Page:Primitive Culture Vol 1.djvu/334

 CHAPTER IX.

MYTHOLOGY (continued).

Nature-myths, their origin, canon of interpretation, preservation of original sense and significant names — Nature-myths of upper savage races compared with related forms among barbaric and civilized nations — Heaven and Earth as Universal Parents — Sun and Moon: Eclipse and Sunset, as Hero or Maiden swallowed by Monster; Rising of Sun from Sea and Descent to Under-World; Jaws of Night and Death, Symplegades; Eye of Heaven, Eye of Odin and the Graiæ — Sun and Moon as mythic civilizers — Moon, her inconstancy, periodical death and revival — Stars, their generation — Constellations, their place in Mythology and Astronomy — Wind and Tempest — Thunder — Earthquake.

laying down general principles of myth-development, we may now proceed to survey the class of Nature-myths, such especially as seem to have their earliest source and truest meaning among the lower races of mankind.

Science, investigating nature, discusses its facts and announces its laws in technical language which is clear and accurate to trained students, but which falls only as a mystic jargon on the ears of barbarians, or peasants, or children. It is to the comprehension of just these simple unschooled minds that the language of poetic myth is spoken, so far at least as it is true poetry, and not its quaint affected imitation. The poet contemplates the same natural world as the man of science, but in his so different craft strives to render difficult thought easy by making it visible and tangible, above all by referring the being and movement of the world to such personal life as his hearers feel within themselves, and thus working out in far-stretched fancy the maxim that 'Man is the measure of all things.' Let but the key be recovered to this mythic