous ancestor.  A tendency in this direction
+has been observed by Messrs. Fison and Howitt even in Australia.
+The Mahilis, Koras and Kurmis, who profess to be members of the
+Hindu community, still retain the totemistic organisation, with
+names derived from birds, beasts and plants.  Even the Jagannathi
+Kumhars of Orissa, taking rank immediately below the writer-caste,
+have the totems tiger, snake, weasel, cow, frog, sparrow and
+tortoise.  The sub-castes of the Khatlya Kumhars explain away their
+totem-names "as names of certain saints, who, being present at
+Daksha's Horse-sacrifice, transformed themselves into animals to
+escape the wrath of Siva," like the gods of Egypt when they fled in
+bestial form from the wrath of Set.
+
+Among the non-Aryan tribes the marriage law has the totemistic
+sanction.  No man may marry a woman of his totem kin.  When the
+totem-name is changed for an eponym, the non-Aryan, rising in the
+social scale, is practically in the same position as the Brahmans,
+"divided into exogamous sections (gotras), the members of which
+profess to be descended from the mythical rishi or inspired saint
+whose name the gotra bears".  There is thus nothing to bar the
+conjecture that the exogamous gotras of the whole Brahmans were
+once a form of totem-kindred, which (like aspiring non-Aryan stocks
+at the present day) dropped the totem-name and renamed the septs
+from some eponymous hero, medicine-man, or Rishi.
+
+Constant repetition of the same set of facts becomes irksome, and
+yet is made necessary by the legitimate demand for trustworthy and
+abundant evidence.  As the reader must already have reflected, this
+living mythical belief in the common confused equality of men,
+gods, plants, beasts, rivers, and what not, which still regulates
+savage society,[1] is one of the most prominent features in
+mythology.  Porphyry remarked and exactly described it among the
+Egyptians--"common and akin to men and gods they believed the
+beasts to be."[2]  The belief in such equality is alien to modern
+civilisation.  We have shown that it is common and fundamental in
+savagery.  For instance, in the Pacific, we might quote Turner,[3]
+and for Melanesia, Codrington,[4] while for New Zealand we have
+Taylor.[5]  For the Jakuts, along the banks of the Lena in Northern
+Asia, we have the evidence of Strahlenberg, who writes: "Each tribe
+of these people look upon some particular creature as sacred, e.g.,
+a swan, goose, raven, etc., and such is not eaten by that tribe"
+though the others may eat it.[6]  As the majority of our witnesses
+were quite unaware that the facts they described were common among
+races of whom many of them had never even heard, their evidence may
+surely be accepted as valid, especially as the beliefs testified to
+express themselves in marriage laws, in the blood-feud, in
+abstinence from food, on pillars over graves, in rude heraldry, and
+in other obvious and palpable shapes.  If we have not made out, by
+the evidence of institutions, that a confused credulity concerning
+the equality and kinship of man and the objects in nature is
+actually a ruling belief among savages, and even higher races, from
+the Lena to the Amazon, from the Gold Coast to Queensland, we may
+despair of ever convincing an opponent.  The survival of the same
+beliefs and institutions among civilised races, Aryan and others,
+will later be demonstrated.[7]  If we find that the mythology of
+civilised races here agrees with the actual practical belief of
+savages, and if we also find that civilised races retain survivals
+of the institutions in which the belief is expressed by savages,
+then we may surely infer that the activity of beasts in the myths
+of Greece springs from the same sources as the similar activity of
+beasts in the myths of Iroquois or Kaffirs.  That is to say, part
+of the irrational element in Greek myth will be shown to be derived
+(whether by inheritance or borrowing) from an ascertained condition
+of savage fancy.
+
+
+[1] See some very curious and disgusting examples of this confusion
+in Liebrecht's Zur Volkskunde, pp. 395, 396 (Heilbronn, 1879).
+
+[2] De Abst., ii. 26.
+
+[3] Nineteen Years in Polynesia, p. 238, and Samoa by the same
+author.  Complete totemism is not asserted here, and is denied for
+Melanesia.
+
+[4] Journ. Anthrop. Inst., "Religious Practices in Melanesia".
+
+[5] New Zealand, "Animal Intermarriage with Men".
+
+[6] Description of Asia (1783), p. 383.
+
+[7] Professor Robertson Smith, Kinship in Arabia, attempts to show
+that totemism existed in the Semitic races.  The topic must be left
+to Orientalists.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE MENTAL CONDITION OF SAVAGES--MAGIC--METAMORPHOSIS--METAPHYSIC--
+PSYCHOLOGY.
+
+
+Claims of sorcerers--Savage scientific speculation--Theory of
+causation--Credulity, except as to new religious ideas--"Post hoc,
+ergo propter hoc"--Fundamental ideas of magic--Examples:
+incantations, ghosts, spirits--Evidence of rank and other
+institutions in proof of confusions of mind exhibited in magical
+beliefs.
+
+
+"I mean eftsoons to have a fling at magicians for their abominable
+lies and monstrous vanities."--PLINY, ap. Phil. Holland.
+
+"Quoy de ceux qui naturellement se changent en loups, en juments,
+et puis encores en hommes?"--MONTAIGNE, Apologie pour Raymond de
+Sebonde.
+
+
+The second feature in the savage intellectual condition which we
+promised to investigate was the belief in magic and sorcery.  The
+world and all the things in it being conceived of vaguely as
+sensible and rational, are supposed to obey the commands of certain
+members of each tribe, such as chiefs, jugglers, or conjurors.
+These conjurors, like Zeus or Indra, can affect the weather, work
+miracles, assume what shapes, animal, vegetable, or inorganic, they
+please, and can metamorphose other persons into similar shapes.  It
+has already been shown that savage man has regarded all THINGS as
+PERSONS much on a level with himself. It has now to be shown WHAT
+KIND OF PERSON HE CONCEIVES HIMSELF TO BE.  He does not look on men
+as civilised races regard them, that is, as beings with strict
+limitations.  On the other hand, he thinks of certain members of
+his tribe as exempt from most of the limitations, and capable of
+working every miracle that tradition has ever attributed to
+prophets or gods.  Nor are such miraculous powers, such practical
+omnipotence, supposed by savages to be at all rare among
+themselves.  Though highly valued, miraculous attainments are not
+believed to be unusual.  This must be kept steadily in mind.  When
+myth-making man regards the sky or sun or wind as a person, he does
+not mean merely a person with the limitations recognised by modern
+races.  He means a person with the miraculous powers of the
+medicine-man.  The sky, sun, wind or other elemental personage can
+converse with the dead, and can turn himself and his neighbours
+into animals, stones and trees.
+
+To understand these functions and their exercise, it is necessary
+to examine what may be called savage science, savage metaphysics,
+and the savage theory of the state of the dead.  The medicine-man's
+supernatural claims are rooted in the general savage view of the
+world, of what is possible, and of what (if anything) is
+impossible.  The savage, even more than the civilised man, may be
+described as a creature "moving about in worlds not realised".  He
+feels, no less than civilised man, the need of making the world
+intelligible, and he is active in his search for causes and
+effects.  There is much "speculation in these eyes that he doth
+glare withal".  This is a statement which has been denied by some
+persons who have lived with savages.  Thus Mr. Bates, in his
+Naturalist on the Amazon,[1]  writes: "Their want of curiosity is
+extreme. . . .  Vicente (an Indian companion) did not know the
+cause of thunder and lightning.  I asked him who made the sun, the
+stars, the trees.  He didn't know, and had never heard the subject
+mentioned in his tribe."  But Mr. Bates admits that even Vicente
+had a theory of the configuration of the world.  "The necessity of
+a theory of the earth and water had been felt, and a theory had
+been suggested."  Again, Mr. Bates says about a certain Brazilian
+tribe, "Their sluggish minds seem unable to conceive or feel the
+want of a theory of the soul"; and he thinks the cause of this
+indolence is the lack "of a written language or a leisured class".
+Now savages, as a rule, are all in the "leisured class," all
+sportsmen.  Mr. Herbert Spencer, too, has expressed scepticism
+about the curiosity attributed to savages.  The point is important,
+because, in our view, the medicine-man's powers are rooted in the
+savage theory of things, and if the savage is too sluggish to
+invent or half consciously evolve a theory of things, our
+hypothesis is baseless.  Again, we expect to find in savage myths
+the answer given by savages to their own questions.  But this view
+is impossible if savages do not ask themselves, and never have
+asked themselves, any questions at all about the world.  On this
+topic Mr. Spencer writes: "Along with absence of surprise there
+naturally goes absence of intelligent curiosity".[2]  Yet Mr.
+Spencer admits that, according to some witnesses, "the Dyaks have
+an insatiable curiosity," the Samoans "are usually very
+inquisitive," and "the Tahitians are remarkably curious and
+inquisitive".  Nothing is more common than to find travellers
+complaining that savages, in their ardently inquiring curiosity,
+will not leave the European for a moment to his own undisturbed
+devices.  Mr. Spencer's savages, who showed no curiosity, displayed
+this impassiveness when Europeans were trying to make them exhibit
+signs of surprise.  Impassivity is a point of honour with many
+uncivilised races, and we cannot infer that a savage has no
+curiosity because he does not excite himself over a mirror, or when
+his European visitors try to swagger with their mechanical
+appliances.  Mr. Herbert Spencer founds, on the statements of Mr.
+Bates already quoted, a notion that "the savage, lacking ability to
+think and the accompanying desire to know, is without tendency to
+speculate".  He backs Mr. Bates's experience with Mungo Park's
+failure to "draw" the negroes about the causes of day and night.
+They had never indulged a conjecture nor formed an hypothesis on
+the matter.  Yet Park avers that "the belief in one God is entire
+and universal among them".  This he "pronounces without the
+smallest shadow of doubt".  As to "primitive man," according to Mr.
+Spencer, "the need for explanations about surrounding appearances
+does not occur to him".  We have disclaimed all knowledge about
+"primitive man," but it is easy to show that Mr. Spencer grounds
+his belief in the lack of speculation among savages on a frail
+foundation of evidence.
+
+
+[1] Vol. ii. p. 162.
+
+[2] Sociology, p. 98.
+
+
+Mr. Spencer has admitted speculation, or at least curiosity, among
+New Caledonians, New Guinea people, Dyaks, Samoans and Tahitians.
+Even where he denies its existence, as among the Amazon tribes
+mentioned by Mr. Bates, we happen to be able to show that Mr. Bates
+was misinformed.  Another traveller, the American geologist,
+Professor Hartt of Cornell University, lived long among the tribes
+of the Amazon.  But Professor Hartt did not, like Mr. Bates, find
+them at all destitute of theories of things--theories expressed in
+myths, and testifying to the intellectual activity and curiosity
+which demands an answer to its questions.  Professor Hartt, when he
+first became acquainted with the Indians of the Amazon, knew that
+they were well supplied with myths, and he set to work to collect
+them.  But he found that neither by coaxing nor by offers of money
+could he persuade an Indian to relate a myth.  Only by accident,
+"while wearily paddling up the Paranamirim of the Ituki," did he
+hear the steersman telling stories to the oarsmen to keep them
+awake.  Professor Hartt furtively noted down the tale, and he found
+that by "setting the ball rolling," and narrating a story himself,
+he could make the natives throw off reserve and add to his stock of
+tales.  "After one has obtained his first myth, and has learned to
+recite it accurately and spiritedly, the rest is easy."  The tales
+published by Professor Hartt are chiefly animal stories, like those
+current in Africa and among the Red Indians, and Hartt even
+believed that many of the legends had been imported by Negroes.
+But as the majority of the Negro myths, like those of the
+Australians, give a "reason why" for the existence of some
+phenomenon or other, the argument against early man's curiosity and
+vivacity of intellect is rather injured, even if the Amazonian
+myths were imported from Africa.  Mr. Spencer based his disbelief
+in the intellectual curiosity of the Amazonian tribes and of
+Negroes on the reports of Mr. Bates and of Mungo Park.  But it
+turns out that both Negroes and Amazonians have stories which do
+satisfy an unscientific curiosity, and it is even held that the
+Negroes lent the Amazonians these very stories.[1]  The
+Kamschadals, according to Steller, "give themselves a reason why
+for everything, according to their own lively fancy, and do not
+leave the smallest matter uncriticised".[2]  As far, then, as Mr.
+Spencer's objections apply to existing savages, we may consider
+them overweighed by the evidence, and we may believe in a naive
+savage curiosity about the world and desire for explanations of the
+causes of things.  Mr. Tylor's opinion corroborates our own: "Man's
+craving to know the causes at work in each event he witnesses, the
+reasons why each state of things he surveys is such as it is and no
+other, is no product of high civilisation, but a characteristic of
+his race down to its lowest stages.  Among rude savages it is
+already an intellectual appetite, whose satisfaction claims many of
+the moments not engrossed by war or sport, food or sleep.  Even in
+the Botocudo or the Australian, scientific speculation has its germ
+in actual experience."[3]  It will be shown later that the food of
+the savage intellectual appetite is offered and consumed in the
+shape of explanatory myths.
+
+
+[1] See Amazonian Tortoise-Myth., pp. 5, 37, 40; and compare Mr.
+Harris's Preface to Nights with Uncle Remus.
+
+[2] Steller, p. 267.  Cf. Farrer's Primitive Manners, p. 274.
+
+[3] Primitive Culture, i. 369.
+
+
+But we must now observe that the "actual experience," properly so
+called, of the savage is so limited and so coloured by misconception
+and superstition, that his knowledge of the world varies very much
+from the conceptions of civilised races.  He seeks an explanation, a
+theory of things, based on his experience.  But his knowledge of
+physical causes and of natural laws is exceedingly scanty, and he is
+driven to fall back upon what we may call metaphysical, or, in many
+cases "supernatural" explanations.  The narrower the range of man's
+knowledge of physical causes, the wider is the field which he has to
+fill up with hypothetical causes of a metaphysical or "supernatural"
+character.  These "supernatural" causes themselves the savage
+believes to be matters of experience. It is to his mind a matter of
+experience that all nature is personal and animated; that men may
+change shapes with beasts; that incantations and supernatural beings
+can cause sunshine and storm.
+
+A good example of this is given in Charlevoix's work on French
+Canada.[1]  Charlevoix was a Jesuit father and missionary among the
+Hurons and other tribes of North America.  He thus describes the
+philosophy of the Red Men: "The Hurons attribute the most ordinary
+effects to supernatural causes".[2]  In the same page the good
+father himself attributes the welcome arrival of rainy weather and
+the cure of certain savage patients to the prayers of Pere Brebeuf
+and to the exhibition of the sacraments.  Charlevoix had
+considerably extended the field in which natural effects are known
+to be produced by natural causes.  He was much more scientifically
+minded than his savage flock, and was quite aware that an ordinary
+clock with a pendulum cannot bring bad luck to a whole tribe, and
+that a weather-cock is not a magical machine for securing
+unpleasant weather.  The Hurons, however, knowing less of natural
+causes and nothing of modern machinery, were as convinced that his
+clock was ruining the luck of the tribe and his weather-cock
+spoiling the weather, as Father Charlevoix could be of the truth of
+his own inferences.  One or two other anecdotes in the good
+father's history and letters help to explain the difference between
+the philosophies of wild and of Christian men.  The Pere Brebeuf
+was once summoned at the instigation of a Huron wizard or
+"medicine-man" before a council of the tribe.  His judges told the
+father that nothing had gone right since he appeared among them.
+To this Brebeuf replied by "drawing the attention of the savages to
+the absurdity of their principles".  He admitted[3] the premise
+that nothing had turned out well in the tribe since his arrival.
+"But the reason," said he, "plainly is that God is angry with your
+hardness of heart."  No sooner had the good father thus demonstrated
+the absurdity of savage principles of reasoning, than the malignant
+Huron wizard fell down dead at his feet!  This event naturally added
+to the confusion of the savages.
+
+
+[1] Histoire de la France-Nouvelle.
+
+[2] Vol. i. p. 191.
+
+[3] Vol. i. p. 192.
+
+
+Coincidences of this sort have a great effect on savage minds.
+Catlin, the friend of the Mandan tribe, mentions a chief who
+consolidated his power by aid of a little arsenic, bought from the
+whites.  The chief used to prophesy the sudden death of his
+opponents, which always occurred at the time indicated.  The
+natural results of the administration of arsenic were attributed by
+the barbarous people to supernatural powers in the possession of
+the chief.[1]  Thus the philosophy of savages seeks causas
+cognoscere rerum, like the philosophy of civilised men, but it
+flies hastily to a hypothesis of "supernatural" causes which are
+only guessed at, and are incapable of demonstration.  This frame of
+mind prevails still in civilised countries, as the Bishop of Nantes
+showed when, in 1846, he attributed the floods of the Loire to "the
+excesses of the press and the general disregard of Sunday".  That
+"supernatural" causes exist and may operate, it is not at all our
+intention to deny.  But the habit of looking everywhere for such
+causes, and of assuming their interference at will, is the main
+characteristic of savage speculation.  The peculiarity of the
+savage is that he thinks human agents can work supernaturally,
+whereas even the Bishop reserved his supernatural explanations for
+the Deity.  On this belief in man's power to affect events beyond
+the limits of natural possibility is based the whole theory of
+MAGIC, the whole power of sorcerers.  That theory, again, finds
+incessant expression in myth, and therefore deserves our attention.
+
+
+[1] Catlin, Letters, ii. 117.
+
+
+The theory requires for its existence an almost boundless
+credulity.  This credulity appears to Europeans to prevail in full
+force among savages.  Bosman is amazed by the African belief that a
+spider created the world.  Moffat is astonished at the South
+African notion that the sea was accidentally created by a girl.
+Charlevoix says, "Les sauvages sont d'une facilite a croire ce
+qu'on leur dit, que les plus facheuse experiences n'ont jamais pu
+guerir".[1]  But it is a curious fact that while savages are, as a
+rule, so credulous, they often laugh at the religious doctrines
+taught them by missionaries.  Elsewhere they recognise certain
+essential doctrines as familiar forms of old.  Dr. Moffat remarks,
+"To speak of the Creation, the Fall and the Resurrection, seemed
+more fabulous, extravagant and ludicrous to them than their own
+vain stories of lions and hyaenas."  Again, "The Gospel appeared
+too preposterous for the most foolish to believe".[2]  While the
+Zulus declared that they used to accept their own myths without
+inquiry,[3] it was a Zulu who suggested to Bishop Colenso his
+doubts about the historical character of the Noachian Deluge.
+Hearne[4] knew a Red Man, Matorabhee, who, "though a perfect bigot
+with regard to the arts and tricks of the jugglers, could yet by no
+means be impressed with a belief of any part of OUR religion".
+Lieutenant Haggard, R.N., tells the writer that during an eclipse
+at Lamoo he ridiculed the native notion of driving away a beast
+which devours the moon, and explained the real cause of the
+phenomenon.  But his native friend protested that "he could not be
+expected to believe such a story".  Yet other savages aver an old
+agreement with the belief in a moral Creator.
+
+
+[1] Vol. ii. p. 378.
+
+[2] Missionary Labours, p. 245.
+
+[3] Callaway, Religion of Amazulus, i. 35.
+
+[4] Journey among the Indians, 1795, p. 350.
+
+
+We have already seen sufficient examples of credulity in savage
+doctrines about the equal relations of men and beasts, stars,
+clouds and plants.  The same readiness of belief, which would be
+surprising in a Christian child, has been found to regulate the
+rudimentary political organisations of grey barbarians.  Add to
+this credulity a philosophy which takes resemblance, or contiguity
+in space, or nearness in time as a sufficient reason for
+predicating the relations of cause and effect, and we have the
+basis of savage physical science.  Yet the metaphysical theories of
+savages, as expressed in Maori, Polynesian, and Zuni hymns, often
+amaze us by their wealth of abstract ideas.  Coincidence elsewhere
+stands for cause.
+
+Post hoc, ergo propter hoc, is the motto of the savage philosophy
+of causation.  The untutored reasoner speculates on the principles
+of the Egyptian clergy, as described by Herodotus.[1]  "The
+Egyptians have discovered more omens and prodigies than any other
+men; for when aught prodigious occurs, they keep good watch, and
+write down what follows; and then, if anything like the prodigy be
+repeated, they expect the same events to follow as before."  This
+way of looking at things is the very essence of superstition.
+
+
+[1] II. p. 82.
+
+
+Savages, as a rule, are not even so scientific as the Egyptians.
+When an untoward event occurs, they look for its cause among all
+the less familiar circumstances of the last few days, and select
+the determining cause very much at random.  Thus the arrival of the
+French missionaries among the Hurons was coincident with certain
+unfortunate events; therefore it was argued that the advent of the
+missionaries was the cause of the misfortune.  When the Bechuanas
+suffered from drought, they attributed the lack of rain to the
+arrival of Dr. Moffat, and especially to his beard, his church
+bell, and a bag of salt in his possession.  Here there was not even
+the pretence of analogy between cause and effect.  Some savages
+might have argued (it is quite in their style), that as salt causes
+thirst, a bag of salt causes drought; but no such case could be
+made out against Dr. Moffat's bell and beard.  To give an example
+from the beliefs of English peasants.  When a cottage was buried by
+a little avalanche in 1772, the accident was attributed to the
+carelessness of the cottagers, who had allowed a light to be taken
+out of their dwelling in Christmas-tide.[1]  We see the same
+confusion between antecedence and consequence in time on one side,
+and cause and effect on the other, when the Red Indians aver that
+birds actually bring winds and storms or fair weather.  They take
+literally the sense of the Rhodian swallow-song:--
+
+
+     The swallow hath come,
+     Bringing fair hours,
+     Bringing fair seasons,
+     On black back and white breast.[2]
+
+
+[1] Shropshire Folk-Lore, by Miss Burne, iii. 401.
+
+[2] Brinton, Myths of New World, p. 107.
+
+
+Again, in the Pacific the people of one island always attribute
+hurricanes to the machinations of the people of the nearest island
+to windward.  The wind comes from them; therefore (as their
+medicine-men can notoriously influence the weather), they must have
+sent the wind.  This unneighbourly act is a casus belli, and
+through the whole of a group of islands the banner of war, like the
+flag of freedom in Byron, flies against the wind.  The chief
+principle, then, of savage science is that antecedence and
+consequence in time are the same as effect and cause.[1]  Again,
+savage science holds that LIKE AFFECTS LIKE, that you can injure a
+man, for example, by injuring his effigy.  On these principles the
+savage explains the world to himself, and on these principles he
+tries to subdue to himself the world.  Now the putting of these
+principles into practice is simply the exercise of art magic, an
+art to which nothing seems impossible.  The belief that his Shamans
+or medicine-men practise this art is universal among savages.  It
+seriously affects their conduct, and is reflected in their myths.
+
+
+[1] See account of Zuni metaphysics in chapter on American Divine
+Myths.
+
+
+The one general rule which governs all magical reasoning is, that
+casual connection in thought is equivalent to causative connection
+in fact.  Like suggests like to human thought by association of
+ideas; wherefore like influences like, or produces analogous
+effects in practice.  Any object once in a man's possession,
+especially his hair or his nails, is supposed to be capable of
+being used against him by a sorcerer.  The part suggests the whole.
+A lock of a man's hair was part of the man; to destroy the hair is
+to destroy its former owner.  Again, whatever event follows another
+in time suggests it, and may have been caused by it.  Accompanying
+these ideas is the belief that nature is peopled by invisible
+spiritual powers, over which magicians and sorcerers possess
+influence.  The magic of the lower races chiefly turns on these two
+beliefs.  First, "man having come to associate in thought those
+things which he found by experience to be connected in fact,
+proceeded erroneously to invert their action, and to conclude that
+association in thought must involve similar connection in reality.
+He thus attempted to discover, to foretell, and to cause events,
+by means of processes which we now see to have only an ideal
+significance."[1]  Secondly, man endeavoured to make disembodied
+spirits of the dead, or any other spirits, obedient to his will.
+Savage philosophy presumes that the beliefs are correct, and that
+their practical application is successful.  Examples of the first
+of the two chief magical ideas are as common in unscientific modern
+times or among unscientific modern people as in the savage world.
+
+
+[1] Primitive Culture, i. 14.
+
+
+The physicians of the age of Charles II. were wont to give their
+patients "mummy powder," that is, pulverised mummy.  They argued
+that the mummy had lasted for a very long time, and that the
+patients ought to do so likewise.  Pliny imagined that diamonds
+must be found in company with gold, because these are the most
+perfect substances in the world, and like should draw to like.
+Aurum potabile, or drinkable gold, was a favourite medical nostrum
+of the Middle Ages, because gold, being perfect, should produce
+perfect health.  Among savages the belief that like is caused by
+like is exemplified in very many practices.  The New Caledonians,
+when they wish their yam plots to be fertile, bury in them with
+mystic ceremonies certain stones which are naturally shaped like
+yams.  The Melanesians have reduced this kind of magic to a system.
+Among them certain stones have a magical efficacy, which is
+determined in each case by the shape of the stone.  "A stone in the
+shape of a pig, of a bread-fruit, of a yam, was a most valuable
+find.  No garden was planted without the stones which were to
+increase the crop."[1]  Stones with a rude resemblance to beasts
+bring the Zuni luck in the chase.
+
+
+[1] Rev. R. H. Codrington, Journ. Anth. Inst., February, 1881.
+
+
+The spiritual theory in some places is mixed up with the "like to
+like" theory, and the magical stones are found where the spirits
+have been heard twittering and whistling.  "A large stone lying
+with a number of small ones under it, like a sow among her
+sucklings, was good for a childless woman."[1]  It is the savage
+belief that stones reproduce their species, a belief consonant with
+the general theory of universal animation and personality.  The
+ancient belief that diamonds gendered diamonds is a survival from
+these ideas.  "A stone with little disks upon it was good to bring
+in money; any fanciful interpretation of a mark was enough to give
+a character to the stone and its associated Vui" or spirit in
+Melanesia.  In Scotland, stones shaped like various parts of the
+human body are expected to cure the diseases with which these
+members may be afflicted.  "These stones were called by the names
+of the limbs which they represented, as 'eye-stone,' 'head-stone'."
+The patient washed the affected part of the body, and rubbed it
+well with the stone corresponding.[2]
+
+
+[1] Codrington, Journ. Anth. Soc., x. iii. 276.
+
+[2] Gregor, Folk-Lore of North-East Counties, p. 40.
+
+
+To return from European peasant-magic to that of savages, we find
+that when the Bushmen want wet weather they light fires, believing
+that the black smoke clouds will attract black rain clouds; while
+the Zulus sacrifice black cattle to attract black clouds of
+rain.[1]  Though this magic has its origin in savage ignorance, it
+survives into civilisation.  Thus the sacrifices of the Vedic age
+were imitations of the natural phenomena which the priests desired
+to produce.[2]   "C'etait un moyen de faire tombre la pluie en
+realisant, par les representations terrestres des eaux du nuage et
+de l'eclair, les conditions dans lesquelles celui-ci determine dans
+le ciel l'epanchement de celles-la."  A good example of magical
+science is afforded by the medical practice of the Dacotahs of
+North America.[3]  When any one is ill, an image of his disease, a
+boil or what not, is carved in wood.  This little image is then
+placed in a bowl of water and shot at with a gun.  The image of the
+disease being destroyed, the disease itself is expected to
+disappear.  Compare the magic of the Philistines, who made golden
+images of the sores which plagued them and stowed them away in the
+ark.[4]  The custom of making a wax statuette of an enemy, and
+piercing it with pins or melting it before the fire, so that the
+detested person might waste as his semblance melted, was common in
+mediaeval Europe, was known to Plato, and is practised by Negroes.
+Some Australians take some of the hair of an enemy, mix it with
+grease and the feathers of the eagle, and burn it in the fire.
+This is "bar" or black magic.  The boarding under the chair of a
+magistrate in Barbadoes was lifted not long ago, and the ground
+beneath was found covered with wax images of litigants stuck full
+of pins.
+
+
+[1] Callaway, i. 92.
+
+[2] Bergaigne, Religion Vedique, i. 126-138, i., vii., viii.
+
+[3] Schoolcraft, iv. 491.
+
+[4] 1 Samuel vi. 4, 5.
+
+
+The war-magic of the Dacotahs works in a similar manner.  Before a
+party starts on the war-trail, the chief, with various ceremonies,
+takes his club and stands before his tent.  An old witch bowls
+hoops at him; each hoop represents an enemy, and for each he
+strikes a foeman is expected to fall.  A bowl of sweetened water is
+also set out to entice the spirits of the enemy.[1]  The war-magic
+of the Aryans in India does not differ much in character from that
+of the Dacotahs.  "If any one wishes his army to be victorious, he
+should go beyond the battle-line, cut a stalk of grass at the top
+and end, and throw it against the hostile army with the words,
+Prasahe kas trapasyati?--O Prasaha, who sees thee?  If one who has
+such knowledge cuts a stalk of grass and throws the parts at the
+hostile army, it becomes split and dissolved, just as a daughter-
+in-law becomes abashed and faints when seeing her father-in-law,"--
+an allusion, apparently, to the widespread tabu which makes
+fathers-in-law, daughters-in-law, sons-in-law, and mothers-in-law
+avoid each other.[2]
+
+
+[1] Schoolcraft, iv. 496.
+
+[2] Aitareya Brahmana, iii. 22.
+
+
+The hunt-dances of the Red Indians and Australians are arranged
+like their war-magic.  Effigies of the bears, deer, or kangaroos
+are made, or some of the hunters imitate the motions of these
+animals.  The rest of the dancers pretend to spear them, and it is
+hoped that this will ensure success among the real bears and
+kangaroos.
+
+Here is a singular piece of magic in which Europeans and Australian
+blacks agree.  Boris Godunoff made his servants swear never to
+injure him by casting spells with the dust on which his feet or his
+carriage wheels had left traces.[1]  Mr. Howitt finds the same
+magic among the Kurnai.[2]  "Seeing a Tatungolung very lame, I
+asked him what was the matter.  He said, 'Some fellow has put
+BOTTLE in my foot'.  I found he was probably suffering from acute
+rheumatism.  He explained that some enemy must have found his foot-
+track and have buried in it a piece of broken bottle.  The magic
+influence, he believed, caused it to enter his foot."  On another
+occasion a native told Mr. Howitt that he had seen black fellows
+putting poison in his foot-tracks.  Bosman mentions a similar
+practice among the people of Guinea.  In Scottish folk-lore a screw
+nail is fixed into the footprint of the person who is to be
+injured.
+
+
+[1] Rambaud's History of Russia, English trans., i. 351.
+
+[2] Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 250.
+
+
+Just as these magical efforts to influence like by like work their
+way into Vedic and other religions, so they are introduced into the
+religion of the savage.  His prayers are addresses to some sort of
+superior being, but the efficacy of the prayer is often eked out by
+a little magic, unless indeed we prefer to suppose that the words
+of the supplication are interpreted by gesture-speech.  Sproat
+writes: "Set words and gestures are used according to the thing
+desired.  For instance, in praying for salmon, the native rubs the
+backs of his hands, looks upwards, and mutters the words, 'Many
+salmon, many salmon'.  If he wishes for deer, he carefully rubs
+both eyes; or, if it is geese, he rubs the back of his shoulder,
+uttering always in a sing-song way the accustomed formula. . . .
+All these practices in praying no doubt have a meaning.  We may see
+a steady hand is needed in throwing the salmon-spear, and clear
+eyesight in finding deer in the forest."[1]
+
+
+[1] Savage Life, p. 208.
+
+
+In addition to these forms of symbolical magic (which might be
+multiplied to any extent), we find among savages the belief in the
+power of songs of INCANTATION.  This is a feature of magic which
+specially deserves our attention.  In myths, and still more in
+marchen or household tales, we shall constantly find that the most
+miraculous effects are caused when the hero pronounces a few lines
+of rhyme.  In Rome, as we have all read in the Latin Delectus, it
+was thought that incantations could draw down the moon.  In the
+Odyssey the kinsfolk of Odysseus sing "a song of healing" over the
+wound which was dealt him by the boar's tusk.  Jeanne d'Arc,
+wounded at Orleans, refused a similar remedy.  Sophocles speaks of
+the folly of muttering incantations over wounds that need the
+surgeon's knife.  The song that salved wounds occurs in the
+Kalewala, the epic poem of the Finns.  In many of Grimm's marchen,
+miracles are wrought by the repetition of snatches of rhyme.  This
+belief is derived from the savage state of fancy.  According to
+Kohl,[1] "Every sorrowful or joyful emotion that opens the Indian's
+mouth is at once wrapped up in the garb of a wabanonagamowin
+(chanson magicale).  If you ask one of them to sing you a simple
+innocent hymn in praise of Nature, a spring or jovial hunting
+stave, he never gives you anything but a form of incantation, with
+which he says you will be able to call to you all the birds from
+the sky, and all the foxes and wolves from their caves and
+burrows."[2]  The giant's daughter in the Scotch marchen, Nicht,
+Nought, Nothing, is thus enabled to call to her aid "all the birds
+of the sky".  In the same way, if you ask an Indian for a love-
+song, he will say that a philtre is really much more efficacious.
+The savage, in short, is extremely practical.  His arts, music and
+drawing, exist not pour l'art, but for a definite purpose, as
+methods of getting something that the artist wants.  The young
+lover whom Kohl knew, like the lover of Bombyca in Theocritus,
+believed in having an image of himself and an image of the beloved.
+Into the heart of the female image he thrust magic powders, and he
+said that this was common, lovers adding songs, "partly elegiac,
+partly malicious, and almost criminal forms of incantation".[3]
+
+
+[1] Page 395.
+
+[2] Cf. Comparetti's Traditional Poetry of the Finns.
+
+[3] Kitchi gami, pp. 395, 397.
+
+
+Among the Indo-Aryans the masaminik or incantations of the Red Man
+are known as mantras.[1]  These are usually texts from the Veda,
+and are chanted over the sick and in other circumstances where
+magic is believed to be efficacious.  Among the New Zealanders the
+incantations are called karakias, and are employed in actual life.
+There is a special karakia to raise the wind.  In Maori myths the
+hero is very handy with his karakia.  Rocks split before him, as
+before girls who use incantations in Kaffir and Bushman tales.  He
+assumes the shape of any animal at will, or flies in the air, all
+by virtue of the karakia or incantation.[2]
+
+
+[1] Muir, Sanskrit Texts, v. 441, "Incantations from the Atharva
+Veda".
+
+[2] Taylor's New Zealand; Theal's Kaffir Folk-Lore, South-African
+Folk-Lore Journal, passim; Shortland's Traditions of the New
+Zealanders, pp. 130-135.
+
+
+Without multiplying examples in the savage belief that miracles can
+be wrought by virtue of physical CORRESPONDANCES, by like acting on
+like, by the part affecting the whole, and so forth, we may go on
+to the magical results produced by the aid of spirits.  These may
+be either spirits of the dead or spiritual essences that never
+animated mortal men.  Savage magic or science rests partly on the
+belief that the world is peopled by a "choir invisible," or rather
+by a choir only occasionally visible to certain gifted people,
+sorcerers and diviners.  An enormous amount of evidence to prove
+the existence of these tenets has been collected by Mr. Tylor, and
+is accessible to all in the chapters on "Animism" in his Primitive
+Culture.  It is not our business here to account for the
+universality of the belief in spirits.  Mr. Tylor, following
+Lucretius and Homer, derives the belief from the reasonings of
+early men on the phenomena of dreams, fainting, shadows, visions
+caused by narcotics, hallucinations, and other facts which suggest
+the hypothesis of a separable life apart from the bodily organism.
+It would scarcely be fair not to add that the kind of "facts"
+investigated by the Psychical Society--such "facts" as the
+appearance of men at the moment of death in places remote from the
+scene of their decease, with such real or delusive experiences as
+the noises and visions in haunted houses--are familiar to savages.
+Without discussing these obscure matters, it may be said that they
+influence the thoughts even of some scientifically trained and
+civilised men.  It is natural, therefore, that they should strongly
+sway the credulous imagination of backward races, in which they
+originate or confirm the belief that life can exist and manifest
+itself after the death of the body.[1]
+
+
+[1] See the author's Making of Religion, 1898.
+
+
+Some examples of savage "ghost-stories," precisely analogous to the
+"facts" of the Psychical Society's investigations, may be adduced.
+The first is curious because it offers among the Kanekas an example
+of a belief current in Breton folk-lore.  The story is vouched for
+by Mr. J. J. Atkinson, late of Noumea, New Caledonia.  Mr.
+Atkinson, we have reason to believe, was unacquainted with the
+Breton parallel.  To him one day a Kaneka of his acquaintance paid
+a visit, and seemed loth to go away.  He took leave, returned, and
+took leave again, till Mr. Atkinson asked him the reason of his
+behaviour.  He then explained that he was about to die, and would
+never see his English friend again.  As he seemed in perfect
+health, Mr. Atkinson rallied him on his hypochondria; but the poor
+fellow replied that his fate was sealed.  He had lately met in the
+wood one whom he took for the Kaneka girl of his heart; but he
+became aware too late that she was no mortal woman, but a wood-
+spirit in the guise of the beloved.  The result would be his death
+within three days, and, as a matter of fact, he died.  This is the
+groundwork of the old Breton ballad of Le Sieur Nan, who dies after
+his intrigue with the forest spectre.[1]  A tale more like a common
+modern ghost-story is vouched for by Mr. C. J. Du Ve, in Australia.
+In the year 1860, a Maneroo black fellow died in the service of Mr.
+Du Ve.  "The day before he died, having been ill some time, he said
+that in the night his father, his father's friend, and a female
+spirit he could not recognise, had come to him and said that he
+would die next day, and that they would wait for him.  Mr. Du Ye
+adds that, though previously the Christian belief had been
+explained to this man, it had entirely faded, and that he had gone
+back to the belief of his childhood."  Mr. Fison, who prints this
+tale in his Kamilaroi and Kurnai,[2] adds, "I could give many
+similar instances which have come within my own knowledge among the
+Fijians, and, strange to say, the dying man in all these cases kept
+his appointment with the ghosts to the very day".
+
+
+[1] It may, of course, be conjectured that the French introduced
+this belief into New Caledonia.
+
+[2] Page 247.
+
+
+In the Cruise of the Beagle is a parallel anecdote of a Fuegian,
+Jimmy Button, and his father's ghost.
+
+Without entering into a discussion of ghosts, it is plain that the
+kind of evidence, whatever its value may be, which convinces many
+educated Europeans of the existence of "veridical" apparitions has
+also played its part in the philosophy of uncivilised races.  On
+this belief in apparitions, then, is based the power of the savage
+sorcerers and necromants, of the men who converse with the dead and
+are aided by disembodied spirits.  These men have greatly influenced
+the beginnings of mythology.  Among certain Australian tribes the
+necromants are called Birraark.[1]  "The Kurnai tell me," says Mr.
+Howitt, "that a Birraark was supposed to be initiated by the 'Mrarts
+(ghosts) when they met him wandering in the bush. . . .  It was from
+the ghosts that he obtained replies to questions concerning events
+passing at a distance or yet to happen, which might be of interest
+or moment to his tribe."  Mr. Howitt prints an account of a
+spiritual seance in the bush.[2]  "The fires were let go down.  The
+Birraark uttered a cry 'coo-ee' at intervals.  At length a distant
+reply was heard, and shortly afterwards the sound as of persons
+jumping on the ground in succession.  A voice was then heard in the
+gloom asking in a strange intonation, 'What is wanted?'  Questions
+were put by the Birraark and replies given.  At the termination of
+the seance, the spirit-voice said, 'We are going'.  Finally, the
+Birraark was found in the top of an almost inaccessible tree,
+apparently asleep."[3]  There was one Birraark at least to every
+clan.  The Kurnai gave the name of "Brewin" (a powerful evil spirit)
+to a Birraark who was once carried away for several days by the
+Mrarts or spirits.[4]  It is a belief with the Australians, as,
+according to Bosman, it was with the people of the Gold Coast, that
+a very powerful wizard lives far inland, and the Negroes held that
+to this warlock the spirits of the dead went to be judged according
+to the merit of their actions in life.  Here we have a doctrine
+answering to the Greek belief in "the wizard Minos," Aeacus, and
+Rhadamanthus, and to the Egyptian idea of Osiris as judge of the
+departed.[5]  The pretensions of the sorcerer to converse with the
+dead are attested by Mr. Brough Smyth.[6]  "A sorcerer lying on his
+stomach spoke to the deceased, and the other sitting by his side
+received the precious messages which the dead man told."  As a
+natural result of these beliefs, the Australian necromant has great
+power in the tribe.  Mr. Howitt mentions a case in which a group of
+kindred, ceasing to use their old totemistic surname, called
+themselves the children of a famous dead Birraark, who thus became
+an eponymous hero, like Ion among the Ionians.[7]  Among the Scotch
+Highlanders the position and practice of the seer were very like
+those of the Birraark.  "A person," says Scott,[8] "was wrapped up
+in the skin of a newly slain bullock and deposited beside a
+waterfall or at the bottom of a precipice, or in some other strange,
+wild and unusual situation, where the scenery around him suggested
+nothing but objects of horror.  In this situation he revolved in his
+mind the question proposed and whatever was impressed on him by his
+exalted imagination PASSED FOR THE INSPIRATION OF THE DISEMBODIED
+SPIRITS who haunt these desolate recesses."  A number of examples
+are given in Martin's Description of the Western Islands.[9]  In the
+Century magazine (July, 1882) is a very full report of Thlinkeet
+medicine-men and metamorphoses.
+
+
+[1] Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 253.
+
+[2] Page 254.
+
+[3] In the Jesuit Relations (1637), p. 51, we read that the Red
+Indian sorcerer or Jossakeed was credited with power to vanish
+suddenly away out of sight of the men standing around him.  Of him,
+as of Homeric gods, it might be said, "Who has power to see him
+come or go against his will?"
+
+[4] Here, in the first edition, occurred the following passage:
+"The conception of Brewin is about as near as the Kurnai get to the
+idea of a God; their conferring of his name on a powerful sorcerer
+is therefore a point of importance and interest".  Mr. Howitt's
+later knowledge demonstrates an error here.
+
+[5] Bosman in Pinkerton, xvi. p. 401.
+
+[6] Aborigines of Australia, i. 197.
+
+[7] In Victoria, after dark the wizard goes up to the clouds and
+brings down a good spirit.  Dawkins, p. 57.  For eponymous
+medicine-men see Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 231.
+
+[8] Lady of the Lake, note 1 to Canto iv.
+
+[9] P. 112.
+
+
+The sorcerer among the Zulus is, apparently, of a naturally
+hysterical and nervous constitution.  "He hears the spirits who
+speak by whistlings speaking to him."[1]  Whistling is also the
+language of the ghosts in New Caledonia, where Mr. Atkinson informs
+us that he has occasionally put an able-bodied Kaneka to
+ignominious flight by whistling softly in the dusk.  The ghosts in
+Homer make a similar sound, "and even as bats flit gibbering in the
+secret place of a wondrous cavern, . . . even so the souls gibbered
+as they fared together" (Odyssey, xxiv. 5).  "The familiar spirits
+make him" (that Zulu sorcerer) "acquainted with what is about to
+happen, and then he divines for the people."  As the Birraarks
+learn songs and dance-music from the Mrarts, so the Zulu Inyanga or
+diviners learn magical couplets from the Itongo or spirits.[2]
+
+
+[1] Callaway, Religious System of the Amazules, p. 265.
+
+[2] On all this, see "Possession" in The Making of Religion.
+
+
+The evidence of institutions confirms the reports about savage
+belief in magic.  The political power of the diviners is very
+great, as may be observed from the fact that a hereditary chief
+needs their consecration to make him a chief de jure.[1]  In fact,
+the qualities of the diviner are those which give his sacred
+authority to the chief.  When he has obtained from the diviners all
+their medicines and information as to the mode of using the
+isitundu (a magical vessel), it is said that he often orders them
+to be killed.  Now, the chief is so far a medicine-man that he is
+lord of the air.  "The heaven is the chief's," say the Zulus; and
+when he calls out his men, "though the heaven is clear, it becomes
+clouded by the great wind that arises".  Other Zulus explain this
+as the mere hyperbole of adulation.  "The word of the chief gives
+confidence to his troops; they say, 'We are going; the chief has
+already seen all that will happen in his vessel'.  Such then are
+chiefs; they use a vessel for divination."[2]  The makers of rain
+are known in Zululand as "heaven-herds" or "sky-herds," who herd
+the heaven that it may not break out and do its will on the
+property of the people.  These men are, in fact, [Greek text
+omitted], "cloud-gatherers," like the Homeric Zeus, the lord of the
+heavens.  Their name of "herds of the heavens" has a Vedic sound.
+"The herd that herds the lightning," say the Zulus, "does the same
+as the herder of the cattle; he does as he does by whistling; he
+says, 'Tshu-i-i-i.  Depart and go yonder.  Do not come here.'"
+Here let it be observed that the Zulus conceive of the thunder-
+clouds and lightning as actual creatures, capable of being herded
+like sheep.  There is no metaphor or allegory about the matter,[3]
+and no forgetfulness of the original meaning of words.  The cloud-
+herd is just like the cowherd, except that not every man, but only
+sorcerers, and they who have eaten the "lightning-bird" (a bird
+shot near the place where lightning has struck the earth), can herd
+the clouds of heaven.  The same ideas prevail among the Bushmen,
+where the rainmaker is asked "to milk a nice gentle female rain";
+the rain-clouds are her hair.  Among the Bushmen Rain is a person.
+Among the Red Indians no metaphor seems to be intended when it is
+said that "it is always birds who make the wind, except that of the
+east".  The Dacotahs once killed a thunder-bird[4] behind Little
+Crow's village on the Missouri.  It had a face like a man with a
+nose like an eagle's bill.[5]
+
+
+[1] Callaway, p. 340.
+
+[2] Callaway, Religions System of the Amazules, p. 343.
+
+[3] Ibid., p. 385.
+
+[4] Schoolcraft, iii. 486.
+
+[5] Compare Callaway, p. 119.
+
+
+The political and social powers which come into the hands of the
+sorcerers are manifest, even in the case of the Australians.
+Tribes and individuals can attempt few enterprises without the aid
+of the man who listens to the ghosts.  Only he can foretell the
+future, and, in the case of the natural death of a member of the
+tribe, can direct the vengeance of the survivors against the
+hostile magician who has committed a murder by "bar" or magic.
+Among the Zulus we have seen that sorcery gives the sanction to the
+power of the chief.  "The winds and weather are at the command" of
+Bosman's "great fetisher".  Inland from the Gold Coast,[1] the king
+of Loango, according to the Abbe Proyart, "has credit to make rain
+fall on earth".  Similar beliefs, with like political results, will
+be found to follow from the superstition of magic among the Red
+Indians of North America. The difficulty of writing about sorcerers
+among the Red Indians is caused by the abundance of the evidence.
+Charlevoix and the other early Jesuit missionaries found that the
+jongleurs, as Charlevoix calls the Jossakeeds or medicine-men, were
+their chief opponents.  As among the Scotch Highlanders, the
+Australians and the Zulus, the Red Indian jongleur is visited by
+the spirits.  He covers a hut with the skin of the animal which he
+commonly wears, retires thither, and there converses with the
+bodiless beings.[2]  The good missionary like Mr. Moffat in Africa,
+was convinced that the exercises of the Jossakeeds were verily
+supernatural.  "Ces seducteurs ont un veritable commerce avec le
+pere du mensonge."[3]  This was denied by earlier and wiser Jesuit
+missionaries.  Their political power was naturally great.  In time
+of war "ils avancent et retardent les marches comme il leur plait".
+In our own century it was a medicine-man, Ten Squa Ta Way, who by
+his magical processes and superstitious rites stirred up a
+formidable war against the United States.[4]  According to Mr.
+Pond,[5] the native name of the Dacotah medicine-men, "Wakan,"
+signifies "men supernaturally gifted".  Medicine-men are believed
+to be "wakanised" by mystic intercourse with supernatural beings.
+The business of the wakanised man is to discern future events, to
+lead and direct parties on the war-trail, "to raise the storm or
+calm the tempest, to converse with the lightning or thunder as with
+familiar friends".[6]  The wakanised man, like the Australian
+Birraark and the Zulu diviner, "dictates chants and prayers".  In
+battle "every Dacotah warrior looks to the Wakan man as almost his
+only resource".  Belief in Wakan men is, Mr. Pond says, universal
+among the Dacotahs, except where Christianity has undermined it.
+"Their influence is deeply felt by every individual of the tribe,
+and controls all their affairs."  The Wakan man's functions are
+absorbed by the general or war-chief of the tribe, and in
+Schoolcraft (iv. 495), Captain Eastman prints copies of native
+scrolls showing the war-chief at work as a wizard.  "The war-chief
+who leads the party to war is always one of these medicine-men."
+In another passage the medicine-men are described as "having a
+voice in the sale of land".  It must be observed that the
+Jossakeed, or medicine-man, pure and simple, exercises a power
+which is not in itself hereditary.  Chieftainship, when associated
+with inheritance of property, is hereditary; and when the chief, as
+among the Zulus, absorbs supernatural power, then the same man
+becomes diviner and chief, and is a person of great and sacred
+influence.  The liveliest account of the performances of the Maori 
+"tohunga" or sorcerer is to be found in Old New Zealand,[7] by the
+Pakeha Maori, an English gentleman who had lived with the natives
+like one of themselves.  The tohunga, says this author,[8] presided
+over "all those services and customs which had something
+approaching to a religious character.  They also pretended to power
+by means of certain familiar spirits, to foretell future events,
+and even in some cases to control them. . . .  The spirit 'entered
+into' them, and, on being questioned, gave a response in a sort of
+half whistling, half-articulate voice, supposed to be the proper
+language of spirits."  In New South Wales, Mrs. Langlot Parker has
+witnessed a similar exhibition.  The "spirits" told the truth in
+this case.  The Pakeha Maori was present in a darkened village-hall
+when the spirit of a young man, a great friend of his own, was
+called up by a tohunga.  "Suddenly, without the slightest warning,
+a voice came out of the darkness. . . .  The voice all through, it
+is to be remembered, was not the voice of the tohunga, but a
+strange melancholy sound, like the sound of a wind blowing into a
+hollow vessel.  'It is well with me; my place is a good place.'
+The spirit gave an answer to a question which proved to be correct,
+and then 'Farewell,' cried the spirit FROM DEEP BENEATH THE GROUND.
+'Farewell,' again, FROM HIGH IN AIR.  'Farewell,' once more came
+moaning through the distant darkness of the night."  As chiefs in
+New Zealand no less than tohungas can exercise the mystical and
+magical power of tabu, that is, of imparting to any object or
+person an inviolable character, and can prevent or remit the
+mysterious punishment for infringement of tabu, it appears probable
+that in New Zealand, as well as among the Zulus and Red Indians,
+chiefs have a tendency to absorb the sacred character and powers of
+the tohungas.  This is natural enough, for a tohunga, if he plays
+his cards well, is sure to acquire property and hereditary wealth,
+which, in combination with magical influence, are the necessary
+qualifications for the office of the chieftain.
+
+
+[1] Pinkerton, xvi. 401.
+
+[2] Charlevoix, i. 105.  See "Savage Spiritualism" in Cock Lane and
+Common Sense.
+
+[3] Ibid., iii. 362.
+
+[4] Catlin, ii. 17.
+
+[5] In Schoolcraft, iv. 402.
+
+[6] Pond, in Schoolcraft, iv. 647.
+
+[7] Auckland, 1863.
+
+[8] Page 148.
+
+
+Here is the place to mention a fact which, though at first sight it
+may appear to have only a social interest, yet bears on the
+development of mythology.  Property and rank seem to have been
+essential to each other in the making of social rank, and where one
+is absent among contemporary savages, there we do not find the
+other.  As an example of this, we might take the case of two
+peoples who, like the Homeric Ethiopians, are the outermost of men,
+and dwell far apart at the ends of the world.  The Eskimos and the
+Fuegians, at the extreme north and south of the American continent,
+agree in having little or no private property and no chiefs.  Yet
+magic is providing a kind of basis of rank.  The bleak plains of
+ice and rock are, like Attica, "the mother of men without master or
+lord".  Among the "house-mates" of the smaller settlements there is
+no head-man, and in the larger gatherings Dr. Rink says that "still
+less than among the house-mates was any one belonging to such a
+place to be considered a chief".  The songs and stories of the
+Eskimo contain the praises of men who have risen up and killed any
+usurper who tried to be a ruler over his "place-mates".  No one
+could possibly establish any authority on the basis of property,
+because "superfluous property, implements, etc., rarely existed".
+If there are three boats in one household, one of the boats is
+"borrowed" by the community, and reverts to the general fund.
+If we look at the account of the Fuegians described in Admiral
+Fitzroy's cruise, we find a similar absence of rank produced by
+similar causes.  "The perfect equality among the individuals
+composing the tribes must for a long time retard their
+civilisation. . . .  At present even a piece of cloth is torn in
+shreds and distributed, and no one individual becomes richer than
+another.  On the other hand, it is difficult to understand how a
+chief can arise till there is property of some sort by which he
+might manifest and still increase his authority."  In the same
+book, however, we get a glimpse of one means by which authority can
+be exercised.  "The doctor-wizard of each party has much influence
+over his companions."  Among the Eskimos this element in the growth
+of authority also exists.  A class of wizards called Angakut have
+power to cause fine weather, and, by the gift of second-sight and
+magical practices, can detect crimes, so that they necessarily
+become a kind of civil magistrates.  These Angekkok or Angakut have
+familiar spirits called Torngak, a word connected with the name of
+their chief spiritual being, Torngarsak.  The Torngak is commonly
+the ghost of a deceased parent of the sorcerer.  "These men," says
+Egede, "are held in great honour and esteem among this stupid and
+ignorant nation, insomuch that nobody dare ever refuse the
+strictest obedience when they command him in the name of
+Torngarsak."  The importance and actual existence of belief in
+magic has thus been attested by the evidence of institutions, even
+among Australians, Fuegians and Eskimos.
+
+It is now necessary to pass from examples of tribes who have
+superstitious respect for certain individuals, but who have no
+property and no chiefs, to peoples who exhibit the phenomenon of
+superstitious reverence attached to wealthy rulers or to judges.
+To take the example of Ireland, as described in the Senchus Mor, we
+learn that the chiefs, just like the Angakut of the Eskimos, had
+"power to make fair or foul weather" in the literal sense of the
+words.[1]  In Africa, in the same way, as Bosman, the old traveller,
+says, "As to what difference there is between one negro and another,
+the richest man is the most honoured," yet the most honoured man has
+the same magical power as the poor Angakuts of the Eskimos.
+
+
+[1] Early History of Institutions, p. 195.
+
+
+"In the Solomon Islands," says Dr. Codrington, "there is nothing to
+prevent a common man from becoming a chief, if he can show that he
+has the mana (supernatural power) for it."[1]
+
+
+[1] Journ. Anth. Inst., x. iii. 287, 300, 309.
+
+
+Though it is anticipating a later stage of this inquiry, we must
+here observe that the sacredness, and even the magical virtues of
+barbarous chiefs seem to have descended to the early leaders of
+European races.  The children of Odin and of Zeus were "sacred
+kings".  The Homeric chiefs, like those of the Zulus and the Red
+Men, and of the early Irish and Swedes, exercised an influence over
+the physical universe.  Homer[1] speaks of "a blameless king, one
+that fears the gods, and reigns among many men and mighty, and the
+black earth bears wheat and barley, and the sheep bring forth and
+fail not, and the sea gives store of fish, and all out of his good
+sovereignty".
+
+
+[1] Od., xix. 109.
+
+
+The attributes usually assigned by barbarous peoples to their
+medicine-men have not yet been exhausted.  We have found that they
+can foresee and declare the future; that they control the weather
+and the sensible world; that they can converse with, visit and
+employ about their own business the souls of the dead.  It would be
+easy to show at even greater length that the medicine-man has
+everywhere the power of metamorphosis.  He can assume the shapes of
+all beasts, birds, fishes, insects and inorganic matters, and he
+can subdue other people to the same enchantment.  This belief
+obviously rests on the lack of recognised distinction between man
+and the rest of the world, which we have so frequently insisted on
+as a characteristic of savage and barbarous thought.  Examples of
+accredited metamorphosis are so common everywhere, and so well
+known, that it would be waste of space to give a long account of
+them.  In Primitive Culture[1] a cloud of witnesses to the belief
+in human tigers, hyaenas, leopards and wolves is collected.[2]  Mr.
+Lane[3] found metamorphosis by wizards as accredited a working
+belief at Cairo as it is among Abipones, Eskimo, or the people of
+Ashangoland.  In various parts of Scotland there is a tale of a
+witch who was shot at when in the guise of a hare.  In this shape
+she was wounded, and the same wound was found on her when she
+resumed her human appearance.  Lafitau, early in the last century,
+found precisely the same tale, except that the wizards took the
+form of birds, not of hares, among the Red Indians.  The birds were
+wounded by the magical arrows of an old medicine-man, Shonnoh Koui
+Eretsi, and these bolts were found in the bodies of the human
+culprits.  In Japan, as we learn from several stories in Mr.
+Mitford's Tales of Old Japan, people chiefly metamorphose
+themselves into foxes and badgers.  The sorcerers of Honduras[4]
+"possess the power of transforming men into wild beasts, and were
+much feared accordingly".  Among the Cakchiquels, a cultivated
+people of Guatemala, the very name of the clergy, haleb, was
+derived from their power of assuming animal shapes, which they took
+on as easily as the Homeric gods.[5]  Regnard, the French
+dramatist, who travelled among the Lapps at the end of the
+seventeenth century (1681), says: "They believe witches can turn
+men into cats;" and again, "Under the figures of swans, crows,
+falcons and geese, they call up tempests and destroy ships".[6]
+Among the Bushmen "sorcerers assume the forms of beasts and
+jackals".[7]  Dobrizhoffer (1717-91), a missionary in Paraguay,
+found that "sorcerers arrogate to themselves the power of
+transforming themselves into tigers".[8]  He was present when the
+Abipones believed that a conversion of this sort was actually
+taking place: "Alas," cried the people, "his whole body is
+beginning to be covered with tiger-spots; his nails are growing".
+Near Loanda, Livingstone found that a "chief may metamorphose
+himself into a lion, kill any one he choses, and then resume his
+proper form".[9]  Among the Barotse and Balonda, "while persons are
+still alive they may enter into lions and alligators".[10]  Among
+the Mayas of Central America "sorcerers could transform themselves
+into dogs, pigs and other animals; their glance was death to a
+victim".[11]  The Thlinkeets think that their Shamans can
+metamorphose themselves into animals at pleasure; and a very old
+raven was pointed out to Mr. C. E. S. Wood as an incarnation of the
+soul of a Shaman.[12]  Sir A. C. Lyall finds a similar belief in
+flourishing existence in India.  The European superstition of the
+were-wolf is too well known to need description.  Perhaps the most
+curious legend is that told by Giraldus Cambrensis about a man and
+his wife metamorphosed into wolves by an abbot.  They retained
+human speech, made exemplary professions of Christian faith, and
+sent for priests when they found their last hours approaching.  In
+an old Norman ballad a girl is transformed into a white doe, and
+hunted and slain by her brother's hounds.  The "aboriginal" peoples
+of India retain similar convictions.  Among the Hos,[13] an old
+sorcerer called Pusa was known to turn himself habitually into a
+tiger, and to eat his neighbour's goats, and even their wives.
+Examples of the power of sorcerers to turn, as with the Gorgon's
+head, their enemies into stone, are peculiarly common in
+America.[14]  Hearne found that the Indians believed they descended
+from a dog, who could turn himself into a handsome young man.[15]
+
+
+[1] Vol. i. pp. 309-315.
+
+[2] See also M'Lennan on Lykanthropy in Encyclopedia Britannica.
+
+[3] Arabian Nights, i. 51.
+
+[4] Bancroft, Races of Pacific Coast, i. 740.
+
+[5] Brinton, Annals of the Cakchiquels, p. 46.
+
+[6] Pinkerton, i. 471.
+
+[7] Bleek, Brief Account of Bushman Folk-Lore, pp. 15, 40.
+
+[8] English translation of Dobrizhoffer's Abipones, i. 163.
+
+[9] Missionary Travels, p. 615.
+
+[10] Livingstone, p. 642.
+
+[11] Bancroft, ii.
+
+[12] Century Magazine, July, 1882.
+
+[13] Dalton's Ethnology of Bengal, p. 200.
+
+[14] Dorman, pp. 130, 134; Report of Ethnological Bureau,
+Washington, 1880-81.
+
+[15] A Journey, etc., p. 342.
+
+
+Let us recapitulate the powers attributed all over the world, by
+the lower people, to medicine-men.  The medicine-man has all
+miracles at his command.  He rules the sky, he flies into the air,
+he becomes visible or invisible at will, he can take or confer any
+form at pleasure, and resume his human shape.  He can control
+spirits, can converse with the dead, and can descend to their
+abodes.
+
+When we begin to examine the gods of MYTHOLOGY, savage or civilised,
+as distinct from deities contemplated, in devotion, as moral and
+creative guardians of ethics, we shall find that, with the general,
+though not invariable addition of immortality, they possess the very
+same accomplishments as the medicine-man, peay, tohunga, jossakeed,
+birraark, or whatever name for sorcerer we may choose.  Among the
+Greeks, Zeus, mythically envisaged, enjoys in heaven all the
+attributes of the medicine-man; among the Iroquois, as Pere le
+Jeune, the old Jesuit missionary, observed,[1] the medicine-man
+enjoys on earth all the attributes of Zeus.  Briefly, the miraculous
+and supernatural endowments of the gods of MYTH, whether these gods
+be zoomorphic or anthropomorphic, are exactly the magical properties
+with which the medicine-man is credited by his tribe.  It does not
+at all follow, as Euemerus and Mr. Herbert Spencer might argue, that
+the god was once a real living medicine- man.  But myth-making man
+confers on the deities of myth the magical powers which he claims
+for himself.
+
+
+[1] Relations (1636), p. 114.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+NATURE MYTHS.
+
+
+Savage fancy, curiosity and credulity illustrated in nature myths--
+In these all phenomena are explained by belief in the general
+animation of everything, combined with belief in metamorphosis--Sun
+myths, Asian, Australian, African, Melanesian, Indian, Californian,
+Brazilian, Maori, Samoan--Moon myths, Australian, Muysca, Mexican,
+Zulu, Macassar, Greenland, Piute, Malay--Thunder myths--Greek and
+Aryan sun and moon myths--Star myths--Myths, savage and civilised,
+of animals, accounting for their marks and habits--Examples of
+custom of claiming blood kinship with lower animals--Myths of
+various plants and trees--Myths of stones, and of metamorphosis
+into stones, Greek, Australian and American--The whole natural
+philosophy of savages expressed in myths, and survives in folk-lore
+and classical poetry; and legends of metamorphosis.
+
+
+The intellectual condition of savages which has been presented and
+established by the evidence both of observers and of institutions,
+may now be studied in savage myths.  These myths, indeed, would of
+themselves demonstrate that the ideas which the lower races
+entertain about the world correspond with our statement.  If any
+one were to ask himself, from what mental conditions do the
+following savage stories arise? he would naturally answer that the
+minds which conceived the tales were curious, indolent, credulous
+of magic and witchcraft, capable of drawing no line between things
+and persons, capable of crediting all things with human passions
+and resolutions.  But, as myths analogous to those of savages, when
+found among civilised peoples, have been ascribed to a psychological
+condition produced by a disease of language acting after civilisation
+had made considerable advances, we cannot take the savage myths as
+proof of what savages think, believe and practice in the course of
+daily life.  To do so would be, perhaps, to argue in a circle.  We
+must therefore study the myths of the undeveloped races in
+themselves.
+
+These myths form a composite whole, so complex and so nebulous that
+it is hard indeed to array them in classes and categories.  For
+example, if we look at myths concerning the origin of various
+phenomena, we find that some introduce the action of gods or extra-
+natural beings, while others rest on a rude theory of capricious
+evolution; others, again, invoke the aid of the magic of mortals,
+and most regard the great natural forces, the heavenly bodies, and
+the animals, as so many personal characters capable of voluntarily
+modifying themselves or of being modified by the most trivial
+accidents.  Some sort of arrangement, however, must be attempted,
+only the student is to understand that the lines are never drawn
+with definite fixity, that any category may glide into any other
+category of myth.
+
+We shall begin by considering some nature myths--myths, that is to
+say, which explain the facts of the visible universe. These range
+from tales about heaven, day, night, the sun and the stars, to
+tales accounting for the red breast of the ousel, the habits of the
+quail, the spots and stripes of wild beasts, the formation of rocks
+and stones, the foliage of trees, the shapes of plants.  In a sense
+these myths are the science of savages; in a sense they are their
+sacred history; in a sense they are their fiction and romance.
+Beginning with the sun, we find, as Mr. Tylor says, that "in early
+philosophy throughout the world the sun and moon are alive, and, as
+it were, human in their nature".[1]  The mass of these solar myths
+is so enormous that only a few examples can be given, chosen almost
+at random out of the heap.  The sun is regarded as a personal
+being, capable not only of being affected by charms and
+incantations, but of being trapped and beaten, of appearing on
+earth, of taking a wife of the daughters of men.  Garcilasso de la
+Vega has a story of an Inca prince, a speculative thinker, who was
+puzzled by the sun-worship of his ancestors.  If the sun be thus
+all-powerful, the Inca inquired, why is he plainly subject to laws?
+why does he go his daily round, instead of wandering at large up
+and down the fields of heaven?  The prince concluded that there was
+a will superior to the sun's will, and he raised a temple to the
+Unknown Power.  Now the phenomena which put the Inca on the path of
+monotheistic religion, a path already traditional, according to
+Garcilasso, have also struck the fancy of savages.  Why, they ask,
+does the sun run his course like a tamed beast?  A reply suited to
+a mind which holds that all things are personal is given in myths.
+Some one caught and tamed the sun by physical force or by art
+magic.
+
+
+[1] Primitive Culture, i. 288.
+
+
+In Australia the myth says that there was a time when the sun did
+not set.  "It was at all times day, and the blacks grew weary.
+Norralie considered and decided that the sun should disappear at
+intervals.  He addressed the sun in an incantation (couched like
+the Finnish Kalewala in the metre of Longfellow's Hiawatha); and
+the incantation is thus interpreted: "Sun, sun, burn your wood,
+burn your internal substance, and go down".  The sun therefore now
+burns out his fuel in a day, and goes below for fresh firewood.[1]
+
+
+[1] Brough Smyth, Aborigines of Victoria, i. 430.
+
+
+In New Zealand the taming of the sun is attributed to the great
+hero Maui, the Prometheus of the Maoris.  He set snares to catch
+the sun, but in vain, for the sun's rays bit them through.
+According to another account, while Norralie wished to hasten the
+sun's setting, Maui wanted to delay it, for the sun used to speed
+through the heavens at a racing pace.  Maui therefore snared the
+sun, and beat him so unmercifully that he has been lame ever since,
+and travels slowly, giving longer days.  "The sun, when beaten,
+cried out and revealed his second great name, Taura-mis-te-ra."[1]
+It will be remembered that Indra, in his abject terror when he fled
+after the slaying of Vrittra, also revealed his mystic name.  In
+North America the same story of the trapping and laming of the sun
+is told, and attributed to a hero named Tcha-ka-betch.  In Samoa
+the sun had a child by a Samoan woman.  He trapped the sun with a
+rope made of a vine and extorted presents.  Another Samoan lassoed
+the sun and made him promise to move more slowly.[2]  These Samoan
+and Australian fancies are nearly as dignified as the tale in the
+Aitareya Brahmana.  The gods, afraid "that the sun would fall out
+of heaven, pulled him up and tied him with five ropes".  These
+ropes are recognised as verses in the ritual, but probably the
+ritual is later than the ropes.  In Mexico we find that the sun
+himself (like the stars in most myths) was once a human or pre-
+human devotee, Nanahuatzin, who leapt into a fire to propitiate the
+gods.[3]  Translated to heaven as the sun, Nanahuatzin burned so
+very fiercely that he threatened to reduce the world to a cinder.
+Arrows were therefore shot at him, and this punishment had as happy
+an effect as the beatings administered by Maui and Tcha-ka-betch.
+Among the Bushmen of South Africa the sun was once a man, from
+whose armpit a limited amount of light was radiated round his hut.
+Some children threw him up into the sky, and there he stuck, and
+there he shines.[4]  In the Homeric hymn to Helios, as Mr. Max
+Muller observes, "the poet looks on Helios as a half god, almost a
+hero, who had once lived on earth," which is precisely the view of
+the Bushmen.[5]  Among the Aztecs the sun is said to have been
+attacked by a hunter and grievously wounded by his arrows.[6]  The
+Gallinomeros, in Central California, seem at least to know that the
+sun is material and impersonal.  They say that when all was dark in
+the beginning, the animals were constantly jostling each other.
+After a painful encounter, the hawk and the coyote collected two
+balls of inflammable substance; the hawk (Indra was occasionally a
+hawk) flew up with them into heaven, and lighted them with sparks
+from a flint.  There they gave light as sun and moon.  This is an
+exception to the general rule that the heavenly bodies are regarded
+as persons.  The Melanesian tale of the bringing of night is a
+curious contrast to the Mexican, Maori, Australian and American
+Indian stories which we have quoted.  In Melanesia, as in
+Australia, the days were long, indeed endless, and people grew
+tired; but instead of sending the sun down below by an incantation
+when night would follow in course of nature, the Melanesian hero
+went to Night (conceived of as a person) and begged his assistance.
+Night (Qong) received Qat (the hero) kindly, darkened his eyes,
+gave him sleep, and, in twelve hours or so, crept up from the
+horizon and sent the sun crawling to the west.[7]  In the same
+spirit Paracelsus is said to have attributed night, not to the
+absence of the sun, but to the apparition of certain stars which
+radiate darkness.  It is extraordinary that a myth like the
+Melanesian should occur in Brazil.  There was endless day till some
+one married a girl whose father "the great serpent," was the owner
+of night.  The father sent night bottled up in a gourd.  The gourd
+was not to be uncorked till the messengers reached the bride, but
+they, in their curiosity, opened the gourd, and let night out
+prematurely.[8]
+
+
+[1] Taylor, New Zealand, p. 131.
+
+[2] Turner, Samoa, p. 20.
+
+[3] Sahagun, French trans., vii. ii.
+
+[4] Bleck, Hottentot Fables, p. 67; Bushman Folk-Lore, pp. 9, 11.
+
+[5] Compare a Californian solar myth: Bancroft, iii. pp. 85, 86.
+
+[6] Bancroft, iii. 73, quoting Burgoa, i. 128, 196.
+
+[7] Codrington, Journ. Anthrop. Inst., February, 1881.
+
+[8] Contes Indiens du Bresil, pp. 1-9, by Couto de Magalhaes.  Rio
+de Janeiro, 1883.  M. Henri Gaidoz kindly presented the author with
+this work.
+
+
+The myths which have been reported deal mainly with the sun as a
+person who shines, and at fixed intervals disappears.  His
+relations with the moon are much more complicated, and are the
+subject of endless stories, all explaining in a romantic fashion
+why the moon waxes and wanes, whence come her spots, why she is
+eclipsed, all starting from the premise that sun and moon are
+persons with human parts and passions.  Sometimes the moon is a
+man, sometimes a woman and the sex of the sun varies according to
+the fancy of the narrators.  Different tribes of the same race, as
+among the Australians, have different views of the sex of moon and
+sun.  Among the aborigines of Victoria, the moon, like the sun
+among the Bushmen, was a black fellow before he went up into the
+sky.  After an unusually savage career, he was killed with a stone
+hatchet by the wives of the eagle, and now he shines in the
+heavens.[1]  Another myth explanatory of the moon's phases was
+found by Mr. Meyer in 1846 among the natives of Encounter Bay.
+According to them the moon is a woman, and a bad woman to boot.
+She lives a life of dissipation among men, which makes her
+consumptive, and she wastes away till they drive her from their
+company.  While she is in retreat, she lives on nourishing roots,
+becomes quite plump, resumes her gay career, and again wastes away.
+The same tribe, strangely enough, think that the sun also is a
+woman.  Every night she descends among the dead, who stand in
+double lines to greet her and let her pass.  She has a lover among
+the dead, who has presented her with a red kangaroo skin, and in
+this she appears at her rising.  Such is the view of rosy-fingered
+Dawn entertained by the blacks of Encounter Bay.  In South America,
+among the Muyscas of Bogota, the moon, Huythaca, is the malevolent
+wife of the child of the sun; she was a woman before her husband
+banished her to the fields of space.[2]  The moon is a man among
+the Khasias of the Himalaya, and he was guilty of the unpardonable
+offence of admiring his mother-in-law.  As a general rule, the
+mother-in-law is not even to be spoken to by the savage son-in-law.
+The lady threw ashes in his face to discourage his passion, hence
+the moon's spots.  The waning of the moon suggested the most
+beautiful and best known of savage myths, that in which the moon
+sends a beast to tell mortals that, though they die like her, like
+her they shall be born again.[3]  Because the spots in the moon
+were thought to resemble a hare they were accounted for in Mexico
+by the hypothesis that a god smote the moon in the face with a
+rabbit;[4] in Zululand and Thibet by a fancied translation of a
+good or bad hare to the moon.
+
+
+[1] Brough Smyth, Aborigines of Victoria, i. 432.
+
+[2] Tylor, Primitive Culture, i. 353.
+
+[3] Bleek, Reynard in South Africa, pp. 69-74.
+
+[4] Sahagun, viii. 2.
+
+
+The Eskimos have a peculiar myth to account for the moon's spots.
+Sun and moon were human brother and sister.  In the darkness the
+moon once attempted the virtue of the sun.  She smeared his face
+over with ashes, that she might detect him when a light was
+brought.  She did discover who her assailant had been, fled to the
+sky, and became the sun.  The moon still pursues her, and his face
+is still blackened with the marks of ashes.[1]  Gervaise[2] says
+that in Macassar the moon was held to be with child by the sun, and
+that when he pursued her and wished to beat her, she was delivered
+of the earth.  They are now reconciled.  About the alternate
+appearance of sun and moon a beautifully complete and adequate tale
+is told by the Piute Indians of California.  No more adequate and
+scientific explanation could possibly be offered, granting the
+hypothesis that sun and moon are human persons and savage persons.
+The myth is printed as it was taken down by Mr. De Quille from the
+lips of Tooroop Eenah (Desert Father), a chief of the Piutes, and
+published in a San Francisco newspaper.
+
+
+[1] Crantz's History of Greenland, i. 212.
+
+[2] Royaume de Macacar, l688.
+
+
+"The sun is the father and ruler of the heavens.  He is the big
+chief.  The moon is his wife and the stars are their children.  The
+sun eats his children whenever he can catch them.  They flee before
+him, and are all the time afraid when he is passing through the
+heavens.  When he (their father) appears in the morning, you see
+all the stars, his children, fly out of sight--go away back into
+the blue of the above--and they do not wake to be seen again until
+he, their father, is about going to his bed.
+
+"Down deep under the ground--deep, deep, under all the ground--is a
+great hole.  At night, when he has passed over the world, looked
+down on everything and finished his work, he, the sun, goes into
+his hole, and he crawls and creeps along it till he comes to his
+bed in the middle part of the earth.  So then he, the sun, sleeps
+there in his bed all night.
+
+"This hole is so little, and he, the sun, is so big, that he cannot
+turn round in it; and so he must, when he has had all his sleep,
+pass on through, and in the morning we see him come out in the
+east.  When he, the sun, has so come out, he begins to hunt up
+through the sky to catch and eat any that he can of the stars, his
+children, for if he does not so catch and eat he cannot live.  He,
+the sun, is not all seen.  The shape of him is like a snake or a
+lizard.  It is not his head that we can see, but his belly, filled
+up with the stars that times and times he has swallowed.
+
+"The moon is the mother of the heavens and is the wife of the sun.
+She, the moon, goes into the same hole as her husband to sleep her
+naps.  But always she has great fear of the sun, her husband, and
+when he comes through the hole to the nobee (tent) deep in the
+ground to sleep, she gets out and comes away if he be cross.
+
+"She, the moon, has great love for her children, the stars, and is
+happy to travel among them in the above; and they, her children,
+feel safe, and sing and dance as she passes along.  But the mother,
+she cannot help that some of her children must be swallowed by the
+father every month.  It is ordered that way by the Pah-ah (Great
+Spirit), who lives above the place of all.
+
+"Every month that father, the sun, does swallow some of the stars,
+his children, and then that mother, the moon, feels sorrow.  She
+must mourn; so she must put the black on her face for to mourn the
+dead.  You see the Piute women put black on their faces when a
+child is gone.  But the dark will wear away from the face of that
+mother, the moon, a little and a little every day, and after a time
+again we see all bright the face of her.  But soon more of her
+children are gone, and again she must put on her face the pitch and
+the black."
+
+Here all the phenomena are accounted for, and the explanation is as
+advanced as the Egyptian doctrine of the hole under the earth where
+the sun goes when he passes from our view.  And still the Great
+Spirit is over all: Religion comes athwart Myth.
+
+Mr. Tylor quotes[1] a nature myth about sun, moon and stars which
+remarkably corresponds to the speculation of the Piutes.  The
+Mintira of the Malayan Peninsula say that both sun and moon are
+women.  The stars are the moon's children; once the sun had as
+many.  They each agreed (like the women of Jerusalem in the
+famine), to eat their own children; but the sun swallowed her whole
+family, while the moon concealed hers.  When the sun saw this she
+was exceedingly angry, and pursued the moon to kill her.
+Occasionally she gets a bite out of the moon, and that is an
+eclipse.  The Hos of North-East India tell the same tale, but say
+that the sun cleft the moon in twain for her treachery, and that
+she continues to be cut in two and grow again every month.  With
+these sun and moon legends sometimes coexists the RELIGIOUS belief
+in a Creator of these and of all things.
+
+
+[1] Primitive Culture, i. 356.
+
+
+In harmony with the general hypothesis that all objects in nature
+are personal, and human or bestial, in real shape, and in passion
+and habits, are the myths which account for eclipses.  These have
+so frequently been published and commented on[1] that a long
+statement would be tedious and superfluous.  To the savage mind,
+and even to the Chinese and the peasants of some European
+countries, the need of an explanation is satisfied by the myth that
+an evil beast is devouring the sun or the moon.  The people even
+try by firing off guns, shrieking, and clashing cymbals, to
+frighten the beast (wolf, pig, dragon, or what not) from his prey.
+What the hungry monster in the sky is doing when he is not biting
+the sun or moon we are not informed.  Probably he herds with the
+big bird whose wings, among the Dacotahs of America and the Zulus
+of Africa, make thunder; or he may associate with the dragons,
+serpents, cows and other aerial cattle which supply the rain, and
+show themselves in the waterspout.  Chinese, Greenland, Hindoo,
+Finnish, Lithunian and Moorish examples of the myth about the moon-
+devouring beasts are vouched for by Grimm.[2]  A Mongolian legend
+has it that the gods wished to punish the maleficent Arakho for his
+misdeeds, but Arakho hid so cleverly that their limited omnipotence
+could not find him.  The sun, when asked to turn spy, gave an
+evasive answer.  The moon told the truth.  Arakho was punished, and
+ever since he chases sun and moon.  When he nearly catches either
+of them, there is an eclipse, and the people try to drive him off
+by making a hideous uproar with musical and other instruments.[3]
+Captain Beeckman in 1704 was in Borneo, when the natives declared
+that the devil "was eating the moon".
+
+
+[1] Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. i.; Lefebure, Les Yeux d'Horus,
+
+[2] Teutonic Mythology, English trans., ii. 706.
+
+[3] Moon-Lore by Rev. T. Harley, p. 167.
+
+
+Dr. Brinton in his Myths and Myth-Makers gives examples from
+Peruvians, Tupis, Creeks, Iroquois and Algonkins.  It would be
+easy, and is perhaps superfluous, to go on multiplying proofs of
+the belief that sun and moon are, or have been, persons.  In the
+Hervey Isles these two luminaries are thought to have been made out
+of the body of a child cut in twain by his parents.  The blood
+escaped from the half which is the moon, hence her pallor.[1]  This
+tale is an exception to the general rule, but reminds us of the
+many myths which represent the things in the world as having been
+made out of a mutilated man, like the Vedic Purusha.  It is hardly
+necessary, except by way of record, to point out that the Greek
+myths of sun and moon, like the myths of savages, start from the
+conception of the solar and lunar bodies as persons with parts and
+passions, human loves and human sorrows.  As in the Mongolian myth
+of Arakho, the sun "sees all and hears all," and, less honourable
+than the Mongolian sun, he plays the spy for Hephaestus on the
+loves of Ares and Aphrodite.  He has mistresses and human children,
+such as Circe and Aeetes.[2]
+
+
+[1] Gill, Myths and Songs, p. 45.
+
+[2] See chapter on Greek Divine Myths.
+
+
+The sun is all-seeing and all-penetrating. In a Greek song of to-
+day a mother sends a message to an absent daughter by the sun; it
+is but an unconscious repetition of the request of the dying Ajax
+that the heavenly body will tell his fate to his old father and his
+sorrowing spouse.[1]
+
+
+[1] Sophocles, Ajax, 846.
+
+
+Selene, the moon, like Helios, the sun, was a person, and amorous.
+Beloved by Zeus, she gave birth to Pandia, and Pan gained her
+affection by the simple rustic gift of a fleece.[1]  The Australian
+Dawn, with her present of a red kangaroo skin, was not more lightly
+won than the chaste Selene.  Her affection for Endymion is well
+known, and her cold white glance shines through the crevices of his
+mountain grave, hewn in a rocky wall, like the tombs of Phrygia.[2]
+She is the sister of the sun in Hesiod, the daughter (by his
+sister) of Hyperion in the Homeric hymns to Helios.
+
+
+[1] Virgil, Georgics, iii. 391.
+
+[2] Preller, Griech. Myth., i. 163.
+
+
+In Greece the aspects of sun and moon take the most ideal human
+forms, and show themselves in the most gracious myths.  But, after
+all, these retain in their anthropomorphism the marks of the
+earliest fancy, the fancy of Eskimos and Australians.  It seems to
+be commonly thought that the existence of solar myths is denied by
+anthropologists.  This is a vulgar error.  There is an enormous
+mass of solar myths, but they are not caused by "a disease of
+language," and--all myths are not solar!
+
+There is no occasion to dwell long on myths of the same character
+in which the stars are accounted for as transformed human
+adventurers.  It has often been shown that this opinion is
+practically of world-wide distribution.[1]  We find it in
+Australia, Persia, Greece, among the Bushmen, in North and South
+America, among the Eskimos, in ancient Egypt, in New Zealand, in
+ancient India--briefly, wherever we look.  The Sanskrit forms of
+these myths have been said to arise from confusion as to the
+meaning of words.  But is it credible that, in all languages,
+however different, the same kind of unconscious puns should have
+led to the same mistaken beliefs?  As the savage, barbarous and
+Greek star-myths (such as that of Callisto, first changed into a
+bear and then into a constellation) are familiar to most readers, a
+few examples of Sanskrit star-stories are offered here from the
+Satapatha Brahmana.[2]  Fires are not, according to the Brahmana
+ritual, to be lighted under the stars called Krittikas, the
+Pleiades.  The reason is that the stars were the wives of the bears
+(Riksha), for the group known in Brahmanic times as the Rishis
+(sages) were originally called the Rikshas (bears).  But the wives
+of the bears were excluded from the society of their husbands, for
+the bears rise in the north and their wives in the east.  Therefore
+the worshipper should not set up his fires under the Pleiades, lest
+he should thereby be separated from the company of his wife.  The
+Brahmanas[3] also tell us that Prajapati had an unholy passion for
+his daughter, who was in the form of a doe.  The gods made Rudra
+fire an arrow at Prajapati to punish him; he was wounded, and
+leaped into the sky, where he became one constellation and his
+daughter another, and the arrow a third group of stars.  In
+general, according to the Brahmanas, "the stars are the lights of
+virtuous men who go to the heavenly world".[4]
+
+
+[1] Custom and Myth, "Star-Myths"; Primitive Culture, i. 288, 291;
+J. G. Muller, Amerikanischen Urreligionen, pp. 52, 53.
+
+[2] Sacred Books of the East, i. 283-286.
+
+[3] Aitareya Bramana, iii. 33.
+
+[4] Satapatha Brahmana, vi. 5, 4, 8.  For Greek examples, Hesiod,
+Ovid, and the Catasterismoi, attributed to Eratosthenes, are useful
+authorities.  Probably many of the tales in Eratosthenes are late
+fictions consciously moulded on traditional data.
+
+
+Passing from savage myths explanatory of the nature of celestial
+bodies to myths accounting for the formation and colour and habits
+of beasts, birds and fishes, we find ourselves, as an old Jesuit
+missionary says, in the midst of a barbarous version of Ovid's
+Metamorphoses.  It has been shown that the possibility of
+interchange of form between man and beast is part of the working
+belief of everyday existence among the lower peoples.  They regard
+all things as on one level, or, to use an old political phrase,
+they "level up" everything to equality with the human status.  Thus
+Mr. Im Thurn, a very good observer, found that to the Indians of
+Guiana "all objects, animate or inaminate, seem exactly of the same
+nature, except that they differ by the accident of bodily form".
+Clearly to grasp this entirely natural conception of primitive man,
+the civilised student must make a great effort to forget for a time
+all that science has taught him of the differences between the
+objects which fill the world.[1]  "To the ear of the savage,
+animals certainly seem to talk."  "As far as the Indians of Guiana
+are concerned, I do not believe that they distinguish such beings
+as sun and moon, or such other natural phenomena as winds and
+storms, from men and other animals, from plants and other inanimate
+objects, or from any other objects whatsoever."  Bancroft says
+about North American myths, "Beasts and birds and fishes fetch and
+carry, talk and act, in a way that leaves even Aesop's heroes quite
+in the shade".[2]
+
+
+[1] Journ. Anthrop. Inst., xi. 366-369.  A very large and rich
+collection of testimonies as to metamorphosis will be found in J.
+G. Muller's Amerikanischen Urreligionen, p. 62 et seq.; while, for
+European superstitions, Bodin on La Demonomanie des Sorciers, Lyon,
+1598, may be consulted.
+
+[2] Vol. iii. p. 127.
+
+
+The savage tendency is to see in inanimate things animals, and in
+animals disguised men.  M. Reville quotes in his Religions des
+Peuples Non-Civilise's, i. 64, the story of some Negroes, who, the
+first time they were shown a cornemuse, took the instrument for a
+beast, the two holes for its eyes.  The Highlander who looted a
+watch at Prestonpans, and observing, "She's teed," sold it cheap
+when it ran down, was in the same psychological condition.  A queer
+bit of savage science is displayed on a black stone tobacco-pipe
+from the Pacific Coast.[1]  The savage artist has carved the pipe
+in the likeness of a steamer, as a steamer is conceived by him.
+"Unable to account for the motive power, he imagines the paddle to
+be linked round the tongue of a coiled serpent, fastened to the
+tail of the vessel," and so he represents it on the black stone
+pipe.  Nay, a savage's belief that beasts are on his own level is
+so literal, that he actually makes blood-covenants with the lower
+animals, as he does with men, mingling his gore with theirs, or
+smearing both together on a stone;[2] while to bury dead animals
+with sacred rites is as usual among the Bedouins and Malagasies to-
+day as in ancient Egypt or Attica.  In the same way the Ainos of
+Japan, who regard the bear as a kinsman, sacrifice a bear once a
+year.  But, to propitiate the animal and his connections, they
+appoint him a "mother," an Aino girl, who looks after his comforts,
+and behaves in a way as maternal as possible.  The bear is now a
+kinsman, [Greek text omitted], and cannot avenge himself within the
+kin.  This, at least, seems to be the humour of it.  In Lagarde's
+Reliquiae Juris Ecclesiastici Antiquissimae a similar Syrian
+covenant of kinship with insects is described.  About 700 A. D.,
+when a Syrian garden was infested by caterpillars, the maidens were
+assembled, and one caterpillar was caught.  Then one of the virgins
+was "made its mother," and the creature was buried with due
+lamentations.  The "mother" was then brought to the spot where the
+pests were, her companions bewailed her, and the caterpillars
+perished like their chosen kinsman, but without extorting
+revenge.[3]  Revenge was out of their reach.  They had been brought
+within the kin of their foes, and there were no Erinnyes, "avengers
+of kindred blood," to help them.  People in this condition of
+belief naturally tell hundreds of tales, in which men, stones,
+trees, beasts, shift shapes, and in which the modifications of
+animal forms are caused by accident, or by human agency, or by
+magic, or by metamorphosis.  Such tales survive in our modern folk-
+lore.  To make our meaning clear, we may give the European nursery-
+myth of the origin of the donkey's long ears, and, among other
+illustrations, the Australian myth of the origin of the black and
+white plumage of the pelican.  Mr. Ralston has published the
+Russian version of the myth of the donkey's ears.  The Spanish
+form, which is identical with the Russian, is given by Fernan
+Caballero in La Gaviota.
+
+
+[1] Magazine of Art, January, 1883.
+
+[2] "Malagasy Folk-Tales," Folk-Lore Journal, October, 1883.
+
+[3] We are indebted to Professor Robertson Smith for this example,
+and to Miss Bird's Journal, pp. 90, 97, for the Aino parallel.
+
+
+"Listen! do you know why your ears are so big?" (the story is told
+to a stupid little boy with big ears).  "When Father Adam found
+himself in Paradise with the animals, he gave each its name; those
+of THY species, my child, he named 'donkeys'.  One day, not long
+after, he called the beasts together, and asked each to tell him
+its name.  They all answered right except the animals of THY sort,
+and they had forgotten their name!  Then Father Adam was very
+angry, and, taking that forgetful donkey by the ears, he pulled
+them out, screaming 'You are called DONKEY!'  And the donkey's ears
+have been long ever since."  This, to a child, is a credible
+explanation.  So, perhaps, is another survival of this form of
+science--the Scotch explanation of the black marks on the haddock;
+they were impressed by St. Peter's finger and thumb when he took
+the piece of money for Caesar's tax out of the fish's mouth.
+
+Turning from folk-lore to savage beliefs, we learn that from one
+end of Africa to another the honey-bird, schneter, is said to be an
+old woman whose son was lost, and who pursued him till she was
+turned into a bird, which still shrieks his name, "Schneter,
+Schneter".[1]  In the same way the manners of most of the birds
+known to the Greeks were accounted for by the myth that they had
+been men and women.  Zeus, for example, turned Ceyx and Halcyon
+into sea-fowls because they were too proud in their married
+happiness.[2]  To these myths of the origin of various animals we
+shall return, but we must not forget the black and white Australian
+pelican.  Why is the pelican parti-coloured?[3]  For this reason:
+After the Flood (the origin of which is variously explained by the
+Murri), the pelican (who had been a black fellow) made a canoe, and
+went about like a kind of Noah, trying to save the drowning.  In
+the course of his benevolent mission he fell in love with a woman,
+but she and her friends played him a trick and escaped from him.
+The pelican at once prepared to go on the war-path.  The first
+thing to do was to daub himself white, as is the custom of the
+blacks before a battle.  They think the white pipe-clay strikes
+terror and inspires respect among the enemy.  But when the pelican
+was only half pipe-clayed, another pelican came past, and, "not
+knowing what such a queer black and white thing was, struck the
+first pelican with his beak and killed him.  Before that pelicans
+were all black; now they are black and white.  That is the
+reason."[4]
+
+
+[1] Barth, iii. 358.
+
+[2] Apollodorus, i. 7 (13, 12).
+
+[3] Sahagun, viii. 2, accounts for colours of eagle and tiger.  A
+number of races explain the habits and marks of animals as the
+result of a curse or blessing of a god or hero.  The Hottentots,
+the Huarochiri of Peru, the New Zealanders (Shortland, Traditions,
+p. 57), are among the peoples which use this myth.
+
+[4] Brough Symth, Aborigines of Australia, i. 477, 478.
+
+
+"That is the reason."  Therewith native philosopy is satisfied, and
+does not examine in Mr. Darwin's laborious manner the slow
+evolution of the colour of the pelican's plumage.  The mythological
+stories about animals are rather difficult to treat, because they
+are so much mixed up with the topic of totemism.  Here we only
+examine myths which account by means of a legend for certain
+peculiarities in the habits, cries, or colours and shapes of
+animals.  The Ojibbeways told Kohl they had a story for every
+creature, accounting for its ways and appearance.  Among the
+Greeks, as among Australians and Bushmen, we find that nearly every
+notable bird or beast had its tradition.  The nightingale and the
+swallow have a story of the most savage description, a story
+reported by Apollodorus, though Homer[1] refers to another, and, as
+usual, to a gentler and more refined form of the myth.  Here is the
+version of Apollodorus.  "Pandion" (an early king of Athens)
+"married Zeuxippe, his mother's sister, by whom he had two
+daughters, Procne and Philomela, and two sons, Erechtheus and
+Butes.  A war broke out with Labdas about some debatable land, and
+Erechtheus invited the alliance of Tereus of Thrace, the son of
+Ares.  Having brought the war, with the aid of Tereus, to a happy
+end, he gave him his daughter Procne to wife.  By Procne, Tereus
+had a son, Itys, and thereafter fell in love with Philomela, whom
+he seduced, pretending that Procne was dead, whereas he had really
+concealed her somewhere in his lands.  Thereon he married
+Philomela, and cut out her tongue.  But she wove into a robe
+characters that told the whole story, and by means of these
+acquainted Procne with her sufferings.  Thereon Procne found her
+sister, and slew Itys, her own son, whose body she cooked, and
+served up to Tereus in a banquet.  Thereafter Procne and her sister
+fled together, and Tereus seized an axe and followed after them.
+They were overtaken at Daulia in Phocis, and prayed to the gods
+that they might be turned into birds.  So Procne became the
+nightingale, and Philomela the swallow, while Tereus was changed
+into a hoopoe."[2]  Pausanias has a different legend; Procne and
+Philomela died of excessive grief.
+
+
+[1] Odyssey, xix. 523.
+
+[2] A Red Indian nightingale-myth is alluded to by J. G. Muller,
+Amerik. Urrel., p. 175.  Some one was turned into a nightingale by
+the sun, and still wails for a lost lover.
+
+
+These ancient men and women metamorphosed into birds were HONOURED
+AS ANCESTORS by the Athenians.[1]  Thus the unceasing musical wail
+of the nightingale and the shrill cry of the swallow were explained
+by a Greek story.  The birds were lamenting their old human sorrow,
+as the honey-bird in Africa still repeats the name of her lost son.
+
+
+[1] Pausanias, i. v.  Pausanias thinks such things no longer occur.
+
+
+Why does the red-robin live near the dwellings of men, a bold and
+friendly bird?  The Chippeway Indians say he was once a young
+brave whose father set him a task too cruel for his strength, and
+made him starve too long when he reached man's estate.  He turned
+into a robin, and said to his father, "I shall always be the friend
+of man, and keep near their dwellings.  I could not gratify your
+pride as a warrior, but I will cheer you by my songs."[1]  The
+converse of this legend is the Greek myth of the hawk.  Why is the
+hawk so hated by birds?  Hierax was a benevolent person who
+succoured a race hated by Poseidon.  The god therefore changed him
+into a hawk, and made him as much detested by birds, and as fatal
+to them, as he had been beloved by and gentle to men.[2]  The
+Hervey Islanders explain the peculiarities of several fishes by the
+share they took in the adventures of Ina, who stamped, for example,
+on the sole, and so flattened him for ever.[3]  In Greece the
+dolphins were, according to the Homeric hymn to Dionysus,
+metamorphosed pirates who had insulted the god.  But because the
+dolphin found the hidden sea-goddess whom Poseidon loved, the
+dolphin, too, was raised by the grateful sea-god to the stars.[4]
+The vulture and the heron, according to Boeo (said to have been a
+priestess in Delphi and the author of a Greek treatise on the
+traditions about birds), were once a man named Aigupios (vulture)
+and his mother, Boulis.  They sinned inadvertently, like Oedipus
+and Jocasta; wherefore Boulis, becoming aware of the guilt, was
+about to put out the eyes of her son and slay herself.  Then they
+were changed, Boulis into the heron, "which tears out and feeds on
+the eyes of snakes, birds and fishes, and Aigupios into the vulture
+which bears his name".  This story, of which the more repulsive
+details are suppressed, is much less pleasing and more savage than
+the Hervey Islanders' myth of the origin of pigs.  Maaru was an old
+blind man who lived with his son Kationgia.  There came a year of
+famine, and Kationgia had great difficulty in finding food for
+himself and his father.  He gave the blind old man puddings of
+banana roots and fishes, while he lived himself on sea-slugs and
+shellfish, like the people of Terra del Fuego.  But blind old Maaru
+suspected his son of giving him the worst share and keeping what
+was best for himself.  At last he discovered that Kationgia was
+really being starved; he felt his body, and found that he was a
+mere living skeleton.  The two wept together, and the father made a
+feast of some cocoa-nuts and bread-fruit, which he had reserved
+against the last extremity.  When all was finished, he said he had
+eaten his last meal and was about to die.  He ordered his son to
+cover him with leaves and grass, and return to the spot in four
+days.  If worms were crawling about, he was to throw leaves and
+grass over them and come back four days later.  Kationgia did as he
+was instructed, and, on his second visit to the grave, found the
+whole mass of leaves in commotion.  A brood of pigs, black, white
+and speckled, had sprung up from the soil; famine was a thing of
+the past, and Kationgia became a great chief in the island.[5]
+
+
+[1] Schoolcraft, ii. 229, 230.
+
+[1] Boeo, quoted by Antoninus Liberalis.
+
+[3] Gill, South Sea Myths, pp. 88-95.
+
+[4] Artemidorus in his Love Elegies, quoted by the Pseud-
+Eratosthenes.
+
+[5] Gill, Myths and Songs from South Pacific, pp. 135-138.
+
+
+"The owl was a baker's daughter" is the fragment of Christian
+mythology preserved by Ophelia.  The baker's daughter behaved
+rudely to our Lord, and was changed into the bird that looks not on
+the sun.  The Greeks had a similar legend of feminine impiety by
+which they mythically explained the origin of the owl, the bat and
+the eagle-owl.  Minyas of Orchomenos had three daughters, Leucippe,
+Arsippe and Alcathoe, most industrious women, who declined to join
+the wild mysteries of Dionysus.  The god took the shape of a
+maiden, and tried to win them to his worship.  They refused, and he
+assumed the form of a bull, a lion, and a leopard as easily as the
+chiefs of the Abipones become tigers, or as the chiefs among the
+African Barotse and Balonda metamorphose themselves into lions and
+alligators.[1]  The daughters of Minyas, in alarm, drew lots to
+determine which of them should sacrifice a victim to the god.
+Leucippe drew the lot and offered up her own son.  They then rushed
+to join the sacred rites of Dionysus, when Hermes transformed them
+into the bat, the owl and the eagle-owl, and these three hide from
+the light of the sun.[2]
+
+
+[1] Livingstone, Missionary Travels, pp. 615, 642.
+
+[2] Nicander, quoted by Antoninus Liberalis.
+
+
+A few examples of Bushman and Australian myths explanatory of the
+colours and habits of animals will probably suffice to establish
+the resemblance between savage and Hellenic legends of this
+character.  The Bushman myth about the origin of the eland (a large
+antelope) is not printed in full by Dr. Bleek, but he observes that
+it "gives an account of the reasons for the colours of the gemsbok,
+hartebeest, eland, quagga and springbok".[1]  Speculative Bushmen
+seem to have been puzzled to account for the wildness of the eland.
+It would be much more convenient if the eland were tame and could
+be easily captured.  They explain its wildness by saying that the
+eland was "spoiled" before Cagn, the creator, or rather maker of
+most things, had quite finished it.  Cagn's relations came and
+hunted the first eland too soon, after which all other elands grew
+wild.  Cagn then said, "Go and hunt them and try to kill one; that
+is now your work, for it was you who spoilt them".[2]  The Bushmen
+have another myth explanatory of the white patches on the breasts
+of crows in their country.  Some men tarried long at their hunting,
+and their wives sent out crows in search of their husbands.  Round
+each crow's neck was hung a piece of fat to serve as food on the
+journey.  Hence the crows have white patches on breast and neck.
+
+
+[1] Brief Account of Bushmen Folk-Lore, p. 7.
+
+[2] Cape Monthly Magazine, July, 1874.
+
+
+In Australia the origins of nearly all animals appear to be
+explained in myths, of which a fair collection is printed in Mr.
+Brough Symth's Aborigines of Victoria.[1]  Still better examples
+occur in Mrs. Langloh Parker's Australian Legends.  Why is the
+crane so thin?  Once he was a man named Kar-ween, the second man
+fashioned out of clay by Pund-jel, a singular creative being, whose
+chequered career is traced elsewhere in our chapter on "Savage
+Myths of the Origin of the World and of Man".  Kar-ween and Pund-
+jel had a quarrel about the wives of the former, whom Pund-jel was
+inclined to admire.  The crafty Kar-ween gave a dance (jugargiull,
+corobboree), at which the creator Pund-jel was disporting himself
+gaily (like the Great Panjandrum), when Kar-ween pinned him with a
+spear.  Pund-jel threw another which took Kar-ween in the knee-
+joint, so that he could not walk, but soon pined away and became a
+mere skeleton.  "Thereupon Pund-jel made Kar-ween a crane," and
+that is why the crane has such attenuated legs.  The Kortume,
+Munkari and Waingilhe, now birds, were once men.  The two latter
+behaved unkindly to their friend Kortume, who shot them out of his
+hut in a storm of rain, singing at the same time an incantation.
+The three then turned into birds, and when the Kortume sings it is
+a token that rain may be expected.
+
+
+[1] Vol. i. p. 426 et seq.
+
+
+Let us now compare with these Australian myths of the origin of
+certain species of birds the Greek story of the origin of frogs, as
+told by Menecrates and Nicander.[1]  The frogs were herdsmen
+metamorphosed by Leto, the mother of Apollo.  But, by way of
+showing how closely akin are the fancies of Greeks and Australian
+black fellows, we shall tell the legend without the proper names,
+which gave it a fictitious dignity.
+
+
+[1] Antoninus Liberalis, xxxv.
+
+
+THE ORIGIN OF FROGS.
+
+"A woman bore two children, and sought for a water-spring wherein
+to bathe them.  She found a well, but herdsmen drove her away from
+it that their cattle might drink.  Then some wolves met her and led
+her to a river, of which she drank, and in its waters she bathed
+her children.  Then she went back to the well where the herdsmen
+were now bathing, and she turned them all into frogs.  She struck
+their backs and shoulders with a rough stone and drove them into
+the waters, and ever since that day frogs live in marshes and
+beside rivers."
+
+A volume might be filled with such examples of the kindred fancies
+of Greeks and savages.  Enough has probably been said to illustrate
+our point, which is that Greek myths of this character were
+inherited from the period of savagery, when ideas of metamorphosis
+and of the kinship of men and beasts were real practical beliefs.
+Events conceived to be common in real life were introduced into
+myths, and these myths were savage science, and were intended to
+account for the Origin of Species.  But when once this train of
+imagination has been fired, it burns on both in literature and in
+the legends of the peasantry.  Every one who writes a Christmas
+tale for children now employs the machinery of metamorphosis, and
+in European folk-lore, as Fontenelle remarked, stories persist
+which are precisely similar in kind to the minor myths of savages.
+
+Reasoning in this wise, the Mundas of Bengal thus account for
+peculiarities of certain animals.  Sing Bonga, the chief god, cast
+certain people out of heaven; they fell to earth, found iron ore,
+and began smelting it.  The black smoke displeased Sing Bonga, who
+sent two king crows and an owl to bid people cease to pollute the
+atmosphere.  But the iron smelters spoiled these birds' tails, and
+blackened the previously white crow, scorched its beak red, and
+flattened its head.  Sing Bonga burned man, and turned woman into
+hills and waterspouts.[1]
+
+
+[1] Dalton, pp. 186, 187.
+
+
+Examples of this class of myth in Indo-Aryan literature are not
+hard to find.  Why is dawn red?  Why are donkeys slow?  Why have
+mules no young ones?  Mules have no foals because they were
+severely burned when Agni (fire) drove them in a chariot race.
+Dawn is red, not because (as in Australia) she wears a red kangaroo
+cloak, but because she competed in this race with red cows for her
+coursers.  Donkeys are slow because they never recovered from their
+exertions in the same race, when the Asvins called on their asses
+and landed themselves the winners.[1]  And cows are accommodated
+with horns for a reason no less probable and satisfactory.[2]
+
+
+[1] Aitareya Brahmana, ii. 272, iv. 9.
+
+[2] iv. 17.
+
+
+Though in the legends of the less developed peoples men and women
+are more frequently metamorphosed into birds and beasts than into
+stones and plants, yet such changes of form are by no means
+unknown.  To the north-east of Western Point there lies a range of
+hills, inhabited, according to the natives of Victoria, by a
+creature whose body is made of stone, and weapons make no wound in
+so sturdy a constitution.  The blacks refuse to visit the range
+haunted by the mythic stone beast.  "Some black fellows were once
+camped at the lakes near Shaving Point.  They were cooking their
+fish when a native dog came up.  They did not give him anything to
+eat.  He became cross and said, 'You black fellows have lots of
+fish, but you give me none'.  So he changed them all into a big
+rock.  This is quite true, for the big rock is there to this day,
+and I have seen it with my own eyes."[1]  Another native, Toolabar,
+says that the women of the fishing party cried out yacka torn,
+"very good".  A dog replied yacka torn, and they were all changed
+into rocks.  This very man, Toolabar, once heard a dog begin to
+talk, whereupon he and his father fled.  Had they waited they would
+have become stones.  "We should have been like it, wallung," that
+is, stones.
+
+
+[1] Native narrator, ap. Brough Smyth, i. 479.
+
+
+Among the North American Indians any stone which has a resemblance
+to the human or animal figure is explained as an example of
+metamorphosis.  Three stones among the Aricaras were a girl, her
+lover and her dog, who fled from home because the course of true
+love did not run smooth, and who were petrified.  Certain stones
+near Chinook Point were sea-giants who swallowed a man.  His
+brother, by aid of fire, dried up the bay and released the man,
+still alive, from the body of the giant.  Then the giants were
+turned into rocks.[1]  The rising sun in Popol Vuh (if the evidence
+of Popol Vuh, the Quichua sacred book, is to be accepted) changed
+into stone the lion, serpent and tiger gods.  The Standing Rock on
+the Upper Missouri is adored by the Indians, and decorated with
+coloured ribbons and skins of animals.  This stone was a woman,
+who, like Niobe, became literally petrified with grief when her
+husband took a second wife.  Another stone-woman in a cave on the
+banks of the Kickapoo was wont to kill people who came near her,
+and is even now approached with great respect.  The Oneidas and
+Dacotahs claim descent from stones to which they ascribe
+animation.[2]  Montesinos speaks of a sacred stone which was
+removed from a mountain by one of the Incas.  A parrot flew out of
+it and lodged in another stone, which the natives still worship.[3]
+The Breton myth about one of the great stone circles (the stones
+were peasants who danced on a Sunday) is a well-known example of
+this kind of myth surviving in folk-lore.  There is a kind of stone
+Actaeon[4] near Little Muniton Creek, "resembling the bust of a man
+whose head is decorated with the horns of a stag".[5]  A crowd of
+myths of metamorphosis into stone will be found among the Iroquois
+legends in Report of Bureau of Ethnology, 1880-81.  If men may
+become stones, on the other hand, in Samoa (as in the Greek myth of
+Deucalion), stones may become men.[6]  Gods, too, especially when
+these gods happen to be cuttlefish, might be petrified.  They were
+chased in Samoa by an Upolu hero, who caught them in a great net
+and killed them.  "They were changed into stones, and now stand up
+in a rocky part of the lagoon on the north side of Upolu."[7]
+Mauke, the first man, came out of a stone.  In short,[8] men and
+stones and beasts and gods and thunder have interchangeable forms.
+In Mangaia[9] the god Ra was tossed up into the sky by Maui and
+became pumice-stone.  Many samples of this petrified deity are
+found in Mangaia.  In Melanesia matters are so mixed that it is not
+easy to decide whether a worshipful stone is the dwelling of a dead
+man's soul or is of spiritual merit in itself, or whether "the
+stone is the spirit's outward part or organ".  The Vui, or spirit,
+has much the same relations with snakes, owls and sharks.[10]
+Qasavara, the mythical opponent of Qat, the Melanesian Prometheus,
+"fell dead from heaven" (like Ra in Mangia), and was turned into a
+stone, on which sacrifices are made by those who desire strength in
+fighting.
+
+
+[1] See authorities ap. Dorman, Primitive Superstitions, pp. 130-
+138.
+
+[2] Dorman, p. 133.
+
+[3] Many examples are collected by J. G. Muller, Amerikanischen
+Urreligionen, pp. 97, 110, 125, especially when the stones have a
+likeness to human form, p. 17a.  Im der That werden auch einige in
+Steine, oder in Thiere and Pflanzen verwandelt."  Cf. p. 220.
+Instances (from Balboa) of men turned into stone by wizards, p.
+309.
+
+[4] Preller thinks that Actaeon, devoured by his hounds after being
+changed into a stag, is a symbol of the vernal year.  Palaephatus
+(De Fab. Narrat.) holds that the story is a moral fable.
+
+[5] Dorman, p. 137.
+
+[6] Turner's Samoa, p. 299.
+
+[7] Samoa, p. 31.
+
+[8] Op. cit., p. 34.
+
+[9] Gill, Myths and Songs, p. 60.
+
+[10] Codrington, Journ. Anthrop. Inst., February, 1881.
+
+
+Without delaying longer among savage myths of metamorphosis into
+stones, it may be briefly shown that the Greeks retained this with
+all the other vagaries of early fancy.  Every one remembers the use
+which Perseus made of the Gorgon's head, and the stones on the
+coast of Seriphus, which, like the stones near Western Point in
+Victoria, had once been men, the enemies of the hero.  "Also he
+slew the Gorgon," sings Pindar, "and bare home her head, with
+serpent tresses decked, to the island folk a stony death."  Observe
+Pindar's explanatory remark: "I ween there is no marvel impossible
+if gods have wrought thereto".  In the same pious spirit a Turk in
+an isle of the Levant once told Mr. Newton a story of how a man
+hunted a stag, and the stag spoke to him.  "The stag spoke?" said
+Mr. Newton.  "Yes, by Allah's will," replied the Turk.  Like
+Pindar, he was repeating an incident quite natural to the minds of
+Australians, or Bushmen, or Samoans, or Red Men, but, like the
+religious Pindar, he felt that the affair was rather marvellous,
+and accounted for it by the exercise of omnipotent power.[1]  The
+Greek example of Niobe and her children may best be quoted in Mr.
+Bridges' translation from the Iliad:--
+
+
+     And somewhere now, among lone mountain rocks
+     On Sipylus, where couch the nymphs at night
+     Who dance all day by Achelous' stream,
+     The once proud mother lies, herself a rook,
+     And in cold breast broods o'er the goddess' wrong.
+                         --Prometheus the fire-bringer.[2]
+
+
+In the Iliad it is added that Cronion made the people into stones.
+The attitude of the later Greek mind towards these myths may be
+observed in a fragment of Philemon, the comic poet. "Never, by the
+gods, have I believed, nor will believe, that Niobe the stone was
+once a woman.  Nay, by reason of her calamities she became
+speechless, and so, from her silence, was called a stone."[3]
+
+
+[1] Pindar, Pyth. x., Myers's translation.
+
+[2] xxiv. 611.
+
+[3] The Scholiast on Iliad, xxiv. 6, 7.
+
+
+There is another famous petrification in the Iliad.  When the
+prodigy of the snake and the sparrows had appeared to the assembled
+Achaeans at Aulis, Zeus displayed a great marvel, and changed into
+a stone the serpent which swallowed the young of the sparrow.
+Changes into stone, though less common than changes into fishes,
+birds and beasts, were thus obviously not too strange for the
+credulity of Greek mythology, which could also believe that a stone
+became the mother of Agdestis by Zeus.
+
+As to interchange of shape between men and women and PLANTS, our
+information, so far as the lower races are concerned, is less
+copious.  It has already been shown that the totems of many stocks
+in all parts of the world are plants, and this belief in connection
+with a plant by itself demonstrates that the confused belief in all
+things being on one level has thus introduced vegetables into the
+dominion of myth.  As far as possessing souls is concerned, Mr.
+Tylor has proved that plants are as well equipped as men or beasts
+or minerals.[1]  In India the doctrine of transmigration widely and
+clearly recognises the idea of trees or smaller plants being
+animated by human souls".  In the well-known ancient Egyptian story
+of "The Two Brothers,"[2] the life of the younger is practically
+merged in that of the acacia tree where he has hidden his heart;
+and when he becomes a bull and is sacrificed, his spiritual part
+passes into a pair of Persea trees.  The Yarucaris of Bolivia say
+that a girl once bewailed in the forest her loverless estate.  She
+happened to notice a beautiful tree, which she adorned with
+ornaments as well as she might.  The tree assumed the shape of a
+handsome young man--
+
+
+     She did not find him so remiss,
+     But, lightly issuing through,
+     He did repay her kiss for kiss,
+     With usury thereto.[3]
+
+
+J. G. Muller, who quotes this tale from Andree, says it has "many
+analogies with the tales of metamorphosis of human beings into
+trees among the ancients, as reported by Ovid".  The worship of
+plants and trees is a well-known feature in religion, and probably
+implies (at least in many cases) a recognition of personality.  In
+Samoa, metamorphosis into vegetables is not uncommon.  For example,
+the king of Fiji was a cannibal, and (very naturally) "the people
+were melting away under him".  The brothers Toa and Pale, wishing
+to escape the royal oven, adopted various changes of shape.  They
+knew that straight timber was being sought for to make a canoe for
+the king, so Pale, when he assumed a vegetable form, became a
+crooked stick overgrown with creepers, but Toa "preferred standing
+erect as a handsome straight tree".  Poor Toa was therefore cut
+down by the king's shipwrights, though, thanks to his brother's
+magic wiles, they did not make a canoe out of him after all.[4]  In
+Samoa the trees are so far human that they not only go to war with
+each other, but actually embark in canoes to seek out distant
+enemies.[5]  The Ottawa Indians account for the origin of maize by
+a myth in which a wizard fought with and conquered a little man who
+had a little crown of feathers.  From his ashes arose the maize
+with its crown of leaves and heavy ears of corn.[6]
+
+
+[1] Primitive Culture, i. 145; examples of Society Islanders,
+Dyaks, Karens, Buddhists.
+
+[2] Maspero, Contes Egyptiens, p. 25.
+
+[3] J. G. Muller, Amerik. Urrel., p. 264.
+
+[4] Turner's Samoa, p. 219.
+
+[5] Ibid.. p. 213.
+
+[6] Amerik. Urrel., p. 60.
+
+
+In Mangaia the myth of the origin of the cocoa-nut tree is a series
+of transformation scenes, in which the persons shift shapes with
+the alacrity of medicine-men.  Ina used to bathe in a pool where an
+eel became quite familiar with her.  At last the fish took courage
+and made his declaration.  He was Tuna, the chief of all eels.  "Be
+mine," he cried, and Ina was his.  For some mystical reason he was
+obliged to leave her, but (like the White Cat in the fairy tale) he
+requested her to cut off his eel's head and bury it.  Regretfully
+but firmly did Ina comply with his request, and from the buried
+eel's head sprang two cocoa trees, one from each half of the brain
+of Tuna.  As a proof of this be it remarked, that when the nut is
+husked we always find on it "the two eyes and mouth of the lover of
+Ina".[1]  All over the world, from ancient Egypt to the wigwams of
+the Algonkins, plants and other matters are said to have sprung
+from a dismembered god or hero, while men are said to have sprung
+from plants.[2]  We may therefore perhaps look on it as a proved
+point that the general savage habit of "levelling up" prevails even
+in their view of the vegetable world, and has left traces (as we
+have seen) in their myths.
+
+
+[1] Gill, Myths and Songs, p. 79.
+
+[2] Myths of the Beginning of Things.
+
+
+Turning now to the mythology of Greece, we see that the same rule
+holds good.  Metamorphosis into plants and flowers is extremely
+common; the instances of Daphne, Myrrha, Hyacinth, Narcissus and
+the sisters of Phaethon at once occur to the memory.
+
+Most of those myths in which everything in Nature becomes personal
+and human, while all persons may become anything in Nature, we
+explain, then, as survivals or imitations of tales conceived when
+men were in the savage intellectual condition.  In that stage, as
+we demonstrated, no line is drawn between things animate and
+inanimate, dumb or "articulate speaking," organic or inorganic,
+personal or impersonal.  Such a mental stage, again, is reflected
+in the nature-myths, many of which are merely "aetiological,"--
+assign a cause, that is, for phenomena, and satisfy an indolent and
+credulous curiosity.
+
+We may be asked again, "But how did this intellectual condition
+come to exist?"  To answer that is no part of our business; for us
+it is enough to trace myth, or a certain element in myth, to a
+demonstrable and actual stage of thought.  But this stage, which
+is constantly found to survive in the minds of children, is thus
+explained or described by Hume in his Essay on Natural Religion:
+"There is an universal tendency in mankind to conceive all
+beings like themselves, and to transfer to every object those
+qualities . . . of which they are intimately conscious".[1]  Now
+they believe themselves to be conscious of magical and supernatural
+powers, which they do not, of course, possess.  These powers of
+effecting metamorphosis, of "shape-shifting," of flying, of becoming
+invisible at will, of conversing with the dead, of miraculously
+healing the sick, savages pass on to their gods (as will be shown
+in a later chapter), and the gods of myth survive and retain the
+miraculous gifts after their worshippers (become more reasonable)
+have quite forgotten that they themselves once claimed similar
+endowments.  So far, then, it has been shown that savage fancy,
+wherever studied, is wild; that savage curiosity is keen; that
+savage credulity is practically boundless.  These considerations
+explain the existence of savage myths of sun, stars, beasts, plants
+and stones; similar myths fill Greek legend and the Sanskrit
+Brahmanes.  We conclude that, in Greek and Sanskrit, the myths are
+relics (whether borrowed or inherited) of the savage mental STATUS.
+
+
+[1] See Appendix B.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+NON-ARYAN MYTHS OF THE ORIGIN OF THE WORLD AND OF MAN.
+
+
+Confusions of myth--Various origins of man and of things--Myths of
+Australia, Andaman Islands, Bushmen, Ovaherero, Namaquas, Zulus,
+Hurons, Iroquois, Diggers, Navajoes, Winnebagoes, Chaldaeans,
+Thlinkeets, Pacific Islanders, Maoris, Aztecs, Peruvians--
+Similarity of ideas pervading all those peoples in various
+conditions of society and culture.
+
+
+The difficulties of classification which beset the study of
+mythology have already been described.  Nowhere are they more
+perplexing than when we try to classify what may be styled
+Cosmogonic Myths.  The very word cosmogonic implies the pre-
+existence of the idea of a cosmos, an orderly universe, and this
+was exactly the last idea that could enter the mind of the myth-
+makers.  There is no such thing as orderliness in their mythical
+conceptions, and no such thing as an universe.  The natural
+question, "Who made the world, or how did the things in the world
+come to be?" is the question which is answered by cosmogonic myths.
+But it is answered piecemeal.  To a Christian child the reply is
+given, "God made all things".  We have known this reply discussed
+by some little girls of six (a Scotch minister's daughters, and
+naturally metaphysical), one of whom solved all difficulties by the
+impromptu myth, "God first made a little place to stand on, and
+then he made the rest".  But savages and the myth-makers, whose
+stories survive into the civilised religions, could adhere firmly
+to no such account as this.  Here occurs in the first edition of
+this book the following passage: "They (savages) have not, and had
+not, the conception of God as we understand what we mean by the
+word.  They have, and had at most, only the small-change of the
+idea "God,"--here the belief in a moral being who watches conduct;
+here again the hypothesis of a pre-human race of magnified, non-
+natural medicine-men, or of extra-natural beings with human and
+magical attributes, but often wearing the fur, and fins, and
+feathers of the lower animals.  Mingled with these faiths (whether
+earlier, later, or coeval in origin with these) are the dread and
+love of ancestral ghosts, often transmuting themselves into worship
+of an imaginary and ideal first parent of the tribe, who once more
+is often a beast or a bird.  Here is nothing like the notion of an
+omnipotent, invisible, spiritual being, the creator of our
+religion; here is only la monnaie of the conception."
+
+It ought to have occurred to the author that he was here traversing
+the main theory of his own book, which is that RELIGION is one
+thing, myth quite another thing.  That many low races of savages
+entertain, in hours of RELIGIOUS thought, an elevated conception of
+a moral and undying Maker of Things, and Master of Life, a Father
+in Heaven, has already been stated, and knowledge of the facts has
+been considerably increased since this work first appeared (1887).
+But the MYTHICAL conceptions described in the last paragraph
+coexist with the religious conception in the faiths of very low
+savages, such as the Australians and Andamanese, just as the same
+contradictory coexistence is notorious in ancient Greece, India,
+Egypt and Anahuac.  In a sense, certain low savages HAVE the
+"conception of God, as we understand what we mean by the word".
+But that sense, when savages come to spinning fables about origins,
+is apt to be overlaid and perplexed by the frivolity of their
+mythical fancy.
+
+With such shifting, grotesque and inadequate fables, the cosmogonic
+myths of the world are necessarily bewildered and perplexed.  We
+have already seen in the chapter on "Nature Myths" that many
+things, sun, moon, the stars, "that have another birth," and
+various animals and plants, are accounted for on the hypothesis
+that they are later than the appearance of man--that they
+originally WERE men.  To the European mind it seems natural to rank
+myths of the gods before myths of the making or the evolution of
+the world, because our religion, like that of the more philosophic
+Greeks, makes the deity the fount of all existences, causa causans,
+"what unmoved moves," the beginning and the end.  But the myth-
+makers, deserting any such ideas they may possess, find it
+necessary, like the child of whom we spoke, to postulate a PLACE
+for the divine energy to work from, and that place is the earth or
+the heavens.  Then, again, heaven and earth are themselves often
+regarded in the usual mythical way, as animated, as persons with
+parts and passions, and finally, among advancing races, as gods.
+Into this medley of incongruous and inconsistent conceptions we
+must introduce what order we may, always remembering that the order
+is not native to the subject, but is brought in for the purpose of
+study.
+
+The origin of the world and of man is naturally a problem which has
+excited the curiosity of the least developed minds.  Every savage
+race has its own myths on this subject, most of them bearing the
+marks of the childish and crude imagination, whose character we
+have investigated, and all varying in amount of what may be called
+philosophical thought.
+
+All the cosmogonic myths, as distinct from religious belief in a
+Creator, waver between the theory of construction, or rather of
+reconstruction, and the theory of evolution, very rudely conceived.
+The earth, as a rule, is mythically averred to have grown out of
+some original matter, perhaps an animal, perhaps an egg which
+floated on the waters, perhaps a handful of mud from below the
+waters.  But this conception does not exclude the idea that many of
+the things in the world, minerals, plants and what not, are
+fragments of the frame of a semi-supernatural and gigantic being,
+human or bestial, belonging to a race which preceded the advent of
+man.[1]  Such were the Titans, demi-gods, Nurrumbunguttias in
+Australia.  Various members of this race are found active in myths
+of the creation, or rather the construction, of man and of the
+world.  Among the lowest races it is to be noted that mythical
+animals of supernatural power often take the place of beings like
+the Finnish Wainamoinen, the Greek Prometheus, the Zulu
+Unkulunkulu, the Red Indian Manabozho, himself usually a great
+hare.
+
+
+[1] Macrobius, Saturnal., i. xx.
+
+
+The ages before the development or creation of man are filled up,
+in the myths, with the loves and wars of supernatural people.  The
+appearance of man is explained in three or four contradictory ways,
+each of which is represented in the various myths of most
+mythologies.  Often man is fashioned out of clay, or stone, or
+other materials, by a Maker of all things, sometimes half-human or
+bestial, but also half-divine.  Sometimes the first man rises out
+of the earth, and is himself confused with the Creator, a theory
+perhaps illustrated by the Zulu myth of Unkulunkulu, "The Old, Old
+One".  Sometimes man arrives ready made, with most of the animals,
+from his former home in a hole in the ground, and he furnishes the
+world for himself with stars, sun, moon and everything else he
+needs.  Again, there are many myths which declare that man was
+evolved out of one or other of the lower animals.  This myth is
+usually employed by tribesmen to explain the origin of their own
+peculiar stock of kindred.  Once more, man is taken to be the fruit
+of some tree or plant, or not to have emerged ready-made, but to
+have grown out of the ground like a plant or a tree.  In some
+countries, as among the Bechuanas, the Boeotians, and the
+Peruvians, the spot where men first came out on earth is known to
+be some neighbouring marsh or cave.  Lastly, man is occasionally
+represented as having been framed out of a piece of the body of the
+Creator, or made by some demiurgic potter out of clay.  All these
+legends are told by savages, with no sense of their inconsistency.
+There is no single orthodoxy on the matter, and we shall see that
+all these theories coexist pell-mell among the mythological
+traditions of civilised races.  In almost every mythology, too, the
+whole theory of the origin of man is crossed by the tradition of a
+Deluge, or some other great destruction, followed by revival or
+reconstruction of the species, a tale by no means necessarily of
+Biblical origin.
+
+In examining savage myths of the origin of man and of the world, we
+shall begin by considering those current among the most backward
+peoples, where no hereditary or endowed priesthood has elaborated
+and improved the popular beliefs.  The natives of Australia furnish
+us with myths of a purely popular type, the property, not of
+professional priests and poets, but of all the old men and full-
+grown warriors of the country.  Here, as everywhere else, the
+student must be on his guard against accepting myths which are
+disguised forms of missionary teaching.[1]
+
+
+[1] Taplin, The Narrinyeri.  "He must also beware of supposing that
+the Australians believe in a creator in our sense, because the
+Narrinyeri, for example, say that Nurundere 'made everything'.
+Nurundere is but an idealised wizard and hunter, with a rival of
+his species."  This occurs in the first edition, but "making all
+things" is one idea, wizardry is another.
+
+
+In Southern Australia we learn that the Boonoorong, an Australian
+coast tribe, ascribe the creation of things to a being named Bun-
+jel or Pund-jel.  He figures as the chief of an earlier
+supernatural class of existence, with human relationships; thus he
+"has a wife, WHOSE FACE HE HAS NEVER SEEN," brothers, a son, and so
+on.  Now this name Bun-jel means "eagle-hawk," and the eagle-hawk
+is a totem among certain stocks.  Thus, when we hear that Eagle-
+hawk is the maker of men and things we are reminded of the Bushman
+creator, Cagn, who now receives prayers of considerable beauty and
+pathos, but who is (in some theories) identified with kaggen, the
+mantis insect, a creative grasshopper, and the chief figure in
+Bushman mythology.[1]  Bun-jel or Pund-jel also figures in
+Australian belief, neither as the creator nor as the eagle-hawk,
+but "as an old man who lives at the sources of the Yarra river,
+where he possesses great multitudes of cattle".[2]  The term Bun-
+jel is also used, much like our "Mr.," to denote the older men of
+the Kurnai and Briakolung, some of whom have magical powers.  One
+of them, Krawra, or "West Wind," can cause the wind to blow so
+violently as to prevent the natives from climbing trees; this man
+has semi-divine attributes.  From these facts it appears that this
+Australian creator, in myth, partakes of the character of the totem
+or worshipful beast, and of that of the wizard or medicine-man.  He
+carried a large knife, and, when he made the earth, he went up and
+down slicing it into creeks and valleys.  The aborigines of the
+northern parts of Victoria seem to believe in Pund-jel in what may
+perhaps be his most primitive mythical shape, that of an eagle.[3]
+This eagle and a crow created everything, and separated the Murray
+blacks into their two main divisions, which derive their names from
+the crow and the eagle.  The Melbourne blacks seem to make Pund-jel
+more anthropomorphic.  Men are his [Greek text omitted] figures
+kneaded of clay, as Aristophanes says in the Birds.  Pund-jel made
+two clay images of men, and danced round them.  "He made their
+hair--one had straight, one curly hair--of bark.  He danced round
+them.  He lay on them, and breathed his breath into their mouths,
+noses and navels, and danced round them.  Then they arose full-
+grown young men."  Some blacks seeing a brickmaker at work on a
+bridge over the Yarra exclaimed, "Like 'em that Pund-jel make 'em
+Koolin".  But other blacks prefer to believe that, as Pindar puts
+the Phrygian legend, the sun saw men growing like trees.
+
+
+[1] Bleek, Brief Account of Bushman Mythology, p. 6; Cape Monthly
+Magazine, July, 1874, pp. 1-13; Kamilaroi and Kurnai, pp. 210, 324.
+
+[2] Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 210.
+
+[3] Brough Smyth, Natives of Victoria, vol. i. p. 423.
+
+
+The first man was formed out of the gum of a wattle-tree, and came
+out of the knot of a wattle-tree.  He then entered into a young
+woman (though he was the first man) and was born.[1]  The Encounter
+Bay people have another myth, which might have been attributed by
+Dean Swift to the Yahoos, so foul an origin does it allot to
+mankind.
+
+
+[1] Meyer, Aborigines of Encounter Bay.  See, later, "Gods of the
+Lowest Races".
+
+
+Australian myths of creation are by no means exclusive of a
+hypothesis of evolution.  Thus the Dieyrie, whose notions Mr. Gason
+has recorded, hold a very mixed view.  They aver that "the good
+spirit" Moora-Moora made a number of small black lizards, liked
+them, and promised them dominion.  He divided their feet into toes
+and fingers, gave them noses and lips, and set them upright.  Down
+they fell, and Moora-Moora cut off their tails.  Then they walked
+erect and were men.[1]  The conclusion of the adventures of one
+Australian creator is melancholy.  He has ceased to dwell among
+mortals whom he watches and inspires.  The Jay possessed many bags
+full of wind; he opened them, and Pund-jel was carried up by the
+blast into the heavens.  But this event did not occur before Pund-
+jel had taught men and women the essential arts of life.  He had
+shown the former how to spear kangaroos, he still exists and
+inspires poets.  From the cosmogonic myths of Australia (the
+character of some of which is in contradiction with the higher
+religious belief of the people to be later described) we may turn,
+without reaching a race of much higher civilisation, to the
+dwellers in the Andaman Islands and their opinions about the origin
+of things.
+
+
+[1] Gason's Dieyries, ap. Native Tribes of South Australia, p. 20.
+
+
+The Andaman Islands, in the Bay of Bengal, are remote from any
+shores, and are protected from foreign influences by dangerous
+coral reefs, and by the reputed ferocity and cannibalism of the
+natives.  These are Negritos, and are commonly spoken of as most
+abject savages.  They are not, however, without distinctions of
+rank; they are clean, modest, moral after marriage, and most strict
+in the observance of prohibited degrees.  Unlike the Australians,
+they use bows and arrows, but are said to be incapable of striking
+a light, and, at all events, find the process so difficult that,
+like the Australians and the farmer in the Odyssey,[1] they are
+compelled "to hoard the seeds of fire".  Their mythology contains
+explanations of the origin of men and animals, and of their own
+customs and language.
+
+
+[1] Odyssey, v. 490.
+
+
+The Andamanese, long spoken of as "godless," owe much to Mr. Man,
+an English official, who has made a most careful study of their
+beliefs.[1]  So extraordinary is the contradiction between the
+relative purity and morality of the RELIGION and the savagery of
+the myths of the Andamanese, that, in the first edition of this
+work, I insisted that the "spiritual god" of the faith must have
+been "borrowed from the same quarter as the stone house" in which
+he is mythically said to live.  But later and wider study, and
+fresh information from various quarters, have convinced me that the
+relative purity of Andamanese religion, with its ethical sanction
+of conduct, may well be, and probably is, a natural unborrowed
+development.  It is easy for MYTH to borrow the notion of a stone
+house from our recent settlement at Port Blair.  But it would not
+be easy for RELIGION to borrow many new ideas from an alien creed,
+in a very few years, while the noted ferocity of the islanders
+towards strangers, and the inaccessibility of their abode, makes
+earlier borrowing, on a large scale at least, highly improbable.
+The Andamanese god, Puluga, is "like fire" but invisible, unborn
+and immortal, knowing and punishing or rewarding, men's deeds, even
+"the thoughts of their hearts".  But when once mythical fancy plays
+round him, and stories are told about him, he is credited with a
+wife who is an eel or a shrimp, just as Zeus made love as an ant or
+a cuckoo.  Puluga was the maker of men; no particular myth as to
+how he made them is given.  They tried to kill him, after the
+deluge (of which a grotesque myth is told), but he replied that he
+was "as hard as wood".  His legend is in the usual mythical
+contradiction with the higher elements in his religion.
+
+
+[1] Journ. Anthrop. Soc., vol. xii. p. 157 et seq.
+
+
+Leaving the Andaman islanders, but still studying races in the
+lowest degree of civilisation, we come to the Bushmen of South
+Africa.  This very curious and interesting people, far inferior in
+material equipment to the Hottentots, is sometimes regarded as a
+branch of that race.[1]  The Hottentots call themselves "Khoi-
+khoi," the Bushmen they style "Sa".  The poor Sa lead the life of
+pariahs, and are hated and chased by all other natives of South
+Africa.  They are hunters and diggers for roots, while the
+Hottentots, perhaps their kinsmen, are cattle-breeders.[2]  Being
+so ill-nourished, the Bushmen are very small, but sturdy.  They
+dwell in, or rather wander through, countries which have been
+touched by some ancient civilisation, as is proved by the
+mysterious mines and roads of Mashonaland.  It is singular that the
+Bushmen possess a tradition according to which they could once
+"make stone things that flew over rivers".  They have remarkable
+artistic powers, and their drawings of men and animals on the walls
+of caves are often not inferior to the designs on early Greek
+vases.[3]
+
+
+[1] See "Divine Myths of the Lower Races".
+
+[2] Hahu, Tsuni Goam, p. 4.  See other accounts in Waitz,
+Anthropologie, ii. 328.
+
+[3] Custom and Myth, where illustrations of Bushman art are given,
+pp. 290-295.
+
+
+Thus we must regard the Bushmen as possibly degenerated from a
+higher status, though there is nothing (except perhaps the
+tradition about bridge-making) to show that it was more exalted
+than that of their more prosperous neighbours, the Hottentots.  The
+myths of the Bushmen, however, are almost on the lowest known
+level.  A very good and authentic example of Bushman cosmogonic
+myth was given to Mr. Orpen, chief magistrate of St. John's
+territory, by Qing, King Nqusha's huntsman.  Qing "had never seen a
+white man, but in fighting," till he became acquainted with Mr.
+Orpen.[1]  The chief force in Bushmen myth is by Dr. Bleek
+identified with the mantis, a sort of large grasshopper.  Though he
+seems at least as "chimerical a beast" as the Aryan creative boar,
+the "mighty big hare" of the Algonkins, the large spider who made
+the world in the opinion of the Gold Coast people, or the eagle of
+the Australians, yet the insect (if insect he be), like the others,
+has achieved moral qualities and is addressed in prayer.  In his
+religious aspect he is nothing less than a grasshopper.  He is
+called Cagn.  "Cagn made all things and we pray to him," said Qing.
+"Coti is the wife of Cagn."  Qing did not know where they came
+from; "perhaps with the men who brought the sun".  The fact is,
+Qing "did not dance that dance," that is, was not one of the
+Bushmen initiated into the more esoteric mysteries of Cagn.  Till
+we, too, are initiated, we can know very little of Cagn in his
+religious aspect.  Among the Bushmen, as among the Greeks, there is
+"no religious mystery without dancing".  Qing was not very
+consistent.  He said Cagn gave orders and caused all things to
+appear and to be made, sun, moon, stars, wind, mountains, animals,
+and this, of course, is a lofty theory of creation.  Elsewhere myth
+avers that Cagn did not so much create as manufacture the objects
+in nature.  In his early day "the snakes were also men". Cagn
+struck snakes with his staff and turned them into men, as Zeus, in
+the Aeginetan myth, did with ants.  He also turned offending men
+into baboons.  In Bushman myth, little as we really know of it, we
+see the usual opposition of fable and faith, a kind creator in
+religion is apparently a magician in myth.
+
+
+[1] Cape Monthly Magazine, July, 1874.
+
+
+Neighbours of the Bushmen, but more fortunate in their wealth of
+sheep and cattle, are the Ovaherero.  The myths of the Ovaherero, a
+tribe dwelling in a part of Hereraland "which had not yet been
+under the influence of civilisation and Christianity," have been
+studied by the Rev. H. Reiderbecke, missionary at Otyozondyupa.
+The Ovaherero, he says, have a kind of tree Ygdrasil, a tree out of
+which men are born, and this plays a great part in their myth of
+creation.  The tree, which still exists, though at a great age, is
+called the Omumborombonga tree.  Out of it came, in the beginning,
+the first man and woman.  Oxen stepped forth from it too, but
+baboons, as Caliban says of the stars, "came otherwise," and sheep
+and goats sprang from a flat rock.  Black people are so coloured,
+according to the Ovaherero, because when the first parents emerged
+from the tree and slew an ox, the ancestress of the blacks
+appropriated the black liver of the victim.  The Ovakuru Meyuru or
+"OLD ONES in heaven," once let the skies down with a run, but drew
+them up again (as the gods of the Satapatha Brahmana drew the sun)
+when most of mankind had been drowned.[1]  The remnant pacified the
+OLD ONES (as Odysseus did the spirits of the dead) by the sacrifice
+of a BLACK ewe, a practice still used to appease ghosts by the
+Ovaherero.  The neighbouring Omnambo ascribe the creation of man to
+Kalunga, who came out of the earth, and made the first three
+sheep.[2]
+
+
+[1] An example of a Deluge myth in Africa, where M. Lenormant found
+none.
+
+[2] South African Folk-Lore Journal, ii. pt. v. p. 95.
+
+
+Among the Namaquas, an African people on the same level of nomadic
+culture as the Ovaherero, a divine or heroic early being called
+Heitsi Eibib had a good deal to do with the origin of things.  If
+he did not exactly make the animals, he impressed on them their
+characters, and their habits (like those of the serpent in Genesis)
+are said to have been conferred by a curse, the curse of Heitsi
+Eibib.  A precisely similar notion was found by Avila among the
+Indians of Huarochiri, whose divine culture-hero imposed, by a
+curse or a blessing, their character and habits on the beasts.[1]
+The lion used to live in a nest up a tree till Heitsi Eibib cursed
+him and bade him walk on the ground.  He also cursed the hare, "and
+the hare ran away, and is still running".[2]  The name of the first
+man is given as Eichaknanabiseb (with a multitude of "clicks"), and
+he is said to have met all the animals on a flat rock, and played a
+game with them for copper beads.  The rainbow was made by Gaunab,
+who is generally a malevolent being, of whom more hereafter.
+
+
+[1] Fables of Yncas (Hakluyt Society), p. 127.
+
+[2] Tsuni Goam, pp. 66, 67.
+
+
+Leaving these African races, which, whatever their relative degrees
+of culture, are physically somewhat contemptible, we reach their
+northern neighbours, the Zulus.  They are among the finest, and
+certainly among the least religious, of the undeveloped peoples.
+Their faith is mainly in magic and ghosts, but there are traces of
+a fading and loftier belief.
+
+The social and political condition of the Zulu is well understood.
+They are a pastoral, but not a nomadic people, possessing large
+kraals or towns.  They practise agriculture, and they had, till
+quite recently, a centralised government and a large army, somewhat
+on the German system.  They appear to have no regular class of
+priests, and supernatural power is owned by the chiefs and the
+king, and by diviners and sorcerers, who conduct the sacrifices.
+Their myths are the more interesting because, whether from their
+natural scepticism, which confuted Bishop Colenso in his orthodox
+days, or from acquaintance with European ideas, they have begun to
+doubt the truth of their own traditions.[1]  The Zulu theory of the
+origin of man and of the world commences with the feats of
+Unkulunkulu, "the old, old one," who, in some legends, was the
+first man, "and broke off in the beginning".  Like Manabozho among
+the Indians of North America, and like Wainamoinen among the Finns,
+Unkulunkulu imparted to men a knowledge of the arts, of marriage,
+and so forth.  His exploits in this direction, however, must be
+considered in another part of this work.  Men in general "came out
+of a bed of reeds".[2]  But there is much confusion about this bed
+of reeds, named "Uthlanga".  The younger people ask where the bed
+of reeds was; the old men do not know, and neither did their
+fathers know.  But they stick to it that "that bed of reeds still
+exists".  Educated Zulus appear somewhat inclined to take the
+expression in an allegorical sense, and to understand the reeds
+either as a kind of protoplasm or as a creator who was mortal.  "He
+exists no longer.  As my grandfather no longer exists, he too no
+longer exists; he died."  Chiefs who wish to claim high descent
+trace their pedigree to Uthlanga, as the Homeric kings traced
+theirs to Zeus.  The myths given by Dr. Callaway are very
+contradictory.
+
+
+[1] These legends have been carefully collected and published by
+Bishop Callaway (Trubner & Co., 1868).
+
+[2] Callaway, p. 9.
+
+
+In addition to the legend that men came out of a bed of reeds,
+other and perhaps even more puerile stories are current.  "Some men
+say that they were belched up by a cow;" others "that Unkulunkulu
+split them out of a stone,"[1] which recalls the legend of Pyrrha
+and Deucalion.  The myth about the cow is still applied to great
+chiefs.  "He was not born; he was belched up by a cow."  The myth
+of the stone origin corresponds to the Homeric saying about men
+"born from the stone or the oak of the old tale".[2]
+
+
+[1] Without anticipating a later chapter, the resemblances of these
+to Greek myths, as arrayed by M. Bouche Leclercq (De Origine
+Generis Humani), is very striking.
+
+[2] Odyssey, xix. 103.
+
+
+In addition to the theory of the natal bed of reeds, the Zulus,
+like the Navajoes of New Mexico, and the Bushmen, believe in the
+subterranean origin of man.  There was a succession of emigrations
+from below of different tribes of men, each having its own
+Unkulunkulu.  All accounts agree that Unkulunkulu is not
+worshipped, and he does not seem to be identified with "the lord
+who plays in heaven"--a kind of fading Zeus--when there is thunder.
+Unkulunkulu is not worshipped, though ancestral spirits are
+worshipped, because he lived so long ago that no one can now trace
+his pedigree to the being who is at once the first man and the
+creator.  His "honour-giving name is lost in the lapse of years,
+and the family rites have become obsolete."[1]
+
+
+[1] See Zulu religion in The Making of Religion, pp. 225-229, where
+it is argued that ghost worship has superseded a higher faith, of
+which traces are discernible.
+
+
+The native races of the North American continent (concerning whose
+civilisation more will be said in the account of their divine
+myths) occupy every stage of culture, from the truly bestial
+condition in which some of the Digger Indians at present exist,
+living on insects and unacquainted even with the use of the bow, to
+the civilisation which the Spaniards destroyed among the Aztecs.
+
+The original facts about religion in America are much disputed, and
+will be more appropriately treated later.  It is now very usual for
+anthropologists to say, like Mr. Dorman, "no approach to
+monotheismn had been made before the discovery of America by
+Europeans, and the Great Spirit mentioned in these (their) books is
+an introduction by Christianity".[1]  "This view will not bear
+examination," says Mr. Tylor, and we shall later demonstrate the
+accuracy of his remark.[2]  But at present we are concerned, not
+with what Indian religion had to say about her Gods, but with what
+Indian myth had to tell about the beginnings of things.
+
+
+[1] Origin of Primitive Superstitions, p. 15.
+
+[2] Primitive Culture, 1873, ii. p. 340.
+
+
+The Hurons, for example (to choose a people in a state of middle
+barbarism), start in myth from the usual conception of a powerful
+non-natural race of men dwelling in the heavens, whence they
+descended, and colonised, not to say constructed, the earth.  In
+the Relation de la Nouvelle France, written by Pere Paul le Jeune,
+of the Company of Jesus, in 1636, there is a very full account of
+Huron opinion, which, with some changes of names, exists among the
+other branches of the Algonkin family of Indians.
+
+They recognise as the founder of their kindred a woman named
+Ataentsic, who, like Hephaestus in the Iliad, was banished from the
+sky.  In the upper world there are woods and plains, as on earth.
+Ataentsic fell down a hole when she was hunting a bear, or she cut
+down a heaven-tree, and fell with the fall of this Huron Ygdrasil,
+or she was seduced by an adventurer from the under world, and was
+tossed out of heaven for her fault.  However it chanced, she
+dropped on the back of the turtle in the midst of the waters.  He
+consulted the other aquatic animals, and one of them, generally
+said to have been the musk-rat, fished[1] up some soil and
+fashioned the earth.[2]  Here Ataentsic gave birth to twins,
+Ioskeha and Tawiscara.  These represent the usual dualism of myth;
+they answer to Osiris and Set, to Ormuzd and Ahriman, and were
+bitter enemies.  According to one form of the myth, the woman of
+the sky had twins, and what occurred may be quoted from Dr.
+Brinton.  "Even before birth one of them betrayed his restless and
+evil nature by refusing to be born in the usual manner, but
+insisting on breaking through his parent's side or arm-pit.  He did
+so, but it cost his mother her life.  Her body was buried, and from
+it sprang the various vegetable productions," pumpkins, maize,
+beans, and so forth.[3]
+
+
+[1] Relations, 1633.  In this myth one Messon, the Great Hare, is
+the beginner of our race.  He married a daughter of the Musk-rat.
+
+[2] Here we first meet in this investigation a very widely
+distributed myth.  The myths already examined have taken the origin
+of earth for granted.  The Hurons account for its origin; a speck
+of earth was fished out of the waters and grew.  In M. H. de
+Charencey's tract Une Legende Cosmogonique (Havre, 1884) this
+legend is traced.  M. de Charencey distinguishes (1) a continental
+version; (2) an insular version; (3) a mixed and Hindoo version.
+Among continental variants he gives a Vogul version (Revue de
+Philologie et d'Ethnographie, Paris, 1874, i. 10).  Numi Tarom (a
+god who cooks fish in heaven) hangs a male and female above the
+abyss of waters in a silver cradle.  He gives them, later, just
+earth enough to build a house on.  Their son, in the guise of a
+squirrel, climbs to Numi Tarom, and receives from him a duck-skin
+and a goose-skin.  Clad in these, like Yehl in his raven-skin or
+Odin in his hawk-skin, he enjoys the powers of the animals, dives
+and brings up three handfuls of mud, which grow into our earth.
+Elempi makes men out of clay and snow.  The American version M. de
+Charencey gives from Nicholas Perrot (Mem. sur les Moers, etc.,
+Paris, 1864, i. 3).  Perrot was a traveller of the seventeenth
+century.  The Great Hare takes a hand in the making of earth out of
+fished-up soil.  After giving other North American variants, and
+comparing the animals that, after three attempts, fish up earth to
+the dove and raven of Noah, M. de Charencey reaches the Bulgarians.
+God made Satan, in the skin of a diver, fish up earth out of Lake
+Tiberias.  Three doves fish up earth, in the beginning, in the
+Galician popular legend (Chodzko, Contes des Paysans Slaves, p.
+374).  In the INSULAR version, as in New Zealand, the island is
+usually fished up with a hook by a heroic angler (Japan, Tonga,
+Tahiti, New Zealand).  The Hindoo version, in which the boar plays
+the part of musk-rat, or duck, or diver, will be given in "Indian
+Cosmogonic Myths".
+
+[3] Brinton, American Hero-Myths, p. 54.  Nicholas Perrot and
+various Jesuit Relations are the original authorities.  See "Divine
+Myths of America".  Mr. Leland, in his Algonkin Tales, prints the
+same story, with the names altered to Glooskap and Malsumis, from
+oral tradition.  Compare Schoolcraft, v. 155, and i. 317, and the
+versions of PP. Charlevoix and Lafitau.  In Charlevoix the good and
+bad brothers are Manabozho and Chokanipok or Chakekanapok, and out
+of the bones and entrails of the latter many plants and animals
+were fashioned, just as, according to a Greek myth preserved by
+Clemens Alexandrinus, parsley and pomegranates arose from the blood
+and scattered members of Dionysus Zagreus.  The tale of Tawiscara's
+violent birth is told of Set in Egypt, and of Indra in the Veda, as
+will be shown later.  This is a very common fable, and, as Mr.
+Whitley Stokes tells me, it recurs in old Irish legends of the
+birth of our Lord, Myth, as usual, invading religion, even
+Christian religion.
+
+
+According to another version of the origin of things, the maker of
+them was one Michabous, or Michabo, the Great Hare.  His birthplace
+was shown at an island called Michilimakinak, like the birthplace
+of Apollo at Delos.  The Great Hare made the earth, and, as will
+afterwards appear, was the inventor of the arts of life.  On the
+whole, the Iroquois and Algonkin myths agree in finding the origin
+of life in an upper world beyond the sky.  The earth was either
+fished up (as by Brahma when he dived in the shape of a boar) by
+some beast which descended to the bottom of the waters, or grew out
+of the tortoise on whose back Ataentsic fell.  The first dwellers
+in the world were either beasts like Manabozho or Michabo, the
+Great Hare, or the primeval wolves of the Uinkarets,[1] or the
+creative musk-rat, or were more anthropomorphic heroes, such as
+Ioskeha and Tawiscara.  As for the things in the world, some were
+made, some evolved, some are transformed parts of an early non-
+natural man or animal.  There is a tendency to identify Ataentsic,
+the sky-woman, with the moon, and in the Two Great Brethren,
+hostile as they are, to recognise moon and sun.[2]
+
+
+[1] Powell, Bureau of Ethnology, i. 44.
+
+[2] Dr. Brinton has endeavoured to demonstrate by arguments drawn
+from etymology that Michabos, Messou, Missibizi or Manabozho, the
+Great Hare, is originally a personification of Dawn (Myths of the
+New World, p. 178).  I have examined his arguments in the
+Nineteenth Century, January, 1886, which may be consulted, and in
+Melusine, January, 1887.  The hare appears to be one out of the
+countless primeval beast-culture heroes.  A curious piece of magic
+in a tradition of the Dene Hareskins may seem to aid Dr. Brinton's
+theory: Pendant la nuit il entra, jeta au feu une tete de lievre
+blanc et aussitot le jour se fit".--Petitot, Traditions Indiennes,
+p. 173.  But I take it that the sacrifice of a white hare's head
+makes light magically, as sacrifice of black beasts and columns of
+black smoke make rainclouds.
+
+
+Some of the degraded Digger Indians of California have the
+following myth of the origin of species.  In this legend, it will
+be noticed, a species of evolution takes the place of a theory of
+creation.  The story was told to Mr. Adam Johnston, who "drew" the
+narrator by communicating to a chief the Biblical narrative of the
+creation.[1]  The chief said it was a strange story, and one that
+he had never heard when he lived at the Mission of St. John under
+the care of a Padre.  According to this chief (he ruled over the
+Po-to-yan-te tribe or Coyotes), the first Indians were coyotes.
+When one of their number died, his body became full of little
+animals or spirits.  They took various shapes, as of deer,
+antelopes, and so forth; but as some exhibited a tendency to fly
+off to the moon, the Po-to-yan-tes now usually bury the bodies of
+their dead, to prevent the extinction of species.  Then the Indians
+began to assume the shape of man, but it was a slow transformation.
+At first they walked on all fours, then they would begin to develop
+an isolated human feature, one finger, one toe, one eye, like the
+ascidian, our first parent in the view of modern science.  Then
+they doubled their organs, got into the habit of sitting up, and
+wore away their tails, which they unaffectedly regret, "as they
+consider the tail quite an ornament".  Ideas of the immortality of
+the soul are said to be confined to the old women of the tribe,
+and, in short, according to this version, the Digger Indians occupy
+the modern scientific position.
+
+
+[1] Schoolcraft, vol. v.
+
+
+The Winnebagoes, who communicated their myths to Mr. Fletcher,[1]
+are suspected of having been influenced by the Biblical narrative.
+They say that the Great Spirit woke up as from a dream, and found
+himself sitting in a chair.  As he was all alone, he took a piece
+of his body and a piece of earth, and made a man.  He next made a
+woman, steadied the earth by placing beasts beneath it at the
+corners, and created plants and animals.  Other men he made out of
+bears.  "He created the white man to make tools for the poor
+Indians"--a very pleasing example of a teleological hypothesis and
+of the doctrine of final causes as understood by the Winnebagoes.
+The Chaldean myth of the making of man is recalled by the legend
+that the Great Spirit cut out a piece of himself for the purpose;
+the Chaldean wisdom coincides, too, with the philosophical acumen
+of the Po-to-yan-te or Coyote tribe of Digger Indians.  Though the
+Chaldean theory is only connected with that of the Red Men by its
+savagery, we may briefly state it in this place.
+
+
+[1] Ibid., iv. 228.
+
+
+According to Berosus, as reported by Alexander Polyhistor, the
+universe was originally (as before Manabozho's time) water and mud.
+Herein all manner of mixed monsters, with human heads, goat's
+horns, four legs, and tails, bred confusedly.  In place of the
+Iroquois Ataentsic, a woman called Omoroca presided over the mud
+and the menagerie.  She, too, like Ataentsic, is sometimes
+recognised as the moon.  Affairs being in this state, Bel-Maruduk
+arrived and cut Omoroca in two (Chokanipok destroyed Ataentsic),
+and out of Omoroca Bel made the world and the things in it.  We
+have already seen that in savage myth many things are fashioned out
+of a dead member of the extra-natural race.  Lastly, Bel cut his
+own head off, and with the blood the gods mixed clay and made men.
+The Chaldeans inherited very savage fancies.[1]
+
+
+[1] Cf. Syncellus, p. 29; Euseb., Chronic. Armen., ed. Mai, p. 10;
+Lenormant, Origines de l'Histoire, i. 506.
+
+
+One ought, perhaps, to apologise to the Chaldeans for inserting
+their myths among the fables of the least cultivated peoples; but
+it will scarcely be maintained that the Oriental myths differ in
+character from the Digger Indian and Iroquois explanations of the
+origin of things.  The Ahts of Vancouver Island, whom Mr. Sproat
+knew intimately, and of whose ideas he gives a cautious account
+(for he was well aware of the limits of his knowledge), tell a
+story of the usual character.[1]  They believe in a member of the
+extra-natural race, named Quawteaht, of whom we shall hear more in
+his heroic character.  As a demiurge "he is undoubtedly represented
+as the general framer, I do not say creator, of all things, though
+some special things are excepted.  He made the earth and water, the
+trees and rocks, and all the animals.  Some say that Quawteaht made
+the sun and moon, but the majority of the Indians believe that he
+had nothing to do with their formation, and that they are deities
+superior to himself, though now distant and less active.  He gave
+names to everything; among the rest, to all the Indian houses which
+then existed, although inhabited only by birds and animals.
+Quawteaht went away before the apparent change of the birds and
+beasts into Indians, which took place in the following manner:--
+
+"The birds and beasts of old had the spirits of the Indians
+dwelling in them, and occupied the various coast villages, as the
+Ahts do at present.  One day a canoe manned by two Indians from an
+unknown country approached the shore.  As they coasted along, at
+each house at which they landed, the deer, bear, elk, and other
+brute inhabitants fled to the mountains, and the geese and other
+birds flew to the woods and rivers.  But in this flight, the
+Indians, who had hitherto been contained in the bodies of the
+various creatures, were left behind, and from that time they took
+possession of the deserted dwellings and assumed the condition in
+which we now see them."
+
+
+[1] Sproat, Scenes and Studies of Savage Life, pp. 210, 211.
+
+
+Crossing the northern continent of America to the west, we are in
+the domains of various animal culture-heroes, ancestors and
+teachers of the human race and the makers, to some extent, of the
+things in the world.  As the eastern tribes have their Great Hare,
+so the western tribes have their wolf hero and progenitor, or their
+coyote, or their raven, or their dog.  It is possible, and even
+certain in some cases, that the animal which was the dominant totem
+of a race became heir to any cosmogonic legends that were floating
+about.
+
+The country of the Papagos, on the eastern side of the Gulf of
+California, is the southern boundary of the province of the coyote
+or prairie wolf.  The realm of his influence as a kind of
+Prometheus, or even as a demiurge, extends very far northwards.  In
+the myth related by Con Quien, the chief of the central Papagos,[1]
+the coyote acts the part of the fish in the Sanskrit legend of the
+flood, while Montezuma undertakes the role of Manu.  This Montezuma
+was formed, like the Adams of so many races, out of potter's clay
+in the hands of the Great Spirit.  In all this legend it seems
+plain enough that the name of Montezuma is imported from Mexico,
+and has been arbitrarily given to the hero of the Papagos.
+According to Mr. Powers, whose manuscript notes Mr. Bancroft quotes
+(iii. 87), all the natives of California believe that their first
+ancestors were created directly from the earth of their present
+dwelling-places, and in very many cases these ancestors were
+coyotes.
+
+
+[1] Davidson, Indian Affairs Report, 1865, p. 131; Bancroft, iii.
+75.
+
+
+The Pimas, a race who live near the Papagos on the eastern coast of
+the Gulf of California, say that the earth was made by a being
+named Earth-prophet.  At first it appeared like a spider's web,
+reminding one of the West African legend that a great spider
+created the world.  Man was made by the Earth-prophet out of clay
+kneaded with sweat.  A mysterious eagle and a deluge play a great
+part in the later mythical adventures of war and the world, as
+known to the Pimas.[1]
+
+
+[1] Communicated to Mr. Bancroft by Mr. Stout of the Pima Agency.
+
+
+In Oregon the coyote appears as a somewhat tentative demiurge, and
+the men of his creation, like the beings first formed by Prajapati
+in the Sanskrit myth, needed to be reviewed, corrected and
+considerably augmented.  The Chinooks of Oregon believe in the
+usual race of magnified non-natural men, who preceded humanity.
+
+These semi-divine people were called Ulhaipa by the Chinooks, and
+Sehuiab by the Lummies.  But the coyote was the maker of men.  As
+the first of Nature's journeymen, he made men rather badly, with
+closed eyes and motionless feet.  A kind being, named Ikanam,
+touched up the coyote's crude essays with a sharp stone, opening
+the eyes of men, and giving their hands and feet the powers of
+movement.  He also acted as a "culture-hero," introducing the first
+arts. [1]
+
+
+[1] [Frauchere's Narrative, 258; Gibb's Chinook Vocabulary;
+Parker's exploring Tour, i. 139;] Bancroft, iii. 96.
+
+
+Moving up the West Pacific coast we reach British Columbia, where
+the coyote is not supposed to have been so active as our old friend
+the musk-rat in the great work of the creation.  According to the
+Tacullies, nothing existed in the beginning but water and a musk-
+rat.  As the animal sought his food at the bottom of the water, his
+mouth was frequently filled with mud.  This he spat out, and so
+gradually formed by alluvial deposit an island.  This island was
+small at first, like earth in the Sanskrit myth in the Satapatha
+Brahmana, but gradually increased in bulk. The Tacullies have no
+new light to throw on the origin of man.[1]
+
+
+[1] Bancroft, iii. 98; Harmon's Journey, pp. 302, 303.
+
+
+The Thlinkeets, who are neighbours of the Tacullies on the north,
+incline to give crow or raven the chief role in the task of
+creation, just as some Australians allot the same part to the
+eagle-hawk, and the Yakuts to a hawk, a crow and a teal-duck.  We
+shall hear much of Yehl later, as one of the mythical heroes of the
+introduction of civilisation.  North of the Thlinkeets, a bird and
+a dog take the creative duties, the Aleuts and Koniagas being
+descended from a dog.  Among the more northern Tinnehs, the dog who
+was the progenitor of the race had the power of assuming the shape
+of a handsome young man.  He supplied the protoplasm of the
+Tinnehs, as Purusha did that of the Aryan world, out of his own
+body.  A giant tore him to pieces, as the gods tore Purusha, and
+out of the fragments thrown into the rivers came fish, the
+fragments tossed into the air took life as birds, and so forth.[1]
+This recalls the Australian myth of the origin of fish and the
+Ananzi stories of the origin of whips.[2]
+
+
+[1] Hearne, pp. 342, 343; Bancroft, iii. 106.
+
+[2] See "Divine Myths of Lower Races".  M. Cosquin, in Contes de
+Lorraine, vol. i. p. 58, gives the Ananzi story.
+
+
+Between the cosmogonic myths of the barbarous or savage American
+tribes and those of the great cultivated American peoples, Aztecs,
+Peruvians and Quiches, place should be found for the legends of
+certain races in the South Pacific.  Of these, the most important
+are the Maoris or natives of New Zealand, the Mangaians and the
+Samoans.  Beyond the usual and world-wide correspondences of myth,
+the divine tales of the various South Sea isles display
+resemblances so many and essential that they must be supposed to
+spring from a common and probably not very distant centre.  As it
+is practically impossible to separate Maori myths of the making of
+things from Maori myths of the gods and their origin, we must pass
+over here the metaphysical hymns and stories of the original divine
+beings, Rangi and Papa, Heaven and Earth, and of their cruel but
+necessary divorce by their children, who then became the usual
+Titanic race which constructs and "airs" the world for the
+reception of man.[1]  Among these beings, more fully described in
+our chapter on the gods of the lower races, is Tiki, with his wife
+Marikoriko, twilight.  Tane (male) is another of the primordial
+race, children of earth and heaven, and between him and Tiki lies
+the credit of having made or begotten humanity.  Tane adorned the
+body of his father, heaven (Rangi), by sticking stars all over it,
+as disks of pearl-shells are stuck all over images.  He was the
+parent of trees and birds, but some trees are original and divine
+beings.  The first woman was not born, but formed out of the sun
+and the echo, a pretty myth.  Man was made by Tiki, who took red
+clay, and kneaded it with his own blood, or with the red water of
+swamps.  The habits of animals, some of which are gods, while
+others are descended from gods, follow from their conduct at the
+moment when heaven and earth were violently divorced.  New Zealand
+itself, or at least one of the isles, was a huge fish caught by
+Maui (of whom more hereafter).  Just as Pund-jel, in Australia, cut
+out the gullies and vales with his knife, so the mountains and
+dells of New Zealand were produced by the knives of Maui's brothers
+when they crimped his big fish.[2]  Quite apart from those childish
+ideas are the astonishing metaphysical hymns about the first
+stirrings of light in darkness, of "becoming" and "being," which
+remind us of Hegel and Heraclitus, or of the most purely
+speculative ideas in the Rig-Veda.[3]  Scarcely less metaphysical
+are the myths of Mangaia, of which Mr. Gill[4] gives an elaborate
+account.
+
+
+[1] See "Divine Myths of Lower Races".
+
+[2] Taylor, New Zealand, pp. 115-121; Bastian, Heilige Sage der
+Polynesier, pp. 36-50; Shortland, Traditions of New Zealanders.
+
+[3] See chapter on "Divine Myths of the Lower Races," and on "Indian
+Cosmogonic Myths"
+
+[4] Myths and Songs from the South Pacific, pp. 1-22.
+
+
+The Mangaian ideas of the world are complex, and of an early
+scientific sort.  The universe is like the hollow of a vast cocoa-
+nut shell, divided into many imaginary circles like those of
+mediaeval speculation.  There is a demon at the stem, as it were,
+of the cocoa-nut, and, where the edges of the imaginary shell
+nearly meet, dwells a woman demon, whose name means "the very
+beginning".  In this system we observe efforts at metaphysics and
+physical speculation.  But it is very characteristic of rude
+thought that such extremely abstract conceptions as "the very
+beginning" are represented as possessing life and human form.  The
+woman at the bottom of the shell was anxious for progeny, and
+therefore plucked a bit out of her own right side, as Eve was made
+out of the rib of Adam.  This piece of flesh became Vatea, the
+father of gods and men.  Vatea (like Oannes in the Chaldean legend)
+was half man, half fish.  "The Very Beginning" begat other children
+in the same manner, and some of these became departmental gods of
+ocean, noon-day, and so forth.  Curiously enough, the Mangaians
+seem to be sticklers for primogeniture.  Vatea, as the first-born
+son, originally had his domain next above that of his mother.  But
+she was pained by the thought that his younger brothers each took a
+higher place than his; so she pushed his land up, and it is now
+next below the solid crust on which mortals live in Mangaia.  Vatea
+married a woman from one of the under worlds named Papa, and their
+children had the regular human form.  One child was born either
+from Papa's head, like Athene from the head of Zeus, or from her
+armpit, like Dionysus from the thigh of Zeus.  Another child may be
+said, in the language of dog-breeders, to have "thrown back," for
+he wears the form of a white or black lizard.  In the Mangaian
+system the sky is a solid vault of blue stone.  In the beginning of
+things the sky (like Ouranos in Greece and Rangi in New Zealand)
+pressed hard on earth, and the god Ru was obliged to thrust the two
+asunder, or rather he was engaged in this task when Maui tossed
+both Ru and the sky so high up that they never came down again.  Ru
+is now the Atlas of Mangaia, "the sky-supporting Ru".[1]  His lower
+limbs fell to earth, and became pumice-stone.  In these Mangaian
+myths we discern resemblances to New Zealand fictions, as is
+natural, and the tearing of the body of "the Very Beginning" has
+numerous counterparts in European, American and Indian fable.  But
+on the whole, the Mangaian myths are more remarkable for their
+semi-scientific philosophy than for their coincidences with the
+fancies of other early peoples.
+
+
+[1] Gill, p. 59.
+
+
+The Samoans, like the Maoris and Greeks, hold that heaven at first
+fell down and lay upon earth.[1]  The arrowroot and another plant
+pushed up heaven, and "the heaven-pushing place" is still known and
+pointed out.  Others say the god Ti-iti-i pushed up heaven, and his
+feet made holes six feet deep in the rocks during this exertion.
+The other Samoan myths chiefly explain the origin of fire, and the
+causes of the characteristic forms and habits of animals and
+plants.  The Samoans, too, possess a semi-mythical, metaphysical
+cosmogony, starting from NOTHING, but rapidly becoming the history
+of rocks, clouds, hills, dew and various animals, who intermarried,
+and to whom the royal family of Samoa trace their origin through
+twenty-three generations.  So personal are Samoan abstract
+conceptions, that "SPACE had a long-legged stool," on to which a
+head fell, and grew into a companion for Space.  Yet another myth
+says that the god Tangaloa existed in space, and made heaven and
+earth, and sent down his daughter, a snipe.  Man he made out of the
+mussel-fish.  So confused are the doctrines of the Samoans.[2]
+
+
+[1] Turner's Samoa, p. 198.
+
+[2] Turner's Samoa, pp. 1-9.
+
+
+Perhaps the cosmogonic myths of the less cultivated races have now
+been stated in sufficient number.  As an example of the ideas which
+prevailed in an American race of higher culture, we may take the
+Quiche legend as given in the Popol Vuh, a post-Christian
+collection of the sacred myths of the nation, written down after
+the Spanish conquest, and published in French by the Abbe Brasseur
+de Bourbourg.[1]
+
+
+[1] See Popol Vuh in Mr. Max Muller's Chips from a German Workshop,
+with a discussion of its authenticity.  In his Annals of the
+Cakchiquels, a nation bordering on the Quiches, Dr. Brinton
+expresses his belief in the genuine character of the text.  Compare
+Bancroft, iii. p. 45.  The ancient and original Popol Vuh, the
+native book in native characters, disappeared during the Spanish
+conquest.
+
+
+The Quiches, like their neighbours the Cakchiquels, were a highly
+civilised race, possessing well-built towns, roads and the arts of
+life, and were great agriculturists.  Maize, the staple of food
+among these advanced Americans, was almost as great a god as Soma
+among the Indo-Aryans.  The Quiches were acquainted with a kind of
+picture-writing, and possessed records in which myth glided into
+history.  The Popol Vuh, or book of the people, gives itself out as
+a post-Columbian copy of these traditions, and may doubtless
+contain European ideas.  As we see in the Commentarias Reales of
+the half-blood Inca Garcilasso de la Vega, the conquered people
+were anxious to prove that their beliefs were by no means so
+irrational and so "devilish" as to Spanish critics they appeared.
+According to the Popol Vuh, there was in the beginning nothing but
+water and the feathered serpent, one of their chief divine beings;
+but there also existed somehow, "they that gave life".  Their names
+mean "shooter of blow-pipe at coyote," "at opossum," and so forth.
+They said "Earth," and there WAS earth, and plants growing thereon.
+Animals followed, and the Givers of life said "Speak our names,"
+but the animals could only cluck and croak.  Then said the Givers,
+"Inasmuch as ye cannot praise us, ye shall be killed and eaten".
+They then made men out of clay; these men were weak and watery, and
+by water they were destroyed.  Next they made men of wood and women
+of the pith of trees.  These puppets married and gave in marriage,
+and peopled earth with wooden mannikins.  This unsatisfactory race
+was destroyed by a rain of resin and by the wild beasts.  The
+survivors developed into apes.  Next came a period occupied by the
+wildest feats of the magnified non-natural race and of animals.
+The record is like the description of a supernatural pantomime--the
+nightmare of a god.  The Titans upset hills, are turned into stone,
+and behave like Heitsi Eibib in the Namaqua myths.
+
+Last of all, men were made of yellow and white maize, and these
+gave more satisfaction, but their sight was contracted.  These,
+however, survived, and became the parents of the present stock of
+humanity.
+
+Here we have the conceptions of creation and of evolution combined.
+Men are MADE, but only the fittest survive; the rest are either
+destroyed or permitted to develop into lower species.  A similar
+mixture of the same ideas will be found in one of the Brahmanas
+among the Aryans of India.  It is to be observed that the Quiche
+myths, as recorded in Popol Vuh, contain not only traces of belief
+in a creative word and power, but many hymns of a lofty and
+beautifully devotional character.
+
+"Hail! O Creator, O Former!  Thou that hearest and understandest
+us, abandon us not, forsake us not!  O God, thou that art in heaven
+and on the earth, O Heart of Heaven, O Heart of Earth, give us
+descendants and posterity as long as the light endures."
+
+This is an example of the prayers of the men made out of maize,
+made especially that they might "call on the name" of the god or
+gods.  Whether we are to attribute this and similar passages to
+Christian influence (for Popol Vuh, as we have it, is but an
+attempt to collect the fragments of the lost book that remained in
+men's minds after the conquest), or whether the purer portions of
+the myth be due to untaught native reflection and piety, it is not
+possible to determine.  It is improbable that the ideas of a
+hostile race would be introduced into religious hymns by their
+victims.  Here, as elsewhere in the sacred legends of civilised
+peoples, various strata of mythical and religious thought coexist.
+
+No American people reached such a pitch of civilisation as the
+Aztecs of Anahuac, whose capital was the city of Mexico.  It is
+needless here to repeat the story of their grandeur and their fall.
+Obscure as their history, previous to the Spanish invasion, may be,
+it is certain that they possessed a highly organised society,
+fortified towns, established colleges or priesthoods, magnificent
+temples, an elaborate calendar, great wealth in the precious
+metals, the art of picture-writing in considerable perfection, and
+a despotic central government.  The higher classes in a society
+like this could not but develop speculative systems, and it is
+alleged that shortly before the reign of Montezuma attempts had
+been made to introduce a pure monotheistic religion.  But the
+ritual of the Aztecs remained an example of the utmost barbarity.
+Never was a more cruel faith, not even in Carthage.  Nowhere did
+temples reek with such pools of human blood; nowhere else, not in
+Dahomey and Ashanti, were human sacrifice, cannibalism and torture
+so essential to the cult that secured the favour of the gods.  In
+these dark fanes--reeking with gore, peopled by monstrous shapes of
+idols bird-headed or beast-headed, and adorned with the hideous
+carvings in which we still see the priest, under the mask of some
+less ravenous forest beast, tormenting the victim--in these
+abominable temples the Castilian conquerors might well believe that
+they saw the dwellings of devils.
+
+Yet Mexican religion had its moral and beautiful aspect, and the
+gods, or certain of the gods, required from their worshippers not
+only bloody hands, but clean hearts.
+
+To the gods we return later.  The myths of the origin of things may
+be studied without a knowledge of the whole Aztec Pantheon.  Our
+authorities, though numerous, lack complete originality and are
+occasionally confused.  We have first the Aztec monuments and
+hieroglyphic scrolls, for the most part undeciphered.  These merely
+attest the hideous and cruel character of the deities.  Next we
+have the reports of early missionaries, like Sahagun and Mendieta,
+of conquerors, like Bernal Diaz, and of noble half-breeds, such as
+Ixtlilxochitl.[1]
+
+
+[1] Bancroft's Native Races of Pacific Coast of North America, vol.
+iii., contains an account of the sources, and, with Sahagun and
+Acosta, is mainly followed here.  See also J. G. Muller, Ur.
+Amerik. Rel., p. 507.  See chapter on the "Divine Myths of Mexico".
+
+
+There are two elements in Mexican, as in Quiche, and Indo-Aryan,
+and Maori, and even Andaman cosmogonic myth.  We find the purer
+religion and the really philosophic speculation concurrent with
+such crude and childish stories as usually satisfy the intellectual
+demands of Ahts, Cahrocs and Bushmen; but of the purer and more
+speculative opinions we know little.  Many of the noble, learned
+and priestly classes of Aztecs perished at the conquest.  The
+survivors were more or less converted to Catholicism, and in their
+writings probably put the best face possible on the native
+religion.  Like the Spanish clergy, their instructors, they were
+inclined to explain away their national gods by a system of
+euhemerism, by taking it for granted that the gods and culture-
+heroes had originally been ordinary men, worshipped after their
+decease.  This is almost invariably the view adopted by Sahagun.
+Side by side with the confessions, as it were, of the clergy and
+cultivated classes coexisted the popular beliefs, the myths of the
+people, partaking of the nature of folk-lore, but not rejected by
+the priesthood.
+
+Both strata of belief are represented in the surviving cosmogonic
+myths of the Aztecs.  Probably we may reckon in the first or
+learned and speculative class of tales the account of a series of
+constructions and reconstructions of the world.  This idea is not
+peculiar to the higher mythologies, the notion of a deluge and
+recreation or renewal of things is almost universal, and even among
+the untutored Australians there are memories of a flood and of an
+age of ruinous winds.  But the theory of definite epochs,
+calculated in accordance with the Mexican calendar, of epochs in
+which things were made and re-made, answers closely to the Indo-
+Aryan conception of successive kalpas, and can only have been
+developed after the method of reckoning time had been carried to
+some perfection.  "When heaven and earth were fashioned, they had
+already been four times created and destroyed," say the fragments
+of what is called the Chimalpopoca manuscript.  Probably this
+theory of a series of kalpas is only one of the devices by which
+the human mind has tried to cheat itself into the belief that it
+can conceive a beginning of things.  The earth stands on an
+elephant, the elephant on a tortoise, and it is going too far to
+ask what the tortoise stands on.  In the same way the world's
+beginning seems to become more intelligible or less puzzling when
+it is thrown back into a series of beginnings and endings.  This
+method also was in harmony with those vague ideas of evolution and
+of the survival of the fittest which we have detected in myth.  The
+various tentative human races of the Popol Vuh degenerated or were
+destroyed because they did not fulfil the purposes for which they
+were made.  In Brahmanic myth we shall see that type after type was
+condemned and perished because it was inadequate, or inadequately
+equipped--because it did not harmonise with its environment.[1]
+For these series of experimental creations and inefficient
+evolutions vast spaces of time were required, according to the
+Aztec and Indo-Aryan philosophies.  It is not impossible that
+actual floods and great convulsions of nature may have been
+remembered in tradition, and may have lent colour and form to these
+somewhat philosophic myths of origins.  From such sources probably
+comes the Mexican hypothesis of a water-age (ending in a deluge),
+an earth-age (ending in an earthquake), a wind-age (ending in
+hurricanes), and the present dispensation, to be destroyed by fire.
+
+
+[1] As an example of a dim evolutionary idea, note the myths of the
+various ages as reported by Mendieta, according to which there were
+five earlier ages "or suns" of bad quality, so that the contemporary
+human beings were unable to live on the fruits of the earth.
+
+
+The less philosophic and more popular Aztec legend of the
+commencement of the world is mainly remarkable for the importance
+given in it to objects of stone.  For some reason, stones play a
+much greater part in American than in other mythologies.  An
+emerald was worshipped in the temple of Pachacamac, who was,
+according to Garcilasso, the supreme and spiritual deity of the
+Incas.  The creation legend of the Cakchiquels of Guatemala[1]
+makes much of a mysterious, primeval and animated obsidian stone.
+In the Iroquois myths[2] stones are the leading characters.  Nor
+did Aztec myth escape this influence.
+
+
+[1] Brinton, Annals of the Cakchiquels.
+
+[2] Erminie Smith, Bureau of Ethnol. Report, ii.
+
+
+There was a god in heaven named Citlalatonac, and a goddess,
+Citlalicue.  When we speak of "heaven" we must probably think of
+some such world of ordinary terrestrial nature above the sky as
+that from which Ataentsic fell in the Huron story.  The goddess
+gave birth to a flint-knife, and flung the flint down to earth.
+This abnormal birth partly answers to that of the youngest of the
+Adityas, the rejected abortion in the Veda, and to the similar
+birth and rejection of Maui in New Zealand.  From the fallen flint-
+knife sprang our old friends the magnified non-natural beings with
+human characteristics, "the gods," to the number of 1600.  The gods
+sent up the hawk (who in India and Australia generally comes to the
+front on these occasions), and asked their mother, or rather
+grandmother, to help them to make men, to be their servants.
+Citlalicue rather jeered at her unconsidered offspring.  She
+advised them to go to the lord of the homes of the departed,
+Mictlanteuctli, and borrow a bone or some ashes of the dead who are
+with him.  We must never ask for consistency from myths.  This
+statement implies that men had already been in existence, though
+they were not yet created.  Perhaps they had perished in one of the
+four great destructions.  With difficulty and danger the gods stole
+a bone from Hades, placed it in a bowl, and smeared it with their
+own blood, as in Chaldea and elsewhere.  Finally, a boy and a girl
+were born out of the bowl.  From this pair sprang men, and certain
+of the gods, jumping into a furnace, became sun and moon.  To the
+sun they then, in Aztec fashion, sacrificed themselves, and there,
+one might think, was an end of them.  But they afterwards appeared
+in wondrous fashions to their worshippers, and ordained the ritual
+of religion.  According to another legend, man and woman (as in
+African myths) struggled out of a hole in the ground.[1]
+
+
+[1] Authorities: Ixtlil.; Kingsborough, ix. pp. 205, 206; Sahagun,
+Hist. Gen., i. 3, vii. 2; J. G. Muller, p. 510, where Muller
+compares the Delphic conception of ages of the world; Bancroft,
+iii. pp. 60, 65.
+
+
+The myths of the peoples under the empire of the Incas in Peru are
+extremely interesting, because almost all mythical formations are
+found existing together, while we have historical evidence as to
+the order and manner of their development.  The Peru of the Incas
+covered the modern state of the same name, and included Ecuador,
+with parts of Chili and Bolivia.  M. Reville calculates that the
+empire was about 2500 miles in length, four times as long as
+France, and that its breadth was from 250 to 500 miles.  The
+country, contained three different climatic regions, and was
+peopled by races of many different degrees of culture, all more or
+less subject to the dominion of the Children of the Sun.  The three
+regions were the dry strip along the coast, the fertile and
+cultivated land about the spurs of the Cordilleras, and the inland
+mountain regions, inhabited by the wildest races.  Near Cuzco, the
+Inca capital, was the Lake of Titicaca, the Mediterranean, as it
+were, of Peru, for on the shores of this inland sea was developed
+the chief civilisation of the new world.
+
+As to the institutions, myths and religion of the empire, we have
+copious if contradictory information.  There are the narratives of
+the Spanish conquerors, especially of Pizarro's chaplain, Valverde,
+an ignorant bigoted fanatic.  Then we have somewhat later
+travellers and missionaries, of whom Cieza de Leon (his book was
+published thirty years after the conquest, in 1553) is one of the
+most trustworthy.  The "Royal Commentaries" of Garcilasso de la
+Vega, son of an Inca lady and a Spanish conqueror, have often
+already been quoted.  The critical spirit and sound sense of
+Garcilasso are in remarkable contrast to the stupid orthodoxy of
+the Spaniards, but some allowance must be made for his fervent
+Peruvian patriotism.  He had heard the Inca traditions repeated in
+boyhood, and very early in life collected all the information which
+his mother and maternal uncle had to give him, or which could be
+extracted from the quipus (the records of knotted cord), and from
+the commemorative pictures of his ancestors.  Garcilasso had
+access, moreover, to the "torn papers" of Blas Valera, an early
+Spanish missionary of unusual sense and acuteness.  Christoval de
+Moluna is also an excellent authority, and much may be learned from
+the volume of Rites and Laws of the Yncas.[1]
+
+
+[1] A more complete list of authorities, including the garrulous
+Acosta, is published by M. Reville in his Hibbert Lectures, pp.
+136, 137.  Garcilasso, Cieza de Leon, Christoval de Moluna, Acosta
+and the Rites and Laws have all been translated by Mr. Clements
+Markham, and are published, with the editor's learned and ingenious
+notes, in the collection of the Hakluyt Society.  Care must be
+taken to discriminate between what is reported about the Indians of
+the various provinces, who were in very different grades of
+culture, and what is told about the Incas themselves.
+
+
+The political and religious condition of the Peruvian empire is
+very clearly conceived and stated by Garcilasso.  Without making
+due allowance for that mysterious earlier civilisation, older than
+the Incas, whose cyclopean buildings are the wonder of travellers,
+Garcilasso attributes the introduction of civilisation to his own
+ancestors.  Allowing for what is confessedly mythical in his
+narrative, it must be admitted that he has a firm grasp of what the
+actual history must have been.  He recognises a period of savagery
+before the Incas, a condition of the rudest barbarism, which still
+existed on the fringes and mountain recesses of the empire.  The
+religion of that period was mere magic and totemism.  From all
+manner of natural objects, but chiefly from beasts and birds, the
+various savage stocks of Peru claimed descent, and they revered and
+offered sacrifice to their totemic ancestors.[1]  Garcilasso adds,
+what is almost incredible, that the Indians tamely permitted
+themselves to be eaten by their totems, when these were carnivorous
+animals.  They did this with the less reluctance as they were
+cannibals, and accustomed to breed children for the purposes of the
+cuisine from captive women taken in war.[2]  Among the huacas or
+idols, totems, fetishes and other adorable objects of the Indians,
+worshipped before and retained after the introduction of the Inca
+sun-totem and solar cult, Garcilasso names trees, hills, rocks,
+caves, fountains, emeralds, pieces of jasper, tigers, lions, bears,
+foxes, monkeys, condors, owls, lizards, toads, frogs, sheep, maize,
+the sea, "for want of larger gods, crabs" and bats.  The bat was
+also the totem of the Zotzil, the chief family of the Cakchiquels
+of Guatemala, and the most high god of the Cakchiquels was
+worshipped in the shape of a bat.  We are reminded of religion as
+it exists in Samoa.  The explanation of Blas Valera was that in
+each totem (pacarissa) the Indians adored the devil.
+
+
+[1] Com. Real., vol. i., chap. ix., x. xi. pp. 47-53.
+
+[2] Cieza de Leon, xii., xv., xix., xxi., xxiii., xxvi., xxviii.,
+xxxii.  Cieza is speaking of people in the valley of Cauca, in New
+Granada.
+
+
+Athwart this early religion of totems and fetishes came, in
+Garcilasso's narrative, the purer religion of the Incas, with what
+he regards as a philosophic development of a belief in a Supreme
+Being.  According to him, the Inca sun-worship was really a
+totemism of a loftier character.  The Incas "knew how to choose
+gods better than the Indians".  Garcilasso's theory is that the
+earlier totems were selected chiefly as distinguishing marks by the
+various stocks, though, of course, this does not explain why the
+animals or other objects of each family were worshipped or were
+regarded as ancestors, and the blood-connections of the men who
+adored them.  The Incas, disdaining crabs, lizards, bats and even
+serpents and lions, "chose" the sun.  Then, just like the other
+totemic tribes, they feigned to be of the blood and lineage of the
+sun.
+
+This fable is, in brief, the Inca myth of the origin of
+civilisation and of man, or at least of their breed of men.  As M.
+Reville well remarks, it is obvious that the Inca claim is an
+adaptation of the local myth of Lake Titicaca, the inland sea of
+Peru.  According to that myth, the Children of the Sun, the
+ancestors of the Incas, came out of the earth (as in Greek and
+African legends) at Lake Titicaca, or reached its shores after
+wandering from the hole or cave whence they first emerged.  The
+myth, as adapted by the Incas, takes for granted the previous
+existence of mankind, and, in some of its forms, the Inca period is
+preceded by the deluge.
+
+Of the Peruvian myth concerning the origin of things, the following
+account is given by a Spanish priest, Christoval de Moluna, in a
+report to the Bishop of Cuzco in 1570.[1]  The story was collected
+from the lips of ancient Peruvians and old native priests, who
+again drew their information in part from the painted records
+reserved in the temple of the sun near Cuzco.  The legend begins
+with a deluge myth; a cataclysm ended a period of human existence.
+All mankind perished except a man and woman, who floated in a box
+to a distance of several hundred miles from Cuzco.  There the
+creator commanded them to settle, and there, like Pund-jel in
+Australia, he made clay images of men of all races, attired in
+their national dress, and then animated them.  They were all
+fashioned and painted as correct models, and were provided with
+their national songs and with seed-corn.  They then were put into
+the earth, and emerged all over the world at the proper places,
+some (as in Africa and Greece) coming out of fountains, some out of
+trees, some out of caves.  For this reason they made huacas
+(worshipful objects or fetishes) of the trees, caves and fountains.
+Some of the earliest men were changed into stones, others into
+falcons, condors and other creatures which we know were totems in
+Peru.  Probably this myth of metamorphosis was invented to account
+for the reverence paid to totems or pacarissas as the Peruvians
+called them.  In Tiahuanaco, where the creation, or rather
+manufacture of men took place, the creator turned many sinners into
+stones.  The sun was made in the shape of a man, and, as he soared
+into heaven, he called out in a friendly fashion to Manco Ccapac,
+the Ideal first Inca, "Look upon me as thy father, and worship me
+as thy father".  In these fables the creator is called
+Pachyachachi, "Teacher of the world".  According to Christoval, the
+creator and his sons were "eternal and unchangeable".  Among the
+Canaris men descend from the survivor of the deluge, and a
+beautiful bird with the face of a woman, a siren in fact, but known
+better to ornithologists as a macaw.  "The chief cause," says the
+good Christoval, "of these fables was ignorance of God."
+
+
+[1] Rites and Laws of the Yncas, p. 4, Hakluyt Society, 1873.
+
+
+The story, as told by Cieza de Leon, runs thus:[1]  A white man of
+great stature (in fact, "a magnified non-natural man") came into
+the world, and gave life to beasts and human beings.  His name was
+Ticiviracocha, and he was called the Father of the Sun.[2]  There
+are likenesses of him in the temple, and he was regarded as a moral
+teacher.  It was owing apparently to this benevolent being that
+four mysterious brothers and sisters emerged from a cave--Children
+of the Sun, fathers of the Incas, teachers of savage men.  Their
+own conduct, however, was not exemplary, and they shut up in a hole
+in the earth the brother of whom they were jealous.  This incident
+is even more common in the marchen or household tales than in the
+regular tribal or national myths of the world.[3]  The buried
+brother emerged again with wings, and "without doubt he must have
+been some devil," says honest Cieza de Leon.  This brother was
+Manco Ccapac, the heroic ancestor of the Incas, and he turned his
+jealous brethren into stones.  The whole tale is in the spirit
+illustrated by the wilder romances of the Popol Vuh.
+
+
+[1] Second Part of the Chronicles of Peru, p 5.
+
+[2] See Making of Religion, pp. 265-270.  Name and God are much
+disputed.
+
+[3] The story of Joseph and the marchen of Jean de l'Ours are well-
+known examples.
+
+
+Garcilasso gives three forms of this myth.  According to "the old
+Inca," his maternal uncle, it was the sun which sent down two of
+his children, giving them a golden staff, which would sink into the
+ground at the place where they were to rest from wandering.  It
+sank at Lake Titicaca.  About the current myths Garcilasso says
+generally that they were "more like dreams" than straightforward
+stories; but, as he adds, the Greeks and Romans also "invented
+fables worthy to be laughed at, and in greater number than the
+Indians.  The stories of one age of heathenism may be compared with
+those of the other, and in many points they will be found to
+agree."  This critical position of Garcilasso's will be proved
+correct when we reach the myths of Greeks and Indo-Aryans.  The
+myth as narrated north-east of Cuzco speaks of the four brothers
+and four sisters who came out of caves, and the caves in Inca times
+were panelled with gold and silver.
+
+Athwart all these lower myths, survivals from the savage stage,
+comes what Garcilasso regards as the philosophical Inca belief in
+Pachacamac.  This deity, to Garcilasso's mind, was purely
+spiritual: he had no image and dwelt in no temple; in fact, he is
+that very God whom the Spanish missionaries proclaimed.  This view,
+though the fact has been doubted, was very probably held by the
+Amautas, or philosophical class in Peru.[1]  Cieza de Leon says
+"the name of this devil, Pachacamac, means creator of the world".
+Garcilasso urges that Pachacamac was the animus mundi; that he did
+not "make the world," as Pund-jel and other savage demiurges made
+it, but that he was to the universe what the soul is to the body.
+
+
+[1] Com. Real., vol. i. p. 106.
+
+
+Here we find ourselves, if among myths at all, among the myths of
+metaphysics--rational myths; that is, myths corresponding to our
+present stage of thought, and therefore intelligible to us.
+Pachacamac "made the sun, and lightning, and thunder, and of these
+the sun was worshipped by the Incas".  Garcilasso denies that the
+moon was worshipped.  The reflections of the sceptical or
+monotheistic Inca, who declared that the sun, far from being a free
+agent, "seems like a thing held to its task," are reported by
+Garcilasso, and appear to prove that solar worship was giving way,
+in the minds of educated Peruvians, a hundred years before the
+arrival of Pizarro and Valverde with his missal.[1]
+
+
+[1] Garcilasso, viii. 8, quoting Blas Valera.
+
+
+From this summary it appears that the higher Peruvian religion had
+wrested to its service, and to the dynastic purposes of the Incas,
+a native myth of the familiar class, in which men come ready made
+out of holes in the ground.  But in Peru we do not find nearly such
+abundance of other savage origin myths as will be proved to exist
+in the legends of Greeks and Indo-Aryans.  The reason probably is
+that Peru left no native literature; the missionaries disdained
+stories of "devils," and Garcilasso's common sense and patriotism
+were alike revolted by the incidents of stories "more like dreams"
+than truthful records.  He therefore was silent about them.  In
+Greece and India, on the other hand, the native religious
+literature preserved myths of the making of man out of clay, of his
+birth from trees and stones, of the fashioning of things out of the
+fragments of mutilated gods and Titans, of the cosmic egg, of the
+rending and wounding of a personal heaven and a personal earth, of
+the fishing up from the waters of a tiny earth which grew greater,
+of the development of men out of beasts, with a dozen other such
+notions as are familiar to contemporary Bushmen, Australians,
+Digger Indians, and Cahrocs.  But in Greece and India these ideas
+coexist with myths and religious beliefs as purely spiritual and
+metaphysical as the belief in the Pachacamac of Garcilasso and the
+Amautas of Peru.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+INDO-ARYAN MYTHS--SOURCES OF EVIDENCE.
+
+
+Authorities--Vedas--Brahmanas--Social condition of Vedic India--
+Arts--Ranks--War--Vedic fetishism--Ancestor worship--Date of Rig-
+Veda Hymns doubtful--Obscurity of the Hymns--Difficulty of
+interpreting the real character of Veda--Not primitive but
+sacerdotal--The moral purity not innocence but refinement.
+
+
+Before examining the myths of the Aryans of India, it is necessary
+to have a clear notion of the nature of the evidence from which we
+derive our knowledge of the subject.  That evidence is found in a
+large and incongruous mass of literary documents, the heritage of
+the Indian people.  In this mass are extremely ancient texts (the
+Rig-Veda, and the Atharva-Veda), expository comments of a date so
+much later that the original meaning of the older documents was
+sometimes lost (the Brahmanas), and poems and legendary collections
+of a period later still, a period when the whole character of
+religious thought had sensibly altered.  In this literature there
+is indeed a certain continuity; the names of several gods of the
+earliest time are preserved in the legends of the latest.  But the
+influences of many centuries of change, of contending philosophies,
+of periods of national growth and advance, and of national
+decadence and decay, have been at work on the mythology of India.
+Here we have myths that were perhaps originally popular tales, and
+are probably old; here again, we have later legends that certainly
+were conceived in the narrow minds of a pedantic and ceremonious
+priesthood.  It is not possible, of course, to analyse in this
+place all the myths of all the periods; we must be content to point
+out some which seem to be typical examples of the working of the
+human intellect in its earlier or its later childhood, in its
+distant hours of barbaric beginnings, or in the senility of its
+sacerdotage.
+
+The documents which contain Indian mythology may be divided,
+broadly speaking, into four classes.  First, and most ancient in
+date of composition, are the collections of hymns known as the
+Vedas.  Next, and (as far as date of collection goes) far less
+ancient, are the expository texts called the Brahmanas.  Later
+still, come other manuals of devotion and of sacred learning,
+called Sutras and Upanishads; and last are the epic poems
+(Itihasas), and the books of legends called Puranas.  We are
+chiefly concerned here with the Vedas and Brahmanas.  A gulf of
+time, a period of social and literary change, separates the
+Brahmanas from the Vedas.  But the epics and Puranas differ perhaps
+even still more from the Brahmanas, on account of vast religious
+changes which brought new gods into the Indian Olympus, or elevated
+to the highest place old gods formerly of low degree.  From the
+composition of the first Vedic hymn to the compilation of the
+latest Purana, religious and mythopoeic fancy was never at rest.
+
+Various motives induced various poets to assign, on various
+occasions the highest powers to this or the other god.  The most
+antique legends were probably omitted or softened by some early
+Vedic bard (Rishi) of noble genius, or again impure myths were
+brought from the obscurity of oral circulation and foisted into
+literature by some poet less divinely inspired.  Old deities were
+half-forgotten, and forgotten deities were resuscitated.  Sages
+shook off superstitious bonds, priests forged new fetters on
+ancient patterns for themselves and their flocks.  Philosophy
+explained away the more degrading myths; myths as degrading were
+suggested to dark and servile hearts by unscientific etymologies.
+Over the whole mass of ancient mythology the new mythology of a
+debased Brahmanic ritualism grew like some luxurious and baneful
+parasite.  It is enough for our purpose if we can show that even in
+the purest and most antique mythology of India the element of
+traditional savagery survived and played its part, and that the
+irrational legends of the Vedas and Brahmanas can often be
+explained as relics of savage philosophy or faith, or as novelties
+planned on the ancient savage model, whether borrowed or native to
+the race.
+
+The oldest documents of Indian mythology are the Vedas, usually
+reckoned as four in number.  The oldest, again, of the four, is the
+Sanhita ("collection") of the Rig-Veda.  It is a purely lyrical
+assortment of the songs "which the Hindus brought with them from
+their ancient homes on the banks of the Indus".  In the
+manuscripts, the hymns are classified according to the families of
+poets to whom they are ascribed.  Though composed on the banks of
+the Indus by sacred bards, the hymns were compiled and arranged in
+India proper.  At what date the oldest hymns of which this
+collection is made up were first chanted it is impossible to say
+with even approximate certainty.  Opinions differ, or have
+differed, between 2400 B.C. and 1400 B.C. as the period when the
+earliest sacred lyrics of the Veda may first have been listened by
+gods and men.  In addition to the Rig-Veda we have the Sanhita of
+the Sama-Veda, "an anthology taken from the Rik-Samhita, comprising
+those of its verses which were intended to be chanted at the
+ceremonies of the soma sacrifice".[1]  It is conjectured that the
+hymns of the Sama-Veda were borrowed from the Rig-Veda before the
+latter had been edited and stereotyped into its present form.  Next
+comes the Yajur-Veda, "which contains the formulas for the entire
+sacrificial ceremonial, and indeed forms its proper foundations,"
+the other Vedas being devoted to the soma sacrifice.[2]  The Yajur-
+Veda has two divisions, known as the Black and the White Yajur,
+which have common matter, but differ in arrangement.  The Black
+Yajur-Veda is also called the Taittirya, and it is described as "a
+motley undigested jumble of different pieces".[3]  Last comes
+Atharva-Veda, not always regarded as a Veda properly speaking.  It
+derives its name from an old semi-mythical priestly family, the
+Atharvans, and is full of magical formulae, imprecations, folk-lore
+and spells. There are good reasons for thinking this late as a
+collection, however early may be the magical ideas expressed in its
+contents.[4]
+
+
+[1] Weber, History of Indian Literature, Eng. transl., p. 63.
+
+[2] Ibid., p. 86.
+
+[3] Ibid, p. 87.  The name Taittirya is derived from a partridge,
+or from a Rishi named Partridge in Sanskrit.  There is a story that
+the pupils of a sage were turned into partridges, to pick up sacred
+texts.
+
+[4] Barth (Les Religions de l'Inde, p. 6) thinks that the existence
+of such a collection as the Atharva-Veda is implied, perhaps, in a
+text of the Rig-Veda, x. 90, 9.
+
+
+Between the Vedas, or, at all events, between the oldest of the
+Vedas, and the compilation of the Brahmanas, these "canonised
+explanations of a canonised text,"[1] it is probable that some
+centuries and many social changes intervened.[2]
+
+
+[1] Whitney, Oriental and Linguistic studies, First Series, p. 4.
+
+[2] Max Muller, Biographical Essays, p. 20.  "The prose portions
+presuppose the hymns, and, to judge from the utter inability of the
+authors of the Brahmanas to understand the antiquated language of
+the hymns, these Brahmanas must be ascribed to a much later period
+than that which gave birth to the hymns."
+
+
+If we would criticise the documents for Indian mythology in a
+scientific manner, it is now necessary that we should try to
+discover, as far as possible, the social and religious condition of
+the people among whom the Vedas took shape.  Were they in any sense
+"primitive," or were they civilised?  Was their religion in its
+obscure beginnings or was it already a special and peculiar
+development, the fruit of many ages of thought?  Now it is an
+unfortunate thing that scholars have constantly, and as it were
+involuntarily, drifted into the error of regarding the Vedas as if
+they were "primitive," as if they exhibited to us the "germs" and
+"genesis" of religion and mythology, as if they contained the
+simple though strange utterances of PRIMITIVE thought.[1]  Thus Mr.
+Whitney declares, in his Oriental and Linguistic Studies, "that the
+Vedas exhibit to us the very earliest germs of the Hindu culture".
+Mr. Max Muller avers that "no country can be compared to India as
+offering opportunities for a real study of the genesis and growth
+of religion".[2]  Yet the same scholar observes that "even the
+earliest specimens of Vedic poetry belong to the modern history of
+the race, and that the early period of the historical growth of
+religion had passed away before the Rishis (bards) could have
+worshipped their Devas or bright beings with sacred hymns and
+invocations".  Though this is manifestly true, the sacred hymns and
+invocations of the Rishis are constantly used as testimony bearing
+on the beginning of the historical growth of religion.  Nay, more;
+these remains of "the modern history of the race" are supposed to
+exhibit mythology in the process of making, as if the race had
+possessed no mythology before it reached a comparatively modern
+period, the Vedic age.  In the same spirit, Dr. Muir, the learned
+editor of Sanskrit Texts, speaks in one place as if the Vedic hymns
+"illustrated the natural workings of the human mind in the period
+of its infancy".[3]  A brief examination of the social and
+political and religious condition of man, as described by the poets
+of the Vedas, will prove that his infancy had long been left behind
+him when the first Vedic hymns were chanted.
+
+
+[1] Ibid., Rig-Veda Sanhita, p. vii.
+
+[2] Hibbert Lectures, p. 131.
+
+[3] Nothing can prove more absolutely and more briefly the late
+character of Vedic faith than the fact that the faith had already
+to be defended against the attacks of sceptics.  The impious denied
+the existence of Indra because he was invisible.  Rig-Veda, ii. 12,
+5; viii. 89, 3; v. 30, 1-2; vi. 27, 3.  Bergaigne, ii. 167.  "Es
+gibt keinen Indra, so hat der eine und der ander gesagt" (Ludwig's
+version).
+
+
+As Barth observes, the very ideas which permeate the Veda, the idea
+of the mystic efficacy of sacrifice, of brahma, prove that the
+poems are profoundly sacerdotal; and this should have given pause
+to the writers who have persisted in representing the hymns as the
+work of primitive shepherds praising their gods as they feed their
+flocks.[1]  In the Vedic age the ranks of society are already at
+least as clearly defined as in Homeric Greece.  "We men," says a
+poet of the Rig-Veda,[2] "have all our different imaginations and
+designs.  The carpenter seeks something that is broken, the doctor
+a patient, the priest some one who will offer libations. . . .  The
+artisan continually seeks after a man with plenty of gold. . . .  I
+am a poet, my father is a doctor, and my mother is a grinder of
+corn."  Chariots and the art of the chariot-builder are as
+frequently spoken of as in the Iliad.  Spears, swords, axes and
+coats of mail were in common use.  The art of boat-building or of
+ship-building was well known.  Kine and horses, sheep and dogs, had
+long been domesticated.  The bow was a favourite weapon, and
+warriors fought in chariots, like the Homeric Greeks and the
+Egyptians.  Weaving was commonly practised.  The people probably
+lived, as a rule, in village settlements, but cities or fortified
+places were by no means unknown.[3]  As for political society,
+"kings are frequently mentioned in the hymns," and "it was regarded
+as eminently beneficial for a king to entertain a family priest,"
+on whom he was expected to confer thousands of kine, lovely slaves
+and lumps of gold.  In the family polygamy existed, probably as the
+exception.  There is reason to suppose that the brother-in-law was
+permitted, if not expected, to "raise up seed" to his dead brother,
+as among the Hebrews.[4]  As to literature, the very structure of
+the hymns proves that it was elaborate and consciously artistic.
+M. Barth writes: "It would be a great mistake to speak of the
+primitive naivete of the Vedic poetry and religion".[5]  Both the
+poetry and the religion, on the other hand, display in the highest
+degree the mark of the sacerdotal spirit.  The myths, though
+originally derived from nature-worship, in an infinite majority of
+cases only reflect natural phenomena through a veil of ritualistic
+corruptions.[6]  The rigid division of castes is seldom recognised
+in the Rig-Veda.  We seem to see caste in the making.[7]  The
+Rishis and priests of the princely families were on their way to
+becoming the all-powerful Brahmans.  The kings and princes were on
+their way to becoming the caste of Kshatriyas or warriors.  The
+mass of the people was soon to sink into the caste of Vaisyas and
+broken men.  Non-Aryan aborigines and others were possibly
+developing into the caste of Sudras.  Thus the spirit of division
+and of ceremonialism had still some of its conquests to achieve.
+But the extraordinary attention given and the immense importance
+assigned to the details of sacrifice, and the supernatural efficacy
+constantly attributed to a sort of magical asceticism (tapas,
+austere fervour), prove that the worst and most foolish elements of
+later Indian society and thought were in the Vedic age already in
+powerful existence.
+
+
+[1] Les Religions de l'Inde, p. 27.
+
+[2] ix. 112.
+
+[3] Ludwig, Rig-Veda, iii. 203.  The burgs were fortified with
+wooden palisades, capable of being destroyed by fire.  "Cities" may
+be too magnificent a word for what perhaps were more like pahs.
+But compare Kaegi, The Rig-Veda, note 42, Engl. transl.  Kaegi's
+book (translated by Dr. Arrowsmith, Boston, U.S., 1886) is probably
+the best short manual of the subject.
+
+[4] Deut. xxv. 5; Matt. xxii. 24.
+
+[5] Revue de l'Histoire des Religions, i. 245.
+
+[6] Ludwig, iii. 262.
+
+[7] On this subject see Muir, i. 192, with the remarks of Haug.
+"From all we know, the real origin of caste seems to go back to a
+time anterior to the composition of the Vedic hymns, though its
+development into a regular system with insurmountable barriers can
+be referred only to the later period of the Vedic times."  Roth
+approaches the subject from the word brahm, that is, prayer with a
+mystical efficacy, as his starting-point.  From brahm, prayer, came
+brahma, he who pronounces the prayers and performs the rite.  This
+celebrant developed into a priest, whom to entertain brought
+blessings on kings.  This domestic chaplaincy (conferring peculiar
+and even supernatural benefits) became hereditary in families, and
+these, united by common interests, exalted themselves into the
+Brahman caste.  But in the Vedic age gifts of prayer and poetry
+alone marked out the purohitas, or men put forward to mediate
+between gods and mortals.  Compare Ludwig, iii. 221.
+
+
+Thus it is self-evident that the society in which the Vedic poets
+lived was so far from being PRIMITIVE that it was even superior to
+the higher barbarisms (such as that of the Scythians of Herodotus
+and Germans of Tacitus), and might be regarded as safely arrived at
+the threshold of civilisation.  Society possessed kings, though
+they may have been kings of small communities, like those who
+warred with Joshua or fought under the walls of Thebes or Troy.
+Poets were better paid than they seem to have been at the courts of
+Homer or are at the present time.  For the tribal festivals special
+priests were appointed, "who distinguished themselves by their
+comprehensive knowledge of the requisite rites and by their
+learning, and amongst whom a sort of rivalry is gradually
+developed, according as one tribe or another is supposed to have
+more or less prospered by its sacrifices".[1]  In the family
+marriage is sacred, and traces of polyandry and of the levirate,
+surviving as late as the epic poems, were regarded as things that
+need to be explained away.  Perhaps the most barbaric feature in
+Vedic society, the most singular relic of a distant past, is the
+survival, even in a modified and symbolic form, of human
+sacrifice.[2]
+
+
+[1] Weber, p. 37.
+
+[2] Wilson, Rig-Veda, i. p. 59-63; Muir, i. ii.; Wilson, Rig-Veda
+i. p. xxiv., ii. 8 (ii. 90); Aitareya Brahmana, Haug's version,
+vol. ii. pp. 462, 469.
+
+
+As to the religious condition of the Vedic Aryans, we must steadily
+remember that in the Vedas we have the views of the Rishis only,
+that is, of sacred poets on their way to becoming a sacred caste.
+Necessarily they no more represent the POPULAR creeds than the
+psalmists and prophets, with their lofty monotheistic morality,
+represent the popular creeds of Israel.  The faith of the Rishis,
+as will be shown later, like that of the psalmists, has a noble
+moral aspect.  Yet certain elements of this higher creed are
+already found in the faiths of the lowest savages.  The Rishis
+probably did not actually INVENT them.  Consciousness of sin, of
+imperfection in the sight of divine beings, has been developed (as
+it has even in Australia) and is often confessed.  But on the whole
+the religion of the Rishis is practical--it might almost be said,
+is magical.  They desire temporal blessings, rain, sunshine, long
+life, power, wealth in flocks and herds.  The whole purpose of the
+sacrifices which occupy so much of their time and thought is to
+obtain these good things.  The sacrifice and the sacrificer come
+between gods and men.  On the man's side is faith, munificence, a
+compelling force of prayer and of intentness of will.  The
+sacrifice invigorates the gods to do the will of the sacrificer; it
+is supposed to be mystically celebrated in heaven as well as on
+earth--the gods are always sacrificing.  Often (as when rain is
+wanted) the sacrifice imitates the end which it is desirable to
+gain.[1]  In all these matters a minute ritual is already observed.
+The mystic word brahma, in the sense of hymn or prayer of a
+compelling and magical efficacy, has already come into use.  The
+brahma answers almost to the Maori karakia or incantation and
+charm.  "This brahma of Visvamitra protects the tribe of Bharata."
+"Atri with the fourth prayer discovered the sun concealed by unholy
+darkness."[2]  The complicated ritual, in which prayer and
+sacrifice were supposed to exert a constraining influence on the
+supernatural powers, already existed, Haug thinks, in the time of
+the chief Rishis or hymnists of the Rig-Veda.[3]
+
+
+[1] Compare "The Prayers of Savages" in J. A. Farrer's Primitive
+Manners, and Ludwig, iii. 262-296, and see Bergaigne, La Religion
+Vedique, vol. i. p. 121.
+
+[2] See texts in Muir, i. 242.
+
+[3] Preface to translation of Aitareya Brahmana, p. 36.
+
+
+In many respects the nature of the idea of the divine, as
+entertained by the Rishis of the Rig-Veda, is still matter for
+discussion.  In the chapter on Vedic gods such particulars as can
+be ascertained will be given.  Roughly speaking, the religion is
+mainly, though not wholly, a cult of departmental gods, originally,
+in certain cases, forces of Nature, but endowed with moral
+earnestness.  As to fetishism in the Vedas the opinions of the
+learned are divided.  M. Bergaigne[1] looks on the whole ritual as,
+practically, an organised fetishism, employed to influence gods of
+a far higher and purer character.  Mr. Max Muller remarks, "that
+stones, bones, shells, herbs and all the other so-called fetishes,
+are simply absent in the old hymns, though they appear in more
+modern hymns, particularly those of the Atharva-Veda.  When
+artificial objects are mentioned and celebrated in the Rig-Veda,
+they are only such as might be praised even by Wordsworth or
+Tennyson--chariots, bows, quivers, axes, drums, sacrificial vessels
+and similar objects.  They never assume any individual character;
+they are simply mentioned as useful or precious, it may be as
+sacred."[2]
+
+
+[1] La Religion Vedique, vol. i. p. 123.  "Le culte est assimilable
+dans une certaine mesure aux incantations, aux pratiques magiques."
+
+[2] Hibbert Lectures, p. 198.
+
+
+When the existence of fetish "herbs" is denied by Mr. Max Muller,
+he does not, of course, forget Soma, that divine juice.  It is also
+to be noted that in modern India, as Mr. Max Muller himself
+observes, Sir Alfred Lyall finds that "the husbandman prays to his
+plough and the fisher to his net," these objects being, at present,
+fetishes.  In opposition to Mr. Max Muller, Barth avers that the
+same kind of fetishism which flourishes to-day flourishes in the
+Rig-Veda.  "Mountains, rivers, springs, trees, herbs are invoked as
+so many powers.  The beasts which live with man--the horse, the
+cow, the dog, the bird and the animals which imperil his existence--
+receive a cult of praise and prayer.  Among the instruments of
+ritual, some objects are more than things consecrated--they are
+divinities; and the war-chariot, the weapons of defence and
+offence, the plough, are the objects not only of benedictions but
+of prayers."[1]  These absolute contradictions on matters of fact
+add, of course, to the difficulty of understanding the early Indo-
+Aryan religion.  One authority says that the Vedic people were
+fetish-worshippers; another authority denies it.
+
+
+[1] Barth, Les Religions de l'Inde, p. 7, with the Vedic texts.
+
+
+Were the Rishis ancestor-worshippers?  Barth has no doubt whatever
+that they were.  In the pitris or fathers he recognises ancestral
+spirits, now "companions of the gods, and gods themselves.  At
+their head appear the earliest celebrants of the sacrifice,
+Atharvan, the Angiras, the Kavis (the pitris, par excellence)
+equals of the greatest gods, spirits who, BY DINT OF SACRIFICE,
+drew forth the world from chaos, gave birth to the sun and lighted
+the stars,"--cosmical feats which, as we have seen, are sometimes
+attributed by the lower races to their idealised mythic ancestors,
+the "old, old ones" of Australians and Ovahereroes.
+
+A few examples of invocations of the ancestral spirits may not be
+out of place.[1]  "May the Fathers protect me in my invocation of
+the gods."  Here is a curious case, especially when we remember how
+the wolf, in the North American myth, scattered the stars like
+spangles over the sky: "The fathers have adorned the sky with
+stars".[2]
+
+
+[1] Rig-Veda, vi. 52,4.
+
+[2] Ibid., x. 68, xi.
+
+Mr. Whitney (Oriental and Linguistic Studies, First Series, p. 59)
+gives examples of the ceremony of feeding the Aryan ghosts.  "The
+fathers are supposed to assemble, upon due invocation, about the
+altar of him who would pay them homage, to seat themselves upon the
+straw or matting spread for each of the guests invited, and to
+partake of the offerings set before them."  The food seems chiefly
+to consist of rice, sesame and honey.
+
+
+Important as is the element of ancestor-worship in the evolution of
+religion, Mr. Max Muller, in his Hibbert Lectures, merely remarks
+that thoughts and feelings about the dead "supplied some of the
+earliest and most important elements of religion"; but how these
+earliest elements affect his system does not appear.  On a general
+view, then, the religion of the Vedic poets contained a vast number
+of elements in solution--elements such as meet us in every quarter
+of the globe.  The belief in ancestral ghosts, the adoration of
+fetishes, the devotion to a moral ideal, contemplated in the
+persons of various deities, some of whom at least have been, and
+partly remain, personal natural forces, are all mingled, and all
+are drifting towards a kind of pantheism, in which, while
+everything is divine, and gods are reckoned by millions, the
+worshipper has glimpses of one single divine essence.  The ritual,
+as we have seen, is more or less magical in character.  The general
+elements of the beliefs are found, in various proportions,
+everywhere; the pantheistic mysticism is almost peculiar to India.
+It is, perhaps, needless to repeat that a faith so very composite,
+and already so strongly differentiated, cannot possibly be
+"primitive," and that the beliefs and practices of a race so highly
+organised in society and so well equipped in material civilisation
+as the Vedic Aryans cannot possibly be "near the beginning".  Far
+from expecting to find in the Veda the primitive myths of the
+Aryans, we must remember that myth had already, when these hymns
+were sung, become obnoxious to the religious sentiment.  "Thus,"
+writes Barth, "the authors of the hymns have expurgated, or at
+least left in the shade, a vast number of legends older than their
+time; such, for example, as the identity of soma with the moon, as
+the account of the divine families, of the parricide of Indra, and
+a long list might be made of the reticences of the Veda. . . .  It
+would be difficult to extract from the hymns a chapter on the loves
+of the gods.  The goddesses are veiled, the adventures of the gods
+are scarcely touched on in passing. . . .  We must allow for the
+moral delicacy of the singers, and for their dislike of speaking
+too precisely about the gods.  Sometimes it seems as if their chief
+object was to avoid plain speaking. . . .  But often there is
+nothing save jargon and indolence of mind in this voluntary
+obscurity, for already in the Veda the Indian intellect is deeply
+smitten with its inveterate malady of affecting mystery the more,
+the more it has nothing to conceal; the mania for scattering
+symbols which symbolise no reality, and for sporting with riddles
+which it is not worth while to divine."[1]  Barth, however, also
+recognises amidst these confusions, "the inquietude of a heart
+deeply stirred, which seeks truth and redemption in prayer".  Such
+is the natural judgment of the clear French intellect on the
+wilfully obscure, tormented and evasive intellect of India.
+
+
+[1] Les Religions de l'Inde, p. 21.
+
+
+It would be interesting were it possible to illuminate the
+criticism of Vedic religion by ascertaining which hymns in the Rig-
+Veda are the most ancient, and which are later.  Could we do this,
+we might draw inferences as to the comparative antiquity of the
+religious ideas in the poems.  But no such discrimination of
+relative antiquity seems to be within the reach of critics.  M.
+Bergaigne thinks it impossible at present to determine the relative
+age of the hymns by any philological test.  The ideas expressed are
+not more easily arrayed in order of date.  We might think that the
+poems which contain most ceremonial allusions were the latest.  But
+Mr. Max Muller says that "even the earliest hymns have sentiments
+worthy of the most advanced ceremonialists".[1]
+
+
+[1] History of Sanskrit Literature, p. 556.
+
+
+The first and oldest source of our knowledge of Indo-Aryan myths is
+the Rig-Veda, whose nature and character have been described.
+The second source is the Atharva-Veda with the Brahmanas.  The
+peculiarity of the Atharva is its collection of magical incantations
+spells and fragments of folklore.  These are often, doubtless, of
+the highest antiquity.  Sorcery and the arts of medicine-men are
+earlier in the course of evolution than priesthood.  We meet them
+everywhere among races who have not developed the institution of an
+order of priests serving national gods.  As a collection, the
+Atharva-Veda is later than the Rig-Veda, but we need not therefore
+conclude that the IDEAS of the Atharva are "a later development of
+the more primitive ideas of the Rig-Veda".  Magic is quod semper,
+quod ubique, quod ab omnibus; the ideas of the Atharva-Veda are
+everywhere; the peculiar notions of the Rig-Veda are the special
+property of an advanced and highly differentiated people.  Even in
+the present collected shape, M. Barth thinks that many hymns of the
+Atharva are not much later than those of the Rig-Veda.  Mr. Whitney,
+admitting the lateness of the Atharva as a collection, says, "This
+would not necessarily imply that the main body of the Atharva hymns
+were not already in existence when the compilation of the Rig-Veda
+took place".[1]  The Atharva refers to some poets of the Rig (as
+certain hymnists in the Rig also do) as earlier men.  If in the Rig
+(as Weber says) "there breathes a lively natural feeling, a warm
+love of nature, while in the Atharva, on the contrary, there
+predominates an anxious apprehension of evil spirits and their
+magical powers," it by no means follows that this apprehension is
+of later origin than the lively feeling for Nature.  Rather the
+reverse.  There appears to be no doubt[2] that the style and
+language of the Atharva are later than those of the Rig.  Roth, who
+recognises the change, in language and style, yet considers the
+Atharva "part of the old literature".[3]  He concludes that the
+Atharva contains many pieces which, "both by their style and ideas,
+are shown to be contemporary with the older hymns of the Rig-Veda".
+In religion, according to Muir,[4] the Atharva shows progress in the
+direction of monotheism in its celebration of Brahman, but it also
+introduces serpent-worship.
+
+
+[1] Journal of the American Oriental Society. iv. 253.
+
+[2] Muir, ii. 446.
+
+[3] Ibid., ii. 448.
+
+[4] Ibid., ii. 451.
+
+
+As to the Atharva, then, we are free to suppose, if we like, that
+the dark magic, the evil spirits, the incantations, are old parts
+of Indian, as of all other popular beliefs, though they come later
+into literature than the poetry about Ushas and the morality of
+Varuna.  The same remarks apply to our third source of information,
+the Brahmanas.  These are indubitably comments on the sacred texts
+very much more modern in form than the texts themselves.  But it
+does not follow, and this is most important for our purpose, that
+the myths in the Brahmanas are all later than the Vedic myths or
+corruptions of the Veda.  Muir remarks,[1] "The Rig-Veda, though
+the oldest collection, does not necessarily contain everything that
+is of the greatest age in Indian thought or tradition.  We know,
+for example, that certain legends, bearing the impress of the
+highest antiquity, such as that of the deluge, appear first in the
+Brahmanas."  We are especially interested in this criticism,
+because most of the myths which we profess to explain as survivals
+of savagery are narrated in the Brahmanas.  If these are
+necessarily late corruptions of Vedic ideas, because the collection
+of the Brahmanas is far more modern than that of the Veda, our
+argument is instantly disproved.  But if ideas of an earlier
+stratum of thought than the Vedic stratum may appear in a later
+collection, as ideas of an earlier stratum of thought than the
+Homeric appear in poetry and prose far later than Homer, then our
+contention is legitimate.  It will be shown in effect that a number
+of myths of the Brahmanas correspond in character and incident with
+the myths of savages, such as Cahrocs and Ahts.  Our explanation
+is, that these tales partly survived, in the minds perhaps of
+conservative local priesthoods, from the savage stage of thought,
+or were borrowed from aborigines in that stage, or were moulded in
+more recent times on surviving examples of that wild early fancy.
+
+
+[1] Muir, iv. 450.
+
+
+In the age of the Brahmanas the people have spread southwards from
+the basin of the Indus to that of the Ganges.  The old sacred texts
+have begun to be scarcely comprehensible.  The priesthood has
+become much more strictly defined and more rigorously constituted.
+Absurd as it may seem, the Vedic metres, like the Gayatri, have
+been personified, and appear as active heroines of stories
+presumably older than this personification.  The Asuras have
+descended from the rank of gods to that of the heavenly opposition
+to Indra's government; they are now a kind of fiends, and the
+Brahmanas are occupied with long stories about the war in heaven,
+itself a very ancient conception.  Varuna becomes cruel on
+occasion, and hostile.  Prajapati becomes the great mythical hero,
+and inherits the wildest myths of the savage heroic beasts and
+birds.
+
+The priests are now Brahmans, a hereditary divine caste, who
+possess all the vast and puerile knowledge of ritual and
+sacrificial minutiae.  As life in the opera is a series of songs,
+so life in the Brahmanas is a sequence of sacrifices.  Sacrifice
+makes the sun rise and set, and the rivers run this way or that.
+
+The study of Indian myth is obstructed, as has been shown, by the
+difficulty of determining the relative dates of the various
+legends, but there are a myriad of other obstacles to the study of
+Indian mythology.  A poet of the Vedas says, "The chanters of hymns
+go about enveloped in mist, and unsatisfied with idle talk".[1]
+The ancient hymns are still "enveloped in mist," owing to the
+difficulty of their language and the variety of modern renderings
+and interpretations.  The heretics of Vedic religion, the opponents
+of the orthodox commentators in ages comparatively recent, used to
+complain that the Vedas were simply nonsense, and their authors
+"knaves and buffoons".  There are moments when the modern student
+of Vedic myths is inclined to echo this petulant complaint.  For
+example, it is difficult enough to find in the Rig-Veda anything
+like a categoric account of the gods, and a description of their
+personal appearance.  But in Rig-Veda, viii. 29, 1, we read of one
+god, "a youth, brown, now hostile, now friendly; a golden lustre
+invests him".  Who is this youth?  "Soma as the moon," according to
+the commentators.  M. Langlois thinks the sun is meant.  Dr.
+Aufrecht thinks the troop of Maruts (spirits of the storm), to
+whom, he remarks, the epithet "dark-brown, tawny" is as applicable
+as it is to their master, Rudra.  This is rather confusing, and a
+mythological inquirer would like to know for certain whether he is
+reading about the sun or soma, the moon, or the winds.
+
+
+[1] Rig-Veda, x. 82, 7, but compare Bergaigne, op. cit., iii. 72,
+"enveloppes de nuees et de murmures".
+
+
+To take another example; we open Mr. Max Muller's translation of
+the Rig-Veda at random, say at page 49.  In the second verse of the
+hymn to the Maruts, Mr. Muller translates, "They who were born
+together, self-luminous, with the spotted deer (the clouds), the
+spears, the daggers, the glittering ornaments.  I hear their whips
+almost close by, as they crack them in their hands; they gain
+splendour on their way."  Now Wilson translates this passage, "Who,
+borne by spotted deer, were born self-luminous, with weapons, war-
+cries and decorations.  I hear the cracking of their whips in their
+hands, wonderfully inspiring courage in the fight."  Benfey has,
+"Who with stags and spears, and with thunder and lightning, self-
+luminous, were born.  Hard by rings the crack of their whip as it
+sounds in their hands; bright fare they down in storm."  Langlois
+translates, "Just born are they, self-luminous.  Mark ye their
+arms, their decorations, their car drawn by deer?  Hear ye their
+clamour?  Listen! 'tis the noise of the whip they hold in their
+hands, the sound that stirs up courage in the battle."  This is an
+ordinary example of the diversities of Vedic translation.  It is
+sufficiently puzzling, nor is the matter made more transparent by
+the variety of opinion as to the meaning of the "deer" along with
+which the Maruts are said (by some of the translators) to have been
+born.  This is just the sort of passage on which a controversy
+affecting the whole nature of Vedic mythological ideas might be
+raised.  According to a text in the Yajur Veda, gods, and men, and
+beasts, and other matters were created from various portions of the
+frame of a divine being named Prajapati.[1]  The god Agni, Brahmans
+and the goat were born from the mouth of Prajapati.  From his
+breast and arms came the god Indra (sometimes spoken of as a ram),
+the sheep, and of men the Rajanya.  Cows and gods called Visvadevas
+were born together from his middle.  Are we to understand the words
+"they who were born together with the spotted deer" to refer to a
+myth of this kind--a myth representing the Maruts and deer as
+having been born at the same birth, as Agni came with the goat, and
+Indra with the sheep?  This is just the point on which the Indian
+commentators were divided.[2]  Sayana, the old commentator, says,
+"The legendary school takes them for deer with white spots; the
+etymological school, for the many-coloured lines of clouds".  The
+modern legendary (or anthropological) and etymological (or
+philological) students of mythology are often as much at variance
+in their attempts to interpret the traditions of India.
+
+
+[1] Muir, Sanskrit Texts, 2nd edit., i. 16.
+
+[2] Max Muller, Rig-Veda Sanhita, trans., vol. i. p. 59.
+
+
+Another famous, and almost comic, example of the difficulty of
+Vedic interpretation is well known.  In Rig-Veda, x. 16, 4, there
+is a funeral hymn.  Agni, the fire-god, is supplicated either to
+roast a goat or to warm the soul of the dead and convey it to
+paradise.  Whether the soul is to be thus comforted or the goat is
+to be grilled, is a question that has mightily puzzled Vedic
+doctors.[1]  Professor Muller and M. Langlois are all for "the
+immortal soul", the goat has advocates, or had advocates, in
+Aufrecht, Ludwig and Roth.  More important difficulties of
+interpretation are illustrated by the attitude of M. Bergaigne in
+La Religion Vedique, and his controversy with the great German
+lexicographers.  The study of mythology at one time made the Vedas
+its starting-point.  But perhaps it would be wise to begin from
+something more intelligible, something less perplexed by
+difficulties of language and diversities of interpretation.
+
+
+[1] Muir, v. 217.
+
+
+In attempting to criticise the various Aryan myths, we shall be
+guided, on the whole, by the character of the myths themselves.
+Pure and elevated conceptions we shall be inclined to assign to a
+pure and elevated condition of thought (though such conceptions do,
+recognisably, occur in the lowest known religious strata), and we
+shall make no difficulty about believing that Rishis and singers
+capable of noble conceptions existed in an age very remote in time,
+in a society which had many of the features of a lofty and simple
+civilisation.  But we shall not, therefore, assume that the hymns
+of these Rishis are in any sense "primitive," or throw much light
+on the infancy of the human mind, or on the "origin" of religious
+and heroic myths.  Impure, childish and barbaric conceptions, on
+the other hand, we shall be inclined to attribute to an impure,
+childish, and barbaric condition of thought; and we shall again
+make no difficulty about believing that ideas originally conceived
+when that stage of thought was general have been retained and
+handed down to a far later period.  This view of the possible, or
+rather probable, antiquity of many of the myths preserved in the
+Brahmanas is strengthened, if it needed strengthening, by the
+opinion of Dr. Weber.[1]  "We must indeed assume generally with
+regard to many of those legends (in the Brahmanas of the Rig-Veda)
+that they had already gained a rounded independent shape in
+tradition before they were incorporated into the Brahmanas; and of
+this we have frequent evidence in the DISTINCTLY ARCHAIC CHARACTER
+OF THEIR LANGUAGE, compared with that of the rest of the text."
+
+
+[1] History of Indian Literature, English trans., p. 47.
+
+
+We have now briefly stated the nature and probable relative
+antiquity of the evidence which is at the disposal of Vedic
+mythologists.  The chief lesson we would enforce is the necessity
+of suspending the judgment when the Vedas are represented as
+examples of primitive and comparatively pure and simple natural
+religion.  They are not primitive; they are highly differentiated,
+highly complex, extremely enigmatic expressions of fairly advanced
+and very peculiar religious thought.  They are not morally so very
+pure as has been maintained, and their purity, such as it is, seems
+the result of conscious reticence and wary selection rather than of
+primeval innocence.  Yet the bards or editors have by no means
+wholly excluded very ancient myths of a thoroughly savage
+character.  These will be chiefly exposed in the chapter on "Indo-
+Aryan Myths of the Beginnings of Things," which follows.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+INDIAN MYTHS OF THE ORIGIN OF THE WORLD AND OF MAN.
+
+Comparison of Vedic and savage myths--The metaphysical Vedic
+account of the beginning of things--Opposite and savage fable of
+world made out of fragments of a man--Discussion of this hymn--
+Absurdities of Brahmanas--Prajapati, a Vedic Unkulunkulu or Qat--
+Evolutionary myths--Marriage of heaven and earth--Myths of Puranas,
+their savage parallels--Most savage myths are repeated in
+Brahmanas.
+
+
+In discussing the savage myths of the origin of the world and of
+man, we observed that they were as inconsistent as they were
+fanciful.  Among the fancies embodied in the myths was noted the
+theory that the world, or various parts of it, had been formed out
+of the body of some huge non-natural being, a god, or giant, or a
+member of some ancient mysterious race.  We also noted the myths of
+the original union of heaven and earth, and their violent
+separation as displayed in the tales of Greeks and Maoris, to which
+may be added the Acagchemem nation in California.[1]  Another
+feature of savage cosmogonies, illustrated especially in some early
+Slavonic myths, in Australian legends, and in the faith of the
+American races, was the creation of the world, or the recovery of a
+drowned world by animals, as the raven, the dove and the coyote.
+The hatching of all things out of an egg was another rude
+conception, chiefly noted among the Finns.  The Indian form occurs
+in the Satapatha Brahmana.[2]  The preservation of the human race
+in the Deluge, or the creation of the race after the Deluge, was
+yet another detail of savage mythology; and for many of these
+fancies we seemed to find a satisfactory origin in the exceedingly
+credulous and confused state of savage philosophy and savage
+imagination.
+
+
+[1] Bancroft, v. 162.
+
+[2] Sacred Books of the East, i. 216.
+
+
+The question now to be asked is, do the traditions of the Aryans of
+India supply us with myths so closely resembling the myths of
+Nootkas, Maoris and Australians that we may provisionally explain
+them as stories originally due to the invention of savages?  This
+question may be answered in the affirmative.  The Vedas, the Epics
+and the Puranas contain a large store of various cosmogonic
+traditions as inconsistent as the parallel myths of savages.  We
+have an Aryan Ilmarinen, Tvashtri, who, like the Finnish smith,
+forged "the iron vault of hollow heaven" and the ball of earth.[1]
+Again, the earth is said to have sprung, as in some Mangaian
+fables, "from a being called Uttanapad".[2]  Again, Brahmanaspati,
+"blew the gods forth like a blacksmith," and the gods had a hand in
+the making of things.  In contrast with these childish pieces of
+anthropomorphism, we have the famous and sublime speculations of an
+often-quoted hymn.[3]  It is thus that the poet dreams of the days
+before being and non-being began:--
+
+
+[1] Muir, v. 354.
+
+[2] Rig-Veda, x. 72, 4.
+
+[3] Ibid., x. 126.
+
+
+"There was then neither non-entity nor entity; there was no
+atmosphere nor sky above.  What enveloped [all]? . . .  Was it
+water, the profound abyss?  Death was not then, nor immortality:
+there was no distinction of day or night. That One breathed calmly,
+self-supported; then was nothing different from it, or above it.
+In the beginning darkness existed, enveloped in darkness.  All this
+was undistinguishable water.  That One which lay void and wrapped
+in nothingness was developed by the power of fervour.  Desire first
+arose in It, which was the primal germ of mind [and which] sages,
+searching with their intellect, have discovered to be the bond
+which connects entity with non-entity.  The ray [or cord] which
+stretched across these [worlds], was it below or was it above?
+There were there impregnating powers and mighty forces, a self-
+supporting principle beneath and energy aloft.  Who knows? who here
+can declare whence has sprung, whence this creation?  The gods are
+subsequent to the development of this [universe]; who then knows
+whence it arose?  From what this creation arose, and whether [any
+one] made it or not, he who in the highest heaven is its ruler, he
+verily knows, or [even] he does not know."[1]
+
+
+[1] Muir, Sanskrit Texts, 2nd edit., v. 357.
+
+
+Here there is a Vedic hymn of the origin of things, from a book, it
+is true, supposed to be late, which is almost, if not absolutely,
+free from mythological ideas.  The "self-supporting principle
+beneath and energy aloft" may refer, as Dr. Muir suggests, to the
+father, heaven above, and the mother, earth beneath.  The "bond
+between entity and non-entity" is sought in a favourite idea of the
+Indian philosophers, that of tapas or "fervour".  The other
+speculations remind us, though they are much more restrained and
+temperate in character, of the metaphysical chants of the New
+Zealand priests, of the Zunis, of Popol Vuh, and so on.  These
+belong to very early culture.
+
+What is the relative age of this hymn?  If it could be proved to be
+the oldest in the Veda, it would demonstrate no more than this,
+that in time exceedingly remote the Aryans of India possessed a
+philosopher, perhaps a school of philosophers, who applied the
+minds to abstract speculations on the origin of things.  It could
+not prove that mythological speculations had not preceded the
+attempts of a purer philosophy.  But the date cannot be ascertained.
+Mr. Max Muller cannot go farther than the suggestion that the hymn
+is an expression of the perennis quaedam philosophia of Leibnitz.
+We are also warned that a hymn is not necessarily modern because it
+is philosophical.[1]  Certainly that is true; the Zunis, Maoris, and
+Mangaians exhibit amazing powers of abstract thought.  We are not
+concerned to show that this hymn is late; but it seems almost
+superfluous to remark that ideas like those which it contains can
+scarcely be accepted as expressing man's earliest theory of the
+origin of all things.  We turn from such ideas to those which the
+Aryans of India have in common with black men and red men, with
+far-off Finns and Scandinavians, Chaldaeans, Haidahs, Cherokees,
+Murri and Maori, Mangaians and Egyptians.
+
+
+[1] History of Sanskrit Literature, p. 568.
+
+
+The next Vedic account of creation which we propose to consider is
+as remote as possible in character from the sublime philosophic
+poem.  In the Purusha Sukta, the ninetieth hymn of the tenth book
+of the Rig-Veda Sanhita, we have a description of the creation of
+all things out of the severed limbs of a magnified non-natural man,
+Purusha.  This conception is of course that which occurs in the
+Norse myths of the rent body of Ymir.  Borr's sons took the body of
+the Giant Ymir and of his flesh formed the earth, of his blood seas
+and waters, of his bones mountains, of his teeth rocks and stones,
+of his hair all manner of plants, of his skull the firmament, of
+his brains the clouds, and so forth.  In Chaldean story, Bel cuts
+in twain the magnified non-natural woman Omorca, and converts the
+halves of her body into heaven and earth.  Among the Iroquois in
+North America, Chokanipok was the giant whose limbs, bones and
+blood furnished the raw material of many natural objects; while in
+Mangaia portions of Ru, in Egypt of Set and Osiris, in Greece of
+Dionysus Zagreus were used in creating various things, such as
+stones, plants and metals.  The same ideas precisely are found in
+the ninetieth hymn of the tenth book of the Rig-Veda.  Yet it is a
+singular thing that, in all the discussions as to the antiquity and
+significance of this hymn which have come under our notice, there
+has not been one single reference made to parallel legends among
+Aryan or non-Aryan peoples.  In accordance with the general
+principles which guide us in this work, we are inclined to regard
+any ideas which are at once rude in character and widely
+distributed, both among civilised and uncivilised races, as
+extremely old, whatever may be the age of the literary form in
+which they are presented.  But the current of learned opinions as
+to the date of the Purusha Sukta, the Vedic hymn about the
+sacrifice of Purusha and the creation of the world out of fragments
+of his body, runs in the opposite direction.  The hymn is not
+regarded as very ancient by most Sanskrit scholars.  We shall now
+quote the hymn, which contains the data on which any theory as to
+its age must be founded:--[1]
+
+
+[1] Rig-Veda, x. 90; Muir, Sanskrit Texts, 2nd edit., i. 9.
+
+
+"Purusha has a thousand heads, a thousand eyes, a thousand feet.
+On every side enveloping the earth, he overpassed (it) by a space
+of ten fingers.  Purusha himself is this whole (universe), whatever
+is and whatever shall be. . . .  When the gods performed a
+sacrifice with Purusha as the oblation, the spring was its butter,
+the summer its fuel, and the autumn its (accompanying) offering.
+This victim, Purusha, born in the beginning, they immolated on the
+sacrificial grass.  With him the gods, the Sadhyas, and the Rishis
+sacrificed.  From that universal sacrifice were provided curds and
+butter.  It formed those aerial (creatures) and animals both wild
+and tame.  From that universal sacrifice sprang the Ric and Saman
+verses, the metres and Yajush.  From it sprang horses, and all
+animals with two rows of teeth; kine sprang from it; from it goats
+and sheep.  When (the gods) divided Purusha, into how many parts
+did they cut him up?  What was his mouth?  What arms (had he)?
+What (two objects) are said (to have been) his thighs and feet?
+The Brahman was his mouth; the Rajanya was made his arms; the being
+(called) the Vaisya, he was his thighs; the Sudra sprang from his
+feet.  The moon sprang from his soul (Mahas), the sun from his eye,
+Indra and Agni from his mouth, and Yaiyu from his breath.  From his
+navel arose the air, from his head the sky, from his feet the
+earth, from his ear the (four) quarters; in this manner (the gods)
+formed the world.  When the gods, performing sacrifice, bound
+Purusha as a victim, there were seven sticks (stuck up) for it
+(around the fire), and thrice seven pieces of fuel were made.  With
+sacrifice the gods performed the sacrifice.  These were the
+earliest rites.  These great powers have sought the sky, where are
+the former Sadhyas, gods."
+
+The myth here stated is plain enough in its essential facts.  The
+gods performed a sacrifice with a gigantic anthropomorphic being
+(Purusha = Man) as the victim.  Sacrifice is not found, as a rule,
+in the religious of the most backward races of all; it is,
+relatively, an innovation, as shall be shown later.  His head, like
+the head of Ymir, formed the sky, his eye the sun, animals sprang
+from his body.  The four castes are connected with, and it appears
+to be implied that they sprang from, his mouth, arms, thighs and
+feet.  It is obvious that this last part of the myth is subsequent
+to the formation of castes.  This is one of the chief arguments for
+the late date of the hymn, as castes are not distinctly recognised
+elsewhere in the Rig-Veda.  Mr. Max Muller[1] believes the hymn to
+be "modern both in its character and in its diction," and this
+opinion he supports by philological arguments.  Dr. Muir[2] says
+that the hymn "has every character of modernness both in its
+diction and ideas".  Dr Haug, on the other hand,[3] in a paper read
+in 1871, admits that the present form of the hymn is not older than
+the greater part of the hymns of the tenth book, and than those of
+the Atharva Veda; but he adds, "The ideas which the hymn contains
+are certainly of a primeval antiquity. . . .  In fact, the hymn is
+found in the Yajur-Veda among the formulas connected with human
+sacrifices, which were formerly practised in India."  We have
+expressly declined to speak about "primeval antiquity," as we have
+scarcely any evidence as to the myths and mental condition for
+example, even of palaeolithic man; but we may so far agree with Dr.
+Haug as to affirm that the fundamental idea of the Purusha Sukta,
+namely, the creation of the world or portions of the world out of
+the fragments of a fabulous anthropomorphic being is common to
+Chaldeans, Iroquois, Egyptians, Greeks, Tinnehs, Mangaians and
+Aryan Indians.  This is presumptive proof of the antiquity of the
+ideas which Dr. Muir and Mr. Max Muller think relatively modern.
+The savage and brutal character of the invention needs no
+demonstration.  Among very low savages, for example, the Tinnehs of
+British North America, not a man, not a god, but a DOG, is torn up,
+and the fragments are made into animals.[4]  On the Paloure River a
+beaver suffers in the manner of Purusha.  We may, for these
+reasons, regard the chief idea of the myth as extremely ancient--
+infinitely more ancient than the diction of the hymn.
+
+
+[1] Ancient Sanskrit Literature, 570.
+
+[2] Sanskrit Texts, 2nd edit., i. 12.
+
+[3] Sanskrit Text, 2nd edit., ii. 463.
+
+[4] Hearne's Journey, pp. 342-343.
+
+
+As to the mention of the castes, supposed to be a comparatively
+modern institution, that is not an essential part of the legend.
+When the idea of creation out of a living being was once received
+it was easy to extend the conception to any institution, of which
+the origin was forgotten.  The Teutonic race had a myth which
+explained the origin of the classes eorl, ceorl and thrall (earl,
+churl and slave).  A South American people, to explain the
+different ranks in society, hit on the very myth of Plato, the
+legend of golden, silver and copper races, from which the ranks of
+society have descended.  The Vedic poet, in our opinion, merely
+extended to the institution of caste a myth which had already
+explained the origin of the sun, the firmament, animals, and so
+forth, on the usual lines of savage thought.  The Purusha Sukta is
+the type of many other Indian myths of creation, of which the
+following[1] one is extremely noteworthy.  "Prajapati desired to
+propagate.  He formed the Trivrit (stoma) from his mouth.  After it
+were produced the deity Agni, the metre Gayatri, . . . of men the
+Brahman, of beasts the goat; . . . from his breast, and from his
+arms he formed the Panchadasa (stoma).  After it were created the
+God Indra, the Trishtubh metre, . . . of men the Rajanya, of beasts
+the sheep.  Hence they are vigorous, because they were created from
+vigour.  From his middle he formed the Saptadasa (stoma).  After it
+were created the gods called the Yisvadevas, the Jagati metre, . . .
+of men the Vaisya, of beasts kine.  Hence they are to be eaten,
+because they were created from the receptacle of food."  The form
+in which we receive this myth is obviously later than the
+institution of caste and the technical names for metres.  Yet
+surely any statement that kine "are to be eaten" must be older than
+the universal prohibition to eat that sacred animal the cow.
+Possibly we might argue that when this theory of creation was first
+promulgated, goats and sheep were forbidden food.[2]
+
+
+[1] Taittirya Sanhita, or Yajur-Veda, vii. i. 1-4; Muir, 2nd edit.,
+i. 15.
+
+[2] Mr. M'Lennan has drawn some singular inferences from this
+passage, connecting, as it does, certain gods and certain classes
+of men with certain animals, in a manner somewhat suggestive of
+totemism (Fornightly Review), February, 1870.
+
+
+Turning from the Vedas to the Brahmanas, we find a curiously savage
+myth of the origin of species.[1]  According to this passage of the
+Brahmana, "this universe was formerly soul only, in the form of
+Purusha".  He caused himself to fall asunder into two parts.
+Thence arose a husband and a wife.  "He cohabited with her; from
+them men were born.  She reflected, 'How does he, after having
+produced me from himself, cohabit with me?  Ah, let me disappear.'
+She became a cow, and the other a bull, and he cohabited with her.
+From them kine were produced."  After a series of similar
+metamorphoses of the female into all animal shapes, and a similar
+series of pursuits by the male in appropriate form, "in this manner
+pairs of all sorts of creatures down to ants were created".  This
+myth is a parallel to the various Greek legends about the amours in
+bestial form of Zeus, Nemesis, Cronus, Demeter and other gods and
+goddesses.  In the Brahmanas this myth is an explanation of the
+origin of species, and such an explanation as could scarcely have
+occurred to a civilised mind.  In other myths in the Brahmanas,
+Prajapati creates men from his body, or rather the fluid of his
+body becomes a tortoise, the tortoise becomes a man (purusha), with
+similar examples of speculation.[2]
+
+
+[1] Satapatha Brahmana, xiv. 4, 2; Muir, 2nd edit., i. 25.
+
+[2] Similar tales are found among the Khonds.
+
+
+Among all these Brahmana myths of the part taken by Prajapati in
+the creation or evoking of things, the question arises who WAS
+Prajapati?  His role is that of the great Hare in American myth; he
+is a kind of demiurge, and his name means "The Master of Things
+Created," like the Australian Biamban, "Master," and the American
+title of the chief Manitou, "Master of Life",[1] Dr. Muir remarks
+that, as the Vedic mind advances from mere divine beings who
+"reside and operate in fire" (Agni), "dwell and shine in the sun"
+(Surya), or "in the atmosphere" (Indra), towards a conception of
+deity, "the farther step would be taken of speaking of the deity
+under such new names as Visvakarman and Prajapati".  These are
+"appellatives which do not designate any limited functions
+connected with any single department of Nature, but the more
+general and abstract notions of divine power operating in the
+production and government of the universe".  Now the interesting
+point is that round this new and abstract NAME gravitate the most
+savage and crudest myths, exactly the myths we meet among
+Hottentots and Nootkas.  For example, among the Hottentots it is
+Heitsi Eibib, among the Huarochiri Indians it is Uiracocha, who
+confers, by curse or blessing, on the animals their proper
+attributes and characteristics.[2]  In the Satapatha Brahmana it is
+Prajapati who takes this part, that falls to rude culture-heroes of
+Hottentots and Huarochiris.[3]  How Prajapati made experiments in a
+kind of state-aided evolution, so to speak, or evolution
+superintended and assisted from above, will presently be set forth.
+
+
+[1] Bergaigne, iii. 40.
+
+[2] Avila, Fables of the Yncas, p. 127.
+
+[3] English translation, ii. 361.
+
+
+In the Puranas creation is a process renewed after each kalpa, or
+vast mundane period.  Brahma awakes from his slumber, and finds the
+world a waste of water.  Then, just as in the American myths of the
+coyote, and the Slavonic myths of the devil and the doves, a boar
+or a fish or a tortoise fishes up the world out of the waters.
+That boar, fish, tortoise, or what not, is Brahma or Vishnu.  This
+savage conception of the beginnings of creation in the act of a
+tortoise, fish, or boar is not first found in the Puranas, as Mr.
+Muir points out, but is indicated in the Black Yajur Veda and in
+the Satapatha Brahmana.[1]  In the Satapatha Brahmana, xiv. 1, 2,
+11, we discover the idea, so common in savage myths--for example,
+in that of the Navajoes--that the earth was at first very small, a
+mere patch, and grew bigger after the animal fished it up.
+"Formerly this earth was only so large, of the size of a span.  A
+boar called Emusha raised her up."  Here the boar makes no pretence
+of being the incarnation of a god, but is a mere boar sans phrase,
+like the creative coyote of the Papogas and Chinooks, or the musk-
+rat of the Tacullies.  This is a good example of the development of
+myths.  Savages begin, as we saw, by mythically regarding various
+animals, spiders, grasshoppers, ravens, eagles, cockatoos, as the
+creators or recoverers of the world.  As civilisation advances,
+those animals still perform their beneficent functions, but are
+looked on as gods in disguise.  In time the animals are often
+dropped altogether, though they hold their place with great
+tenacity in the cosmogonic traditions of the Aryans in India.  When
+we find the Satapatha Brahmana alleging[2] "that all creatures are
+descended from a tortoise," we seem to be among the rude Indians of
+the Pacific Coast.  But when the tortoise is identified with
+Aditya, and when Adityas prove to be solar deities, sons of Aditi,
+and when Aditi is recognised by Mr. Muller as the Dawn, we see that
+the Aryan mind has not been idle, but has added a good deal to the
+savage idea of the descent of men and beasts from a tortoise.[3]
+
+
+[1] Muir, 2nd edit., vol. i. p. 52.
+
+[2] Muir, 2nd edit., vol. i. p. 54.
+
+[3] See Ternaux Compans' Nouvelles Annales des Voyages, lxxxvi. p.
+5.  For Mexican traditions, "Mexican and Australian Hurricane
+World's End," Bancroft, v. 64.
+
+
+Another feature of savage myths of creation we found to be the
+introduction of a crude theory of evolution.  We saw that among the
+Potoyante tribe of the Digger Indians, and among certain Australian
+tribes, men and beasts were supposed to have been slowly evolved
+and improved out of the forms first of reptiles and then of
+quadrupeds.  In the mythologies of the more civilised South
+American races, the idea of the survival of the fittest was
+otherwise expressed.  The gods made several attempts at creation,
+and each set of created beings proving in one way or other unsuited
+to its environment, was permitted to die out or degenerated into
+apes, and was succeeded by a set better adapted for survival.[1]
+In much the same way the Satapatha Brahmana[2] represents mammals
+as the last result of a series of creative experiments.  "Prajapati
+created living beings, which perished for want of food.  Birds and
+serpents perished thus.  Prajapati reflected, 'How is it that my
+creatures perish after having been formed?'  He perceived this:
+'They perish from want of food'.  In his own presence he caused
+milk to be supplied to breasts.  He created living beings, which,
+resorting to the breasts, were thus preserved.  These are the
+creatures which did not perish."
+
+
+[1] This myth is found in Popol Vuh.  A Chinook myth of the same
+sort, Bancroft, v. 95.
+
+[2] ii. 5, 11; Muir, 2nd edit., i. 70.
+
+
+The common myth which derives the world from a great egg--the myth
+perhaps most familiar in its Finnish shape--is found in the
+Satapatha Brahmana.[1]  "In the beginning this universe was waters,
+nothing but waters.  The waters desired: 'How can we be
+reproduced?'  So saying, they toiled, they performed austerity.
+While they were performing austerity, a golden egg came into
+existence.  It then became a year. . . .  From it in a year a man
+came into existence, who was Prajapati. . . .  He conceived progeny
+in himself; with his mouth he created the gods."  According to
+another text,[2] "Prajapati took the form of a tortoise".  The
+tortoise is the same as Aditya.[3]
+
+
+[1] xi. 1, 6, 1; Muir, Journal of Royal Asiatic Society, 1863.
+
+[2] Satapatha Brahmana, vii. 4, 3, 5.
+
+[3] Aitareya Brahmana, iii. 34 (11, 219), a very discreditable
+origin of species.
+
+
+It is now time to examine the Aryan shape of the widely spread myth
+about the marriage of heaven and earth, and the fortunes of their
+children.  We have already seen that in New Zealand heaven and
+earth were regarded as real persons, of bodily parts and passions,
+united in a secular embrace.  We shall apply the same explanation
+to the Greek myth of Gaea and of the mutilation of Cronus.  In
+India, Dyaus (heaven) answers to the Greek Uranus and the Maori
+Rangi, while Prithivi (earth) is the Greek Gaea, the Maori Papa.
+In the Veda, heaven and earth are constantly styled "parents";[1]
+but this we might regard as a mere metaphorical expression, still
+common in poetry.  A passage of the Aitareya Brahmana, however,
+retains the old conception, in which there was nothing metaphorical
+at all.[2]  These two worlds, heaven and earth, were once joined.
+Subsequently they were separated (according to one account, by
+Indra, who thus plays the part of Cronus and of Tane Mahuta).
+"Heaven and earth," says Dr. Muir, "are regarded as the parents not
+only of men, but of the gods also, as appears from the various
+texts where they are designated by the epithet Devapatre, 'having
+gods for their children'."  By men in an early stage of thought
+this myth was accepted along with others in which heaven and earth
+were regarded as objects created by one of their own children, as
+by Indra,[3] who "stretched them out like a hide," who, like Atlas,
+"sustains and upholds them"[4] or, again, Tvashtri, the divine
+smith, wrought them by his craft; or, once more, heaven and earth
+sprung from the head and feet of Purusha.  In short, if any one
+wished to give an example of that recklessness of orthodoxy or
+consistency which is the mark of early myth, he could find no
+better example than the Indian legends of the origin of things.
+Perhaps there is not one of the myths current among the lower races
+which has not its counterpart in the Indian Brahmanas.  It has been
+enough for us to give a selection of examples.
+
+
+[1] Muir, v. 22.
+
+[2] iv. 27; Haug, ii. 308.
+
+[3] Rig-Veda, viii. 6, 5.
+
+[4] Ibid., iii. 32, 8.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+GREEK MYTHS OF THE ORIGIN OF THE WORLD AND MAN.
+
+The Greeks practically civilised when we first meet them in Homer--
+Their mythology, however, is full of repulsive features--The
+hypothesis that many of these are savage survivals--Are there other
+examples of such survival in Greek life and institutions?--Greek
+opinion was constant that the race had been savage--Illustrations
+of savage survival from Greek law of homicide, from magic,
+religion, human sacrifice, religious art, traces of totemism, and
+from the mysteries--Conclusion: that savage survival may also be
+expected in Greek myths.
+
+
+The Greeks, when we first make their acquaintance in the Homeric
+poems, were a cultivated people, dwelling, under the government of
+royal families, in small city states.  This social condition they
+must have attained by 1000 B.C., and probably much earlier.  They
+had already a long settled past behind them, and had no
+recollection of any national migration from the "cradle of the
+Aryan race".  On the other hand, many tribes thought themselves
+earth-born from the soil of the place where they were settled.  The
+Maori traditions prove that memories of a national migration may
+persist for several hundred years among men ignorant of writing.
+Greek legend, among a far more civilised race, only spoke of
+occasional foreign settlers from Sidon, Lydia, or Egypt.  The
+Homeric Greeks were well acquainted with almost all the arts of
+life, though it is not absolutely certain that they could write,
+and certainly they were not addicted to reading.  In war they
+fought from chariots, like the Egyptians and Assyrians; they were
+bold seafarers, being accustomed to harry the shores even of Egypt,
+and they had large commercial dealings with the people of Tyre and
+Sidon.  In the matter of religion they were comparatively free and
+unrestrained.  Their deities, though, in myth, capricious in
+character, might be regarded in many ways as "making for
+righteousness".  They protected the stranger and the suppliant;
+they sanctioned the oath, they frowned on the use of poisoned
+arrows; marriage and domestic life were guarded by their good-will;
+they dispensed good and evil fortune, to be accepted with humility
+and resignation among mortals.
+
+The patriarchal head of each family performed the sacrifices for
+his household, the king for the state, the ruler of Mycenae,
+Agamemnon, for the whole Achaean host encamped before the walls of
+Troy.  At the same time, prophets, like Calchas, possessed
+considerable influence, due partly to an hereditary gift of second-
+sight, as in the case of Theoclymenus,[1] partly to acquired
+professional skill in observing omens, partly to the direct
+inspiration of the gods.  The oracle at Delphi, or, as it is called
+by Homer, Pytho, was already famous, and religion recognised, in
+various degrees, all the gods familiar to the later cult of Hellas.
+In a people so advanced, so much in contact with foreign races and
+foreign ideas, and so wonderfully gifted by nature with keen
+intellect and perfect taste, it is natural to expect, if anywhere,
+a mythology almost free from repulsive elements, and almost purged
+of all that we regard as survivals from the condition of savagery.
+But while Greek mythology is richer far than any other in beautiful
+legend, and is thronged with lovely and majestic forms of gods and
+goddesses, nymphs and oreads ideally fair, none the less a very
+large proportion of its legends is practically on a level with the
+myths of Maoris, Thlinkeets, Cahrocs and Bushmen.
+
+
+[1] Odyssey, xx. 354.
+
+
+This is the part of Greek mythology which has at all times excited
+most curiosity, and has been made the subject of many systems of
+interpretation.  The Greeks themselves, from almost the earliest
+historical ages, were deeply concerned either to veil or explain
+away the blasphemous horrors of their own "sacred chapters," poetic
+traditions and temple legends.  We endeavour to account for these
+as relics of an age of barbarism lying very far behind the time of
+Homer--an age when the ancestors of the Greeks either borrowed, or
+more probably developed for themselves, the kind of myths by which
+savage peoples endeavour to explain the nature and origin of the
+world and all phenomena.
+
+The correctness of this explanation, resting as it does on the
+belief that the Greeks were at one time in the savage status, might
+be demonstrated from the fact that not only myths, but Greek life
+in general, and especially Greek ritual, teemed with surviving
+examples of institutions and of manners which are found everywhere
+among the most backward and barbarous races.  It is not as if only
+the myths of Greece retained this rudeness, or as if the Greeks
+supposed themselves to have been always civilised.  The whole of
+Greek life yields relics of savagery when the surface is excavated
+ever so slightly.  Moreover, that the Greeks, as soon as they came
+to reflect on these matters at all, believed themselves to have
+emerged from a condition of savagery is undeniable.  The poets are
+entirely at one on this subject with Moschion, a writer of the
+school of Euripides.  "The time hath been, yea, it HATH been," he
+says, "when men lived like the beasts, dwelling in mountain caves,
+and clefts unvisited of the sun. . . .  Then they broke not the
+soil with ploughs nor by aid of iron, but the weaker man was slain
+to make the supper of the stronger," and so on.[1]  This view of
+the savage origin of mankind was also held by Aristotle:[2] "It is
+probable that the first men, whether they were produced by the
+earth (earth-born) or survived from some deluge, were on a level of
+ignorance and darkness".[3]  This opinion, consciously held and
+stated by philosophers and poets, reveals itself also in the
+universal popular Greek traditions that men were originally
+ignorant of fire, agriculture, metallurgy and all the other arts
+and conveniences of life, till they were instructed by ideal
+culture-heroes, like Prometheus, members of a race divine or half
+divine.  A still more curious Athenian tradition (preserved by
+Varro) maintained, not only that marriage was originally unknown,
+but that, as among Australians and some Red Indians, the family
+name, descended through the mother, and kinship was reckoned on the
+female side before the time of Cecrops.[4]
+
+
+[1] Moschion; cf. Preller, Ausgewahlte Aufsatze, p. 206.
+
+[2] Politics, ii. 8-21; Plato, Laws, 667-680.
+
+[3] Compare Horace, Satires, i. 3, 99; Lucretius, v. 923.
+
+[4] Suidas, s.v. "Prometheus"; Augustine, De Civitate Dei, xviii. 9.
+
+
+While Greek opinion, both popular and philosophical, admitted, or
+rather asserted, that savagery lay in the background of the
+historical prospect, Greek institutions retained a thousand birth-
+marks of savagery.  It is manifest and undeniable that the Greek
+criminal law, as far as it effected murder, sprang directly from
+the old savage blood-feud.[1]  The Athenian law was a civilised
+modification of the savage rule that the kindred of a slain man
+take up his blood-feud.  Where homicide was committed WITHIN the
+circle of blood relationship, as by Orestes, Greek religion
+provided the Erinnyes to punish an offence which had, as it were,
+no human avenger.  The precautions taken by murderers to lay the
+ghost of the slain man were much like those in favour among the
+Australians.  The Greek cut off the extremities of his victim, the
+tips of the hands and feet, and disposed them neatly beneath the
+arm-pits of the slain man.[2]  In the same spirit, and for the same
+purpose, the Australian black cuts off the thumbs of his dead
+enemy, that the ghost too may be mutilated and prevented from
+throwing at him with a ghostly spear.  We learn also from
+Apollonius Rhodius and his scholiast that Greek murderers used
+thrice to suck in and spit out the gore of their victims, perhaps
+with some idea of thereby partaking of their blood, and so, by
+becoming members of their kin, putting it beyond the power of the
+ghosts to avenge themselves.  Similar ideas inspire the worldwide
+savage custom of making an artificial "blood brotherhood" by
+mingling the blood of the contracting parties.  As to the
+ceremonies of cleansing from blood-guiltiness among the Greeks, we
+may conjecture that these too had their primitive side; for
+Orestes, in the Eumenides, maintains that he has been purified of
+his mother's slaughter by sufficient blood of swine.  But this
+point will be illustrated presently, when we touch on the mysteries.
+
+
+[1] Duncker, History of Greece, Engl. transl., vol. ii. p. 129.
+
+[2] See "Arm-pitting in Ancient Greece," in the American Journal of
+Philology, October, 1885, where a discussion of the familiar texts
+in Aeschylus and Apollonius Rhodius will be found.
+
+
+Ritual and myth, as might be expected, retained vast masses of
+savage rites and superstitious habits and customs.  To be "in all
+things too superstitious," too full of deisidaimonia, was even in
+St. Paul's time the characteristic of the Athenians.  Now
+superstition, or deisidaimonia, is defined by Theophrastus,[1] as
+"cowardice in regard to the supernatural" ([Greek text omitted]).
+This "cowardice" has in all ages and countries secured the
+permanence of ritual and religious traditions.  Men have always
+argued, like one of the persons in M. Renan's play, Le Pretre de
+Nemi, that "l'ordre du monde depend de l'ordre des rites qu'on
+observe".  The familiar endurable sequence of the seasons of
+spring, and seed-sowing, and harvest depend upon the due
+performance of immemorial religious acts.  "In the mystic
+deposits," says Dinarchus, "lies the safety of the city."[2]  What
+the "mystic deposits" were nobody knows for certain, but they must
+have been of very archaic sanctity, and occur among the Arunta and
+the Pawnees.
+
+
+[1] Characters.
+
+[2] Ap. Hermann, Lehrbuch, p. 41; Aglaophamus, 965.
+
+
+Ritual is preserved because it preserves LUCK.  Not only among the
+Romans and the Brahmans, with their endless minute ritual actions,
+but among such lower races as the Kanekas of New Caledonia, the
+efficacy of religious functions is destroyed by the slightest
+accidental infraction of established rules.[1]   The same timid
+conservatism presides over myth, and in each locality the mystery-
+plays, with their accompanying narratives, preserved inviolate the
+early forms of legend.  Myth and ritual do not admit of being
+argued about.  "C'etait le rite etabli.  Ce n'etait pas plus
+absurde qu'autre chose," says the conservative in M. Renan's piece,
+defending the mode of appointment of
+
+
+     The priest who slew the slayer,
+     And shall himself be slain.
+
+
+[1] Thus the watchers of the dead in New Caledonia are fed by the
+sorcerer with a mess at the end of a very long spoon, and should
+the food miss the mouth, all the ceremonies have to be repeated.
+This detail is from Mr. J. J. Atkinson.
+
+
+Now, if the rites and myths preserved by the timorousness of this
+same "cowardice towards the supernatural" were originally evolved
+in the stage of savagery, savage they would remain, as it is
+impious and dangerous to reform them till the religion which they
+serve perishes with them.  These relics in Greek ritual and faith
+are very commonly explained as due to Oriental influences, as
+things borrowed from the dark and bloody superstitions of Asia.
+But this attempt to save the native Greek character for
+"blitheness" and humanity must not be pushed too far.[1]   It must
+be remembered that the cruder and wilder sacrifices and legends of
+Greece were strictly LOCAL; that they were attached to these
+ancient temples, old altars, barbarous xoana, or wooden idols, and
+rough fetish stones, in which Pausanias found the most ancient
+relics of Hellenic theology.  This is a proof of their antiquity
+and a presumption in favour of their freedom from foreign
+influence.  Most of these things were survivals from that dimly
+remembered prehistoric age in which the Greeks, not yet gathered
+into city states, lived in villages or kraals, or pueblos, as we
+should translate [Greek text omitted], if we were speaking of
+African or American tribes.  In that stage the early Greeks must
+have lacked both the civic and the national or Panhellenic
+sentiment; their political unit was the clan, which, again,
+answered in part to the totem kindred of America, or Africa, or
+Australia.[2]  In this stagnant condition they could not have made
+acquaintance with the many creeds of Semitic and other alien
+peoples on the shores of the Levant.[3]  It was later, when Greece
+had developed the city life of the heroic age, that her adventurous
+sons came into close contact with Egypt and Phoenicia.
+
+
+[1] Claus, De Antiq. Form. Dianae, 6,7,16.
+
+[2] As C. O. Muller judiciously remarks: "The scenes of nine-tenths
+of the Greek myths are laid in PARTICULAR DISTRICTS OF GREECE, and
+they speak of the primeval inhabitants, of the lineage and adventures
+of native heroes.  They manifest an accurate acquaintance with
+individual localities, which, at a time when Greece was neither
+explored by antiquaries, nor did geographical handbooks exist, could
+be possessed only by the inhabitants of these localities."  Muller
+gives, as examples, myths of bears more or less divine.  Scientific
+Mythology, pp. 14, 15.
+
+[3] Compare Claus, De Dianae Antiquissima Natura, p. 3.
+
+
+In the colonising time, still later--perhaps from 900 B.C.
+downwards--the Greeks, settled on sites whence they had expelled
+Sidonians or Sicanians, very naturally continued, with
+modifications, the worship of such gods as they found already in
+possession.  Like the Romans, the Greeks easily recognised their
+own deities in the analogous members of foreign polytheistic
+systems.  Thus we can allow for alien elements in such gods and
+goddesses as Zeus Asterios, as Aphrodite of Cyprus or Eryx, or the
+many-breasted Ephesian Artemis, whose monstrous form had its exact
+analogue among the Aztecs in that many-breasted goddess of the
+maguey plant whence beer was made.  To discern and disengage the
+borrowed factors in the Hellenic Olympus by analysis of divine
+names is a task to which comparative philology may lawfully devote
+herself; but we cannot so readily explain by presumed borrowing
+from without the rude xoana of the ancient local temples, the wild
+myths of the local legends, the sacra which were the exclusive
+property of old-world families, Butadae or Eumolpidae.  These are
+clearly survivals from a stage of Greek culture earlier than the
+city state, earlier than the heroic age of the roving Greek
+Vikings, and far earlier than the Greek colonies.  They belong to
+that conservative and immobile period when the tribe or clan,
+settled in its scattered kraals, lived a life of agriculture,
+hunting and cattle-breeding, engaged in no larger or more
+adventurous wars than border feuds about women or cattle.  Such
+wars were on a humbler scale than even Nestor's old fights with the
+Epeians; such adventures did not bring the tribe into contact with
+alien religions.  If Sidonian merchantmen chanced to establish a
+factory near a tribe in this condition, their religion was not
+likely to make many proselytes.
+
+These reasons for believing that most of the wilder element in
+Greek ritual and myth was native may be briefly recapitulated, as
+they are often overlooked.  The more strange and savage features
+meet us in LOCAL tales and practices, often in remote upland
+temples and chapels.  There they had survived from the society of
+the VILLAGE status, before villages were gathered into CITIES,
+before Greeks had taken to a roving life, or made much acquaintance
+with distant and maritime peoples.
+
+For these historical reasons, it may be assumed that the LOCAL
+religious antiquities of Greece, especially in upland districts
+like Arcadia and Elis, are as old, and as purely national, as free
+from foreign influences as any Greek institutions can be.  In these
+rites and myths of true folk-lore and Volksleben, developed before
+Hellas won its way to the pure Hellenic stage, before Egypt and
+Phoenicia were familiar, should be found that common rude element
+which Greeks share with the other races of the world, and which
+was, to some extent, purged away by the genius of Homer and Pindar,
+pii vates et Phaebo digna locuti.
+
+In proof of this local conservatism, some passages collected by K.
+F. Hermann in his Lehrbuch der Griechischen Antiquitaten[1] may be
+cited.  Thus Isocrates writes,[2] "This was all their care, neither
+to destroy any of the ancestral rites, nor to add aught beyond what
+was ordained".  Clemens Alexandrinus reports that certain
+Thessalians worshipped storks, "IN ACCORDANCE WITH USE AND
+WONT".[3]  Plato lays down the very "law of least change" which has
+been described.  "Whether the legislator is establishing a new
+state or restoring an old and decayed one, in respect of gods and
+temples, . . . if he be a man of sense, he will MAKE NO CHANGE IN
+ANYTHING which the oracle of Delphi, or Dodona, or Ammon has
+sanctioned, in whatever manner."  In this very passage Plato[4]
+speaks of rites "derived from Tyrrhenia or Cyprus" as falling
+within the later period of the Greek Wanderjahre.  On the high
+religious value of things antique, Porphyry wrote in a late age,
+and when the new religion of Christ was victorious, "Comparing the
+new sacred images with the old, we see that the old are more simply
+fashioned, yet are held divine, but the new, admired for their
+elaborate execution, have less persuasion of divinity,"--a remark
+anticipated by Pausanias, "The statues Daedalus wrought are
+quainter to the outward view, yet there shows forth in them
+somewhat supernatural".[5]  So Athenaeus[6] reports of a visitor to
+the shrine of Leto in Delos, that he expected the ancient statue of
+the mother of Apollo to be something remarkable, but, unlike the
+pious Porphyry, burst out laughing when he found it a shapeless
+wooden idol.  These idols were dressed out, fed and adorned as if
+they had life.[7]  It is natural that myths dating from an age when
+Greek gods resembled Polynesian idols should be as rude as
+Polynesian myths.  The tenacity of LOCAL myth is demonstrated by
+Pausanias, who declares that even in the highly civilised Attica
+the Demes retained legends different from those of the central
+city--the legends, probably, which were current before the villages
+were "Synoecised" into Athens.[8]
+
+
+[1] Zweiter Theil, 1858.
+
+[2] Areop., 30.
+
+[3] Clem. Alex., Oxford, 1715, i. 34.
+
+[4] Laws, v. 738.
+
+[5] De. Abst., ii. 18; Paus., ii. 4, 5.
+
+[6] xiv. 2.
+
+[7] Hermann, op. cit., p. 94, note 10.
+
+[8] Pausanias, i. 14, 6.
+
+
+It appears, then, that Greek ritual necessarily preserves matter of
+the highest antiquity, and that the oldest rites and myths will
+probably be found, not in the Panhellenic temples, like that in
+Olympia, not in the NATIONAL poets, like Homer and Sophocles, but
+in the LOCAL fanes of early tribal gods, and in the LOCAL mysteries,
+and the myths which came late, if they came at all, into literary
+circulation.  This opinion is strengthened and illustrated by that
+invaluable guide-book of the artistic and religious pilgrim written
+in the second century after our era by Pausanias.  If we follow him,
+we shall find that many of the ceremonies, stories and idols which
+he regarded as oldest are analogous to the idols and myths of the
+contemporary backward races.  Let us then, for the sake of
+illustrating the local and savage survivals in Greek religion,
+accompany Pausanias in his tour through Hellas.
+
+In Christian countries, especially in modern times, the contents of
+one church are very like the furniture of another church; the
+functions in one resemble those in all, though on the Continent
+some shrines still retain relics and customs of the period when
+local saints had their peculiar rites.  But it was a very different
+thing in Greece.  The pilgrim who arrived at a temple never could
+guess what oddity or horror in the way of statues, sacrifices, or
+stories might be prepared for his edification.  In the first place,
+there were HUMAN SACRIFICES.  These are not familiar to low
+savages, if known to them at all.  Probably they were first offered
+to barbaric royal ghosts, and thence transferred to gods.  In the
+town of Salamis, in Cyprus, about the date of Hadrian, the devout
+might have found the priest slaying a human victim to Zeus,--an
+interesting custom, instituted, according to Lactantius, by Teucer,
+and continued till the age of the Roman Empire.[1]
+
+
+[1] Euseb., Praep. Ev., iv. 17, mentions, among peoples practising
+human sacrifices, Rhodes, Salamis, Heliopolis, Chios, Tenedos,
+Lacedaemon, Arcadia and Athens; and, among gods thus honoured,
+Hera, Athene, Cronus, Ares, Dionysus, Zeus and Apollo.  For
+Dionysus the Cannibal, Plutarch, Themist., 13; Porphyr., Abst., ii.
+55.  For the sacrifice to Zeus Laphystius, see Grote, i. c. vi.,
+and his array of authorities, especially Herodotus, vii. 197.
+Clemens Alexandrinus (i. 36) mentions the Messenians, to Zeus; the
+Taurians, to Artemis, the folk of Pella, to Peleus and Chiron; the
+Cretans, to Zeus; the Lesbians, to Dionysus.  Geusius de Victimis
+Humanis (1699) may be consulted.
+
+
+At Alos in Achaia Phthiotis, the stranger MIGHT have seen an
+extraordinary spectacle, though we admit that the odds would have
+been highly against his chance of witnessing the following events.
+As the stranger approaches the town-hall, he observes an elderly
+and most respectable citizen strolling in the same direction.  The
+citizen is so lost in thought that apparently he does not notice
+where he is going.  Behind him comes a crowd of excited but silent
+people, who watch him with intense interest.  The citizen reaches
+the steps of the town-hall, while the excitement of his friends
+behind increases visibly.  Without thinking, the elderly person
+enters the building.  With a wild and un-Aryan howl, the other
+people of Alos are down on him, pinion him, wreathe him with
+flowery garlands, and, lead him to the temple of Zeus Laphystius,
+or "The Glutton," where he is solemnly sacrificed on the altar.
+This was the custom of the good Greeks of Alos whenever a
+descendant of the house of Athamas entered the Prytaneion.  Of
+course the family were very careful, as a rule, to keep at a safe
+distance from the forbidden place.  "What a sacrifice for Greeks!"
+as the author of the Minos[1] says in that dialogue which is
+incorrectly attributed to Plato.  "He cannot get out except to be
+sacrificed," says Herodotus, speaking of the unlucky descendant of
+Athamas.  The custom appears to have existed as late as the time of
+the scholiast on Apollonius Rhodius.[2]
+
+
+[1] 315, c.; Plato, Laws, vi. 782, c.
+
+[2] Argonautica, vii. 197.
+
+
+Even in the second century, when Pausanias visited Arcadia, he
+found what seem to have been human sacrifices to Zeus.  The passage
+is so very strange and romantic that we quote a part of it.[1]
+"The Lycaean hill hath other marvels to show, and chiefly this:
+thereon there is a grove of Zeus Lycaeus, wherein may men in nowise
+enter; but if any transgresses the law and goes within, he must die
+within the space of one year.  This tale, moreover, they tell,
+namely, that whatsoever man or beast cometh within the grove casts
+no shadow, and the hunter pursues not the deer into that wood, but,
+waiting till the beast comes forth again, sees that it has left its
+shadow behind.  And on the highest crest of the whole mountain
+there is a mound of heaped-up earth, the altar of Zeus Lycaeus, and
+the more part of Peloponnesus can be seen from that place.  And
+before the altar stand two pillars facing the rising sun, and
+thereon golden eagles of yet more ancient workmanship.  And on this
+altar they sacrifice to Zeus in a manner that may not be spoken,
+and little liking had I to make much search into this matter.  BUT
+LET IT BE AS IT IS, AND AS IT HATH BEEN FROM THE BEGINNING."  The
+words "as it hath been from the beginning" are ominous and
+significant, for the traditional myths of Arcadia tell of the human
+sacrifices of Lycaon, and of men who, tasting the meat of a mixed
+sacrifice, put human flesh between their lips unawares.[2]  This
+aspect of Greek religion, then, is almost on a level with the
+mysterious cannibal horrors of "Voodoo," as practised by the secret
+societies of negroes in Hayti.  But concerning these things, as
+Pausanias might say, it is little pleasure to inquire.
+
+
+[1] Pausanias, viii. 2.
+
+[2] Plato, Rep., viii. 565, d.  This rite occurs in some African
+coronation ceremonies.
+
+
+Even where men were not sacrificed to the gods, the tourist among
+the temples would learn that these bloody rites had once been
+customary, and ceremonies existed by way of commutation.  This is
+precisely what we find in Vedic religion, in which the empty form
+of sacrificing a man was gone through, and the origin of the world
+was traced to the fragments of a god sacrificed by gods.[1]  In
+Sparta was an altar of Artemis Orthia, and a wooden image of great
+rudeness and antiquity--so rude indeed, that Pausanias, though
+accustomed to Greek fetish-stones, thought it must be of barbaric
+origin.  The story was that certain people of different towns, when
+sacrificing at the altar, were seized with frenzy and slew each
+other.  The oracle commanded that the altar should be sprinkled
+with human blood.  Men were therefore chosen by lot to be
+sacrificed till Lycurgus commuted the offering, and sprinkled the
+altar with the blood of boys who were flogged before the goddess.
+The priestess holds the statue of the goddess during the flogging,
+and if any of the boys are but lightly scourged, the image becomes
+too heavy for her to bear.
+
+
+[1] The Purusha Sukhta, in Rig-Veda, x. 90.
+
+
+The Ionians near Anthea had a temple of Artemis Triclaria, and to
+her it had been customary to sacrifice yearly a youth and maiden of
+transcendent beauty.  In Pausanias's time the human sacrifice was
+commuted.  He himself beheld the strange spectacle of living beasts
+and birds being driven into the fire to Artemis Laphria, a
+Calydonian goddess, and he had seen bears rush back among the
+ministrants; but there was no record that any one had ever been
+hurt by these wild beasts.[1]  The bear was a beast closely
+connected with Artemis, and there is some reason to suppose that
+the goddess had herself been a she-bear or succeeded to the cult of
+a she-bear in the morning of time.[2]
+
+
+[1] Paus., vii. 18, 19.
+
+[2] See "Artemis", postea.
+
+
+It may be believed that where symbolic human sacrifices are
+offered, that is, where some other victim is slain or a dummy of a
+man is destroyed, and where legend maintains that the sacrifice was
+once human, there men and women were originally the victims.
+Greek ritual and Greek myth were full of such tales and such
+commutations.[1]  In Rome, as is well known, effigies of men called
+Argives were sacrificed.[2]  As an example of a beast-victim given
+in commutation, Pausanias mentions[3] the case of the folk of
+Potniae, who were compelled once a year to offer to Dionysus a boy,
+in the bloom of youth.  But the sacrifice was commuted for a goat.
+
+
+[1] See Hermann, Alterthumer., ii. 159-161, for abundant examples.
+
+[2] Plutarch, Quest. Rom. 32.
+
+[3] ix. 8, 1.
+
+
+These commutations are familiar all over the world.  Even in
+Mexico, where human sacrifices and ritual cannibalism were daily
+events, Quetzalcoatl was credited with commuting human sacrifices
+for blood drawn from the bodies of the religious.  In this one
+matter even the most conservative creeds and the faiths most
+opposed to change sometimes say with Tartuffe:--
+
+
+     Le ciel defend, de vrai, certains contentements,
+     Mais on trouve avec lui des accommodements.
+
+
+Though the fact has been denied (doubtless without reflection), the
+fact remains that the Greeks offered human sacrifices.  Now what
+does this imply?  Must it be taken as a survival from barbarism, as
+one of the proofs that the Greeks had passed through the barbaric
+status?
+
+The answer is less obvious than might be supposed.  Sacrifice has
+two origins.  First, there are HONORIFIC sacrifices, in which the
+ghost or god (or divine beast, if a divine beast be worshipped) is
+offered the food he is believed to prefer.  This does not occur
+among the lowest savages.  To carnivorous totems, Garcilasso says,
+the Indians of Peru offered themselves.  The feeding of sacred mice
+in the temples of Apollo Smintheus is well known.  Secondly, there
+are expiatory or PIACULAR sacrifices, in which the worshipper, as
+it were, fines himself in a child, an ox, or something else that he
+treasures.  The latter kind of sacrifice (most common in cases of
+crime done or suspected within the circle of kindred) is not
+necessarily barbaric, except in its cruelty.  An example is the
+Attic Thargelia, in which two human scape-goats annually bore "the
+sins of the congregation," and were flogged, driven to the sea with
+figs tied round their necks, and burned.[1]
+
+
+[1] Compare the Marseilles human sacrifice, Petron., 141; and for
+the Thargelia, Tsetzes, Chiliads, v. 736; Hellad. in Photius, p.
+1590 f. and Harpoc. s. v.
+
+
+The institution of human sacrifice, then, whether the offering be
+regarded as food, or as a gift to the god of what is dearest to man
+(as in the case of Jephtha's daughter), or whether the victim be
+supposed to carry on his head the sins of the people, does not
+necessarily date from the period of savagery.  Indeed, sacrifice
+flourishes most, not among savages, but among advancing barbarians.
+It would probably be impossible to find any examples of human
+sacrifices of an expiatory or piacular character, any sacrifices at
+all, among Australians, or Andamanese, or Fuegians.  The notion of
+presenting food to the supernatural powers, whether ghosts or gods,
+is relatively rare among savages.[1]   The terrible Aztec banquets
+of which the gods were partakers are the most noted examples of
+human sacrifices with a purely cannibal origin.  Now there is good
+reason to guess that human sacrifices with no other origin than
+cannibalism survived even in ancient Greece.  "It may be
+conjectured," writes Professor Robertson Smith,[2]  "that the human
+sacrifices offered to the Wolf Zeus (Lycaeus) in Arcadia were
+originally cannibal feasts of a Wolf tribe.  The first participants
+in the rite were, according to later legend, changed into wolves;
+and in later times[3] at least one fragment of the human flesh was
+placed among the sacrificial portions derived from other victims,
+and the man who ate it was believed to become a were-wolf."[4]  It
+is the almost universal rule with cannibals not to eat members of
+their own stock, just as they do not eat their own totem.  Thus, as
+Professor Robertson Smith says, when the human victim is a captive
+or other foreigner, the human sacrifice may be regarded as a
+survival of cannibalism.  Where, on the other hand, the victim is a
+fellow tribesman, the sacrifice is expiatory or piacular.
+
+
+[1] Jevons, Introduction to the Science of Religion, pp. 161, 199.
+
+[2] Encyc. Brit., s. v. "Sacrifice".
+
+[3] Plato, Rep., viii. 565, D.
+
+[4] Paus., viii. 2.
+
+
+Among Greek cannibal gods we cannot fail to reckon the so-called
+"Cannibal Dionysus," and probably the Zeus of Orchomenos, Zeus
+Laphystius, who is explained by Suidas as "the Glutton Zeus".  The
+cognate verb ([Greek text omitted]) means "to eat with mangling and
+rending," "to devour gluttonously".  By Zeus Laphystius, then,
+men's flesh was gorged in this distressing fashion.
+
+The evidence of human sacrifice (especially when it seems not
+piacular, but a relic of cannibalism) raises a presumption that
+Greeks had once been barbarians.  The presumption is confirmed by
+the evidence of early Greek religious art.
+
+When his curiosity about human sacrifices was satisfied, the
+pilgrim in Greece might turn his attention to the statues and other
+representations of the gods.  He would find that the modern statues
+by famous artists were beautiful anthropomorphic works in marble or
+in gold and ivory.  It is true that the faces of the ancient gilded
+Dionysi at Corinth were smudged all over with cinnabar, like
+fetish-stones in India or Africa.[1]  As a rule, however, the
+statues of historic times were beautiful representations of kindly
+and gracious beings.  The older works were stiff and rigid images,
+with the lips screwed into an unmeaning smile.  Older yet were the
+bronze gods, made before the art of soldering was invented, and
+formed of beaten plates joined by small nails.  Still more ancient
+were the wooden images, which probably bore but a slight
+resemblance to the human frame, and which were often mere
+"stocks".[2]  Perhaps once a year were shown the very early gods,
+the Demeter with the horse's head, the Artemis with the fish's
+tails, the cuckoo Hera, whose image was of pear-wood, the Zeus with
+three eyes, the Hermes, made after the fashion of the pictures on
+the walls of sacred caves among the Bushmen.  But the oldest gods
+of all, says Pausanias repeatedly, were rude stones in the temple
+or the temple precinct.  In Achaean Pharae he found some thirty
+squared stones, named each after a god.  "Among all the Greeks in
+the oldest times rude stones were worshipped in place of statues."
+The superstitious man in Theophrastus's Characters used to anoint
+the sacred stones with oil.  The stone which Cronus swallowed in
+mistake for Zeus was honoured at Delphi, and kept warm with wool
+wrappings.  There was another sacred stone among the Troezenians,
+and the Megarians worshipped as Apollo a stone cut roughly into a
+pyramidal form.  The Argives had a big stone called Zeus Kappotas.
+The Thespians worshipped a stone which they called Eros; "their
+oldest idol is a rude stone".[3]  It is well known that the
+original fetish-stone has been found in situ below the feet of the
+statue of Apollo in Delos.  On this showing, then, the religion of
+very early Greeks in Greece was not unlike that of modern Negroes.
+The artistic evolution of the gods, a remarkably rapid one after a
+certain point, could be traced in every temple.  It began with the
+rude stone, and rose to the wooden idol, in which, as we have seen,
+Pausanias and Porphyry found such sanctity.  Next it reached the
+hammered bronze image, passed through the archaic marbles, and
+culminated in the finer marbles and the chryselephantine statues of
+Zeus and Athena. But none of the ancient sacred objects lost their
+sacredness.  The oldest were always the holiest idols; the oldest
+of all were stumps and stones, like savage fetish-stones.
+
+
+[1] Pausanias, ii. 2.
+
+[2] Clemens Alex., Protrept. (Oxford, 1715). p. 41.
+
+[3] Gill, Myths of South Pacific, p. 60.  Compare a god, which
+proved to he merely pumice-stone, and was regarded as the god of
+winds and waves, having been drifted to Puka-Puka.  Offerings of
+food were made to it during hurricanes.
+
+
+Another argument in favour of the general thesis that savagery left
+deep marks on Greek life in general, and on myth in particular, may
+be derived from survivals of totemism in ritual and legend.  The
+following instances need not necessarily be accepted, but it may be
+admitted that they are precisely the traces which totemism would
+leave had it once existed, and then waned away on the advance of
+civilisation.[1]
+
+
+[1] The argument to be derived from the character of the Greek
+[Greek text omitted] as a modified form of the totem-kindred is too
+long and complex to be put forward here.  It is stated in Custom
+and Myth, "The history of the Family," in M'Lennan's Studies in
+Early history, and is assumed, if not proved, in Ancient Society by
+the late Mr. Lewis Morgan.
+
+
+That Greeks in certain districts regarded with religious reverence
+certain plants and animals is beyond dispute.  That some stocks
+even traced their lineage to beasts will be shown in the chapter on
+Greek Divine Myths, and the presumption is that these creatures,
+though explained as incarnations and disguises of various gods,
+were once totems sans phrase, as will be inferred from various
+examples.  Clemens Alexandrinus, again, after describing the
+animal-worship of the Egyptians, mentions cases of zoolatry in
+Greece.[1]  The Thessalians revered storks, the Thebans weasels,
+and the myth ran that the weasel had in some way aided Alcmena when
+in labour with Heracles.  In another form of the myth the weasel
+was the foster-mother of the hero.[2]  Other Thessalians, the
+Myrmidons, claimed descent from the ant and revered ants.  The
+religious respect paid to mice in the temple of Apollo Smintheus,
+in the Troad, Rhodes, Gela, Lesbos and Crete is well known, and a
+local tribe were alluded to as Mice by an oracle.  The god himself,
+like the Japanese harvest-god, was represented in art with a mouse
+at his foot, and mice, as has been said, were fed at his shrine.[3]
+The Syrians, says Clemens Alexandrinus, worship doves and fishes,
+as the Elians worship Zeus.[4]  The people of Delphi adored the
+wolf,[5] and the Samians the sheep.  The Athenians had a hero whom
+they worshipped in the shape of a wolf.[6]  A remarkable testimony
+is that of the scholiast on Apollonius Rhodius, ii. 124.  "The
+wolf," he says, "was a beast held in honour by the Athenians, and
+whosoever slays a wolf collects what is needful for its burial."
+The burial of sacred animals in Egypt is familiar.  An Arab tribe
+mourns over and solemnly buries all dead gazelles.[7]  Nay, flies
+were adored with the sacrifice of an ox near the temple of Apollo
+in Leucas.[8]  Pausanias (iii. 22) mentions certain colonists who
+were guided by a hare to a site where the animal hid in a myrtle-
+bush.  They therefore adore the myrtle, [Greek text omitted].  In
+the same way a Carian stock, the Ioxidae, revered the asparagus.[9]
+A remarkable example of descent mythically claimed from one of the
+lower animals is noted by Otfried Muller.[10]  Speaking of the swan
+of Apollo, he says, "That deity was worshipped, according to the
+testimony of the Iliad, in the Trojan island of Tenedos.  There,
+too, was Tennes honoured as the [Greek text omitted] of the island.
+Now his father was called Cycnus (the swan) in an oft-told and
+romantic legend.[11] . . .  The swan, therefore, as father to the
+chief hero on the Apolline island, stands in distinct relation to
+the god, who is made to come forward still more prominently from
+the fact that Apollo himself is also called father of Tennes.  I
+think we can scarcely fail to recognise a mythus which was local at
+Tenedos. . . .  The fact, too, of calling the swan, instead of
+Apollo, the father of a hero, demands altogether a simplicity and
+boldness of fancy which are far more ancient than the poems of
+Homer."
+
+
+[1] Op. cit., i. 34.
+
+[2] Scholiast on Iliad, xix. 119.
+
+[3] Aelian, H. A., xii. 5; Strabo, xiii. 604.  Compare "Apollo and
+the Mouse, Custom and Myth, pp. 103-120.
+
+[4] Lucian, De Dea Syria.
+
+[5] Aelian, H. A., xii. 40.
+
+[6] Harpocration, [Greek text omitted].  Compare an address to the
+wolf-hero, "who delights in the flight and tears of men," in
+Aristophanes, Vespae, 389.
+
+[7] Robertson Smith, Kinship in Early Arabia, pp. 195-204.
+
+[8] Aelian, xi. 8.
+
+[9] Plutarch, Theseus, 14.
+
+[10] Proleg., Engl. trans., p. 204.
+
+[11] [Canne on Conon, 28.]
+
+
+Had Muller known that this "simplicity and boldness of fancy" exist
+to-day, for example, among the Swan tribe of Australia, he would
+probably have recognised in Cycnus a survival from totemism.  The
+fancy survives again in Virgil's Cupavo, "with swan's plumes rising
+from his crest, the mark of his father's form".[1]  Descent was
+claimed, not only from a swan Apollo, but from a dog Apollo.
+
+
+[1] Aeneid, x. 187.
+
+
+In connection with the same set of ideas, it is pointed out that
+several [Greek text omitted], or stocks, had eponymous heroes, in
+whose names the names of the ancestral beast apparently survived.
+In Attica the Crioeis have their hero (Crio, "Ram"), the Butadae
+have Butas ("Bullman"), the Aegidae have Aegeus ("Goat"), and the
+Cynadae, Cynus ("Dog").  Lycus, according to Harpocration (s. v.)
+has his statue in the shape of a wolf in the Lyceum.  "The general
+facts that certain animals might not be sacrificed to certain gods"
+(at Athens the Aegidae introduced Athena, to whom no goat might be
+offered on the Acropolis, while she herself wore the goat skin,
+aegis), "while, on the other hand, each deity demanded particular
+victims, explained by the ancients themselves in certain cases to
+be hostile animals, find their natural explanation" in totemism.[1]
+Mr. Evelyn Abbott points out, however, that the names Aegeus,
+Aegae, Aegina, and others, may be connected with the goat only by
+an old volks-etymologie, as on coins of Aegina in Achaea.  The real
+meaning of the words may be different.  Compare [Greek text
+omitted], the sea-shore.  Mr. J. G. Frazer does not, at present,
+regard totemism as proved in the case of Greece.[2]
+
+
+[1] Some apparent survivals of totemism in ritual will be found in
+the chapter on Greek gods, especially Zeus, Dionysus, and Apollo.
+
+[2] See his Golden Bough, an alternative explanation of these
+animals in connection with "The Corn Spirit".
+
+
+As final examples of survivals from the age of barbarism in the
+religion of Greece, certain features in the Mysteries may be noted.
+Plutarch speaks of "the eating of raw flesh, and tearing to pieces
+of victims, as also fastings and beatings of the breast, and again
+in many places abusive language at the sacrifices, and other mad
+doings".  The mysteries of Demeter, as will appear when her legend
+is criticised, contained one element all unlike these "mad doings";
+and the evidence of Sophocles, Pindar, Plutarch and others
+demonstrate that religious consolations were somehow conveyed in
+the Eleusinia.  But Greece had many other local mysteries, and in
+several of these it is undeniable the Greeks acted much as
+contemporary Australians, Zunis and Negroes act in their secret
+initiations which, however, also inculcate moral ideas of
+considerable excellence.  Important as these analogies are, they
+appear to have escaped the notice of most mythologists.  M. Alfred
+Maury, however, in Les Religions de la Grece, published in 1857,
+offers several instances of hidden rites, common to Hellas and to
+barbarism.
+
+There seem in the mysteries of savage races to be two chief
+purposes.  There is the intention of giving to the initiated a
+certain sacred character, which puts them in close relation with
+gods or demons, and there is the introduction of the young to
+complete or advancing manhood, and to full participation in the
+savage Church with its ethical ideas.  The latter ceremonies
+correspond, in short, to confirmation, and they are usually of a
+severe character, being meant to test by fasting (as Plutarch says)
+and by torture (as in the familiar Spartan rite) the courage and
+constancy of the young braves.  The Greek mysteries best known to
+us are the Thesmophoria and the Eleusinia.  In the former the rites
+(as will appear later) partook of the nature of savage "medicine"
+or magic, and were mainly intended to secure fertility in husbandry
+and in the family.  In the Eleusinia the purpose was the
+purification of the initiated, secured by ablutions and by standing
+on the "ram's-skin of Zeus," and after purifications the mystae
+engaged in sacred dances, and were permitted to view a miracle play
+representing the sorrows and consolations of Demeter.  There was a
+higher element, necessarily obscure in nature.  The chief features
+in the whole were purifications, dancing, sacrifice and the
+representation of the miracle play.  It would be tedious to offer
+an exhaustive account of savage rites analogous to these mysteries
+of Hellas.  Let it suffice to display the points where Greek found
+itself in harmony with Australian, and American, and African
+practice.  These points are: (1) mystic dances; (2) the use of a
+little instrument, called turndun in Australia, whereby a roaring
+noise is made, and the profane are warned off; (3) the habit of
+daubing persons about to be initiated with clay or anything else
+that is sordid, and of washing this off; apparently by way of
+showing that old guilt is removed and a new life entered upon; (4)
+the performances with serpents may be noticed, while the "mad
+doings" and "howlings" mentioned by Plutarch are familiar to every
+reader of travels in uncivilised countries; (5) ethical instruction
+is communicated.
+
+First, as to the mystic dances, Lucian observes:[1] "You cannot
+find a single ancient mystery in which there is not dancing. . . .
+This much all men know, that most people say of the revealers of
+the mysteries that they 'dance them out'" ([Greek text omitted]).
+Clemens of Alexandria uses the same term when speaking of his own
+"appalling revelations".[2]  So closely connected are mysteries
+with dancing among savages, that when Mr. Orpen asked Qing, the
+Bushman hunter, about some doctrines in which Qing was not
+initiated, he said: "Only the initiated men of that dance know
+these things".  To "dance" this or that means to be acquainted with
+this or that myth, which is represented in a dance or ballet
+d'action[3] ([Greek text omitted]).  So widely distributed is the
+practice, that Acosta, in an interesting passage, mentions it as
+familiar to the people of Peru before and after the Spanish
+conquest.  The text is a valuable instance of survival in religion.
+When they were converted to Christianity the Peruvians detected the
+analogy between our sacrament and their mysteries, and they kept up
+as much as possible of the old rite in the new ritual.  Just as the
+mystae of Eleusis practised chastity, abstaining from certain food,
+and above all from beans, before the great Pagan sacrament, so did
+the Indians.  "To prepare themselves all the people fasted two
+days, during which they did neyther company with their wives, nor
+eate any meate with salt or garlicke, nor drink any chic. . . .
+And although the Indians now forbeare to sacrifice beasts or other
+things publikely, which cannot be hidden from the Spaniardes, yet
+doe they still use many ceremonies that have their beginnings from
+these feasts and auntient superstitions, for at this day do they
+covertly make their feast of Ytu at the daunces of the feast of the
+Sacrament.  Another feast falleth almost at the same time, whereas
+the Christians observe the solempnitie of the holy Sacrament, which
+DOTH RESEMBLE IT IN SOME SORT, AS IN DAUNCING, SINGING AND
+REPRESENTATIONS."[4]  The holy "daunces" at Seville are under Papal
+disapproval, but are to be kept up, it is said, till the peculiar
+dresses used in them are worn out.  Acosta's Indians also had
+"garments which served only for this feast".  It is superfluous to
+multiply examples of the dancing, which is an invariable feature of
+savage as of Greek mysteries.
+
+
+[1] [Greek text omitted], chap. xv. 277.
+
+[2] Ap. Euseb., Praep. Ev., ii, 3, 6.
+
+[3] Cape Monthly Magazine, July, 1874.
+
+[4] Acosta, Historie of the Indies, book v. chap. xxviii.  London,
+1604.
+
+
+2. The Greek and savage use of the turndun, or bribbun of Australia
+in the mysteries is familiar to students.  This fish-shaped flat
+board of wood is tied to a string, and whirled round, so as to
+cause a peculiar muffled roar.  Lobeck quotes from the old scholia
+on Clemens Alexandrinus, published by Bastius in annotations on St.
+Gregory, the following Greek description of the turndun, the "bull-
+roarer" of English country lads, the Gaelic srannam:[1] [Greek text
+omitted]".  "The conus was a little slab of wood, tied to a string,
+and whirled round in the mysteries to make a whirring noise.  As
+the mystic uses of the turndun in Australia, New Zealand, New
+Mexico and Zululand have elsewhere been described at some length
+(Custom and Myth, pp. 28-44), it may be enough to refer the reader
+to the passage.  Mr. Taylor has since found the instrument used in
+religious mysteries in West Africa, so it has now been tracked
+almost round the world.  That an instrument so rude should be
+employed by Greek and Australians on mystic occasions is in itself
+a remarkable coincidence.  Unfortunately, Lobeck, who published the
+Greek description of the turndun (Aglaophamus, 700), was
+unacquainted with the modern ethnological evidence.
+
+
+[1] Pronounced strantham.  For this information I am indebted to my
+friend Mr. M'Allister, schoolmaster at St. Mary's Loch.
+
+
+3. The custom of plastering the initiated over with clay or filth
+was common in Greek as in barbaric mysteries.  Greek examples may
+be given first.  Demosthenes accuses Aeschines of helping his
+mother in certain mystic rites, aiding her, especially, by
+bedaubing the initiate with clay and bran.[1]  Harpocration
+explains the term used ([Greek text omitted]) thus: "Daubing the
+clay and bran on the initiate, to explain which they say that the
+Titans when they attacked Dionysus daubed themselves over with
+chalk, but afterwards, for ritual purposes, clay was used".  It may
+be urged with some force that the mother of Aeschines introduced
+foreign, novel and possibly savage rites.  But Sophocles, in a
+fragment of his lost play, the Captives, uses the term in the same
+ritual sense--
+
+
+    [Greek text omitted].
+
+
+[1] De Corona, 313.
+
+
+The idea clearly was that by cleansing away the filth plastered
+over the body was symbolised the pure and free condition of the
+initiate.  He might now cry in the mystic chant--
+
+
+     [Greek text omitted].
+     Worse have I fled, better have I found.
+
+
+That this was the significance of the daubing with clay in Greek
+mysteries and the subsequent cleansing seems quite certain.  We are
+led straight to this conclusion by similar rites, in which the
+purpose of mystically cleansing was openly put forward.  Thus
+Plutarch, in his essay on superstition, represents the guilty man
+who would be purified actually rolling in clay, confessing his
+misdeeds, and then sitting at home purified by the cleansing
+process ([Greek text omitted]).[1]  In another rite, the cleansing
+of blood-guiltiness, a similar process was practised.  Orestes,
+after killing his mother, complains that the Eumenides do not cease
+to persecute him, though he has been "purified by blood of
+swine".[2]  Apollonius says that the red hand of the murderer was
+dipped in the blood of swine and then washed.[3]  Athenaeus
+describes a similar unpleasant ceremony.[4]  The blood of whelps
+was apparently used also, men being first daubed with it and then
+washed clean.[5]  The word [Greek text omitted] is again the
+appropriate ritual term.  Such rites Plutarch calls [Greek text
+omitted], "filthy purifications".[6]  If daubing with dirt is known
+to have been a feature of Greek mysteries, it meets us everywhere
+among savages.  In O-Kee-Pa, that curiously minute account of the
+Mandan mysteries, Catlin writes that a portion of the frame of the
+initiate was "covered with clay, which the operator took from a
+wooden bowl, and with his hand plastered unsparingly over".  The
+fifty young men waiting for initiation "were naked and entirely
+covered with clay of various colours".[7]  The custom is mentioned
+by Captain John Smith in Virginia.  Mr. Winwood Reade found it in
+Africa, where, as among the Mandans and Spartans, cruel torture and
+flogging accompanied the initiation of young men.[8]  In Australia
+the evidence for daubing the initiate is very abundant.[9]  In New
+Mexico, the Zunis stole Mr. Cushing's black paint, as considering
+it even better than clay for religious daubing.[10]
+
+
+[1] So Hermann, op. cit., 133.
+
+[2] Eumenides, 273.
+
+[3] Argonautica, iv. 693.
+
+[4] ix. 78.  Hermann, from whom the latter passages are borrowed,
+also quotes the evidence of a vase published by Feuerbach,
+Lehrbuch, p. 131, with other authorities.
+
+[5] Plutarch, Quaest. Rom., 68.
+
+[6] De Superstitione, chap. xii.
+
+[7] O-Kee-Pa, London, 1867, p. 21.
+
+[8] Savage Africa, case of Mongilomba; Pausanias, iii. 15.
+
+[9] Brough Smyth, i. 60.
+
+[10] Custma and Myth, p. 40.
+
+
+4. Another savage rite, the use of serpents in Greek mysteries, is
+attested by Clemens Alexandrinus and by Demosthenes (loc. cit.).
+Clemens says the snakes were caressed in representations of the
+loves of Zeus in serpentine form.  The great savage example is that
+of "the snake-dance of the Moquis," who handle rattle-snakes in the
+mysteries without being harmed.[1]  The dance is partly totemistic,
+partly meant, like the Thesmophoria, to secure the fertility of the
+lands of the Moquis of Arizonas.  The turndum or [Greek text
+omitted] is employed.  Masks are worn, as in the rites of Demeter
+Cidiria in Arcadia.[2]
+
+
+[1] The Snake-Dance of the Moquis.  By Captain Jobn G. Bourke,
+London, 1884.
+
+[2] Pausanias, viii. 16.
+
+
+5. This last point of contact between certain Greek and certain
+savage mysteries is highly important.  The argument of Lobeck, in
+his celebrated work Aglaophamus, is that the Mysteries were of no
+great moment in religion.  Had he known the evidence as to savage
+initiations, he would have been confirmed in his opinion, for many
+of the singular Greek rites are clearly survivals from savagery.
+But was there no more truly religious survival?  Pindar is a very
+ancient witness that things of divine import were revealed.  "Happy
+is he who having seen these things goes under the hollow earth.  He
+knows the end of life, and the god-given beginning."[1]  Sophocles
+"chimes in," as Lobeck says, declaring that the initiate alone LIVE
+in Hades, while other souls endure all evils.  Crinagoras avers
+that even in life the initiate live secure, and in death are the
+happier.  Isagoras declares that about the end of life and all
+eternity they have sweet hopes.
+
+
+[1] Fragm., cxvi., 128 H. p. 265.
+
+
+Splendida testimonia, cries Lobeck.  He tries to minimise the
+evidence, remarking that Isocrates promises the very same rewards
+to all who live justly and righteously.  But why not, if to live
+justly and righteously was part of the teaching of the mysteries of
+Eleusis?  Cicero's evidence, almost a translation of the Greek
+passages already cited, Lobeck dismisses as purely rhetorical.[1]
+Lobeck's method is rather cavalier.  Pindar and Sophocles meant
+something of great significance.
+
+
+[1] De Legibus ii. 14; Aglaophamus, pp. 69-74.
+
+
+Now we have acknowledged savage survivals of ugly rites in the
+Greek mysteries.  But it is only fair to remember that, in certain
+of the few savage mysteries of which we know the secret,
+righteousness of life and a knowledge of good are inculcated.  This
+is the case in Australia, and in Central Africa, where to be
+"uninitiated" is equivalent to being selfish.[1]  Thus it seems not
+improbable that consolatory doctrines were expounded in the
+Eleusinia, and that this kind of sermon or exhortation was no less
+a survival from savagery than the daubing with clay, and the [Greek
+text omitted], and other wild rites.
+
+
+[1] Making of Religion, pp. 193-197, 235.
+
+
+We have now attempted to establish that in Greek law and ritual
+many savage customs and usages did undeniably survive.  We have
+seen that both philosophical and popular opinion in Greece believed
+in a past age of savagery.  In law, in religion, in religious art,
+in custom, in human sacrifice, in relics of totemism, and in the
+mysteries, we have seen that the Greeks retained plenty of the
+usages now found among the remotest and most backward races.  We
+have urged against the suggestion of borrowing from Egypt or Asia
+that these survivals are constantly found in local and tribal
+religion and rituals, and that consequently they probably date from
+that remote prehistoric past when the Greeks lived in village
+settlements.  It may still doubtless be urged that all these things
+are Pelasgic, and were the customs of a race settled in Hellas
+before the arrival of the Homeric Achaeans, and Dorians, and
+Argives, who, on this hypothesis, adopted and kept up the old
+savage Pelasgian ways and superstitions.  It is impossible to prove
+or disprove this belief, nor does it affect our argument.  We
+allege that all Greek life below the surface was rich in institutions
+now found among the most barbaric peoples.  These institutions,
+whether borrowed or inherited, would still be part of the legacy
+left by savages to cultivated peoples.  As this legacy is so large
+in custom and ritual, it is not unfair to argue that portions of it
+will also be found in myths.  It is now time to discuss Greek myths
+of the origin of things, and decide whether they are or are not
+analogous in ideas to the myths which spring from the wild and
+ignorant fancy of Australians, Cahrocs, Nootkas and Bushmen.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+
+GREEK COSMOGONIC MYTHS.
+
+Nature of the evidence--Traditions of origin of the world and man--
+Homeric, Hesiodic and Orphic myths--Later evidence of historians,
+dramatists, commentators--The Homeric story comparatively pure--The
+story in Hesiod, and its savage analogues--The explanations of the
+myth of Cronus, modern and ancient--The Orphic cosmogony--Phanes
+and Prajapati--Greek myths of the origin of man--Their savage
+analogues.
+
+
+The authorities for Greek cosmogonic myth are extremely various in
+date, character and value.  The most ancient texts are the Iliad
+and the poems attributed to Hesiod.  The Iliad, whatever its date,
+whatever the place of its composition, was intended to please a
+noble class of warriors.  The Hesiodic poems, at least the
+Theogony, have clearly a didactic aim, and the intention of
+presenting a systematic and orderly account of the divine
+genealogies.  To neither would we willingly attribute a date much
+later than the ninth century of our era, but the question of the
+dates of all the epic and Hesiodic poems, and even of their various
+parts, is greatly disputed among scholars.  Yet it is nowhere
+denied that, however late the present form of some of the poems may
+be, they contain ideas of extreme antiquity.  Although the Homeric
+poems are usually considered, on the whole, more ancient than those
+attributed to Hesiod,[1] it is a fact worth remembering that the
+notions of the origin of things in Hesiod are much more savage and
+(as we hold) much more archaic than the opinions of Homer.
+
+
+[1] Grote assigns his Theogony to circ. 750 A.D.  The Thegony was
+taught to boys in Greece, much as the Church Catechism and Bible
+are taught in England; Aeschines in Ctesiph., 135, p. 73.
+Libanius, 400 years after Christ (i. 502-509, iv. 874).
+
+
+While Hesiod offers a complete theogony or genealogy of deities and
+heroes, Homer gives no more than hints and allusions to the stormy
+past of the gods.  It is clear, however, that his conception of
+that past differed considerably from the traditions of Hesiod.
+However we explain it, the Homeric mythology (though itself
+repugnant to the philosophers from Xenophanes downwards) is much
+more mild, pure and humane than the mythology either of Hesiod or
+of our other Greek authorities.  Some may imagine that Homer
+retains a clearer and less corrupted memory than Hesiod possessed
+of an original and authentic "divine tradition".  Others may find
+in Homer's comparative purity a proof of the later date of his
+epics in their present form, or may even proclaim that Homer was a
+kind of Cervantes, who wished to laugh the gods away.  There is no
+conceivable or inconceivable theory about Homer that has not its
+advocates.  For ourselves, we hold that the divine genius of Homer,
+though working in an age distant rather than "early," selected
+instinctively the purer mythical materials, and burned away the
+coarser dross of antique legend, leaving little but the gold which
+is comparatively refined.
+
+We must remember that it does not follow that any mythical ideas
+are later than the age of Homer because we first meet them in poems
+of a later date.  We have already seen that though the Brahmanas
+are much later in date of compilation than the Veda, yet a
+tradition which we first find in the Brahmanas may be older than
+the time at which the Veda was compiled.  In the same way, as Mr.
+Max Muller observes, "we know that certain ideas which we find in
+later writers do not occur in Homer.  But it does not follow at
+all that such ideas are all of later growth or possess a secondary
+character.  One myth may have belonged to one tribe; one god may
+have had his chief worship in one locality; and our becoming
+acquainted with these through a later poet does not in the least
+prove their later origin."[1]
+
+
+[1] Hibbert Lectures, pp. 130, 131.
+
+
+After Homer and Hesiod, our most ancient authorities for Greek
+cosmogonic myths are probably the so-called Orphic fragments.
+Concerning the dates and the manner of growth of these poems
+volumes of erudition have been compiled.  As Homer is silent about
+Orpheus (in spite of the position which the mythical Thracian bard
+acquired as the inventor of letters and magic and the father of the
+mysteries), it has been usual to regard the Orphic ideas as of late
+introduction.  We may agree with Grote and Lobeck that these ideas
+and the ascetic "Orphic mode of life" first acquired importance in
+Greece about the time of Epimenides, or, roughly speaking, between
+620 and 500 B.C.[1]  That age certainly witnessed a curious growth
+of superstitious fears and of mystic ceremonies intended to
+mitigate spiritual terrors.  Greece was becoming more intimately
+acquainted with Egypt and with Asia, and was comparing her own
+religion with the beliefs and rites of other peoples.  The times
+and the minds of men were being prepared for the clear philosophies
+that soon "on Argive heights divinely sang".  Just as, when the old
+world was about to accept Christianity, a deluge of Oriental and
+barbaric superstitions swept across men's minds, so immediately
+before the dawn of Greek philosophy there came an irruption of
+mysticism and of spiritual fears.  We may suppose that the Orphic
+poems were collected, edited and probably interpolated, in this
+dark hour of Greece.  "To me," says Lobeck, "it appears that the
+verses may be referred to the age of Onomacritus, an age curious in
+the writings of ancient poets, and attracted by the allurements of
+mystic religions."  The style of the surviving fragments is
+sufficiently pure and epic; the strange unheard of myths are unlike
+those which the Alexandrian poets drew from fountains long lost.[2]
+But how much in the Orphic myths is imported from Asia or Egypt,
+how much is the invention of literary forgers like Onomacritus, how
+much should be regarded as the first guesses of the physical poet-
+philosophers, and how much is truly ancient popular legend recast
+in literary form, it is impossible with certainty to determine.
+
+
+[1] Lobeck, Aglaophamus, i. 317; Grote, iii. 86.
+
+[2] Aglaophamus, i. 611.
+
+
+We must not regard a myth as necessarily late or necessarily
+foreign because we first meet it in an "Orphic composition".  If
+the myth be one of the sort which encounter us in every quarter,
+nay, in every obscure nook of the globe, we may plausibly regard it
+as ancient.  If it bear the distinct marks of being a Neo-platonic
+pastiche, we may reject it without hesitation.  On the whole,
+however, our Orphic authorities can never be quoted with much
+satisfaction.  The later sources of evidence for Greek myths are
+not of great use to the student of cosmogonic legend, though
+invaluable when we come to treat of the established dynasty of
+gods, the heroes and the "culture-heroes".  For these the
+authorities are the whole range of Greek literature, poets,
+dramatists, philosophers, critics, historians and travellers.  We
+have also the notes and comments of the scholiasts or commentators
+on the poets and dramatists.  Sometimes these annotators only
+darken counsel by their guesses.  Sometimes perhaps, especially in
+the scholia on the Iliad and Odyssey, they furnish us with a
+precious myth or popular marchen not otherwise recorded.  The
+regular professional mythographi, again, of whom Apollodorus (150
+B.C.) is the type, compiled manuals explanatory of the myths which
+were alluded to by the poets.  The scholiasts and mythographi often
+retain myths from lost poems and lost plays.  Finally, from the
+travellers and historians we occasionally glean examples of the
+tales ("holy chapters," as Mr. Grote calls them) which were
+narrated by priests and temple officials to the pilgrims who
+visited the sacred shrines.
+
+These "chapters" are almost invariably puerile, savage and obscene.
+They bear the stamp of extreme antiquity, because they never, as a
+rule, passed through the purifying medium of literature.  There
+were many myths too crude and archaic for the purposes of poetry
+and of the drama.  These were handed down from local priest to
+local priest, with the inviolability of sacred and immutable
+tradition.  We have already given a reason for assigning a high
+antiquity to the local temple myths.  Just as Greeks lived in
+villages before they gathered into towns, so their gods were gods
+of villages or tribes before they were national deities.  The local
+myths are those of the archaic village state of "culture," more
+ancient, more savage, than literary narrative.  Very frequently the
+local legends were subjected to the process of allegorical
+interpretation, as men became alive to the monstrosity of their
+unsophisticated meaning.  Often they proved too savage for our
+authorities, who merely remark, "Concerning this a certain holy
+chapter is told," but decline to record the legend.  In the same
+way missionaries, with mistaken delicacy, often refuse to repeat
+some savage legend with which they are acquainted.
+
+The latest sort of testimony as to Greek myths must be sought in
+the writings of the heathen apologists or learned Pagan defenders
+of Paganism in the first centuries during Christianity, and in the
+works of their opponents, the fathers of the Church.  Though the
+fathers certainly do not understate the abominations of Paganism,
+and though the heathen apologists make free use of allegorical (and
+impossible) interpretations, the evidence of both is often useful
+and important.  The testimony of ancient art, vases, statues,
+pictures and the descriptions of these where they no longer
+survive, are also of service and interest.
+
+After this brief examination of the sources of our knowledge of
+Greek myth, we may approach the Homeric legends of the origin of
+things and the world's beginning.  In Homer these matters are only
+referred to incidentally.  He more than once calls Oceanus (that
+is, the fabled stream which flows all round the world, here
+regarded as a PERSON) "the origin of the gods," "the origin of all
+things".[1]  That Ocean is considered a person, and that he is not
+an allegory for water or the aqueous element, appears from the
+speech of Hera to Aphrodite: "I am going to visit the limits of the
+bountiful earth, and Oceanus, father of the gods, and mother
+Tethys, who reared me duly and nurtured me in their halls, when
+far-seeing Zeus imprisoned Cronus beneath the earth and the
+unvintaged sea".[2]  Homer does not appear to know Uranus as the
+father of Cronus, and thus the myth of the mutilation of Uranus
+necessarily does not occur in Homer.  Cronus, the head of the
+dynasty which preceded that of Zeus, is described[3] as the son of
+Rhea, but nothing is said of his father.  The passage contains the
+account which Poseidon himself chose to give of the war in heaven:
+"Three brethren are we, and sons of Cronus whom Rhea bare--Zeus and
+myself, and Hades is the third, the ruler of the folk in the
+underworld.  And in three lots were all things divided, and each
+drew a domain of his own."  Here Zeus is the ELDEST son of Cronus.
+Though lots are drawn at hazard for the property of the father
+(which we know to have been customary in Homer's time), yet
+throughout the Iliad Zeus constantly claims the respect and
+obedience due to him by right of primogeniture.[4]  We shall see
+that Hesiod adopts exactly the opposite view.  Zeus is the YOUNGEST
+child of Cronus.  His supremacy is an example of jungsten recht,
+the wide-spread custom which makes the youngest child the heir in
+chief.[5]  But how did the sons of Cronus come to have his property
+in their hands to divide?  By right of successful rebellion, when
+"Zeus imprisoned Cronus beneath the earth and the unvintaged sea".
+With Cronus in his imprisonment are the Titans.  That is all that
+Homer cares to tell about the absolute beginning of things and the
+first dynasty of rulers of Olympus.  His interest is all in the
+actual reigning family, that of the Cronidae, nor is he fond of
+reporting their youthful excesses.
+
+
+[1] Iliad, xiv. 201, 302, 246.
+
+[2] In reading what Homer and Hesiod report about these matters, we
+must remember that all the forces and phenomena are conceived of by
+them as PERSONS.  In this regard the archaic and savage view of all
+things as personal and human is preserved.  "I maintain," says
+Grote, "moreover, fully the character of these great divine agents
+as persons, which is the light in which they presented themselves
+to the Homeric or Hesiodic audience.  Uranus, Nyx, Hypnos and
+Oneiros (heaven, night, sleep and dream) are persons just as much
+as Zeus or Apollo.  To resolve them into mere allegories is unsafe
+and unprofitable.  We then depart from the point of view of the
+original hearers without acquiring any consistent or philosophical
+point of view of our own."  This holds good though portions of the
+Hesiodic genealogies are distinctly poetic allegories cast in the
+mould or the ancient personal theory of things.
+
+[3] Iliad, xv. 187.
+
+[4] The custom by which sons drew lots for equal shares of their
+dead father's property is described in Odyssey, xiv. 199-212.  Here
+Odysseus, giving a false account of himself, says that he was a
+Cretan, a bastard, and that his half-brothers, born in wedlock,
+drew lots for their father's inheritance, and did not admit him to
+the drawing, but gave him a small portion apart.
+
+[5] See Elton, Origins of English History, pp. 185-207.
+
+
+We now turn from Homer's incidental allusions to the ample and
+systematic narrative of Hesiod.  As Mr. Grote says, "Men habitually
+took their information respecting their theogonic antiquities from
+the Hesiodic poems."  Hesiod was accepted as an authority both by
+the pious Pausanias in the second century of our era--who protested
+against any attempt to alter stories about the gods--and by moral
+reformers like Plato and Xenophanes, who were revolted by the
+ancient legends,[1] and, indeed, denied their truth.  Yet, though
+Hesiod represents Greek orthodoxy, we have observed that Homer
+(whose epics are probably still more ancient) steadily ignores the
+more barbarous portions of Hesiod's narrative.  Thus the question
+arises: Are the stories of Hesiod's invention, and later than
+Homer, or does Homer's genius half-unconsciously purify materials
+like those which Hesiod presents in the crudest form?  Mr. Grote
+says: "How far these stories are the invention of Hesiod himself it
+is impossible to determine.  They bring us down to a cast of fancy
+more coarse and indelicate than the Homeric, and more nearly
+resemble some of the holy chapters ([Greek text omitted]) of the
+more recent mysteries, such, for example, as the tale of Dionysus
+Zagreus.  There is evidence in the Theogony itself that the author
+was acquainted with local legends current both at Krete and at
+Delphi, for he mentions both the mountain-cave in Krete wherein the
+newly-born Zeus was hidden, and the stone near the Delphian temple--
+the identical stone which Kronos had swallowed--placed by Zeus
+himself as a sign and marvel to mortal men.  Both these monuments,
+which the poet expressly refers to, and had probably seen, imply a
+whole train of accessory and explanatory local legends, current
+probably among the priests of Krete and Delphi."
+
+
+[1] Timaeeus, 41; Republic, 377.
+
+
+All these circumstances appear to be good evidence of the great
+antiquity of the legends recorded by Hesiod.  In the first place,
+arguing merely a priori, it is extremely improbable that in the
+brief interval between the date of the comparatively pure and noble
+mythology of the Iliad and the much ruder Theogony of Hesiod men
+INVENTED stories like the mutilation of Uranus, and the swallowing
+of his offspring by Cronus.  The former legend is almost exactly
+parallel, as has already been shown, to the myth of Papa and Rangi
+in New Zealand.  The later has its parallels among the savage
+Bushmen and Australians.  It is highly improbable that men in an
+age so civilised as that of Homer invented myths as hideous as
+those of the lowest savages.  But if we take these myths to be, not
+new inventions, but the sacred stories of local priesthoods, their
+antiquity is probably incalculable.  The sacred stories, as we know
+from Pausanias, Herodotus and from all the writers who touch on the
+subject of the mysteries, were myths communicated by the priests to
+the initiated.  Plato speaks of such myths in the Republic, 378:
+"If there is an absolute necessity for their mention, a very few
+might hear them in a mystery, and then let them sacrifice, not a
+common pig, but some huge and unprocurable victim; this would have
+the effect of very greatly diminishing the number of the hearers".
+This is an amusing example of a plan for veiling the horrors of
+myth.  The pig was the animal usually offered to Demeter, the
+goddess of the Eleusinian mysteries.  Plato proposes to substitute
+some "unprocurable" beast, perhaps a giraffe or an elephant.
+
+To Hesiod, then, we must turn for what is the earliest complete
+literary form of the Greek cosmogonic myth.  Hesiod begins, like
+the New Zealanders, with "the august race of gods, by earth and
+wide heaven begotten".[1]  So the New Zealanders, as we have seen,
+say, "The heaven which is above us, and the earth which is beneath
+us, are the progenitors of men and the origin of all things".
+Hesiod[2] somewhat differs from this view by making Chaos
+absolutely first of all things, followed by "wide-bosomed Earth,"
+Tartarus and Eros (love).  Chaos unaided produced Erebus and Night;
+the children of Night and Erebus are Aether and Day.  Earth
+produced Heaven, who then became her own lover, and to Heaven she
+bore Oceanus, and the Titans, Coeeus and Crius, Hyperion and
+Iapetus, Thea and Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne, Phoebe, Tethys, "and
+youngest after these was born Cronus of crooked counsel, the most
+dreadful of her children, who ever detested his puissant sire,"
+Heaven.  There were other sons of Earth and Heaven peculiarly
+hateful to their father,[3] and these Uranus used to hide from the
+light in a hollow of Gaea.  Both they and Gaea resented this
+treatment, and the Titans, like "the children of Heaven and Earth,"
+in the New Zealand poem, "sought to discern the difference between
+light and darkness".  Gaea (unlike Earth in the New Zealand myth,
+for there she is purely passive), conspired with her children,
+produced iron, and asked her sons to avenge their wrongs.[4]  Fear
+fell upon all of them save Cronus, who (like Tane Mahuta in the
+Maori poem) determined to end the embraces of Earth and Heaven.
+But while the New Zealand, like the Indo-Aryan myth,[5] conceives
+of Earth and Heaven as two beings who have never previously been
+sundered at all, Hesiod makes Heaven amorously approach his spouse
+from a distance.  This was the moment for Cronus,[6] who stretched
+out his hand armed with the sickle of iron, and mutilated Uranus.
+As in so many savage myths, the blood of the wounded god fallen on
+the ground produced strange creatures, nymphs of the ash-tree,
+giants and furies.  As in the Maori myth, one of the children of
+Heaven stood apart and did not consent to the deed.  This was
+Oceanus in Greece,[7] and in New Zealand it was Tawhiri Matea, the
+wind, "who arose and followed his father, Heaven, and remained with
+him in the open spaces of the sky".  Uranus now predicted[8] that
+there would come a day of vengeance for the evil deed of Cronus,
+and so ends the dynasty of Uranus.
+
+
+[1] Theog., 45.
+
+[2] Ibid., 116.
+
+[3] Ibid., 155.
+
+[4] Ibid., 166.
+
+[5] Muir, v. 23, quoting Aitareya Brahmana, iv. 27: "These two
+worlds were once joined; subsequently they separated".
+
+[6] Theog., 175-185.
+
+[7] Apollod., i, 15.
+
+[8] Theog., 209.
+
+
+This story was one of the great stumbling-blocks of orthodox
+Greece.  It was the tale that Plato said should be told, if at all,
+only to a few in a mystery, after the sacrifice of some rare and
+scarcely obtainable animal.  Even among the Maoris, the conduct of
+the children who severed their father and mother is regarded as a
+singular instance of iniquity, and is told to children as a moral
+warning, an example to be condemned.  In Greece, on the other hand,
+unless we are to take the Euthyphro as wholly ironical, some of the
+pious justified their conduct by the example of Zeus.  Euthyphro
+quotes this example when he is about to prosecute his own father,
+for which act, he says, "Men are angry with ME; so inconsistently
+do they talk when I am concerned and when the gods are concerned".[1]
+But in Greek THE TALE HAS NO MEANING.  It has been allegorised in
+various ways, and Lafitau fancied that it was a distorted form of
+the Biblical account of the origin of sin.  In Maori the legend is
+perfectly intelligible.  Heaven and earth were conceived of (like
+everything else), as beings with human parts and passions, linked in
+an endless embrace which crushed and darkened their children.  It
+became necessary to separate them, and this feat was achieved not
+without pain.  "Then wailed the Heaven, and exclaimed the Earth,
+'Wherefore this murder?  Why this great sin?  Why separate us?'  But
+what cared Tane?  Upwards he sent one and downwards the other.  He
+cruelly severed the sinews which united Heaven and Earth."[2]  The
+Greek myth too, contemplated earth and heaven as beings corporeally
+united, and heaven as a malignant power that concealed his children
+in darkness.
+
+
+[1] Euthyphro, 6.
+
+[2] Taylor, New Zealand, 119.
+
+
+But while the conception of heaven and earth as parents of living
+things remains perfectly intelligible in one sense, the vivid
+personification which regarded them as creatures with human parts
+and passions had ceased to be intelligible in Greece before the
+times of the earliest philosophers.  The old physical conception of
+the pair became a metaphor, and the account of their rending
+asunder by their children lost all significance, and seemed to be
+an abominable and unintelligible myth.  When examined in the light
+of the New Zealand story, and of the fact that early peoples do
+regard all phenomena as human beings, with physical attributes like
+those of men, the legend of Cronus, and Uranus, and Gaea ceases to
+be a mystery.  It is, at bottom, a savage explanation (as in the
+Samoan story) of the separation of earth and heaven, an explanation
+which could only have occurred to people in a state of mind which
+civilisation has forgotten.
+
+The next generation of Hesiodic gods (if gods we are to call the
+members of this race of non-natural men) was not more fortunate
+than the first in its family relations.
+
+Cronus wedded his sister, Rhea, and begat Demeter, Hera, Hades,
+Poseidon, and the youngest, Zeus.  "And mighty Cronus swallowed
+down each of them, each that came to their mother's knees from her
+holy womb, with this intent that none other of the proud sons of
+heaven should hold his kingly sway among the immortals.  Heaven and
+Earth had warned him that he too should fall through his children.
+Wherefore he kept no vain watch, but spied and swallowed down each
+of his offspring, while grief immitigable took possession of
+Rhea."[1]  Rhea, being about to become the mother of Zeus, took
+counsel with Uranus and Gaea.  By their advice she went to Crete,
+where Zeus was born, and, in place of the child, she presented to
+Cronus a huge stone swathed in swaddling bands.  This he swallowed,
+and was easy in his mind.  Zeus grew up, and by some means,
+suggested by Gaea, compelled Zeus to disgorge all his offspring.
+"And he vomited out the stone first, as he had swallowed it
+last."[2]  The swallowed children emerged alive, and Zeus fixed the
+stone at Pytho (Delphi), where Pausanias[3] had the privilege of
+seeing it, and where, as it did not tempt the cupidity of barbarous
+invaders, it probably still exists.  It was not a large stone,
+Pausanias says, and the Delphians used to pour oil over it, as
+Jacob did[4] to the stone at Bethel, and on feast-days they covered
+it with wraps of wool.  The custom of smearing fetish-stones (which
+Theophrastus mentions as one of the practices of the superstitious
+man) is clearly a survival from the savage stage of religion.  As a
+rule, however, among savages, fetish-stones are daubed with red
+paint (like the face of the wooden ancient Dionysi in Greece, and
+of Tsui Goab among the Hottentots), not smeared with oil.[5]
+
+
+[1] Theog., 460, 465.
+
+[2] Theog., 498.
+
+[3] x. 245.
+
+[4] Gen. xxviii. 18.
+
+[5] Pausanias, ii. 2, 5.  "Churinga" in Australia are greased with
+the natural moisture of the palm of the hand, and rubbed with red
+ochre.--Spencer and Gillen.  They are "sacred things," but not
+exactly fetishes.
+
+
+The myth of the swallowing and disgorging of his own children by
+Cronus was another of the stumbling-blocks of Greek orthodoxy.  The
+common explanation, that Time ([Greek text omitted]) does swallow
+his children, the days, is not quite satisfactory.  Time brings
+never the past back again, as Cronus did.  Besides, the myth of the
+swallowing is not confined to Cronus.  Modern philology has given,
+as usual, different analyses of the meaning of the name of the god.
+Hermann, with Preller, derives it from [Greek text omitted], to
+fulfil.  The harvest-month, says Preller, was named Cronion in
+Greece, and Cronia was the title of the harvest-festival.  The
+sickle of Cronus is thus brought into connection with the sickle of
+the harvester.[1]
+
+
+[1] Preller, Gr. Myth., i. 44; Hartung, ii. 48; Porphyry, Abst.,
+ii. 54. Welcker will not hear of this etymology, Gr. gott., i. 145,
+note 9.
+
+
+The second myth, in which Cronus swallows his children, has
+numerous parallels in savage legend.  Bushmen tell of Kwai Hemm,
+the devourer, who swallows that great god, the mantis insect, and
+disgorges him alive with all the other persons and animals whom he
+has engulphed in the course of a long and voracious career.[1]  The
+moon in Australia, while he lived on earth, was very greedy, and
+swallowed the eagle-god, whom he had to disgorge.  Mr. Im Thurn
+found similar tales among the Indians of Guiana.  The swallowing
+and disgorging of Heracles by the monster that was to slay Hesione
+is well known.  Scotch peasants tell of the same feats, but
+localise the myth on the banks of the Ken in Galloway.  Basutos,
+Eskimos, Zulus and European fairy tales all possess this incident,
+the swallowing of many persons by a being from whose maw they
+return alive and in good case.
+
+
+[1] Bleek, Bushman Folk-lore, pp. 6, 8.
+
+
+A mythical conception which prevails from Greenland to South
+Africa, from Delphi to the Solomon Islands, from Brittany to the
+shores of Lake Superior, must have some foundation in the common
+elements of human nature.[1]  Now it seems highly probable that
+this curious idea may have been originally invented in an attempt
+to explain natural phenomena by a nature-myth.  It has already been
+shown (chapter v.) that eclipses are interpreted, even by the
+peasantry of advanced races, as the swallowing of the moon by a
+beast or a monster.  The Piutes account for the disappearance of
+the stars in the daytime by the hypothesis that the "sun swallows
+his children".  In the Melanesian myth, dawn is cut out of the body
+of night by Qat, armed with a knife of red obsidian.  Here are
+examples[2] of transparent nature-myths in which this idea occurs
+for obvious explanatory purposes, and in accordance with the laws
+of the savage imagination.  Thus the conception of the swallowing
+and disgorging being may very well have arisen out of a nature-
+myth.  But why is the notion attached to the legend of Cronus?
+
+
+[1] The myth of Cronus and the swallowed children and the stone is
+transferred to Gargantua.  See Sebillot, Gargantua dans les
+Traditions Populaires.  But it is impossible to be certain that
+this is not an example of direct borrowing by Madame De Cerny in
+her Saint Suliac, p. 69.
+
+[2] Compare Tylor, Prim. Cult., i. 338.
+
+
+That is precisely the question about which mythologists differ, as
+has been shown, and perhaps it is better to offer no explanation.
+However stories arise--and this story probably arose from a
+nature-myth--it is certain that they wander about the world, that
+they change masters, and thus a legend which is told of a princess
+with an impossible name in Zululand is told of the mother of
+Charlemagne in France.  The tale of the swallowing may have been
+attributed to Cronus, as a great truculent deity, though it has no
+particular elemental signification in connection with his legend.
+
+This peculiarly savage trick of swallowing each other became an
+inherited habit in the family of Cronus.  When Zeus reached years
+of discretion, he married Metis, and this lady, according to the
+scholiast on Hesiod, had the power of transforming herself into any
+shape she pleased.  When she was about to be a mother, Zeus induced
+her to assume the shape of a fly and instantly swallowed her.[1]
+In behaving thus, Zeus acted on the advice of Uranus and Gaea.  It
+was feared that Metis would produce a child more powerful than his
+father.  Zeus avoided this peril by swallowing his wife, and
+himself gave birth to Athene.  The notion of swallowing a hostile
+person, who has been changed by magic into a conveniently small
+bulk, is very common.  It occurs in the story of Taliesin.[2]
+Caridwen, in the shape of a hen, swallows Gwion Bach, in the form
+of a grain of wheat.  In the same manner the princess in the
+Arabian Nights swallowed the Geni.  Here then we have in the
+Hesiodic myth an old marchen pressed into the service of the higher
+mythology.  The apprehension which Zeus (like Herod and King
+Arthur) always felt lest an unborn child should overthrow him, was
+also familiar to Indra; but, instead of swallowing the mother and
+concealing her in his own body, like Zeus, Indra entered the
+mother's body, and himself was born instead of the dreaded
+child.[3]  A cow on this occasion was born along with Indra.  This
+adventure of the [Greek text omitted] or swallowing of Metis was
+explained by the late Platonists as a Platonic allegory.  Probably
+the people who originated the tale were not Platonists, any more
+than Pandarus was all Aristotelian.
+
+
+[1] Hesiod, Theogonia, 886.  See Scholiast and note in Aglaophamus,
+i. 613.  Compare Puss in Boots and the Ogre.
+
+[2] Mabinogion, p. 473.
+
+[3] Black Yajur Veda, quoted by Sayana.
+
+
+After Homer and Hesiod, the oldest literary authorities for Greek
+cosmogonic myths are the poems attributed to Orpheus.  About their
+probable date, as has been said, little is known.  They have
+reached us only in fragments, but seem to contain the first guesses
+of a philosophy not yet disengaged from mythical conditions.  The
+poet preserves, indeed, some extremely rude touches of early
+imagination, while at the same time one of the noblest and boldest
+expressions of pantheistic thought is attributed to him.  From the
+same source are drawn ideas as pure as those of the philosophical
+Vedic hymn,[1] and as wild as those of the Vedic Purusha Sukta, or
+legend of the fashioning of the world out of the mangled limbs of
+Purusha.  The authors of the Orphic cosmogony appear to have begun
+with some remarks on Time ([Greek text omitted]).  "Time was when
+as yet this world was not."[2]  Time, regarded in the mythical
+fashion as a person, generated Chaos and Aether.  The Orphic poet
+styles Chaos [Greek text omitted], "the monstrous gulph," or "gap".
+This term curiously reminds one of Ginnunga-gap in the Scandinavian
+cosmogonic legends.  "Ginnunga-gap was light as windless air," and
+therein the blast of heat met the cold rime, whence Ymir was
+generated, the Purusha of Northern fable.[3]  These ideas
+correspond well with the Orphic conception of primitive space.[4]
+
+
+[1] Rig-Veda, x. 90.
+
+[2] Lobeck, Aglaophamus, i. 470.  See also the quotations from
+Proclus.
+
+[3] Gylfi's Mocking.
+
+[4] Aglaophamus, p. 473.
+
+
+In process of time Chaos produced an egg, shining and silver white.
+It is absurd to inquire, according to Lobeck, whether the poet
+borrowed this widely spread notion of a cosmic egg from Phoenicia,
+Babylon, Egypt (where the goose-god Seb laid the egg), or whether
+the Orphic singer originated so obvious an idea.  Quaerere ludicrum
+est.  The conception may have been borrowed, but manifestly it is
+one of the earliest hypotheses that occur to the rude imagination.
+We have now three primitive generations, time, chaos, the egg, and
+in the fourth generation the egg gave birth to Phanes, the great
+hero of the Orphic cosmogony.[1]  The earliest and rudest thinkers
+were puzzled, as many savage cosmogonic myths have demonstrated, to
+account for the origin of life.  The myths frequently hit on the
+theory of a hermaphroditic being, both male and female, who
+produces another being out of himself.  Prajapati in the Indian
+stories, and Hrimthursar in Scandinavian legend--"one of his feet
+got a son on the other"--with Lox in the Algonquin tale are
+examples of these double-sexed personages.  In the Orphic poem,
+Phanes is both male and female.  This Phanes held within him "the
+seed of all the gods,"[2] and his name is confused with the names
+of Metis and Ericapaeus in a kind of trinity.  All this part of the
+Orphic doctrine is greatly obscured by the allegorical and
+theosophistic interpretations of the late Platonists long after our
+era, who, as usual, insisted on finding their own trinitarian
+ideas, commenta frigidissima, concealed under the mythical
+narrative.[3]
+
+
+[1] Clemens Alexan., p. 672.
+
+[2] Damascius, ap. Lobeck, i. 481.
+
+[3] Aglaoph., i. 483.
+
+
+Another description by Hieronymus of the first being, the Orphic
+Phanes, "as a serpent with bull's and lion's heads, with a human
+face in the middle and wings on the shoulders," is sufficiently
+rude and senseless.  But these physical attributes could easily be
+explained away as types of anything the Platonist pleased.[1]  The
+Orphic Phanes, too, was almost as many-headed as a giant in a fairy
+tale, or as Purusha in the Rig-Veda.  He had a ram's head, a bull's
+head, a snake's head and a lion's head, and glanced around with
+four eyes, presumably human.[2]  This remarkable being was also
+provided with golden wings.  The nature of the physical arrangements
+by which Phanes became capable of originating life in the world is
+described in a style so savage and crude that the reader must be
+referred to Suidas for the original text.[3]  The tale is worthy of
+the Swift-like fancy of the Australian Narrinyeri.
+
+
+[1] Damascius, 381, ap. Lobeck, i. 484.
+
+[2] Hermias in Phaedr. ap. Lobeck, i. 493.
+
+[3] Suidas s. v. Phanes.
+
+
+Nothing can be easier or more delusive than to explain all this
+wild part of the Orphic cosmogony as an allegorical veil of any
+modern ideas we choose to select.  But why the "allegory" should
+closely imitate the rough guesses of uncivilised peoples, Ahts,
+Diggers, Zunis, Cahrocs, it is less easy to explain.  We can
+readily imagine African or American tribes who were accustomed to
+revere bulls, rams, snakes, and so forth, ascribing the heads of
+all their various animal patrons to the deity of their confederation.
+We can easily see how such races as practise the savage rites of
+puberty should attribute to the first being the special organs of
+Phanes.  But on the Neo-Platonic hypothesis that Orpheus was a seer
+of Neo-Platonic opinions, we do not see why he should have veiled
+his ideas under so savage an allegory.  This part of the Orphic
+speculation is left in judicious silence by some modern commentators,
+such as M. Darmesteter in Les Cosmogonies Aryennes.[1]  Indeed, if we
+choose to regard Apollonius Rhodius, an Alexandrine poet writing in
+a highly civilised age, as the representative of Orphicism, it is
+easy to mask and pass by the more stern and characteristic
+fortresses of the Orphic divine.  The theriomorphic Phanes is a much
+less "Aryan" and agreeable object than the glorious golden-winged
+Eros, the love-god of Apollonius Rhodius and Aristophanes.[2]
+
+
+[1] Essais Orientaux, p. 166.
+
+[2] Argonautica, 1-12; Aves, 693.
+
+
+On the whole, the Orphic fragments appear to contain survivals of
+savage myths of the origin of things blended with purer
+speculations.  The savage ideas are finally explained by late
+philosophers as allegorical veils and vestments of philosophy; but
+the interpretation is arbitrary, and varies with the taste and
+fancy of each interpreter.  Meanwhile the coincidence of the wilder
+elements with the speculations native to races in the lowest grades
+of civilisation is undeniable.  This opinion is confirmed by the
+Greek myths of the origin of Man.  These, too, coincide with the
+various absurd conjectures of savages.
+
+In studying the various Greek local legends of the origin of Man,
+we encounter the difficulty of separating them from the myths of
+heroes, which it will be more convenient to treat separately.  This
+difficulty we have already met in our treatment of savage
+traditions of the beginnings of the race.  Thus we saw that among
+the Melanesians, Qat, and among the Ahts, Quawteaht, were heroic
+persons, who made men and most other things.  But it was desirable
+to keep their performances of this sort separate from their other
+feats, their introduction of fire, for example, and of various
+arts.  In the same way it will be well, in reviewing Greek legends,
+to keep Prometheus' share in the making of men apart from the other
+stories of his exploits as a benefactor of the men whom he made.
+In Hesiod, Prometheus is the son of the Titan Iapetus, and perhaps
+his chief exploit is to play upon Zeus a trick of which we find the
+parallel in various savage myths.  It seems, however, from Ovid[1]
+and other texts, that Hesiod somewhere spoke of Prometheus as
+having made men out of clay, like Pund-jel in the Australian, Qat
+in the Melanesian and Tiki in the Maori myths.  The same story is
+preserved in Servius's commentary on Virgil.[2]  A different legend
+is preserved in the Etymologicum Magnum (voc. Ikonion).  According
+to this story, after the deluge of Deucalion, "Zeus bade Prometheus
+and Athene make images of men out of clay, and the winds blew into
+them the breath of life".  In confirmation of this legend,
+Pausanias was shown in Phocis certain stones of the colour of clay,
+and "smelling very like human flesh"; and these, according to the
+Phocians, were "the remains of the clay from which the whole human
+race was fashioned by Prometheus".[3]
+
+
+[1] Ovid. Metam. i. 82.
+
+[2] Eclogue, vi. 42.
+
+[3] Pausanias, x. 4, 3.
+
+
+Aristophanes, too, in the Birds (686) talks of men as [Greek text
+omitted], figures kneaded of clay.  Thus there are sufficient
+traces in Greek tradition of the savage myth that man was made of
+clay by some superior being, like Pund-jel in the quaint Australian
+story.
+
+We saw that among various rude races other theories of the origin
+of man were current.  Men were thought to have come out of a hole
+in the ground or a bed of reeds, and sometimes the very scene of
+their first appearance was still known and pointed out to the
+curious.  This myth was current among races who regarded themselves
+as the only people whose origin needed explanation.  Other stories
+represented man as the fruit of a tree, or the child of a rock or
+stone, or as the descendant of one of the lower animals.  Examples
+of these opinions in Greek legend are now to be given.  In the
+first place, we have a fragment of Pindar, in which the poet
+enumerates several of the centres from which different Greek tribes
+believed men to have sprung.  "Hard it is to find out whether
+Alalkomeneus, first of men, arose on the marsh of Cephissus, or
+whether the Curetes of Ida first, a stock divine, arose, or if it
+was the Phrygian Corybantes that the sun earliest saw--men like
+trees walking;" and Pindar mentions Egyptian and Libyan legends of
+the same description.[1]  The Thebans and the Arcadians held
+themselves to be "earth-born".  "The black earth bore Pelasgus on
+the high wooded hills," says an ancient line of Asius.  The
+Dryopians were an example of a race of men born from ash-trees.
+The myth of gens virum truncis et duro robore nata, "born of tree-
+trunk and the heart of oak," had passed into a proverb even in
+Homer's time.[2]  Lucian mentions[3] the Athenian myth "that men
+grew like cabbages out of the earth".  As to Greek myths of the
+descent of families from animals, these will be examined in the
+discussion of the legend of Zeus.
+
+
+[1] Preller, Aus. Auf., p. 158.
+
+[2] Virgil Aen., viii. 315; Odyssey, xix. 163; Iliad, ii. xxii.
+120; Juvenal, vi. 11.  Cf. also Bouche Leclerq, De Origine Generis
+Humani.
+
+[3] Philops. iii.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+SAVAGE DIVINE MYTHS.
+
+The origin of a belief in GOD beyond the ken of history and of
+speculation--Sketch of conjectural theories--Two elements in all
+beliefs, whether of backward or civilised races--The Mythical and
+the Religious--These may be coeval, or either may be older than the
+other--Difficulty of study--The current anthropological theory--
+Stated objections to the theory--Gods and spirits--Suggestion that
+savage religion is borrowed from Europeans--Reply to Mr. Tylor's
+arguments on this head--The morality of savages.
+
+
+"The question of the origin of a belief in Deity does not come
+within the scope of a strictly historical inquiry.  No man can
+watch the idea of GOD in the making or in the beginning.  We are
+acquainted with no race whose beginning does not lie far back in
+the unpenetrated past.  Even on the hypothesis that the natives of
+Australia, for example, were discovered in a state of culture more
+backward than that of other known races, yet the institutions and
+ideas of the Australians must have required for their development
+an incalculable series of centuries.  The notions of man about the
+Deity, man's religious sentiments and his mythical narratives, must
+be taken as we find them.  There have been, and are, many theories
+as to the origin of the conception of a supernatural being or
+beings, concerned with the fortunes of mankind, and once active in
+the making of the earth and its inhabitants.  There is the
+hypothesis of an original divine tradition, darkened by the smoke
+of foolish mortal fancies.  There is the hypothesis of an innate
+and intuitive sensus numinis.  There is the opinion that the notion
+of Deity was introduced to man by the very nature of his knowledge
+and perceptions, which compel him in all things to recognise a
+finite and an infinite.  There is the hypothesis that gods were
+originally ghosts, the magnified shapes of ancestral spectres.
+There is the doctrine that man, seeking in his early speculations
+for the causes of things, and conscious of his own powers as an
+active cause, projected his own shadow on the mists of the unknown,
+and peopled the void with figures of magnified non-natural men, his
+own parents and protectors, and the makers of many of the things in
+the world.
+
+"Since the actual truth cannot be determined by observation and
+experiment, the question as to the first germs of the divine
+conception must here be left unanswered.  But it is possible to
+disengage and examine apart the two chief elements in the earliest
+as in the latest ideas of Godhead.  Among the lowest and most
+backward, as among the most advanced races, there coexist the
+MYTHICAL and the RELIGIOUS elements in belief.  The rational factor
+(or what approves itself to us as the rational factor) is visible
+in religion; the irrational is prominent in myth.  The Australian,
+the Bushman, the Solomon Islander, in hours of danger and necessity
+'yearns after the gods,' and has present in his heart the idea of a
+father and friend.  This is the religious element.  The same man,
+when he comes to indulge his fancy for fiction, will degrade this
+spiritual friend and father to the level of the beasts, and will
+make him the hero of comic or repulsive adventures.  This is the
+mythical or irrational element.  Religion, in its moral aspect,
+always traces back to the belief in a power that is benign and
+works for righteousness.  Myth, even in Homer or the Rig-Veda,
+perpetually falls back on the old stock of absurd and immoral
+divine adventures.[1]
+
+
+[1] M. Knappert here, in a note to the Dutch translation, denies
+the lowest mythical element to the Hebrews, as their documents have
+reached us.
+
+
+"It would be rash, in the present state of knowledge, to pronounce
+that the germ of the serious Homeric sense of the justice and power
+of the Divinity is earlier or later than the germ of the Homeric
+stories of gods disguised as animals, or imprisoned by mortals, or
+kicked out of Olympus.  The rational and irrational aspects of
+mythology and religion may be of coeval antiquity for all that is
+certainly known, or either of them, in the dark backward of mortal
+experience, may have preceded the other.  There is probably no
+religion nor mythology which does not offer both aspects to the
+student.  But it is the part of advancing civilisation to adorn and
+purify the rational element, and to subordinate and supersede the
+irrational element, as far as religious conservatism, ritual and
+priestly dogma will permit."
+
+Such were the general remarks with which this chapter opened in the
+original edition of the present work.  But reading, reflection and
+certain additions to the author's knowledge of facts, have made it
+seem advisable to state, more fully and forcibly than before, that,
+in his opinion, not only the puzzling element of myth, but the
+purer element of a religious belief sanctioning morality is derived
+by civilised people from a remote past of savagery.  It is also
+necessary to draw attention to a singular religious phenomena, a
+break, or "fault," as geologists call it, in the religious strata.
+While the most backward savages, in certain cases, present the
+conception of a Being who sanctions ethics, and while that
+conception recurs at a given stage of civilisation, it appears to
+fade, or even to disappear in some conditions of barbarism.  Among
+some barbaric peoples, such as the Zulus, and the Red Indians of
+French Canada when first observed, as among some Polynesians and
+some tribes of Western and Central Africa little trace of a supreme
+being is found, except a name, and that name is even occasionally a
+matter of ridicule.  The highest religious conception has been
+reached, and is generally known, yet the Being conceived of as
+creative is utterly neglected, while ghosts, or minor gods, are
+served and adored.  To this religious phenomenon (if correctly
+observed) we must attempt to assign a cause.  For this purpose it
+is necessary to state again what may be called the current or
+popular anthropological theory of the evolution of Gods.
+
+That theory takes varying shapes.  In the philosophy of Mr. Herbert
+Spencer we find a pure Euhemerism.  Gods are but ghosts of dead
+men, raised to a higher and finally to the highest power.  In the
+somewhat analogous but not identical system of Mr. Tylor, man first
+attains to the idea of spirit by reflection on various physical,
+psychological and psychical experiences, such as sleep, dreams,
+trances, shadows, hallucinations, breath and death, and he
+gradually extends the conception of soul or ghost till all nature
+is peopled with spirits.  Of these spirits one is finally promoted
+to supremacy, where the conception of a supreme being occurs.  In
+the lowest faiths there is said, on this theory, to be no
+connection, or very little connection, between religion and
+morality.  To supply a religious sanction of morals is the work of
+advancing thought.[1]
+
+
+[1] Prim. Cult., ii. 381.  Huxley's Science and Hebrew Tradition,
+pp. 346,372.
+
+
+This current hypothesis is, confessedly, "animistic," in Mr.
+Tylor's phrase, or, in Mr. Spencer's terminology, it is "the ghost
+theory".  The human soul, says Mr. Tylor, has been the model on
+which all man's ideas of spiritual beings, from "the tiniest elf"
+to "the heavenly Creator and ruler of the world, the Great Spirit,"
+have been framed.[1]  Thus it has been necessary for Mr. Tylor and
+for Mr. Spencer to discover first an origin of man's idea of his
+own soul, and that supposed origin in psychological, physical and
+psychical experiences is no doubt adequate.  By reflection on these
+facts, probably, the idea of spirit was reached, though the
+psychical experiences enumerated by Mr. Tylor may contain points as
+yet unexplained by Materialism.  From these sources are derived all
+really "animistic" gods, all that from the first partake of the
+nature of hungry ghosts, placated by sacrifices of food, though in
+certain cases that hunger may have been transferred, we surmise, by
+worshippers to gods not ORIGINALLY animistic.
+
+
+[1] Prim. Cult., ii. 109
+
+
+In answer to this theory of an animistic or ghostly origin of all
+gods, it must first be observed that all gods are not necessarily,
+it would seem, of animistic origin.  Among certain of the lowest
+savages, although they believe in ghosts, the animistic conception,
+the spiritual idea, is not attached to the relatively supreme being
+of their faith.  He is merely a powerful BEING, unborn, and not
+subject to death.  The purely metaphysical question "was he a
+ghost?" does not seem always to have been asked.  Consequently
+there is no logical reason why man's idea of a Maker should not be
+prior to man's idea that there are such things as souls, ghosts and
+spirits.  Therefore the animistic theory is not necessary as
+material for the "god-idea".  We cannot, of course, prove that the
+"god-idea" was historically prior to the "ghost-idea," for we know
+no savages who have a god and yet are ignorant of ghosts.  But we
+can show that the idea of God may exist, in germ, without
+explicitly involving the idea of spirit.  Thus gods MAY be prior in
+evolution to ghosts, and therefore the animistic theory of the
+origin of gods in ghosts need not necessarily be accepted.
+
+In the first place, the original evolution of a god out of a ghost
+need not be conceded, because in perhaps all known savage
+theological philosophy the God, the Maker and Master, is regarded
+as a being who existed before death entered the world.  Everywhere,
+practically speaking, death is looked on as a comparatively late
+intruder.  He came not only after God was active, but after men and
+beasts had populated the world.  Scores of myths accounting for
+this invasion of death have been collected all over the world.[1]
+Thus the relatively supreme being, or beings, of religion are
+looked on as prior to Death, therefore, not as ghosts.  They are
+sometimes expressly distinguished as "original gods" from other
+gods who are secondary, being souls of chiefs.  Thus all Tongan
+gods are Atua, but all Atua are not "original gods".[2]  The word
+Atua, according to Mr. White, is "A-tu-a".  "A" was the name given
+to the author of the universe, and signifies: "Am the unlimited in
+power," "The Conception," "the Leader," "the Beyond All".  "Tua"
+means "Beyond that which is most distant," "Behind all matter," and
+"Behind every action".  Clearly these conceptions are not more
+mythical (indeed A does not seem to occur in the myths), nor are
+they more involved in ghosts, than the unknown absolute of Mr.
+Herbert Spencer.  Yet the word Atua denotes gods who are recognised
+as ghosts of chiefs, no less than it denotes the supreme
+existence.[3]  These ideas are the metaphysical theology of a race
+considerably above the lowest level.  They lend no assistance to a
+theory that A was, or was evolved out of, a human ghost, and he is
+not found in Maori MYTHOLOGY as far as our knowledge goes.  But,
+among the lowest known savages, the Australians, we read that "the
+Creator was a gigantic black, once on earth, now among the stars".
+This is in Gippsland; the deities of the Fuegians and the Blackfoot
+Indians are also Beings, anthropomorphic, unborn and undying, like
+Mangarrah, the creative being of the Larrakeah tribe in Australia.
+"A very good man called Mangarrah lives in the sky. . . .  He made
+everything" (blacks excepted).  He never dies.[4]  The Melanesian
+Vui "never were men," were "something different," and "were NOT
+ghosts".  It is as a Being, not as a Spirit, that the Kurnai deity
+Munganngaur (Our Father) is described.[5]  In short, though
+Europeans often speak of these divine beings of low savages as
+"spirits," it does not appear that the natives themselves advance
+here the metaphysical idea of spirit.  These gods are just BEINGS,
+anthropomorphic, or (in myth and fable), very often bestial,
+"theriomorphic".[6]  It is manifest that a divine being envisaged
+thus need not have been evolved out of the theory of spirits or
+ghosts, and may even have been prior to the rise of the belief in
+ghosts.
+
+
+[1] See Modern Mythology, "Myths of Origin of Death".
+
+[2] Mariner, ii. 127.
+
+[3] White, Ancient History of the Maoris, vol. i. p. 4; other views
+in Gill's Myths of the Pacific.  I am not committed to Mr. White's
+opinion.
+
+[4] Journal Anthrop. Inst., Nov., 1894, p. 191.
+
+[5] Ibid., 1886, p. 313.
+
+[6] See Making of Religion, pp. 201-210, for a more copious
+statement.
+
+
+Again, these powerful, or omnipotent divine beings are looked on as
+guardians of morality, punishers of sin, rewarders of
+righteousness, both in this world and in a future life, in places
+where ghosts, though believed in, ARE NOT WORSHIPPED, NOR IN
+RECEIPT OF SACRIFICE, and where, great grandfathers being
+forgotten, ancestral ghosts can scarcely swell into gods.  This
+occurs among Andamanese, Fuegians and Australians, therefore, among
+non-ghost-worshipping races, ghosts cannot have developed into
+deities who are not even necessarily spirits.  These gods, again,
+do not receive sacrifice, and thus lack the note of descent from
+hungry food-craving ghosts.  In Australia, indeed, while ghosts are
+not known to receive any offerings, "the recent custom of providing
+food for it"--the dead body of a friend--"is derided by the
+intelligent old aborigines as 'white fellow's gammon'".[1]
+
+
+[1] Dawson, Australian Aborigines, p. 51, 1881.
+
+
+The Australians possess no chiefs like "Vich Ian Vohr or
+Chingachgook" whose ghosts might be said to swell into supreme
+moral deities.  "Headmen" they have, leaders of various degrees of
+authority, but no Vich Ian Vohr, no semi-sacred representative of
+the tribe.[1]  Nor are the ghosts of the Headmen known to receive
+any particular posthumous attention or worship.  Thus it really
+seems impossible to show proof that Australian gods grew out of
+Australian ghosts, a subject to which we shall return.
+
+
+[1] Howitt, Organisation of Australian Tribes, pp. 101-113.
+"Transactions of Royal Society of Victoria," 1889.
+
+
+Some supporters of the current theory therefore fall back on the
+hypothesis that the Australians are sadly degenerate.[1]  Chiefs,
+it is argued, or kings, they once had, and the gods are surviving
+ghosts of these wholly forgotten potentates.  To this we reply that
+we know not the very faintest trace of Australian degeneration.
+Sir John Lubbock and Mr. Tylor have correctly argued that the soil
+of Australia has not yet yielded so much as a fragment of native
+pottery, nor any trace of native metal work, not a vestige of stone
+buildings occurs, nor of any work beyond the present native level
+of culture, unless we reckon weirs for fish-catching.  "The
+Australian boomerang," writes Mr. Tylor, "has been claimed as
+derived from some hypothetical high culture, whereas the
+transition-stages through which it is connected with the club are
+to be observed in its own country, while no civilised race
+possesses the weapon."[2]
+
+
+[1] See Prof. Menzie's History of Religion, pp. 16, 17, where a
+singular inconsistency has escaped the author.
+
+[2] Prim. Cult., i. 57, 67.
+
+
+Therefore the Australian, with his boomerang, represents no
+degeneration but advance on his ancestors, who had not yet
+developed the boomerang out of the club.  If the excessively
+complex nature of Australian rules of prohibited degrees be
+appealed to as proof of degeneration from the stage in which they
+were evolved, we reply that civilisation everywhere tends not to
+complicate but to simplify such rules, as it also notoriously
+simplifies the forms of language.
+
+The Australian people, when discovered, were only emerging from
+palaeolithic culture, while the neighbouring Tasmanians were
+frankly palaeolithic.[1]  Far from degenerating, the Australians
+show advance when they supersede their beast or other totem by an
+eponymous human hero.[2]  The eponymous hero, however, changed with
+each generation, so that no one name was fixed as that of tribal
+father, later perhaps to become a tribal god.  We find several
+tribes in which the children now follow the FATHER'S class, and
+thus paternal kin takes the place of the usual early savage method
+of reckoning kinship by the mother's side, elsewhere prevalent in
+Australia.  In one of these tribes, dwelling between the Glenelg
+and Mount Napier, headmanship is hereditary, but nothing is said of
+any worship of the ghosts of chiefs.  All this social improvement
+denotes advance on the usual Australian standard.[3]  Of
+degeneration (except when produced recently by European vices and
+diseases) I know no trace in Australia.  Their highest religious
+conceptions, therefore, are not to be disposed of as survivals of a
+religion of the ghosts of such chiefs as the Australians are not
+shown ever to have recognised.  The "God idea" in Australia, or
+among the Andamanese, must have some other source than the Ghost-
+Theory.  This is all the more obvious because not only are ghosts
+not worshipped by the Australians, but also the divine beings who
+are alleged to form links between the ghost and the moral god are
+absent.  There are no departmental gods, as of war, peace, the
+chase, love, and so forth.  Sun, sky and earth are equally
+unworshipped.  There is nothing in religion between a Being, on one
+hand (with a son or sons), and vague mischievous spirits, boilyas
+or mrarts, and ghosts (who are not worshipped), on the other hand.
+The friends of the idea that the God is an ancient evolution from
+the ghost of such a chief as is not proved to have existed, must
+apparently believe that the intermediate stages in religious
+evolution, departmental gods, nature gods and gods of polytheism in
+general once existed in Australia, and have all been swept away in
+a deluge of degeneration.  That deluge left in religion a moral,
+potently active Father and Judge.  Now that conception is
+considerably above the obsolescent belief in an otiose god which is
+usually found among barbaric races of the type from which the
+Australians are said to have degenerated.  There is no proof of
+degeneracy, and, if degeneration has occurred, why has it left just
+the kind of deity who, in the higher barbaric culture, is not
+commonly found?  Clearly this attempt to explain the highest aspect
+of Australian religion by an undemonstrated degeneration is an
+effort of despair.
+
+
+[1] Tylor, preface to Ling Roth's Aborigines of Tasmania, pp. v.-
+viii.
+
+[2] Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 231.
+
+[3] Kamilaroi and Kurnai, pp. 277, 278.
+
+
+While the current theory thus appears to break down over the
+deities of certain Australian tribes and of other low savages to be
+more particularly described later, it is not more successful in
+dealing with what we have called the "fault" or break in the
+religious strata of higher races.  The nature of that "fault" may
+thus be described:  While the deities of several low savage peoples
+are religiously regarded as guardians and judges of conduct both in
+this life and in the next, among higher barbarians they are often
+little, or not at all, interested in conduct.  Again, while among
+Australians, and Andamanese, and Fuegians, there is hardly a
+verifiable trace, if any trace there be, of sacrifice to any divine
+being, among barbarians the gods beneath the very highest are in
+receipt even of human sacrifice.  Even among barbarians the highest
+deity is very rarely worshipped with sacrifice.  Through various
+degrees he is found to lose all claim on worship, and even to
+become a mere name, and finally a jest and a mockery.  Meanwhile
+ancestral ghosts, and gods framed on the same lines as ghosts,
+receive sacrifice of food and of human victims.  Once more, the
+high gods of low savages are not localised, not confined to any
+temple or region.  But the gods of higher barbarians (the gods
+beneath the highest), are localised in this way, as occasionally
+even the highest god also is.
+
+All this shows that, among advancing barbarians, the gods, if they
+started from the estate of gods among savages on the lowest level,
+become demoralised, limited, conditioned, relegated to an otiose
+condition, and finally deposed, till progressive civilisation, as
+in Greece, reinstates or invents purer and more philosophic
+conceptions, without being able to abolish popular and priestly
+myth and ritual.
+
+Here, then, is a flaw or break in the strata of religion.  What was
+the cause of this flaw?  We answer, the evolution, through ghosts,
+of "animistic" gods who retained the hunger and selfishness of
+these ancestral spirits whom the lowest savages are not known to
+worship.
+
+The moral divine beings of these lowest races, beings (when
+religiously regarded) unconditioned, in need of no gift that man
+can give, are not to be won by offerings of food and blood.  Of
+such offerings ghosts, and gods modelled on ghosts, are notoriously
+in need.  Strengthened and propitiated by blood and sacrifice (not
+offered to the gods of low savages), the animistic deities will
+become partisans of their adorers, and will either pay no regard to
+the morals of their worshippers, or will be easily bribed to
+forgive sins.  Here then is, ethically speaking, a flaw in the
+strata of religion, a flaw found in the creeds of ghost-worshipping
+barbarians, but not of non-ghost-worshipping savages.  A crowd of
+venal, easy-going, serviceable deities has now been evolved out of
+ghosts, and Animism is on its way to supplant or overlay a rude
+early form of theism.  Granting the facts, we fail to see how they
+are explained by the current theory which makes the highest god the
+latest in evolution from a ghost.  That theory wrecks itself again
+on the circumstance that, whereas the tribal or national highest
+divine being, as latest in evolution, ought to be the most potent,
+he is, in fact, among barbaric races, usually the most disregarded.
+A new idea, of course, is not necessarily a powerful or fashionable
+idea.  It may be regarded as a "fad," or a heresy, or a low form of
+dissent.  But, when universally known to and accepted by a tribe or
+people, then it must be deemed likely to possess great influence.
+But that is not the case; and among barbaric tribes the most
+advanced conception of deity is the least regarded, the most
+obsolete.
+
+An excellent instance of the difference between the theory here
+advocated, and that generally held by anthropologists, may be found
+in Mr. Abercromby's valuable work, Pre- and Proto-Historic Finns,
+i. 150-154.  The gods, and other early ideas, says Mr. Abercromby,
+"could in no sense be considered as supernatural".  We shall give
+examples of gods among the races "nearest the beginning," whose
+attributes of power and knowledge can not, by us at least, be
+considered other than "supernatural".  "The gods" (in this
+hypothesis) "were so human that they could be forced to act in
+accordance with the wishes of their worshippers, and could likewise
+be punished."  These ideas, to an Australian black, or an
+Andamanese, would seem dangerously blasphemous.  These older gods
+"resided chiefly in trees, wells, rivers and animals".  But many
+gods of our lowest known savages live "beyond the sky".  Mr.
+Abercromby supposes the sky god to be of later evolution, and to be
+worshipped after man had exhausted "the helpers that seemed nearest
+at hand . . . in the trees and waters at his very door".  Now the
+Australian black has not a door, nor has he gods of any service to
+him in the "trees and waters," though sprites may lurk in such
+places for mischief.  But in Mr. Abercromby's view, some men turned
+at last to the sky-god, "who in time would gain a large circle of
+worshippers".  He would come to be thought omnipotent, omniscient,
+the Creator.  This notion, says Mr. Abercromby, "must, if this view
+is correct, be of late origin".  But the view is not correct.  The
+far-seeing powerful Maker beyond the sky is found among the very
+backward races who have not developed helpers nearer man, dwelling
+round what would be his door, if door he was civilised enough to
+possess.  Such near neighbouring gods, of human needs, capable of
+being bullied, or propitiated by sacrifice, are found in races
+higher than the lowest, who, for their easily procurable aid, have
+allowed the Maker to sink into an otiose god, or a mere name.  Mr.
+Abercromby unconsciously proves our case by quoting the example of
+a Samoyede.  This man knew a Sky-god, Num; that conception was
+familiar to him.  He also knew a familiar spirit.  On Mr.
+Abercromby's theory he should have resorted for help to the Sky-
+god, not to the sprite.  But he did the reverse: he said, "I cannot
+approach Num, he is too far away; if I could reach him I should not
+beseech thee (the familiar spirit), but should go myself; but I
+cannot".  For this precise reason, people who have developed the
+belief in accessible affable spirits go to them, with a spell to
+constrain, or a gift to bribe, and neglect, in some cases almost
+forget, their Maker.  But He is worshipped by low savages, who do
+not propitiate ghosts and who have no gods in wells and trees,
+close at hand.  It seems an obvious inference that the greater God
+is the earlier evolved.
+
+These are among the difficulties of the current anthropological
+theory.  There is, however, a solution by which the weakness of the
+divine conception, its neglected, disused aspect among barbaric
+races, might be explained by anthropologists, without regarding it
+as an obsolescent form of a very early idea.  This solution is
+therefore in common use.  It is applied to the deity revealed in
+the ancient mysteries of the Australians, and it is employed in
+American and African instances.
+
+The custom is to say that the highest divine being of American or
+African native peoples has been borrowed from Europeans, and is,
+especially, a savage refraction from the God of missionaries.  If
+this can be proved, the shadowy, practically powerless "Master of
+Life" of certain barbaric peoples, will have degenerated from the
+Christian conception, because of that conception he will be only a
+faint unsuccessful refraction.  He has been introduced by
+Europeans, it is argued, but is not in harmony with his new
+environment, and so is "half-remembered and half forgot".
+
+The hypothesis of borrowing admits of only one answer, but that
+answer should be conclusive.  If we can discover, say in North
+America, a single instance in which the supreme being occurs, while
+yet he cannot possibly be accounted for by any traceable or
+verifiable foreign influence, then the burden of proof, in other
+cases, falls on the opponent.  When he urges that other North
+American supreme beings were borrowed, we can reply that our
+crucial example shows that this need not be the fact.  To prove
+that it is the fact, in his instances, is then his business.  It is
+obvious that for information on this subject we must go to the
+reports of the earliest travellers who knew the Red Indians well.
+We must try to get at gods behind any known missionary efforts.
+Mr. Tylor offers us the testimony of Heriot, about 1586, that the
+natives of Virginia believed in many gods, also in one chief god,
+"who first made other principal gods, and then the sun, moon and
+stars as petty gods".[1]  Whence could the natives of Virginia have
+borrowed this notion of a Creator before 1586?  If it is replied,
+in the usual way, that they developed him upwards out of sun, moon
+and star gods, other principal gods, and finally reached the idea
+of the Creator, we answer that the idea of the Maker is found where
+these alleged intermediate stages are NOT found, as in Australia.
+In Virginia then, as in Victoria, a Creator may have been evolved
+in some other way than that of gradual ascent from ghosts, and may
+have been, as in Australia and elsewhere, prior to verifiable
+ghost-worship.  Again, in Virginia at our first settlement, the
+native priests strenuously resisted the introduction of Christianity.
+They were content with their deity, Ahone, "the great God who
+governs all the world, and makes the sun to shine, creating the moon
+and stars his companions. . . .  The good and peaceable God . . .
+needs not to be sacrificed unto, for he intendeth all good unto
+them."  This good Creator, without sacrifice, among a settled
+agricultural barbaric race sacrificing to other gods and ghosts,
+manifestly cannot be borrowed from the newly arrived religion of
+Christianity, which his priests, according to the observer,
+vigorously resisted.  Ahone had a subordinate deity, magisterial in
+functions, "looking into all men's actions" and punishing the same,
+when evil.  To THIS god sacrifices WERE made, and if his name,
+Okeus, is derived from Oki = "spirit," he was, of course, an
+animistic ghost-evolved deity. Anthropological writers, by an
+oversight, have dwelt on Oki, but have not mentioned Ahone.[2]
+Manifestly it is not possible to insist that these Virginian high
+deities were borrowed, without saying whence and when they were
+borrowed by a barbaric race which was, at the same time, rejecting
+Christian teaching.
+
+
+[1] Prim. Cult., ii. 341.
+
+[2] History of Travaile into Virginia, by William Strachey, 1612.
+
+
+Mr. Tylor writes, with his habitual perspicacity: "It is the
+widespread belief in the Great Spirit, whatever his precise nature
+and origin, that has long and deservedly drawn the attention of
+European thinkers to the native religions of the North American
+tribes".  Now while, in recent times, Christian ideas may
+undeniably have crystallised round "the Great Spirit," it has come
+to be thought "that THE WHOLE DOCTRINE of the Great Spirit was
+borrowed by the savages from missionaries and colonists.  But this
+view will not bear examination," says Mr. Tylor.[1]
+
+
+[1] Prim. Cult, ii. pp. 339, 340 (1873).  For some reason, Mr.
+Tylor modifies this passage in 1891.
+
+
+Mr. Tylor proceeds to prove this by examples from Greenland, and
+the Algonkins.  He instances the Massachusett God, Kiehtan, who
+created the other gods, and receives the just into heaven.  This
+was recorded in 1622, but the belief, says Winslow, our authority,
+goes back into the unknown past.  "They never saw Kiehtan, but THEY
+HOLD IT A GREAT CHARGE AND DUTY THAT ONE AGE TEACH ANOTHER."  How
+could a deity thus rooted in a traditional past be borrowed from
+recent English settlers?
+
+In these cases the hypothesis of borrowing breaks down, and still
+more does it break down over the Algonkin deity Atahocan.
+
+Father Le Jeune, S.J., went first among the Algonkins, a missionary
+pioneer, in 1633, and suffered unspeakable things in his courageous
+endeavour to win souls in a most recalcitrant flock.  He writes
+(1633): "As this savage has given me occasion to speak of their
+god, I will remark that it is a great error to think that the
+savages have no knowledge of any deity.  I was surprised to hear
+this in France.  I do not know their secrets, but, from the little
+which I am about to tell, it will be seen that they have such
+knowledge.
+
+"They say that one exists whom they call Atahocan, who made the
+whole.  Speaking of God in a wigwam one day, they asked me 'what is
+God?'  I told them that it was He who made all things, Heaven and
+Earth.  They then began to cry out to each other, 'Atahocan!
+Atahocan! it is Atahocan!'"
+
+There could be no better evidence that Atahocan was NOT (as is
+often said) "borrowed from the Jesuits".  The Jesuits had only just
+arrived.
+
+Later (1634) Le Jeune interrogated an old man and a partly
+Europeanised sorcerer.  They replied that nothing was certain; that
+Atahocan was only spoken of as "of a thing so remote," that
+assurance was impossible.  "In fact, their word Nitatohokan means,
+'I fable, I tell an old story'."
+
+Thus Atahocan, though at once recognised as identical with the
+Creator of the missionary, was so far from being the latest thing
+in religious evolution that he had passed into a proverb for the
+ancient and the fabulous.  This, of course, is inconsistent with
+RECENT borrowing.  He was neglected for Khichikouai, spirits which
+inspire seers, and are of some practical use, receiving rewards in
+offerings of grease, says Le Jeune.[1]
+
+
+[1] Relations, 1633, 1634.
+
+
+The obsolescent Atahocan seems to have had no moral activity.  But,
+in America, this indolence of God is not universal.  Mr. Parkman
+indeed writes: "In the primitive Indian's conception of a God, the
+idea of moral good has no part".[1]  But this is definitely
+contradicted by Heriot, Strachey, Winslow, already cited, and by
+Pere Le Jeune.  The good attributes of Kiehtan and Ahone were not
+borrowed from Christianity, were matter of Indian belief before the
+English arrived.  Mr. Parkman writes: "The moment the Indians began
+to contemplate the object of his faith, and sought to clothe it
+with attributes, it became finite, and commonly ridiculous".  It
+did so, as usual, in MYTHOLOGY, but not in RELIGION.  There is
+nothing ridiculous in what is known of Ahone and Kiehtan.  If they
+had a mythology, and if we knew the myths, doubtless they would be
+ridiculous enough.  The savage mind, turned from belief and awe
+into the spinning of yarns, instantly yields to humorous fancy.  As
+we know, mediaeval popular Christianity, in imagery, marchen or
+tales, and art, copiously illustrates the same mental phenomenon.
+Saints, God, our Lord, and the Virgin, all play ludicrous and
+immoral parts in Christian folk-tales.  This is Mythology, and here
+is, beyond all cavil, a late corruption of Religion.  Here, where
+we know the history of a creed, Religion is early, and these myths
+are late.  Other examples of American divine ideas might be given,
+such as the extraordinary hymns in which the Zunis address the
+Eternal, Ahonawilona.  But as the Zuni religion has only been
+studied in recent years, the hymns would be dismissed as
+"borrowed," though there is nothing Catholic or Christian about
+them.  We have preferred to select examples where borrowing from
+Christianity is out of the question.  The current anthropological
+theory is thus confronted with American examples of ideas of the
+divine which cannot have been borrowed, while, if the gods are said
+to have been evolved out of ghosts, we reply that, in some cases,
+they receive no sacrifice, sacrifice being usually a note of
+ghostly descent.  Again, similar gods, as we show, exist where
+ghosts of chiefs are not worshipped, and as far as evidence goes
+never were worshipped, because there is no evidence of the
+existence at any time of such chiefs.  The American highest gods
+may then be equally free from the taint of ghostly descent.
+
+
+[1] Parkman, The Jesuits in North America. p. lxxviii.
+
+
+There is another more or less moral North American deity whose
+evolution is rather questionable.  Pere Brebeuf (1636), speaking of
+the Hurons, says that "they have recourse to Heaven in almost all
+their necessities, . . . and I may say that it is, in fact, God
+whom they blindly adore, for they imagine that there is an Oki,
+that is, a demon, in heaven, who regulates the seasons, bridles the
+winds and the waves of the sea, and helps them in every need.  They
+dread his wrath, and appeal to him as witness to the inviolability
+of their faith, when they make a promise or treaty of peace with
+enemies.  'Heaven hear us to-day' is their form of adjuration."[1]
+
+
+[1] Relations, 1636, pp. 106, 107.
+
+
+A spiritual being, whose home is heaven, who rides on the winds,
+whose wrath is dreaded, who sanctions the oath, is only called "a
+demon" by the prejudice of the worthy father who, at the same time,
+admits that the savages have a conception of God--and that God, so
+conceived, is this demon!
+
+The debatable question is, was the "demon," or the actual expanse
+of sky, first in evolution?  That cannot precisely be settled, but
+in the analogous Chinese case of China we find heaven (Tien) and
+"Shang-ti, the personal ruling Deity," corresponding to the Huron
+"demon".  Shang-ti, the personal deity, occurs most in the oldest,
+pre-Confucian sacred documents, and, so far, appears to be the
+earlier conception.  The "demon" in Huron faith may also be earlier
+than the religious regard paid to his home, the sky.[1]  The
+unborrowed antiquity of a belief in a divine being, creative and
+sometimes moral, in North America, is thus demonstrated.  So far I
+had written when I accidentally fell in with Mr. Tylor's essay on
+"The Limits of Savage Religion".[2]  In that essay, rather to my
+surprise, Mr. Tylor argues for the borrowing of "The Great Spirit,"
+"The Great Manitou," from the Jesuits.  Now, as to the phrase,
+"Great Spirit," the Jesuits doubtless caused its promulgation, and,
+where their teaching penetrated, shreds of their doctrine may have
+adhered to the Indian conception of that divine being.  But Mr.
+Tylor in his essay does not allude to the early evidence, his own,
+for Oki, Atahocan, Kiehtan, and Torngursak, all undeniably prior to
+Jesuit influence, and found where Jesuits, later, did not go.  As
+Mr. Tylor offers no reason for disregarding evidence in 1892 which
+he had republished in a new edition of Primitive Culture in 1891,
+it is impossible to argue against him in this place.  He went on,
+in the essay cited (1892) to contend that the Australian god of the
+Kamilaroi of Victoria, Baiame, is, in name and attributes, of
+missionary introduction.  Happily this hypothesis can be refuted,
+as we show in the following chapter on Australian gods.
+
+
+[1] See Tylor, Prim. Cult., ii. 362, and Making of Religion, p.
+318; also Menzies, History of Religion, pp. 108,109, and Dr.
+Legge's Chinese Classics, in Sacred Books of the East, vols. iii.,
+xxvii., xxviii.
+
+[2] Journ. of Anthrop. Inst., vol. xxi., 1892.
+
+
+It would be easy enough to meet the hypothesis of borrowing in the
+case of the many African tribes who possess something approaching
+to a rude monotheistic conception.  Among these are the Dinkas of
+the Upper Nile, with their neighbours, whose creed Russegger
+compares to that of modern Deists in Europe.  The Dinka god,
+Dendid, is omnipotent, but so benevolent that he is not addressed
+in prayer, nor propitiated by sacrifice.  Compare the supreme being
+of the Caribs, beneficent, otiose, unadored.[1]  A similar deity,
+veiled in the instruction of the as yet unpenetrated Mysteries,
+exists among the Yao of Central Africa.[2]  Of the negro race,
+Waitz says, "even if we do not call them monotheists, we may still
+think of them as standing on the boundary of monotheism despite
+their innumerable rude superstitions".[3]  The Tshi speaking people
+of the Gold Coast have their unworshipped Nyankupon, a now otiose
+unadored being, with a magisterial deputy, worshipped with many
+sacrifices.  The case is almost an exact parallel to that of Ahone
+and Oki in America.  THESE were not borrowed, and the author has
+argued at length against Major Ellis's theory of the borrowing from
+Christians of Nyankupon.[4]
+
+
+[1] Rochefort, Les Isles Antilles, p. 415.  Tylor, ii. 337.
+
+[2] Macdonald, Africana, 1, 71, 72, 130, 279-301.  Scott,
+Dictionary of the Manganja Language, Making of Religion, pp. 230-
+238.  A contradictory view in Spencer, Ecclesiastical Institutions,
+p. 681.
+
+[3] Anthropologie, ii. 167.
+
+[4] Making of Religion, pp. 243-250.
+
+
+To conclude this chapter, the study of savage and barbaric
+religions seems to yield the following facts:--
+
+1. Low savages.  No regular chiefs.  Great beings, not in receipt
+of sacrifice, sanctioning morality.  Ghosts are not worshipped,
+though believed in.  Polytheism, departmental gods and gods of
+heaven, earth, sky and so forth, have not been developed or are not
+found.
+
+2. Barbaric races.  Aristocratic or monarchic.  Ghosts are
+worshipped and receive sacrifice.  Polytheistic gods are in renown
+and receive sacrifice.  There is usually a supreme Maker who is, in
+some cases, moral, in others otiose.  In only one or two known
+cases (as in that of the Polynesian Taaroa) is he in receipt of
+sacrifice.
+
+3. Barbaric races.  (Zulus, monarchic with Unkulunkulu; some
+Algonquins (feebly aristocratic) with Atahocan).  Religion is
+mainly ancestor worship or vague spirit worship; ghosts are
+propitiated with food.  There are traces of an original divine
+being whose name is becoming obsolescent and a matter of jest.
+
+4. Early civilisations.  Monarchic or aristocratic.  (Greece,
+Egypt, India, Peru, Mexico.)  Polytheism.  One god tends to be
+supreme.  Religiously regarded, gods are moral; in myth are the
+reverse.  Gods are in receipt of sacrifice.  Heavenly society is
+modelled on that of men, monarchic or aristocratic.  Philosophic
+thought tends towards belief in one pure god, who may be named
+Zeus, in Greece.
+
+5. The religion of Israel.  Probably a revival and purification of
+the old conception of a moral, beneficent creator, whose creed had
+been involved in sacrifice and anthropomorphic myth.
+
+In all the stages thus roughly sketched, myths of the lowest sort
+prevail, except in the records of the last stage, where the
+documents have been edited by earnest monotheists.
+
+If this theory be approximately correct, man's earliest religious
+ideas may very well have consisted, in a sense, of dependence on a
+supreme moral being who, when attempts were made by savages to
+describe the modus of his working, became involved in the fancies
+of mythology.  How this belief in such a being arose we have no
+evidence to prove.  We make no hint at a sensus numinis, or direct
+revelation.
+
+While offering no hypothesis of the origin of belief in a moral
+creator we may present a suggestion.  Mr. Darwin says about early
+man: "The same high mental faculties which first led man to believe
+in unseen spiritual agencies, then in fetichism, polytheism and
+ultimately monotheism, would infallibly lead him, so long as his
+reasoning powers remained poorly developed, to various strange
+superstitions and customs".[1]  Now, accepting Mr. Darwin's theory
+that early man had "high mental faculties," the conception of a
+Maker of things does not seem beyond his grasp.  Man himself made
+plenty of things, and could probably conceive of a being who made
+the world and the objects in it.  "Certainly there must be some
+Being who made all these things.  He must be very good too," said
+an Eskimo to a missionary.[2]  The goodness is inferred by the
+Eskimo from his own contentment with "the things which are made".[3]
+
+
+[1] Darwin, Descent of Man, i. p. 66.
+
+[2] Cranz, i. 199.
+
+[3] Romans, i. 19.
+
+
+Another example of barbaric man "seeking after God" may be adduced.
+
+What the Greenlander said is corroborated by what a Kaffir said.
+Kaffir religion is mainly animistic, ancestral spirits receive food
+and sacrifice--there is but an evanescent tradition of a "Lord in
+Heaven".  Thus a very respectable Kaffir said to M. Arbrousset,
+"your tidings (Christianity) are what I want; and I was seeking
+before I knew you. . . .  I asked myself sorrowful questions.  'Who
+has touched the stars with his hands? . . .  Who makes the waters
+flow? . . .  Who can have given earth the wisdom and power to
+produce corn?'  Then I buried my face in my hands."
+
+"This," says Sir John Lubbock, "was, however, an exceptional case.
+As a general rule savages do not set themselves to think out such
+questions."[1]
+
+
+[1] Origin of Civilisation, p. 201.
+
+
+As a common fact, if savages never ask the question, at all events,
+somehow, they have the answer ready made.  "Mangarrah, or Baiame,
+Puluga, or Dendid, or Ahone, or Ahonawilona, or Atahocan, or
+Taaroa, or Tui Laga, was the maker."  Therefore savages who know
+that leave the question alone, or add mythical accretions.  But
+their ancestors must have asked the question, like the "very
+respectable Kaffir" before they answered it.
+
+Having reached the idea of a Creator, it was not difficult to add
+that he was "good," or beneficent, and was deathless.
+
+A notion of a good powerful Maker, not subject to death because
+necessarily prior to Death (who only invaded the world late), seems
+easier of attainment than the notion of Spirit which, ex hypothesi,
+demands much delicate psychological study and hard thought.  The
+idea of a Good Maker, once reached, becomes, perhaps, the germ of
+future theism, but, as Mr. Darwin says, the human mind was
+"infallibly led to various strange superstitions".  As St. Paul
+says, in perfect agreement with Mr. Darwin on this point, "they
+became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was
+darkened".
+
+Among other imaginations (right or wrong) was the belief in
+spirits, with all that followed in the way of instituting
+sacrifices, even of human beings, and of dropping morality, about
+which the ghost of a deceased medicine-man was not likely to be
+much interested.  The supposed nearness to man, and the venal and
+partial character of worshipped gods and ghost-gods, would
+inevitably win for them more service and attention than would be
+paid to a Maker remote, unbought and impartial.  Hence the
+conception of such a Being would tend to obsolescence, as we see
+that it does, and would be most obscured where ghosts were most
+propitiated, as among the Zulus.  Later philosophy would attach the
+spiritual conception to the revived or newly discovered idea of the
+supreme God.
+
+In all this speculation there is nothing mystical; no supernatural
+or supernormal interference is postulated.  Supernormal experiences
+may have helped to originate or support the belief in spirits,
+that, however, is another question.  But this hypothesis of the
+origin of belief in a good unceasing Maker of things is, of course,
+confessedly a conjecture, for which historical evidence cannot be
+given, in the nature of the case.  All our attempts to discover
+origins far behind history must be conjectural.  Their value must
+be estimated by the extent to which this or that hypothesis
+colligates the facts.  Now our hypothesis does colligate the facts.
+It shows how belief in a moral supreme being might arise before
+ghosts were worshipped, and it accounts for the flaw in the
+religious strata, for the mythical accretions, for the otiose
+Creator in the background of many barbaric religions, and for the
+almost universal absence of sacrifice to the God relatively
+supreme.  He was, from his earliest conception, in no need of gifts
+from men.
+
+On this matter of otiose supreme gods, Professor Menzies writes,
+"It is very common to find in savage beliefs a vague far-off god,
+who is at the back of all the others, takes little part in the
+management of things, and receives little worship.  But it is
+impossible to judge what that being was at an earlier time; he may
+have been a nature god, or a spirit who has by degrees grown faint,
+and come to occupy this position."
+
+Now the position which he occupies is usually, if not universally,
+that of the Creator.  He could not arrive at this rank by "becoming
+faint," nor could "a nature-god" be the Maker of Nature.  The only
+way by which we can discover "what that being was at an earlier
+time" is to see what he IS at an earlier time, that is to say, what
+the conception of him is, among men in an earlier state of culture.
+Among them, as we show, he is very much more near, potent and
+moral, than among races more advanced in social evolution and
+material culture.  We can form no opinion as to the nature of such
+"vague, far-off gods, at the back of all the others," till we
+collect and compare examples, and endeavour to ascertain what
+points they have in common, and in what points they differ from
+each other.  It then becomes plain that they are least far away,
+and most potent, where there is least ghostly and polytheistic
+competition, that is, among the most backward races.  The more
+animism the less theism, is the general rule.  Manifestly the
+current hypothesis--that all religion is animistic in origin--does
+not account for these facts, and is obliged to fly to an
+undemonstrated theory of degradation, or to an undemonstrated
+theory of borrowing.  That our theory is inconsistent with the
+general doctrine of evolution we cannot admit, if we are allowed to
+agree with Mr. Darwin's statement about the high mental faculties
+which first led man to sympathetic, and then to wild beliefs.  We
+do not pretend to be more Darwinian than Mr. Darwin, who compares
+"these miserable and indirect results of our higher faculties" to
+"the occasional mistakes of the instincts of the lower animals".
+
+The opinion here maintained, namely, that a germ of pure belief may
+be detected amidst the confusion of low savage faith, and that in a
+still earlier stage it may have been less overlaid with fable, is
+in direct contradiction to current theories.  It is also in
+contradiction with the opinions entertained by myself before I made
+an independent examination of the evidence.  Like others, I was
+inclined to regard reports of a moral Creator, who observes
+conduct, and judges it even in the next life, as rumours due either
+to Christian influence, or to mistake.  I well know, however, and
+could, and did, discount the sources of error.  I was on my guard
+against the twin fallacies of describing all savage religion as
+"devil worship," and of expecting to find a primitive "divine
+tradition".  I was also on my guard against the modern bias derived
+from the "ghost-theory," and Mr. Spencer's works, and I kept an eye
+on opportunities of "borrowing".[1]  I had, in fact, classified all
+known idola in the first edition of this work, such as the fallacy
+of leading questions and the chance of deliberate deception.  I
+sought the earliest evidence, prior to any missionary teaching, and
+the evidence of what the first missionaries found, in the way of
+belief, on their arrival.  I preferred the testimony of the best
+educated observers, and of those most familiar with native
+languages.  I sought for evidence in native hymns (Maori, Zuni,
+Dinka, Red Indian) and in native ceremonial and mystery, as these
+sources were least likely to be contaminated.
+
+
+[1] Making of Religion, p. 187.
+
+
+On the other side, I found a vast body of testimony that savages
+had no religion at all.  But that testimony, en masse, was refuted
+by Roskoff, and also, in places, by Tylor.  When three witnesses
+were brought to swear that they saw the Irishman commit a crime, he
+offered to bring a dozen witnesses who did NOT see him.  Negative
+evidence of squatters, sailors and colonists, who did NOT see any
+religion among this or that race, is not worth much against
+evidence of trained observers and linguists who DID find what the
+others missed, and who found more the more they knew the tribe in
+question.  Again, like others, I thought savages incapable of such
+relatively pure ideas as I now believe some of them to possess.
+But I could not resist the evidence, and I abandoned my a priori
+notions.  The evidence forcibly attests gradations in the central
+belief.  It is found in various shades, from relative potency down
+to a vanishing trace, and it is found in significant proportion to
+the prevalence of animistic ideas, being weakest where they are
+most developed, strongest where they are least developed.  There
+must be a reason for these phenomena, and that reason, as it seems
+to me, is the overlaying and supersession of a rudely Theistic by an
+animistic creed.  That one cause would explain, and does colligate,
+all the facts.
+
+There remains a point on which misconception proves to be possible.
+It will be shown, contrary to the current hypothesis, that the
+religion of the lowest races, in its highest form, sanctions
+morality.  That morality, again, in certain instances, demands
+unselfishness.  Of course we are not claiming for that doctrine any
+supernatural origin.  Religion, if it sanctions ethics at all, will
+sanction those which the conscience accepts, and those ethics, in
+one way or other, must have been evolved.  That the "cosmical" law
+is "the weakest must go to the wall" is generally conceded.  Man,
+however, is found trying to reverse the law, by equal and friendly
+dealing (at least within what is vaguely called "the tribe").  His
+religion, as in Australia, will be shown to insist on this
+unselfishness.  How did he evolve his ethics?
+
+"Be it little or be it much they get," says Dampier about the
+Australians in 1688, "every one has his part, as well the young and
+tender as the old and feeble, who are not able to get abroad as the
+strong and lusty."  This conduct reverses the cosmical process, and
+notoriously civilised society, Christian society, does not act on
+these principles.  Neither do the savages, who knock the old and
+feeble on the head, or deliberately leave them to starve, act on
+these principles, sanctioned by Australian religion, but (according
+to Mr. Dawson) NOT carried out in Australian practice.  "When old
+people become infirm . . . it is lawful and customary to kill
+them."[1]
+
+
+[1] Australian Aborigines, p. 62.
+
+
+As to the point of unselfishness, evolutionists are apt to account
+for it by common interest.  A tribe in which the strongest
+monopolise what is best will not survive so well as an unselfish
+tribe in the struggle for existence.  But precisely the opposite is
+true, aristocracy marks the more successful barbaric races, and an
+aristocratic slave-holding tribe could have swept Australia as the
+Zulus swept South Africa.  That aristocracy and acquisition of
+separate property are steps in advance on communistic savagery all
+history declares.  Therefore a tribe which in Australia developed
+private property, and reduced its neighbours to slavery, would have
+been better fitted to survive than such a tribe as Dampier
+describes.
+
+This is so evident that probably, or possibly, the Dampier state of
+society was not developed in obedience to a recognised tribal
+interest, but in obedience to an affectionate instinct.  "Ils
+s'entr' aiment les une les autres," says Brebeuf of the Hurons.[1]
+"I never heard the women complain of being left out of feasts, or
+that the men ate the best portions . . . every one does his
+business sweetly, peaceably, without dispute.  You never see
+disputes, quarrels, hatred, or reproach among them."  Brebeuf then
+tells how a young Indian stranger, in a time of want, stole the
+best part of a moose.  "They did not rage or curse, they only
+bantered him, and yet to take our meat was almost to take our
+lives."  Brebeuf wanted to lecture the lad; his Indian host bade
+him hold his peace, and the stranger was given hospitality, with
+his wife and children.  "They are very generous, and make it a
+point not to attach themselves to the goods of this world."  "Their
+greatest reproach is 'that man wants everything, he is greedy'.
+They support, with never a murmur, widows, orphans and old men, yet
+they kill hopeless or troublesome invalids, and their whole conduct
+to Europeans was the reverse of their domestic behaviour."
+
+
+[1] Relations, 1634, p. 29.
+
+
+Another example of savage unselfish ethics may be found in Mr.
+Mann's account of the Andaman Islanders, a nomad race, very low in
+culture.  "It is a noteworthy trait, and one which deserves high
+commendation, that every care and consideration are paid by all
+classes to the very young, the weak, the aged, and the helpless,
+and these being made special objects of interest and attention,
+invariably fare better in regard to the comforts and necessaries of
+daily life than any of the otherwise more fortunate members of the
+community."[1]
+
+
+[1] J. A. I., xii. p. 93.
+
+
+Mr. Huxley, in his celebrated Romanes Lecture on "Evolution and
+Morality," laid stress on man's contravention of the cosmic law,
+"the weakest must go to the wall".  He did not explain the
+evolution of man's opposition to this law.  The ordinary
+evolutionist hypothesis, that the tribe would prosper most whose
+members were least self-seeking, is contradicted by all history.
+The overbearing, "grabbing," aristocratic, individualistic,
+unscrupulous races beat the others out of the field.  Mr. Huxley,
+indeed, alleged that the "influence of the cosmic process in the
+evolution of society is the greater the more rudimentary its
+civilisation.  Social progress means a checking of the cosmic
+process at every step and the substitution for it of another, which
+may be called the ethical process. . . .  As civilisation has
+advanced, so has the extent of this interference increased. . . ."[1]
+But where, in Europe, is the interference so marked as among
+the Andamanese?  We have still to face the problem of the
+generosity of low savages.
+
+
+[1] Ethics of Evolution, pp. 81-84.
+
+
+It is conceivable that the higher ethics of low savages rather
+reflect their emotional instincts than arise from tribal
+legislation which is supposed to enable a "tribe" to prosper in the
+struggle for existence.  As Brebeuf and Dampier, among others,
+prove, savages often set a good example to Christians, and their
+ethics are, in certain cases, as among the Andamanese and Fuegians,
+and, probably among the Yao, sanctioned by their religion.  But, as
+Mr. Tylor says, "the better savage social life seems but in
+unstable equilibrium, liable to be easily upset by a touch of
+distress, temptation, or violence".[1]  Still, religion does its
+best, in certain cases, to lend equilibrium; though all the world
+over, religion often fails in practice.
+
+
+[1] Prim. Cult., i. 51.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1
+
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