968 



MYTHOLOGY 



[b. a. e. 



The constant struggle of man with his 

 physical environment to secure welfare 

 was a warfare against elements ever defi- 

 nitely and vividly personified and hu- 

 manized by him, thus unconsciously 

 making his surroundings quite unreal, 

 though felt to be real ; and his struggle 

 with his environment was a ceaseless 

 strife with animals and plants and trees 

 in like manner ever mythically personi- 

 fied and humanized by him ; and, finally, 

 his tireless struggle with other men for 

 supremacy and welfare was therefore 

 typical, not only fundamentally and prac- 

 tically, but also mythically and ideally; 

 and so this never-ceasing struggle was an 

 abiding, all-pervading, all-transforming 

 theme of his thoughts, and an ever-im- 

 pending, ever-absorbing business of his 

 life, suffered and impelled by his cease- 

 less yearning for welfare. 



An environment would have been re- 

 garded by savage men very differently 

 from what it would l)e by the cultured 

 mind of to-day. To the former the 

 bodies and elements composing it were 

 regarded as beings, indeed as man-beings, 

 and the operations of nature were ascribed 

 to the action of the diverse magic powers, 

 or orendan, exercised by these beings 

 rather than to the forces of nature; so 

 that the action and interaction of the 

 bodies and elemental principles of nature 

 were regarded as the result of the working 

 of numberless beings through their ortm- 

 das. Among most known tribes in North 

 America the earth is regarded as a 

 humanized being in person and form, 

 every particle of whose body is living 

 substance and potent with the quick- 

 ening power of life, which is bestowed 

 on all who feed upon her. They that 

 feed upon her are the plants and the 

 trees, who are indeed ))eings living and 

 having a being because they receive life 

 substance from the earth, hence they are 

 like the primal beings endowed with mind 

 and volition, to whom prayer (q. v.) may 

 be offered, since they rule and dispose in 

 their several jurisdictions unless they are 

 overcome by some more powerful orenda. 

 Now, a prayer is psychologically the ex- 

 pression of the fact that the petitioner in 

 need is unable to secure what is required 

 for the welfare, or in distress to prevent 

 what will result in the ill-fare, of himself 

 or his kind. The substance of the prayer 

 merely tells in what direction or in what 

 respect this inal>ility exists. In tui'n, the 

 animals and men live on the products of 

 the trees and plants, l)y which means they 

 renew life and gain the quickening power 

 of life, indirectly from the earth-mother, 

 and thus by a metaphor they are said to 

 have come up out of the earth. As the 

 giver of life, the earth is regarded affec- 

 tionately and is called Mother, but as the 



taker of life and thedevourer of their dead 

 bodies, she is regarded as wicked and a 

 cannibal. 



In the science of opinions mythology 

 is found to be a fruitful field in which to 

 gather data regarding the origin and 

 growth of human concepts relating to 

 man and the world around him. A study 

 of the birth and evolution of the concepts 

 of the human mind indicates clearly that 

 the beginnings of conventional forms and 

 ideas and their variations "along the lines 

 of their development are almost never 

 quite so simple, or rather quite so direct, 

 as they may seem — are seldom, even in 

 the beginning, the direct product of the 

 environmental resource and exigency act- 

 ing together so immediately and so ex- 

 clusively of mental agency as students are 

 apt to assume. As a rule they are rather 

 the product of these things — these factors 

 and conditions of environment acting 

 very indirectly and sometimes very 

 subtly and complexly — through the con- 

 dition of mind wrought l)y long-continued 

 life and experience therein, or, again, act- 

 ing through the state of mind borne 

 over from one environment to another. 

 It is the part of wisdom to be more cau- 

 tious in deriving ideas and concepts, arts, 

 or even technic forms of a people too in- 

 stantly, too directly, from the environ- 

 ing natural objects or elements they may 

 simulate or resemble. The motive, if 

 not for the choice, at least for the persist- 

 ency, of a given mode of a concept in re- 

 lation to any objective factor is always a 

 psychic reason, not a mere first-hand in- 

 fluence of environment or of accident in 

 the popular sense of this term. This dis- 

 position of the "mere accident" or 

 "chance" hypothesis of origins dispels 

 many perplexities in the formation of ex- 

 act judgment concerning comparative 

 data, in the identifications of cognate 

 forms and concepts among widely sepa- 

 rated peoples; for instance, in the drawing 

 of sound inferences particularly regard- 

 ing their common or generic, specific or 

 exceptional, origin and growth, as shown 

 by the data in question. 



As it is evident that independent proc- 

 esses and diverse factors combined can 

 not be alike in every particular in widely 

 separated parts of the world, there is 

 found a means for determining, through 

 minute differences in similarity, rather 

 than through general similarities alone, 

 howsoever striking they may appear, 

 whether such forms are related, whether 

 or not they have a common genesis whence 

 they have inherited aught in common. 

 Hence caution makes it incumbent on 

 students to beware of the alluring fallacy 

 lurking in the fre(juently repeated epigram 

 that "human nature is everywhere the 

 same. ' ' The nature of men differs widely 



