of the
sun as a ball of fire which had somehow been thrown up into the sky, and
of the moon as associated with the sun as sister or wife or husband, and
of the stars as children of these two. For creative agents early man had
to look to the beings about him, particularly to beasts, birds, and
insects. The process of creation was simple--the story usually amounts
merely to saying that such and such a beast or other being made this or
that object; and there is very rarely, if ever, a conception of an
absolute beginning; almost always a reconstruction of existing material
is assumed.

+826+. Both explanations of the resemblances in myths, it thus appears,
are reasonable in themselves, and every case must be considered
separately. That a community has borrowed one story does not prove
borrowing in the case of any other story; and that a people has been a
center of distribution of certain myths does not prove that it was the
originator of all myths. These two propositions appear to be
self-evident, but they have often been ignored in discussions of the
provenance of mythical material.[1417]

+827+. The similarities in myths all over the world extend over the
whole domain of religion. Myths may be divided into those which deal
with the creation of the world and of man (cosmogonic), those which deal
with the origins of tribes and nations (ethnogonic), those which refer
to the origin of customs and institutions (sociogonic), and those which
are based on the forms and movements of the heavenly bodies, clouds,
winds, and so forth (solar, lunar, procellar, and so forth).

+828+. _Cosmogonic myths._[1418] Among early tribes the creators are
very often familiar animals, such as the coyote, the raven, the hare
(North America), the wagtail (among the Ainu), the grasshopper (among
the Bushmen)--in general, whatever animals appear to the men of a
particular tribe to show skill and power. Reference is made above to the
reasons which led early men to pay such high regard to the lower
animals.[1419] But in more advanced savage communities the creative
function is ascribed to a man, as among the Thompson River Indians and
in Southeast Australia; in Central Australia the authors of creation or
of the arrangement of things are beings who are indifferently men or
animals, but are regarded as the ancestors of the tribes. In the higher
religions the creators are nature gods and great gods, and finally the
one God stands alone as creator.

+