Page:Myth, Ritual, and Religion (Volume 1).djvu/189

 in three or four contradictory ways, each of which is represented in the various legends of most mythologies. Sometimes man is fashioned out of clay, or stone, or other materials, by one of the older species of beings, half-human or bestial, but also half-divine. Sometimes the first man rises out of the earth, and is himself confused with the creator, a theory well illustrated by the Zulu myth of Unkulunkulu, "The Old, Old One." Sometimes man arrives ready made, with most of the animals, from his former home in a hole in the ground, and he furnishes the world for himself with stars, sun, moon, and everything else he needs. Again, there are many myths which declare that man was evolved out of one or other of the lower animals. This myth is usually employed by tribesmen to explain the origin of their own peculiar stock of kindred. Once more, man is taken to be the fruit of some tree or plant, or not to have emerged ready-made, but to have grown out of the ground like a plant or a tree. In some countries, as among the Bechuanas, the Bœotians, and Peruviaus, the spot where men first came out on earth is known to be some neighbouring marsh or cave. Lastly, man is occasionally represented as having been framed out of a piece of the body of the creator, or made by some demiurgic potter out of clay. All these legends are told by savages, with no sense of their inconsistency. There is no single orthodoxy on the matter, and we shall see that all these theories coexist pell-mell among the mythological traditions of civilised races. In almost every mythology, too, the whole theory of