10 



Nature begins to be felt by higher minds, priestly castes are 

 established who have leisure for meditation ; ideas are trans- 

 mitted from generation to generation ; and the vague and primi- 

 tive Nature worship passes into the phase of philosophical and 

 scientific religion." 



Science thus pushes farther and farther back the limit of 

 the mysterious and reduces to commonplace truth the poetic 

 vagueness of mythic lore. 



To the ancient Greek the travellers' tales, brought back by 

 early explorers from the bounds of the known world, contained 

 descriptions of natural marvels (exaggerated, no doubt), for the 

 explanation of which nothing would suffice but the intervention 

 of a god or a demigod. Wonders but half seen, or but heard 

 of by report, were woven into legends which were well-believed ; 

 but they are instances which show that, where no solid un- 

 derstanding of fact existed, there was the region for poetic 

 fancy, or fancy which from its natural origin took a poetic form. 

 And so the imposing rock masses at the entrance of the Medi- 

 terranean, in description at any rate, seemed like the pillars of a 

 gateway, which none but Hercules could have fashioned. 



Nor is it difficult, as another instance, to trace the origin of 

 the notion of the Centaur. Commencing with the fact of the 

 national custom or sport of bull-hunting in Thessaly, the expert 

 horsemen who engaged in it evidently made a somewhat similar 

 impression upon their neighbours as did the Spaniards upon the 

 Mexicans who believed the horse and man to be one creature. Or 

 at any rate as the story of the prowess of the Thessalian moun- 

 taineers came as a hearsay marvel to an imaginative people, the 

 Centaur monster would be easily evolved. The adventures of 

 Ulysses also abound with instances where natural phenomena 

 evidently gave rise to mythical ideas. 



Northern Europe, with its dull and cloudy skies, strangely 

 impressive to the denizen of the sunlit south, became pictured 

 to imagination as a region where Helios never revealed himself, 

 and the phrase "Cimmerian darkness " still remains to testify of 

 the myth. Again, the awful mystery connected with a volcano 

 would, with the greatest naturalness, be connected with plutonic 

 operations ; and that Etna should be regarded as the home and 

 forge of Vulcan is easily understood. 



Nor need we go back to primeval or classic times to discover 

 the tendency of the mind to allow the imagination to run riot 

 where it is not held in check by the rigid regulation of Science. 

 Medievalism, of course, abounds with instances, in fact, the very 

 life of that time was saturated with superstition and speculation. 

 There is something particularly naive in the manner in which 

 ancient maps pourtray the regions beyond the limits then actually 

 known, and in the impossible monsters, human and bestial, 

 which figure, in all seriousness, in books of natural history. 



Flint implements and celts were then regarded as thunder- 



