Ferguson has convincingly proved.[1] We are in the same case with the phraseology of the Myth. On the ascent out of each of the great periods, the ideas connected with it, which began with the entrance into it, cannot disappear. The idea, having once been grasped by man, remains always present to him, and can be conveniently used to give names to natural phenomena connected with the same circle of ideas; and he does not cease to take notice of natural phenomena while forming myths. Thus even the agriculturist may have spoken of the Sun's hunts; and even at the agricultural stage myths may still have arisen which spoke of the Sun as a sportsman armed with arrows with which he slays the dragon. It is accordingly not the mythic material that is of the highest moment in sketching the chief stages of development in the formation of myths, but rather the Tendency of the myth—the position occupied by man in relation to external nature, so far as appears from the myths in question. How, according to this scale of development, the stages of the myth among the Aryans are reflected in their mythology, I do not presume to judge, being on Aryan ground only a dilettante. I will, however, quote some examples from the special ground of these studies, to illustrate what has been expounded. Looking at the myth of Jacob, observing the centre of the cycle, whose name—as is demonstrated at the proper place—is an appellation of the starry heaven, how he strives against the Red, 'Edôm,' and the White, 'Lâbhân,' and seeing that the myth-maker's sympathy always inclines to Jacob, that his over-reaching of his enemies always appears in a light favourable to him, and that his defeats always wear a tragic colour, I can conclude that this cycle of myths belongs to Nomadism. The same inference must be drawn from an examination of the myth of Joseph. But if I look at the hymn to Judah, or consider the myth of Samson and what the Hebrew told of
- ↑ Rude Stone Monuments in all Countries, their Ages and Uses, London 1872, pp. 9 et seq. and 28.
