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300 one which has grown and flourished in the world. Descriptive names become personal, the notion of personality stretches to take in even the most abstract notions to which a name may be applied, and realized name, epithet, and metaphor pass into interminable mythic growths by the process which Max Müller has so aptly characterized as 'a disease of language.' It would be difficult indeed to define the exact thought lying at the root of every mythic conception, but in easy cases the course of formation can be quite well followed. North American tribes have personified Nipinūkhe and Pipūnūkhe, the beings who bring the spring (nipin) and the winter (pipūn); Nipinūkhe brings the heat and birds and verdure, Pipūnūkhe ravages with his cold winds, his ice and snow; one comes as the other goes, and between them they divide the world. Just such personification as this furnishes the staple of endless nature-metaphor in our own European poetry. In the springtime it comes to be said that May has conquered Winter, his gate is open, he has sent letters before him to tell the fruit that he is coming, his tent is pitched, he brings the woods their summer clothing. Thus, when Night is personified, we see how it comes to pass that Day is her son, and how each in a heavenly chariot drives round the world. To minds in this mythologic stage, the Curse becomes a personal being, hovering in space till it can light upon its victim; Time and Nature arise as real entities; Fate and Fortune become personal arbiters of our lives. But at last, as the change of meaning goes on, thoughts that once had a more real sense fade into mere poetic forms of speech. We have but to compare the effect of ancient and modern personification on our own minds, to understand something of what has happened in the interval. Milton may be consistent, classical, majestic, when he tells how Sin and Death sat within the gates of hell, and how they built their bridge of length prodigious across the deep abyss to earth. Yet such descriptions leave