156 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



chariots and horses to bring the dawn ; so that here the fortunate 

 owner of Chanticleer has brought him to a good market. Thus we 

 see that the Breton peasant of our day has not even yet lost the mythic 

 sense with which his remote Aryan ancestors could behold the chariots 

 and horses of the dawn. But myth, though largely based on such 

 half -playful metaphor, runs through all the intermediate stages which 

 separate poetic fancy from crude philosophy embodied in stories seri- 

 ously devised as explanations of real facts. No doubt many legends 

 of the ancient world, though not really history, are myths which have 

 arisen by reasoning on actual events, as definite as that which, some 

 four years ago, was terrifying the peasant-mind in North Germany, and 

 especially in Posen. The report had spread far and wide that all 

 Catholic children with black hair and blue eyes were to be sent out of 

 the country, some said to Russia, while others declared that it was the 

 King of Prussia who had been playing cards with the Sultan of Turkey, 

 and had staked and lost forty thousand fair-haired, blue-eyed children ; 

 and there were Moors traveling about in covered carts to collect them ; 

 and the schoolmasters were helping, for they were to have five dollars 

 for every child they handed over. For a time the popular excitement 

 was quite serious : the parents kept the children away from school and 

 hid them, and w^hen they appeared in the streets of the market-town 

 the little ones clung to them with terrified looks. Dr. Schwartze, the 

 well-known mythologist, took the pains to trace the rumor to its 

 sources. One thing was quite plain, that its prime cause was that 

 grave and learned body, the Anthropological Society of Berlin, who, 

 without a thought of the commotion they were stirring up, had, in 

 order to class the population as to race, induced the authorities to have 

 a census made throughout the local schools, to ascertain the color of the 

 children's skin, hair, and eyes. Had it been only the boys, to the Gov- 

 ernment inspection of whom for military conscription the German peas- 

 ants are only too well accustomed, nothing would have been thought of 

 it ; but why should the officials want to know about the little gii-ls' 

 hair and eyes ? The whole group of stories which suddenly sprang up 

 were myths created to answer this question ; and even the details 

 which became embodied with them could all be traced to their sources, 

 such as the memories of German princes selling regiments of their peo- 

 ple to pay their debts, the late political negotiations between Germany 

 and Russia, etc. The fact that a caravan of Moors had been traveling 

 about as a show accounted for the covered carts with which they were 

 to fetch the children ; while the schoolmasters were naturally impli- 

 cated, as having drawn up the census. One schoolmaster, who evi- 

 dently knew his people, assured the terrified parents that it was only 

 the children with blue hair and green eyes that were wanted — an ex- 

 planation which sent them home quite comforted. After all, there is no 

 reason why we should not come in time to a thorough understanding 

 of mythology. The human mind is much what it used to be, and the 



