boas] CONCLUSION 881 



that everywhere tales attach themselves to phenomena of nature; 

 that they become sometimes animal tales, sometimes tales dealing 

 with the heavenly bodies. The distribution of these tales demon- 

 strates clearly that the more thought is bestowed upon them by 

 individuals deeply interested in these matters — by chiefs, priests, or 

 poets — the more complex do they become, and the more definite 

 are the local characteristics that they develop. The facts, however, 

 do not show that the elements of which these tales are composed 

 have any immediate connection with the phenomena of nature, for 

 most of them retain the imaginative character just described. 



The problem of mythology must therefore rather be looked for in 

 the tendency of the mind to associate single tales with phenomena 

 of nature and to give them an interpretative meaning. I do not doubt 

 that when the anthropomorphization of sun and moon, of mountains 

 and animals, had attracted stories of various kinds to them, then 

 the moment set in when the observation of these bodies and of the 

 animals still further stimulated the imagination and led to new forms 

 of tales, that are the expressions of the contemplation of nature. I 

 am, however, not prepared to admit that the present condition of 

 myths indicates that these form any important part of mythology. 



That European myths happen to have developed in this direc- 

 tion — presumably by long-continued re-interpretation and systema- 

 tization at the hands of poets and priests — does not prove that we 

 must look for a poetic interpretation of nature as the primary back- 

 ground of all mythologies. 



The material presented in the present work, if examined in its 

 relation to the folk-tales of neighboring tribes and in its probable 

 historical development, shows nothing that would necessitate the 

 assumption that it originated from the contemplation of natural 

 phenomena. It rather emphasizes the fact that its origin must be 

 looked for in the imaginative tales dealing with the social life of the 

 people. 



50633°— 31 eth— 16 56 



