98 MYTH AND SCIENCE. 



It was thus, when the fetish attained to a specific 

 type, that mythical anthropomorphism was generated, 

 and polytheism, properly so-called ; a polytheism 

 which represents in its figures and images the 

 humanization and personification of specific types. 

 These afterwards diverge into specifications which 

 vary with the number of phenomena that are 

 united in a single idea or conception. The first 

 polytheistic Olympus consisted of natural types, and 

 at a much later period they became moral or 

 abstract, in accordance with the spontaneous evolu- 

 tion of the intelligence itself. 



It was in fact in this way that all the specific 

 myths of the general phenomena of nature had their 

 origin, and in our Aryan race we can, starting from 

 the Big-Veda, follow their splendid development 

 among Grseco-Latins, Celts, Germans, and Slavs; it 

 may also be traced in the memory and historic evolu- 

 tion of other races, and with less distinctness among 

 those which are barbarous and savage.* 



* The Sanscrit word Vrtyund, meaninsr light, was personified in 

 Aurora, and afterwards signified the intelligence, or inward light ; 

 a symbolical evolution of myth towards a rational conception. 

 The worship of heaven and earth, united in a common type, is found 

 among all Aryan peoples, and among other races. The Germans 

 worshipped Hertlia, the original form of Erde, earth. The Letts 

 worshipped Mahte, or Mahmine, mother earth. So did the Magyars, 

 and the Ostiaks adored the earth under the Slavonic name of Imlia. 

 In China sacrifices to the divine earth Heou-tou and to the heaven 

 Tien were fundamental rites. In North America the Shawnees in- 

 voked earth as their great ancestress. The Comanchi adored her as 

 their common mother. In New Zealand heaven and earth are worshipped 



