those who are the descendants of their
worshippers. For though creeds and forms may change, human nature
never changes. We are less simple than our fathers: that is all. And,
as Professor York Powell[1] most truly says: "It is not in a man's
creed, but in his deeds; not in his knowledge, but in his sympathy,
that there lies the essence of what is good and of what will last in
human life."

The most usual habits of mind in our own day are the theoretical and
analytical habits. Dissection, vivisection, analysis--those are the
processes to which all things not conclusively historical and all
things spiritual are bound to pass. Thus we find the old myths
classified into Sun Myths and Dawn Myths, Earth Myths and Moon Myths,
Fire Myths and Wind Myths, until, as one of the most sane and vigorous
thinkers of the present day[2] has justly observed: "If you take the
rhyme of Mary and her little lamb, and call Mary the sun and the lamb
the moon, you will achieve astonishing results, both in religion and
astronomy, when you find that the lamb followed Mary to school one
day."

In this little collection of Myths, the stories are not presented to
the student of folklore as a fresh contribution to his knowledge.
Rather is the book intended for those who, in the course of their
reading, frequently come across names which possess for them no
meaning, and who care to read some old stories, through which runs the
same humanity that their own hearts know. For although the old worship
has passed away, it is almost impossible for us to open a book that
does not contain some mention of the gods of long ago. In our
childhood we are given copies of Kingsley's _Heroes_ and of
Hawthorne's _Tanglewood Tales_. Later on, we find in Shakespeare,
Spenser, Milton, Keats, Shelley, Longfellow, Tennyson, Mrs. Browning,
and a host of other writers, constant allusion to the stories of the
gods. Scarcely a poet has ever written but makes mention of them in
one or other of his poems. It would seem as if there were no get-away
from them. We might expect in this twentieth century that the old gods
of Greece and of Rome, the gods of our Northern forefathers, the gods
of Egypt, the gods of the British race, might be forgotten. But even
when we read in a newspaper of aeroplanes, someone is more than likely
to quote the story of Bellerophon and his winged steed, or of Icarus,
the flyer, and in our daily speech the names of gods and goddesses
continually crop up.