s to a purer monotheistic conception, and even to rational science,
the great majority of the common people, and even of those of higher
culture, still hold many ideas which are polytheistic and
anthropomorphic, and some which really belong to the debased stage of
fetishism and vulgar superstition.

Other causes contribute to produce the natural and intrinsic concurrence
of the several stages of myth which are found existing together in the
life of a people. Such, for example, is the conquest effected by a more
civilized nation over another race, inferior by nature or retarded by
other circumstances. The mythical ideas of the conquered people remain,
and are even diffused through the lower classes of the conquering race;
or they are ingrafted by a synthetic and assimilating process, so as to
modify other mythical and religious beliefs. This compound of various
stages and various beliefs also occurs through the moral and
intellectual diffusion of dogma, without the acquisition of really new
matter. Manifest proofs of these various stages of myth, co-existent
together, may be traced in the development of the Vedic ideas among the
earlier aboriginal nations, and conversely; as in the case of the Aztecs
and Incas in Mexico and Peru, whose earlier beliefs were mixed with
those of their conquerors. The same thing may be observed in the
development of Judaism during the Babylonish captivity, in the biblical
and messianic doctrines which were grafted on pagan beliefs, and in the
teaching of Islam, as it was adopted in the East and among the black
races of Africa.

We must make allowance for these extrinsic accidents if we are to
describe correctly the natural course and logical evolution of myth.
Even with respect to the special evolution of myth in a separate people,
unmixed with others, while it is normal in what may be termed its
general form and categorical phases, yet like all natural objects and
phenomena, and much more in all which concerns the human mind, there are
variations in its forms, and it attains its ends by many ways.

If we take a wider view of the general and reciprocal influences of
ethnic myths; as respects the historic results of mythologies, we shall
see that if every race evolved its sphere of myth in accordance with the
canons laid down by us, their effect upon each other would work together
for a common result more quickly than when each is taken apart. The
reader must allow me to make my meaning cle