"

Toe abode of souls (par. 202, 232)
Ale powers with whom Thorr strives are
personifications in some way of death-all,
or almost all. He tugs as he thinks at a cat
and cannot lift it from the ground; but the
cat is Jormundgandr, the great mid-earth
serpent, in part the personification of the
sea, but also (by reason of this) the personi-
fication of the devouring hell "rapax Orcus
(compare Cerberus, the Sarameyas, and no-
tice the middle-age change of Orcus to Ogre).
He (or, in the story as we now have it, Loki)
contends with a personification of the death-
fire, not with a mere allegorical representa-
tion of fire in its common aspect. And
again, he contends not with Elli, old age,
but with Hel, the goddess of the under-
world.

This is the original form into which I read back the mythical journey to Utgardloki. It is easy to see how the story got changed. Loki is made to accompany Thorr instead of to fight against him; the later mythologies not being able to understand how Loki could sometimes be a god and dwell in Asgard, sometimes be a giant of Jotunheim. With this change the others could easily creep in. Logi is invented to fight with Loki, and Elli in place of Hel appears in obedience to a desire for allegory in the place of true myth.

Par. 195. Thanatos.-Thanatos and Hypnos belong again to the region of allegory rather than pure mythology. For in pure mythology the place of the first is taken by Hades In Vedic mythology their part is played by the two Saramayas; one probably chiefly a divinity of death, the other of sleep, and the two being brothers, as of course death and sleep are.

|sential toward the information we are seek. ing. For instance, the number of myths which can in any system be traced to the phenomena of the sun is a matter of the highest importance, as showing the influence which a certain set of phenomena had upon the national mind; but of much less significance is the question of the exact origin of the different features in these legendary tales. If any given tale be found to originate solely in a confusion of language, a mistaken, misinterpreted epithet, then it has almost no interest for us as an interpreter of the popular thought and feeling; unless, indeed, the shape which the story takes should reproduce (as it probably will) some one of the universal forms which seem to stand ready in the human mind for the molding of its legends.

44

"

With regard to the particular question of sun (and other nature) myths and their occurrence, the question which stands between rival disputants is something of this sort: "All myths, that is, all primitive legends," says one party which may be regarded as the Philological school, "are found, if we examine closely enough into the meaning of the proper names which occur in them, to represent originally some natural phenomenon, which is in nine cases out of ten (at least for southern nations) a story of some part of the sun's daily course, some one of his innumerable aspects." "Is it conceivable," say their opponents (we may call these the Ethnologists) that man could ever have been in such a condition that all his attention was turned upon the workings of nature or upon the heavenly bodies? Far more probable is it, that these stories arose from a variety of natural causes, real traditions of some hero, It has been suggested that among a group of reminiscences of historical events transformed figures sculptured upon the drum of a column in the mist of exaggeration, or the legacy of brought from the Artemesium (Temple of days when men had strange and almost inDiana) at Ephesus, one is a representation of conceivable ideas about the world they lived Thanatos, Death. The figure is that of a in, when they thought animals spoke and boy, as young and comely as Love, but of a had histories like men, that men could and somewhat passive expression, and with a frequently did become trees, and trees men, sword girt upon his thigh, which Eros never etc., etc. Indeed, so strange and senseless wears. His right hand is raised as though are the notions of primitive men, that it is he were beckoning; and with him stand De-wasted labor to try and interpret them." mêtêr and Hermes, both divinities connected with the rites of the dead. Save in this instance-if it be an instance-Thanatos is unknown to Greek art. Hypnos, when he appears, wears a fair womanish face with closed eyes, scarcely distinguishable from the artistic representation of the Gorgon. As the moon, this last is in some sense a being of sleep and death.

This is a rough statement of the two heads of argument. The second, so far as merely negative, must fall before positive proof, as that the nature-myth hidden in an immense number of stories can be by philology satis. factorily unraveled. There is, however, also positive proof on the other side, when many stories, which as nature-myths interpreted on philological principles should only have exPar. 208 Myths and the rules of their in-isted among the people of a particuliar linterpretation have been made of late years the subject of controversy almost as keen as that which has raged round that primary question concerning the existence of nature-worship, which we have discussed above. In this (XIth) and the previous chapters, the writers have endeavored to keep before the reader only those features in a myth which are es

guistic family, are found among other races who have no real relation whatever to the first.

Both these sets of facts can be adduced, and to reconcile them in every case would no doubt be hard. On the whole, however, it will perhaps be found that, as has just been said, certain molds for the construction of

stories seem to exist already in the human | tneir smallest divisions, and an appropriate mind, obeying some natural craving, and into these, as into a Procrustean bed, the myth more or less easily must fit. These primitive forms do not, however, preclude the undoubted existence-strange as such a phenomenon may appear-of an especial mytho-sidered half vowels. Each of their consopoic age connected with man's observations of the phenomena of nature-an age in which natural religions gained their foundation, and when the doings of the external world had a much deeper effect upon man's imagination than in later times they have ever had.

sign for each of these. But none of the Semitic alphabets in their original forms seem to have possessed these qualifications. They never get nearer to the expression of vowel sounds than by letters which may be con

CHAPTERS XII. AND XIII.

MAHAFFY, Prolegomena to History; RAWLINSON, Five Monarchies; TYLOR, Early History of Mankind.

LENORMANT, Essai sur la Propagation de Aphabet Phenicien.

None of the Semitic alphabets can be considered as quite complete; as a complete alphabet requires a subdivision of sounds into

nants (in Phenician, Hebrew, Arabic) carried a vowel sound with it, and was therefore a syllabic sign and not a true letter.

CHAPTER XIV.

GIBBON, with notes by MILMAN, etc.; LATHAM, Germania of Tacitus; Id., National_ ities of Europe; CURTIUS, Griech Gesch; MOMMSEN, Die unterital Dialekten; Id., Röm Gesch; VON MAURER, Op. cit.

Par. 272. It will be observed that (following Mommsen) the Etruscans are here spoken of as belonging to the Italic family. This is liable to grave doubts; but the question is at present too unsettled to admit of satisfactory discussion in this place.

inter-Daughter," 73, 83, 86, 107, 166.
Dêmêtêr, 176.