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viii scholars, and the fact established that the myths of a nation are as legitimate a subject for scientific investigation as any other phenomena. The delight which this investigation has never ceased to impart is strictly the satisfaction which the astronomer or the geologist feels in the ascertainment of new facts: and I have written throughout under a constant sense of the paramount duty of simply and plainly speaking the truth.

Of one fact, the importance of which if it be well ascertained can scarcely be exaggerated, I venture to claim the discovery. I am not aware that the great writers who have traced the wonderful parallelisms in the myths of the Aryan world have asserted that the epic poems of the Aryan nations are simply different versions of one and the same story, and that this story has its origin in the phenomena of the natural world, and the course of the day and the year. This position is, in my belief, established by an amount of evidence which not long hence will probably be regarded as excessive. At the least I have no fear that it will fail to carry conviction to all who will weigh the facts without prejudice or partiality, who will carefully survey the whole evidence produced before they form a definite judgment, and who will fairly estimate the cumulative proof of the fact that the mythology of the Vedic and Homeric poets contains the germs, and in most instances more than the germs, of almost all the stories of Teutonic, Scandinavian, and Celtic folk-lore. This common stock of materials, which supplements the evidence of language for the ultimate affinity of all the Aryan nations, has been moulded into an infinite variety of shapes by the story-tellers of Greeks and Latins, of Persians and Englishmen, of the ancient and modern Hindus, of Germans and Norwegians, Icelanders, Danes, Frenchmen, and Spaniards. On this common