of the Epic soars high above such
myths as those about Pytho, Typhaon, and the Apollo who is alternately a
dolphin and a meteor: soars high above pedantry and bad etymology. In
the Epics we breathe a purer air.

Descending, as it did, from the mythology of savages, the mythic store of
Greece was rich in legends such as we find among the lowest races. Homer
usually ignores them: Hesiod and the authors of the Hymns are less noble
in their selections.

For this reason and for many others, we regard the Hymns, on the whole,
as post-Homeric, while their collector, by inserting the Hymn to Ares,
shows little proof of discrimination. Only the methods of modern German
scholars, such as Wilamowitz Mollendorf, and of Englishmen like Mr.
Walter Leaf, can find in the Epics marks of such confusion, dislocation,
and interpolations as confront us in the Hymn to Apollo. (I may refer to
my work, "Homer and the Epic," for a defence of the unity of Iliad and
Odyssey.) For example, Mr. Verrall certainly makes it highly probable
that the Pythian Hymn, at least in its concluding words of the God, is
not earlier than the sixth century. But no proof of anything like this
force is brought against the antiquity of the Iliad or Odyssey.

As to the myths in the Hymns, I would naturally study them from the
standpoint of anthropology, and in the light of comparison of the legends
of much more backward peoples than the Greeks. But that light at present
is for me broken and confused.

I have been led to conclusions varying from those of such students as Mr.
Tylor and Mr. Spencer, and these conclusions should be stated, before
they are applied to the Myth of Apollo. I am not inclined, like them, to
accept "Animism," or "The Ghost Theory," as the master-key to the
_origin_ of religion, though Animism is a great tributary stream. To
myself it now appears that among the lowest known races we find present a
fluid mass of beliefs both high and low, from the belief in a moral
creative being, a judge of men, to the pettiest fable which envisages him
as a medicine-man, or even as a beast or bird. In my opinion the higher
belief may very well be the earlier. While I can discern the processes
by which the lower myths were evolved, and were attached to a worthier
pre-existing creed, I cannot see how, if the lower faiths came first, the
higher faith was ever evolved out of _them_ by very backward savages.

On the other side, in the case of Australia