than one route. Several great and powerful deities may shed a number of attributes and variants which themselves become personalized into gods. Egyptian mythology teems with examples of this, as almost all its principal gods absorbed or gave birth to several others in this manner. For example, from Horus was evolved Horus the Elder, Horus the Younger, Heru-an-Mut (a local god worshipped at Edfu), Heru-Khenti-Khat (a god with a crocodile's head), the Horus of Khnemu ('Horus of the Two Horizons,' or the Harmachis of the Greeks, a form of Ra, the sun-god), Heru-Behudeti (who prevailed in the southern heavens at midday), and so forth. Gods belonging to certain towns or religious centres were collected and grouped, perhaps by priestly influence, into a pantheon in order of their importance.

Among semi-civilized people, then, the activities of the greater gods are constantly being enriched by new functions. Dialectical misunderstandings led to descriptive terms which brought about a change in divine names. The fortunes of kingdoms or royal races, migration and conquest, the contact of race with race through trade and travel, the adoption of foreign deities, all served to modify and expand the pantheons of the ancient world.

MONOTHEISM

Monotheism—the worship of one god—may emerge from polytheism in more ways than one. A certain god by dint of a miracle, because he is the deity of a conquering race, because of the enterprise of his priests, or by absorbing lesser gods, becomes the most powerful and popular deity in a state or neighbourhood. Or he may be the god of the reigning dynasty, a circumstance sufficient to secure for him at least a fashionable recognition so long as that dynasty survives. We usually find that such gods have vested in them the right to pardon sin, and they are indeed the founts of righteousness in virtue of their all-sufficing nature. But, apart from all the above considerations, the rise of moral feeling and a higher standard of conduct, order, and life were connected with the communal rise of monotheistic worship and the more exalted religious outlook it brings.

THE NATURE OF MYTHIC LAW

Tylor has stated that myth displays a regularity of development which cannot be accounted for by motiveless fancy and must be attributed to laws of growth. These laws, as has been seen, are practically universal in their application. But besides those forces which bring the myth into being—those demands of primitive man for explanation and intellectual satisfaction—there are other factors which begin to work upon myth at birth, and do not cease to act upon it, in succession, until perhaps it loses its earlier characteristics.

Thus we first find, going to work by analogy with certain contemporary savage examples and by induction, the purely animistic myth. As we have seen, this bestows personality and will-power upon inanimate objects, glorifies animals, and is practically without religious significance. Such a myth is found among the Chinook Indians of the north-west coast of America in the adventures of Blue Jay, a bird with human attributes who travels to the country of the Supernatural People and succeeds in defeating them in climbing, diving, whale-spearing, and archery. As we possess it, the myth has undoubtedly been influenced by successive waves of advancing native thought, but no sophistication by European influence is discernible. The impudence and effrontery of the Blue Jay bird led to its adoption as the central figure in many a tale, and, later, as the hero of the universal story of the 'Harrying of Hell,' in which a supernatural being traverses the country of the dead and brings defeat and disgrace upon its inhabitants in order to show the savage mind that it was possible to conquer death and Hell. Thus we have emanating from an animistic idea (1) the bird as person (in the myth a 'person' is spoken of as splitting wood with his beak); (2) the bird as tale-hero; (3) the bird as vanquisher of death and Hell. Further elaborations of the myth, had social and tribal circumstances permitted of its growth, might well have shown us Blue Jay as the winged god, the principle of 'evil,' or perhaps in an even more exalted mythic capacity. Had the Chinooks remained undiscovered in their own environment and been capable of the evolution of a literature, who shall say to what heights of sanctity the conception of Blue Jay might not have risen?

FROM BIRD-TO MAN-GOD

Lest the reader unaccustomed to the developments of mythic law think such a statement exaggerated, he shall be shown the valuable 'test of recurrence,' frequently employed by the rational experimentalist in myth, a test which, conversely, is his undoing if his conclusions are ill founded. The myth of the Aztec war-god Uitzilopochtli is similar to that of Blue Jay. It recounts how Uitzilopochtli, guided by a bird, led the Aztecs from the Underworld (?) country of Aztlan to the valley of Mexico by means of a peculiar call. Later he appears in Mexican myth in the full panoply of the national god of war, the most important figure, save one, in the Aztec pantheon. To him human sacrifice was rendered, and the greatest temple in the land was erected. His cult boasted an exclusive high priest, and in all respects he was regarded as the national god of the Aztec race. Yet he never resigned certain of his bird-like characteristics—a circumstance from which he derived his name, signifying 'Humming-bird Wizard,' and denoting that he was a bird before he took human shape.[28] Paste images of him were eaten at certain festivals by way of a communion rite.

The personalized bird is to be met with not only in American myth, but in European and Asiatic story as well. The Romano-Greek winged Mercury was originally almost certainly such a figure as Blue Jay. Like the Chinook god, he was sprightly, vivid, fond of practical joking, and a notorious thief. Picus, the Latin war-god, was a woodpecker, whose picture adorned the banners of his devotees. The god, in human form, wore a woodpecker on his head. Instead of becoming a national deity like Uitzilopochtli, Blue Jay might, in the hands of a people of equal imaginative capacity to the Greeks, have evolved into a mere messenger of the gods, or under the more sober influences of Judaism have become a cherub or an archangel—such are the diversities of racial character and its effect upon religious development.

Myth is hedged round and protected from change by the spirit of sanctity, but it may fall a prey to the religious spirit when more fully evolved, for what is sanctity to one age is often blasphemy to its successor, and that which appears worthy of retention to religious conservatives and priests at one period may well be regarded as an abomination by their official descendants. Thus we find the philosophers of Greece almost to a man attempting to purge the myths of their race from the grossness of barbaric ideas; we note, too, the strivings of the Egyptian and Babylonian priests to combine rival myths and to bring older religious story into line with more modern theological ideas—in a word, to modify the traditional myths of the race so that the old scientific and religious explanations of the universe—the myths—took quite a new shape.

THE CAUSES OF MYTHIC CHANGE

The question then arises, What are the true causes of mythic change? If the conclusions previously presented be correct, these are:

(1) The evolution, growth, and advance of theological ideas. Thus a myth acceptable in 'animistic' times might not prove so under a monotheistic or even