INTRODUCTION 



to the ones that Fiske had expressed in the 

 " Cosmic Philosophy," or had at least indicated 

 in the course of that book. 



The first of the matters that I yet have space 

 to mention in this connection relates to Fiske*s 

 views as to the origin of primitive mythology. 

 In the " Myths and Myth-Makers" (published 

 in 1872, and written during the immediately pre- 

 vious years, contemporaneously with a great part 

 of the " Cosmic Philosophy "), Fiske, following, 

 as he tells us in the Preface to that book, such 

 authorities as Grimm, Max Miiller, and Tylor, 

 undertook, as expositor, " to present ... re- 

 sults in such a way as to awaken interest in 

 them." He did not undertake to form a new 

 theory of his own regarding mythology. In 

 the main he conceived (op. cit. chapter i.) that 

 a myth is " in its origin an explanation, by the 

 uncivilized mind, of some natural phenome- 

 non." A primitive man explained a natural 

 phenomenon " when he had classified it along 

 with the well-known phenomena of human vo- 

 lition." Meanwhile, Max Miiller^s then famous 

 theory of the origin of myths, although Fiske 

 (chapter vii.) regards it as defective (in so far as 

 it refers that origin to a " disease of language "), 

 still is founded upon individual interpretations 

 of Greek and early Indie myths which Fiske, 



cxl 



