48 THE ORIGIN OF ANIMAL-WORSHIP. 



The current theory of the myth is that it has grown 

 out of the habit of symbolizing natural agents and pro 

 cesses, in terms of human personalities and actions. Now ; 

 it may in the first place be remarked that, though sym- 

 bolization of this kind is common enough among civilized 

 races, it is not common among races that are the most 

 uncivilized. By existing savages, surrounding objects, 

 motions, and changes, are habitually used to convey ideas 

 respecting human transactions. It is by no means so 

 much the habit to express by the doings of men the course 

 of natural phenomena. It needs but to read the speech 

 of an Indian chief to see that just as primitive men name 

 one another metaphorically after surrounding objects, so 

 do they metaphorically describe one another s doings as 

 though they were the doings of natural objects. But as 

 suming a contrary habit of thought to be the dominant 

 one, ancient myths are explained as results of the primi 

 tive tendency to symbolize inanimate things and their 

 changes, by human beings and their doings. 



A kindred difficulty must be added. The change of 

 verbal meaning from which the myth is said to arise, is a 

 change opposite in kind to that which prevails in the 

 earlier stages of linguistic development. It implies a 

 derivation of the concrete from the abstract ; whereas at 

 first abstracts are derived only from concretes : the con 

 creting of abstracts being a subsequent process. In the 

 words of Prof. Max Miiller, there are &quot; dialects spoken at 

 the present day which have no abstract nouns, and the 

 more we go back in the history of languages, the smaller 

 we find the number of these useful expressions &quot; (&quot; Chips,&quot; 

 vol. ii., p. 54) ; or, as he says more recently : &quot; Ancient 

 words and ancient thoughts, for both go together, have 

 not yet arrived at that stage of abstraction in which, for 

 instance, active powers, whether natural or supernatural, 



