Page:Myth, Ritual, and Religion (Volume 1).djvu/188

 almost the same level; those of the early Greeks are not much higher, while it is easy to detect the wild savage  element among the complicated allegories and traditions of the Aryan race in India.

All the cosmogonic myths waver between the theory of construction, or rather of reconstruction, and the theory of evolution, very rudely conceived. The earth, as a rule, is thought to have grown out of some original matter, perhaps an animal, perhaps an egg which floated on the waters, perhaps a handful of mud from below the waters. But this conception does not exclude the idea that many of the things in the world, minerals, plants, and what not, are fragments of the frame of a semi-supernatural and gigantic being, human or bestial, belonging to a race which preceded the advent of man. Such were the Titans, demigods, Nurrumbunguttias in Australia. Various members of this race, generally thought of as mortal, and almost always as capable of intermarriage with humanity, are found active in the creation, or rather in the construction, of man and of the world. Among the lowest races it is to be noted that mythical animals of supernatural power often take the place of beings like the Finnish Wainamoinen, the Greek Prometheus, the Zulu Unkulunkulu, the Red Indian Manabozho, himself usually a great hare.

The ages before the development or creation of man are filled up, in the myths, with the loves and wars of supernatural people. The appearance of man is