THE IDEAS AND SOURCES OF MYTH. O 



Whether we content ourselves with studying the 

 mental and social conditions in the lower types of 

 modern peoples, or go hack to the earliest times, we 

 find men everywhere and always possessed of the 

 power of speech, and holding mythical superstitions, 

 it may be of the rudest and most elementary kind ; 

 so also do we find men possessed of rational ideas, 

 although they may be very simple and empirical. 

 They have some knowledge of the causes of things, 

 of periods in the phenomena of nature, which they 

 know how to apply to the habits and necessities of 

 their social and individual lives. 



No one, for example, would deny that many 

 mythical superstitions, and fanciful beliefs in in- 

 visible powers, existed among the now extinct 

 Tasrnanians, and are now found among the An- 

 daman islanders, the Fuegians, the Australians, the 

 Cingalese Veddahs, and other rude and uncultured 

 savages. On the other hand, those who are ac- 

 quainted with their mode of life find that savages 

 are not absolutely devoid of intellectual activity of 

 an empirical kind, since they partly understand the 

 natural causes of some phenomena, and are able, in 

 a rational, not an arbitrary manner, to ascribe to 

 laws and the necessities of things many facts relating 

 to the individual and to society. They are, there- 

 fore, not without the scientific as well as the mythical 

 faculty, making due allowance for their intellectual 

 condition ; and these primitive and natural instincts 



