he fruition of desire. Light
and darkness typify the contrast. Divinity thus conceived under
numerical separateness. Monotheisms do not escape this. The triune
nature of single gods. The truly religious and only philosophic
notion of divinity is under logical, not mathematical unity. This
discards mythical conceptions.

CHAPTER V.

THE MYTH AND THE MYTHICAL CYCLES.

Returning again to the definition of the elemental religious
sentiment--"a Wish whose fruition depends upon unknown power"--it
enables us to class all those notions, opinions and narratives, which
constitute mythologies, creeds and dogmas, as theories respecting the
nature and action of the unknown power. Of course they are not
recognized as theories. They arise unconsciously or are received by
tradition, oral or written, and always come with the stamp of divinity
through inspiration and revelation. None but a god can tell the secrets
of the gods.

Therefore they are the most sacred of all things, and they partake of
the holiness and immutability which belong to the unknown power itself.
To misplace a vowel point in copying the sacred books was esteemed a sin
by the Rabbis, and a pious Mussulman will not employ the same pen to
copy a verse of the Koran and an ordinary letter. There are many
Christians who suppose the saying: "Heaven and earth shall pass away,
but My Words shall not pass away," has reference to the words of the Old
and New Testament. "What shall remain to us," asked Ananda, the disciple
of Buddha, "when thou shalt have gone hence into Nirvana?" "My Word
(_dharma_)," replied the Master. Names thus came to be as holy as the
objects to which they referred. So sacred was that of Jehovah to the
Israelites that its original sound was finally lost. Such views are
consistent enough to the Buddhist, who, assuming all existence to be but
imaginary, justly infers that the name is full as much as the object.

The science of mythology has made long strides in the last half century.
It has left far behind it the old euphemeristic view that the myth is a
distorted historical tradition, as well as the theories not long since
in vogue, that it was a system of natural philosophy, a device of shrewd
rulers, or as Bacon thought, a series of "instructive fables." The
primitive form of the myth is now recognized to be made up from the
notions which man gains of the manifestations of force in external
nature, in their supposed