ill account
for the appearance of metamorphosis in myth. If we find a belief that
inanimate objects are really much on a level with man, the opinion
will account for incidents of myth such as that in which the wooden
figure-head of the Argo speaks with a human voice. Again, a widespread
belief in the separability of the soul or the life from the body will
account for the incident in nursery tales and myths of the "giant who
had no heart in his body," but kept his heart and life elsewhere. An
ancient identity of mental status and the working of similar mental
forces at the attempt to explain the same phenomena will account,
without any theory of borrowing, or transmission of myth, or of
original unity of race, for the world-wide diffusion of many mythical
conceptions.

But this theory of the original similarity of the savage mind everywhere
and in all races will scarcely account for the world-wide distribution
of long and intricate mythical PLOTS, of consecutive series of adroitly
interwoven situations. In presence of these long romances, found among
so many widely severed peoples, conjecture is, at present, almost
idle. We do not know, in many instances, whether such stories were
independently developed, or carried from a common centre, or borrowed by
one race from another, and so handed on round the world.

This chapter may conclude with an example of a tale whose DIFFUSION may
be explained in divers ways, though its ORIGIN seems undoubtedly savage.
If we turn to the Algonkins, a stock of Red Indians, we come on a
popular tradition which really does give pause to the mythologist. Could
this story, he asks himself, have been separately invented in widely
different places, or could the Iroquois have borrowed from the
Australian blacks or the Andaman Islanders? It is a common thing in most
mythologies to find everything of value to man--fire, sun, water--in
the keeping of some hostile power. The fire, or the sun, or the water
is then stolen, or in other ways rescued from the enemy and restored
to humanity. The Huron story (as far as water is concerned) is told by
Father Paul Le Jeune, a Jesuit missionary, who lived among the Hurons
about 1636. The myth begins with the usual opposition between two
brothers, the Cain and Abel of savage legend. One of the brothers, named
Ioskeha, slew the other, and became the father of mankind (as known
to the Red Indians) and the guardian of the Iroquois. The earth was at
first arid and