PROCEEDIXGS: ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY 337 



logical, scientific ; so mj-thology may be defined as the logic of the mythos. 

 The first men had only mj^ths; and whether as cosmogony or as religion 

 they were final, conclusive. 



Hence, mythos and epos and logos, all translatable as word, represent 

 three well-defined stages of human tliought in the development of opin- 

 ions. Whatever, therefore, the ultimate terms or concepts may be in 

 which man may define his gods, the process of his reasoning is always 

 quite thesame; the "unknown" is defined, though perhaps, unconsciously, 

 in terms of the "knovsTi;" but the "known" quantity here is man, what- 

 ever this concept may signify at the time and place. 



The phenomena, the bodies and the processes of nature are personified, 

 and so humanized — a process of thought which is called anthropomor- 

 phism. So that all powers and functions and attributes characteristic of 

 man — no matter whether good or evil — are ascribed to the gods in a 

 more or less idealized form. Not only this, but the arts of men and the 

 social and religious institutions of men are in like manner unconsciously 

 attributed to the gods ; and so the social and the religious institutions of the 

 gods are ever an exact reflex of the human society over which these self- 

 same gods preside. 



By so doing, men give, in their myths and epics, though unconsciously 

 perhaps, a faithful picture of the early cufture and civilization of their 

 own ancestors. In this manner, in brief, the gods in later times become 

 the revealers of all history, the divine teachers of the arts and the crafts, 

 and the founders of the institutions — human and divine — of a people. 

 Here is found the true source of prophecy and inspiration; for these 

 divine beings are the offspring of the interaction of the powers and the 

 bodies and the phenomena of nature and the mind of man in its three-fold 

 activities — the conscious, the subconscious and the superconscious. 

 (Author's abstract.) 



A special meeting of the Anthropological Society of Washington was 

 held Tuesday, March 3, 1914, at 4.30 p.m., in the new National Museum 

 Building, the President, Mr. Stetson, in the chair; 37 persons present. 



Mr. W. E. Safford, Economic Botanist of the Department of Agri- 

 culture, read a paper on The pan-pipes of ancient Ptru. Several speci- 

 mens and figures on vases were shown and compared with ancient 

 syrinxes, or fistulas, from Greece and Rome. (See this Journal, 4 : 183- 

 191. April 19, 1914.) 



At a special meeting of the Society held March 4, 1914, at the National 

 Museum, Dr. A. B. Lewis gave an address on his Travels in the South 

 Seas and New Guijiea, illustrated with excellent lantern slides. The 

 four years of 1909-1913 were spent in the South Pacific in the interest 

 of the Field IMuseum of Natural History, Chicago, studjdng the natives 

 and collecting ethnological material. The region chiefl}- concerned was 

 in Melanesia, which includes the island groups extending northwest from 

 Fiji and New Caledonia through the New Hebrides and Solomon Islands 

 to New Guinea. Many of these islands are large and mountainous, 



