Page:The Religion of Ancient Egypt.djvu/122

 j'irai. As the motives for applying an appellative to a phenomenon are many, it is evident that many myths may refer to the same phenomenon under different names. And every myth which involves a metaphor naturally suggests a legend, which in its turn is susceptible of an indefinite amount of development in the hands of poets or other mythographers, long after the primitive meaning of the myth has been forgotten.

It is therefore only through a radical misconception of the nature of a myth that attempts can be made to discover a consistent system in the mythology of any country. One myth was originally quite independent of every other.

Another serious mistake is to suppose that all the details of a mythological legend are of equal importance. The Psalmist speaks of a tabernacle in the heavens set for the sun, whom he compares to "a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoicing as a strong man to run a race." Call the sun the Bridegroom or the Racer (and he is so named in several mythologies), and a series of images will at once be suggested correlative to each of these names, and adventures will be invented to suit them. But these details are no real part of the myth, and frequently conceal its true meaning. One of the chief difficulties in dealing with a myth lies in distinguishing the essential from the non-essential portions of the legend to which it has given rise.