skrit Brahmanes. We conclude that, in Greek and Sanskrit, the myths
are relics (whether borrowed or inherited) of the savage mental STATUS.

(1) See Appendix B.

CHAPTER VI. NON-ARYAN MYTHS OF THE ORIGIN OF THE WORLD AND OF MAN.

Confusions of myth--Various origins of man and of things--Myths of
Australia, Andaman Islands, Bushmen, Ovaherero, Namaquas, Zulus, Hurons,
Iroquois, Diggers, Navajoes, Winnebagoes, Chaldaeans, Thlinkeets,
Pacific Islanders, Maoris, Aztecs, Peruvians--Similarity of ideas
pervading all those peoples in various conditions of society and
culture.

The difficulties of classification which beset the study of mythology
have already been described. Nowhere are they more perplexing than when
we try to classify what may be styled Cosmogonic Myths. The very word
cosmogonic implies the pre-existence of the idea of a cosmos, an orderly
universe, and this was exactly the last idea that could enter the mind
of the myth-makers. There is no such thing as orderliness in their
mythical conceptions, and no such thing as an universe. The natural
question, "Who made the world, or how did the things in the world come
to be?" is the question which is answered by cosmogonic myths. But it is
answered piecemeal. To a Christian child the reply is given, "God made
all things". We have known this reply discussed by some little girls of
six (a Scotch minister's daughters, and naturally metaphysical), one of
whom solved all difficulties by the impromptu myth, "God first made a
little place to stand on, and then he made the rest". But savages and
the myth-makers, whose stories survive into the civilised religions,
could adhere firmly to no such account as this. Here occurs in the first
edition of this book the following passage: "They (savages) have not,
and had not, the conception of God as we understand what we mean by
the word. They have, and had at most, only the small-change of the idea
God,"--here the belief in a moral being who watches conduct; here
again the hypothesis of a pre-human race of magnified, non-natural
medicine-men, or of extra-natural beings with human and magical
attributes, but often wearing the fur, and fins, and feathers of the
lower animals. Mingled with these faiths (whether earlier, later, or
coeval in origin with these) are the dread and love of ancestral ghosts,
often transmuting themselves into worship of an imaginary and ideal
first parent of the tribe, who once more is often a bea