BOLL. 30] 



MYTHOLOGY 



965 



composed of a body of such myths and 

 fragments thereof. But of course no 

 myth that has come down to the present 

 time is simple. Myths and parts of 

 myths have necessarily been employed to 

 define and explain other myths or other 

 and new phenomena, and the way from 

 the first to the last is long and often 

 broken. Vestigial myths, myths whose 

 meaning or symbolism has from any 

 cause whatsoever become obscured or 

 entirely lost, constitute a great part of 

 folklore, and such myths are also called 

 folktales. 



A study of the lexic derivation of the 

 terms "myth" and "mythology" will not 

 lead to a satisfactory definition and inter- 

 pretation of what is denoted by either 

 term, for the genesis of the things so 

 named was not understood when they re- 

 ceived these appellations. In its broadest 

 sense, mi/thos in Greek denoted whatever 

 was uttered by the mouth of man — a say- 

 ing, a legend, a story of something as un- 

 derstood by the narrator, a word. But in 

 Attic Greek it denoted also any prehis- 

 toric story of the Greeks, and these were 

 chiefly stories of gods and heroes, which 

 were, "though this fact was unknown to the 

 Greeks themselves, phenomena of nature. 

 And when the term received this specific 

 meaning it fell into discredit, 1>ecause the 

 origin and true character of myths not be- 

 ing understood, these prehistoric stories 

 by the advance in knowledge came into 

 disreiHite among the Greeks themselves, 

 and after the rise of Christianity they were 

 condemned as the wicked fables of a false 

 religion. Hence, in popular usage, and 

 quite apart from the study of mythology, 

 the term "myth" denotes what is in fact 

 nonexistent — a nothing with a name, a 

 story without a basis of fact — "a nonentity 

 of which an entity is affirmed, a nothing 

 which is said to be something." Besides 

 mythos in Greek, logos, signifying 'word,' 

 was employed originally with approxi- 

 mately the same meaning in ordinary 

 speech at the time of Homty, who some- 

 times used them interchangeably. But, 

 strictly speaking, there was a difference 

 from the beginning which, by the need for 

 precision in diction, finally led to a wide 

 divergence in the signification of the two 

 terms. Logos, derived from h-gein, 'to 

 gather,' was seldom used by Homer to de- 

 note 'a saying, a speaking, or a significa- 

 tion,' but to denote usually 'a gathering,' 

 or, stricth', ' a telling, casting up or count- 

 ing.' In time this term came to mean 

 not only the inward constitution but the 

 outward form of thought, and finally t(^ 

 denote exact thinkingorreason — not only 

 the reason in man, but the reason in the 

 universe — the Divine Logos, the Volition 

 of God, the Son of God, God Himself. It 

 is so employed in the opening lines of the 



first chapter of the Gospel of St John. 

 Such is a brief outline of the uses of the 

 two terms whicli in their primal significa- 

 tion formed the term "mythology," from 

 which but little can l)e gathered as to 

 what constitutes a myth. 



Up to a certain point there is substan- 

 tial agreement among students in the use 

 of the term myth. But this means but 

 little. To the question. What is the 

 nature and origin of a myth? wholly dif- 

 ferent repli.es, perplexing in number, are 

 given, and for this reason the study of 

 mythology, of a definite body of myths, 

 has not yet become a science. By careful 

 study of adequate materials a clue to the 

 meaning and significance of myths may 

 be found in the apprehension — vague in 

 the beginning, increasingly definite as the 

 study progresses — that all these things, 

 these tales, these gods, although so ili- 

 verse, arise from one simple though com- 

 mon basis or motive. 



Every body, element, or phenomenon 

 of nature, whether subjective or objective, 

 has its myth or story to account for its 

 origin, history, and manner of action. 

 Portions of these myths, especially those 

 concerning the most striking objects of 

 an environment, are woven together by 

 some master mind into a cj'cle of myths, 

 and a myth of the beginnings, a genesis, 

 or creation, story is thus developed. The 

 horns and the cloven feet of the deer, the 

 stripes of the chijimunk's back, the tail 

 of the beaver, the flat nose of the otter, 

 the rattles of the snake, the tides of rivers, 

 the earthquake, the meteor, the aurora 

 borealis; in short, every phenomenon 

 that fixed the attention required and re- 

 ceived an explanation which, being con- 

 ventional, satisfied the conmionsense of 

 the community, and which later,owingto 

 its imputation of apparently impossible 

 attributes to fictitious personages to ac- 

 count for the operations of nature, be- 

 came, by the growing knowledge of man, 

 a myth. 



A mj'th is of interest from three view- 

 points, namely, (1) as a literary product 

 emboch'ing a wondrous story of things 

 and personages; (2) for the character of 

 the matter it contains as expressive of 

 human thought and the interpretation of 

 human experience, and (o) for the pur- 

 ]30se of comparison with the myths of 

 alien or of cognate peoples and for the 

 data it contains relating to the customs, 

 arts, and archeology of the people among 

 whom it exists. 



With the available data, it is as yet 

 impossible to define with satisfactory 

 clearness all the ol>jective realities of the 

 personal agencies or men-beings of the 

 American Indian myths. In ' Indian 

 thought these personages are constantly 

 associated in function, and sometimes 



