his death, as for the loss of one who might never return. For every aspect of the material world he would have ready some life-giving expression; and those aspects would be scarcely less varied than his words. The same object would at different times, or under different conditions, awaken the most opposite or inconsistent conceptions. But these conceptions and the words which expressed them would exist side by side without producing the slightest consciousness of their incongruity ; nor is it easy to determine the exact order in which they might arise. The sun would awaken both mournful and inspiriting ideas, ideas of victory and defeat, of toil and premature death. He would be the Titan, strangling the serpents of the night before he drove his chariot up the sky; and he would also be the being who, worn down by unwilling labour undergone for men, sinks wearied into the arms of the mother who bare him in the morning. Other images would not be wanting; the dawn and the dew and the violet clouds would be not less real and living than the sun. In his rising from the east he would quit the fair dawn, whom he should see no more till his labour drew towards its close. And not less would he love and be loved by the dew and by the morning herself, while to both his life would be fatal as his fiery car rose higher in the sky. So would man speak of all other things also; of the thunder and the earthquake and the storm, not less than of summer and winter. But it would be no personification, and still less would it be an allegory or metaphor. It would be to him a veritable reality, which he examined and analysed as little as he reflected on himself It would be a sentiment and a belief, but in no sense a religion.
Primary myths.In these spontaneous utterances of thoughts awakened by outward phenomena, we have the source of the myths which must be regarded as primary. But it is obvious that such myths would be produced only so long as the words employed were used in their original meaning. While men were conscious of describing only the departure of the sun when they said " Endymion sleeps," the myth had not passed beyond its first stage ; but if once the meaning of the word were either in part or wholly forgotten, the creation of a new personality under this name would become inevitable, and the change would be rendered both more certain and more rapid by the very wealth of words which they lavished on the sights and objects which most impressed their imagination. A thousand phrasesprofound and reverent awe and admiration. The state of mind which can see signs and wonders only in what is irregular belongs, as Professor Müller has remarked, to a later time.
