OUR INDIAN MYTHOLOGY. 527 



place of man in nature." Whatever emotion the application of the 

 doctrine of evolution to the moral world may cause, and however 

 grave may be the shock it inflicts on the edifice of beliefs, it should 

 be accepted with confidence, for it is true, and the truth can not be 

 wrong. Even if it exacts a transformation of the social order by 

 transforming beliefs, it must be faced resolutely. The natural sciences 

 thus impose themselves on the attention even of the statesman. " It 

 is necessary attentively to follow their progress, to measure the bear- 

 ing of their discoveries, to study their actual or possible influence on 

 current beliefs and ideas, and to endeavor to construct a new edifice 

 all the more quickly as the bases of the old one appear to be seriously 

 threatened. 



These declarations deserve a hearing. They have a considerable 

 importance, not only because they come from a naturalist whose 

 works* and position assure him one of the first places among the 

 French scientific men of his generation, but also and especially because 

 this naturalist is not suspected of any inconsiderate enthusiasm for 

 the doctrine of evolution, and because he only yesterday was defend- 

 ing the beliefs we have spoken of against it. The honorable scruples 

 which have kept him back seem at last to have yielded to the force of 

 accumulated proofs : he lets fall the barriers which he seemed dis- 

 posed to keep up between nature and man ; he perceives that mechan- 

 ism and science blend, and does not hesitate to say so. We expected 

 nothing less from his clear-sightedness and his sincerity. Translated 

 for the Popular Science Monthly from the Revue Philosophique. 



OUR INDIAN MYTHOLOGY. 



By J. HENRY GEST. 



THE myths of a people are the first crude embodiments of its re- 

 ligious feeling. They are first formulated in stories told over the 

 fires of long winter evenings, and pass on as traditions from father 

 to son, until written language at last makes a record of them. How 

 carefully European students have gathered them together, seeking to 

 extract from the scanty records the hidden image which inspired them ! 

 Any reader of this can recall some myth of Greece, or Rome, or early 

 Europe ; but how many are aware that here, among our own Indians, 

 there exists a mythology from which not a little can be learned of the 

 religious feeling of a rude civilization such as our own Aryan ancestors 

 passed through long centuries ago ? 



Among recent German publications is a small pamphlet of seventy 



* One of these works, a study of the organization of worni3, has been pronounced 

 " admirable " by Mr. Darwin. 



