ivers, sun,
moon, and stars, beasts and human beings, they have felt the necessity
of accounting for the beginning of all these objects.[1413] This attempt
at giving a natural history of the world is in itself a scientific
procedure, but in the earlier periods of humanity it naturally attached
itself to the hypothesis of superhuman Powers--the production of this
variety of mysterious things appeared to demand capacity above that of
man. The science and the fancy of early man combined to produce a great
mass of theories and stories which to their inventors seemed to be a
satisfactory account of the origin of all things.[1414]

+820+. Myths thus furnish an important contribution to the history of
early opinion, scientific and religious; in the absence of written
records they often offer our only means of information concerning early
thought. They describe the origin not only of the physical world but
also of communities and social organizations and institutions. They have
a noteworthy vitality, lasting from the beginning of human communal life
into periods of advanced civilization; and, when adopted by great
religious organizations and interwoven into their theories of salvation,
they perpetuate to civilized times the ideas of the crude period in
which they originated. In many cases they stand side by side, and in
sharp contrast, with elevated moral conceptions of the deity, and then
have to be harmonized, usually with a great expenditure of exegetical
ingenuity, with the higher ideas of society.

+821+. The mythopoeic age, in the widest sense of the term, embraces
the whole period in which appeal is made, for the explanation of
phenomena, to other than natural agencies; but it is generally
understood to extend only up to the time when, though a general divine
Power is invoked for creation, this is regarded as working solely
through the laws of nature.[1415] And within this period the myth-making
impulse lasted longer in some directions than in others. In general, the
mythical theories concerning the larger processes, as, for example, the
creation of the world, received no addition after the establishment of a
settled civilization; but after this time even well-advanced communities
continued to invent mythical accounts of the origin of customs,
institutions, genealogies, and similar facts. Throughout the whole
myth-making period a progression may be recognized in the character of
the myths: from the earlier animal and hu