138 THE KIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE. 



The more accurate knowledge which we have recently 

 obtained, through comparative ethnology, of the various 

 forms of myths of ancient and modern uncivilised races, 

 is also of great interest in psychogeny. Still, it would 

 take us too far from our purpose if we were to enter 

 into it with any fulness here ; we must refer the reader 

 to Adalbert Svoboda's excellent work on Forms of 

 Faith (1897). In respect of their scientific and 

 poetical contents, we may arrange all pertinent psy- 

 chogenetic myths in the following five groups : — 



I. The myth of transmigration. — The soul lived 

 formerly in the body of another animal, and passed 

 from this into a human body. The Egyptian priests, 

 for instance, taught that the human soul wandered 

 through all the species of animals after the death of 

 the body, returning to a human frame after 3,000 

 years of transmigration. 



II. The myth of the in-planting of the soul. — The 

 soul existed independently in another place — a psycho- 

 genetic store, as it were (in a kind of embryonic 

 slumber or latent life) ; it was taken out by a bird 

 (sometimes represented as an eagle, generally as a 

 white stork), and implanted in the human body. 



III. The myth of the creation of the soul. — God 

 creates the souls, and keeps them stored — sometimes 

 in a pond (living in the form of 'plankton), according 

 to other myths in a tree (where they are conceived as 

 the fruit of a phanerogam) ; the Creator takes them 

 from the pond or tree, and inserts them in the human 

 germ during the act of conception. 



IV. The myth of the scatulation of the soul (the 

 theory of Leibnitz which we have given above). 



V. The myth of the division of the soul (the theory 

 of Rudolph Wagner [1855] and of other physiologists) . 



