We have been so accustomed from childhood, he says, to the absurdities of Greek myth, that we have ceased to be aware that they are absurd. Why are the legends of men and beasts and gods so incredible and revolting? Why have we ceased to tell such tales? The answer is, that early men were in "a state of almost inconceivable savagery and ignorance," and that the Greek myths are inherited from people in that condition. "Look at the Kaffirs and Iroquois," says Fontenelle, "if you wish to know what early men were like; and remember that even the Iroquois and Kaffirs are people with a long past, with knowledge and culture (politesse) which the first men did not enjoy." Now the more ignorant a man is, the more prodigies he supposes himself to behold. Thus the first narratives of the earliest men were full of monstrous things, "parce qu'ils etoient faits par des gens sujets à voir bien des choses qui n'etaient pas." This condition answers, in Mr. Tylor's system, to the confusion the savage makes between dreams and facts, and to the hallucinations which beset him when he does not get his regular meals. Here, then, we have a groundwork of irresponsible fancy.
The next step is this: even the rudest men are curious, and ask "the reason why" of phenomena. "Il y a eu de la philosophie même dans ces siècles grossiers;" and this rude philosophy "greatly contributed to the origin of myths." Men looked for causes of things. " 'Whence comes this river?' asked the reflective man of those ages—a queer philosopher, yet one who might have been a Descartes did he live to-day. After long meditation, he concluded that some one had always to keep filling the source whence the stream springs. And whence came the water? Our philosopher did not consider so curiously. He had evolved the myth of a water-nymph or naiad, and there he stopped."
The characteristic of these mythical explanations—as of all philosophies, past, present, and to come—was that they were limited by human experience. Early man's experience showed him that effects were produced by conscious, sentient,
