PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
With a deep consciousness of its shortcomings, but with a confidence not less deep in the security of the foundations laid by the Science of Comparative Mythology, I submit to the judgment of all whose desire it is to ascertain the truth of facts in every field of inquiry a work on a subject as vast as it is important. The history of mythology is, in a sense far beyond that in which we may apply the words to the later developements of religious systems, the history of the human mind; and the analysis which lays bare the origin and nature of Iranian dualism, and traces the influence of that dualism on the thought and philosophy of other lands, must indefinitely affect our conclusions on many subjects which may not appear to be directly connected with it.
For myself I confess candidly, and with a feeling of gratitude which lapse of time certainly has not weakened, that Professor Max Müller's Essay on Comparative Mythology first opened to me thirteen years ago a path through a labyrinth which, up to that time, had seemed as repulsive as it was intricate. I well remember the feeling of delight awakened by his analysis of the myths examined in that essay, of which it is but bare justice to say that by it the ground which it traversed was for the first time effectually broken for English
