xxii INTRODUCTION. 



a dream — a suspicion — becomes coiitag'ious. There 

 is no one to discriminate between what is sensible 

 and what is fooHsh. 



Carlyle has sufficiently shown how contagious 

 ideas became during the French Revolution, when 

 the minds of the people were on the ' qui vive ' — in 

 expectation of something happening. 



Those Chaldeans saw eclipses, comets,* storms, 

 perhaps felt earthquakes, and other incomprehen- 

 sible phenomena. What did they all mean ? Some- 

 body theorized, and the theory germinated like a 

 weed in the fertile mental soil of such a primitive, 

 ignorant people. 



I suspect that the science of Mythology will have 

 to be gone over again by some master-minds and 

 inspected from a different point of view — the 

 psychological. All we know about dreams, visions, 

 inspirations, revelations, hallucinations, etc., will 

 have to be taken into account, at the same time that 

 due consideration is given to the fantasies of poets 

 and artists. 



In this connection it would be unwise not to 

 take into consideration the mental effects of drugs, 

 that may have been known to those ancient people. 



Then symbols are like stories. A story that 

 passes from the lips of one person into the ear 

 of another, and then through the convolutions of 



* It is curious that on the monuments and cyhnders I ha\c not met 

 with a comet ; yet Babylonian works on astronomy mention the 

 appearance of comets. 



