318 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [VoL. VI. 
the Mother-Corn by their complaints, as to the imperfection of the corn- 
rites. ‘““ What is this ye tell us?” said they. “ These things be to the 
simple as the wind and other movings, speechless; but as to us they 
be signs even as erst the warnings of the underworld were signs to 
our fathers, the beloved, and ourselves, that we seek still further the 
middle, so are these things signs to us. Stay, therefore, your feet with 
patience, while we devise that ye be made content and happy.” Then to 
one another they said, “It may well be Paiyatuma, the liquid voices his 
flute and the flutes of his players they tell of. Come now, we will 
await the time of our custom and then learn if perchance our hearts 
guess aright.” 
What becomes of the view of Hoffding that savage peoples have no 
sense for the beauty of nature, no feeling of its grandeur and magnifi- 
cense, no idea of its gentler aspects in the face of the following statement 
from the most eminent of German ethnographers ? 
“ Even the savage, the most prejudiced creature in human shape, the 
man with the least field of vision, receives an impression from the rain- 
bow, the bridge to the sky, from the roar of the sea, from the rustle of 
the woods, the bubbling ofthe spring. These phenomena are drawn into 
the range of superstitious conceptions, which in their turn are called 
forth by nearer causes. 
“ Are they images of souls, which the Ainu place on promontories 
where an awkward current prevails in order to pray for a good passage 
ora lucky haul? Savages know how meteoric stones fall, and have 
retained experiences of them in their traditions ; the stone hatchets found 
in the soil they call thunderbolts. The boat with the corpse is launched 
on the waves; the dark forest is overlaid with taboo; in every brook a 
spirit is imagined. Poetry here entwines its roots with religion; it 
appears a highly superfluous question to ask if these races have a sense 
of Nature.” (Ratze/, Vol. I., p. 49.) 
Again: 
“Many myths are nothing but picturesque descriptions of natural 
events and personifications of natural forces. These bridge over the 
interval to science, for in them mythology becomes like science, the way 
and the method towards the knowledge of the causes of phenomena. 
“The original object falls into the background, the images become 
independent figures whose quarrels and tricks have an interest of their 
own. Therewith we have the fable, especially the widespread beast- 
fable. 
