Page:Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett - Comparative Literature (1886).djvu/188

 as the destroyers of myth are man's widening or deepening experiences of space or time, of social and individual life. The myth, which may consist in a rude effort to explain some element of physical nature or some form of animal life, or some social custom or some rude sense of personality, does not become visible as myth until wider circles of comparison and contrast have superannuated the beliefs and corrected the experiences upon which it once reposed. The social aspect of clan myth-making may thus be easily conceived. Such myth-making constantly accompanies the fusion of clan groups, traditions of eponymous ancestry being interwoven as larger groups—clan-federations or nations—are developed. It is indeed mainly this social fusion that makes the beginning of every national history fade into masses of myth, blending their social and physical origins in darkness which science has hitherto done little to lighten.

The clan age, then, is the great maker of social as well as physical myths; and, to return to the latter, it views physical Nature neither as a person in our modern sense of the word, nor as an impersonal entity; neither as invested with individuality as we conceive it, nor yet as divested of personality and conceived in the abstract. Ages later than those of the clan reach the individual view of Nature; and ages later still reach the abstract view of Nature.

But here our brief review of nature's aspects as modified by clan life must cease. The illustrations we had intended to offer must be reserved for another opportunity; and we shall willingly leave the corroboration or denial of our views to students who can spare the time and trouble to criticise them in the light of early poetry.