16 
of the deeds done by heroes and gods still had an indefinable 
credence in the popular mind. 
This nation, the most artistically cultivated ever known, 
could still celebrate disgusting or meaningless ceremonies. These 
facts, examined by the scientific method of comparative 
mythology, are explicable enough; and we know from them 
something of what the original condition of the Greeks must 
have been long before the dawn of historical records. Compara- 
tive mythology teaches us that each clan had in primitive times 
its own stone fetish or beast totem ; and, as the nation gradually 
integrated, all the various deities were united by poetic fancy 
into a family, with a family history like that of the Greek 
princelings of the time. It is a great stumbling-block to the 
exponents of the philological method that they can find no 
etymology of the Greek names for the gods, excepting only two : 
Zeus, which is the same as Dyaus, meaning originally the sky ; 
and Demeter, Mother Harth. Nothing whatever can be done with 
such names as Apollo, Athene, Artemis, Hera, Cronion, Dionusos, 
Hermes. In earliest times we find these mysterious names known 
and honoured. 
When we leave the consideration of the Aryan nations and 
turn to the savages of our day, we find practices like those of the 
ancient Greeks still existing in Asia, Africa, America, Oceania, nay 
even more than enough in Europe. In dealing with the beliefs and 
customs of present-day savages, the philological method is help- 
less. But they throw complete light on the inexplicable customs 
which have lingered in more civilized nations. A dead soldier is 
followed to the grave by his led horse; a semi-civilized nation 
does that, and kills the horse into the bargain, that the deceased 
may have a fair start in the next world. 
The entire subject of folk-lore suggests some instructive 
thoughts to the mind. How amazed the advanced thinkers of a 
century ago would have been at the discussion of savage rites _ 
and customs as a branch of science. ‘The entire point of view 
has changed. Advanced thinkers are no longer oppositional 
and negative, as the eighteenth century thinkers were. Now- 
a-days we hold that everything has its place, that the beliefs and 
customs of past ages, however grotesque or repulsive, were 
exactly adapted to their own time. It is partly because we 
now hold that all things are connected and _ indispen- 
sable to each other, that we consequently regard all things 
whatever as amenable to the methods of science. and as 
separate manifestations of that ever-working Power which our 
