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CHAPTER XL 



HISTOEICAL TEADITIONS AND MYTHS OP OBSERVATION. 



The traditions current among mankind are partly historical 

 and partly mythical. To the ethnologist they are of value in 

 two very different ways, sometimes as preserving the memory 

 of past events, sometimes as showing by their occurrence iu 

 different districts of the woi^ld that between the inhabitants of 

 these districts there has been in some way a historical con- 

 nexion. His great difficulty in dealing with them is to sepa- 

 rate the fact and the fiction, which are both so valuable in their 

 different ways ; and this difficulty is aggravated by the circum- 

 stance that these two elements are often mixed up in a most 

 complex manner, myths presenting themselves in the dress 

 of historical narrative, and historical facts growing into the 

 wildest myths. 



Between the traditions of real events, which are History, 

 and the pui'e myths, whose origin and development are being 

 brought more and more clearly into view in our own times 

 by the labours of Adalbert Kuhn and Max Miiller, and their 

 school, there lie a mass of stories which may be called " Myths 

 of Observation." They are inferences from observed facts, 

 which take the form of positive assertions, and they differ 

 principally from the inductions of modern science in being 

 much more generally crade and erroneous, and iu taking to 

 themselves names of persons, and more or less of purely sub- 

 jective detail, which enables theni to assume the appearance 



