8 



NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



accustomed; there is always a feeling of uncertainty about new 

 systems and they are cautiously experimented with at first. 



In reviewing the myths of the ancients or of modern primitive 

 men we may sometimes wonder how any large body of rational 

 men could hold as sacred truths such fictions as we may regard 

 unworthy of serious consideration. If such is the case it is 

 because we have forgotten that the human mind has not 

 always been of the same texture as it is today in the modern man 

 of civilization. The minds of men, Ave should recall, through 

 the varying grades of culture, from lower savagery to civilization, 

 are characterized by wide differences. They are not uniformly sus- 

 ceptible to the same stimuli, for each culture grade gives to the mind 

 of the man which it characterizes a different viewpoint, different 

 capacities and different associations. It is always well to keep in 

 mind the fact that our present enlightened beliefs, our sciences 

 and our civilization are the product of a long period of evolution 

 under favorable circumstances, and that they are not things that 

 men were always able to grasp. It is well, also, to remember that 

 our ancestors were once barbarians and rude savages, scarcely 

 more intelligent than the other animals of the forest. All this 

 might be hard to believe were it not that primitive savages still 

 are to be found, and that all the various culture stages can be 

 illustrated by groups of living peoples. There is little doubt that 

 the man of five centuries hence will find plenty to laugh at, if he 

 feels so disposed, when he reads the annals of our times and gets 

 an insight of our customs and beliefs, some of which he may term 

 myths. While he may appreciate our achievements he will cer- 

 tainly deny our claim to enlightenment and choose to bestow it 

 upon himself. There can be no true enlightenment, and the age of 

 fable will not cease to be, until the laws which govern all phenomena 

 are known to men. Until then men must theorize. Myths were 

 originally theories adduced from the best information at hand. 

 vSurviving in more enlightened ages they were still held even though 

 inconsistent with the known objective experience of the time. 

 Even so they were regarded as sacred truths. A myth must be 

 regarded, therefore, as a primitive theory, as a rude attempt to 

 reach truth, as a tentative hypothesis upon which to fasten one's 

 belief, for one must believe something. 



Legends and traditions. No people of any intellectual life can 

 exist in social bodies without building up out of their experiences 

 and especially out of their imaginations a vast body of oral fiction. 

 Among peoples, widely separated in point of time and space, the 



