Page:Journal of American Folklore vol. 12.djvu/375

 Animal Myths and their Origin. 43

mainly concrete. In outwitting his foes, instead of throttling them the diverging elementary man began to make plans of strategy. From the concrete face to face expression of cause he began to pro- ject the force concerned farther and farther away, until, many ages after the genesis of reason, these forces took form in the gods who dwelt beyond the clouds, and the myths of cosmogony and transfor- mation arose. Then love was born and faith and hope. Figments of the imagination gave birth to legends, and these grew into myths, which were told to the children in the starlight. Ideals were con- ceived worthy the ages of intense effort required for their later attainment. Civilization had begun and the first men with their first notions had faded away into the unremembered and undreamed of past.

Charles L. Edwards.

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