542 Tramactiom. — Miscellaneous. 



board, quicldy, quickly ! " " Mamma, steamers can't talk," 

 was his response ; and I believe such cases might be multiplied 

 indefinitely, as often as (with a little tact) we care to test the 

 matter. 



Professor Max Miiller says something to the effect that with 

 children the chair, or table, or pussy, shares with papa and 

 mamma an equal share of life or intelligence, as the case may 

 be : and on this view comparative mythologists have tabulated 

 an infant age in man's beliefs, when talking wolves or snakes, 

 and such like, were living realities, by which we may gauge the 

 intelligence of the people who told tales about them. Nothing 

 can be more unsafe than this, at all events when applied to 

 tales or traditions that have had their origin in the East. 



There is certainly no greater myth than crediting the Hindus 

 with belief in the actual, rather than the symbolical, nature of 

 their myths, as is the fashion among Europeans generally. 

 Their mythology, and therefore that of all Western Asiatics, is 

 symbolical. St. Paul well indicates this principle that underlies 

 all Eastern writings, etc. : " The invisible things of Him (God) 

 since the creation are clearly seen, being perceived through the 

 things that are made, even his everlasting power and divinity;" 

 that is, visible things were, in the East, used to express the 

 nature of invisible things ; the visible formed the sijmbol of the 

 invisible. Man has made the mistake, on the one hand, to deem 

 the symbol adequate to this expression ; and, on the other hand, 

 the uninitiated (the greater number) have had no just conception 

 of the symbol, a fact which has merged it into the idol : and, 

 moreover, anthropomorphism, which was intended in the East 

 to be modified and corrected by being taken in the symbolic 

 sense, and not to be taken in the actual or obvious sense, by 

 furnishing the Deity with unworthy attributes, led to the 

 corruption of morals and the degeneration of thought. The 

 sooner the symbolic principle is recognised, the sooner will the 

 East yield up its secrets, and its symbols be interpreted : the 

 literal or exoteric signification is a delusion and a snare, as our 

 examination of the Maori legend of Tane testifies. Exotcrically, 

 Tane is a tree that pushed up the sky, and propped it ; and, in 

 the belief of the uninitiated, he is not only a tree that walks and 

 talks and works, but he begets children, which are other trees, 

 and birds of course, seeing these, lodge in the branches ; but 

 esoterically, as we have seen, the legend was built on a philo- 

 sophical basis, and its authors had a keen insight mto the nature 

 and end of things. This is testified to in the analysis of the 

 story, wherein Tane is resolved into the jilialloa : and this 

 construction is still further borne out by a fact not mentioned in 

 our examination, that one of the wives of Tane is Para-ure, the 

 name of a substance which doubtless Mr. Huxley would pro- 

 nounce protoplasm, and could prove it so ou chemical analysis ; 



