the oracles of our savage ancestors; their creed, the rule of their life, prized by them as men now prize their faith; and, by whatever savage philosophy these strange conceits were eliminated, their effect upon the popular mind was vital. Anaxagoras, Socrates, Protagoras, and Epicurus well knew and boldly proclaimed that the gods of the Grecians were disreputable characters, not the kind of deities to make or govern worlds; yet so deep rooted in the hearts of the people were the maxims of the past, that for these expressions one heretic was cast into prison, another expelled from Athens, and another forced to drink the hemlock. And the less a fable presents the appearance of probability, the more grotesque and extravagant it is, the less the likelihood of its having originated in pure invention; for no extravagantly absurd invention without a particle of truth could by any possibility have been palmed off upon a people, and by them accepted, revered, recited, preserved as veritable incident or solution of mystery, and handed down to those most dear to them, to be in like manner held as sacred.

Therefore we may be sure that there never was a myth without a meaning; that mythology is not a bundle of ridiculous fancies invented for vulgar amusement; that there is not one of these stories, no matter how silly or absurd, which was not founded in fact, which did not once hold a significance. "And though I have well weighed and considered all this," concluded Lord Bacon, nearly three hundred years ago, "and thoroughly seen into the levity which the mind indulges for allegories and illusions, yet I cannot but retain a high value for the ancient mythology." Indeed, to ancient myths has been attributed the preservation of shattered fragments of lost sciences, even as some have alleged that we are indebted to the writings of Democritus and Aristotle for modern geographical discoveries.

That these ductile narratives have suffered in their transmission to us, that through the magnifying and refracting influences of time, and the ignorance and fanaticism of those to whom they were first recited, we receive them mutilated and distorted, there can be no doubt. Not one in a thousand of those aboriginal beliefs which were held by the people of the Pacific Coast at the time of its first occupation by foreigners, has been preserved. And for the originality and purity of such as we have, in many instances, no one can vouch. Certain writers who saw in the native fable probable evidence of the presence of an apostle, or a miraculous interposition in the affairs of benighted heathendom, could but render the narrative in accordance with their prepossessions. The desire of some to prove a certain origin for the Indians, and the contempt of others for native character, also led to imperfect or colored narrations. But happily, enough has been preserved in authentic picture-writings, and by narrators whose integrity and intelligence are above suspicion, to give us a fair insight into the native psychological structure and belief; and if the knowledge we have is but infinitesimal in comparison with what has been lost, we may thereby learn to prize more highly such as we have.

Again we come to the ever-recurring question—Whence is it? Whence arise belief, worship, superstition? Whence the striking likeness in all supernatural conceptions between nations and ages the most diverse? Why is it that so many peoples, during the successive stages of their progress, have their creation myth, their origin myth, their flood myth, their animal, and plant, and planet myths? This coincidence of evolution can scarcely be the result of accident. Mythologies, then, being like languages common to mankind, uniform in substance yet varying in detail, what follows with regard to the essential system of their supernatural conceptions? Is it a perfected gift of the Creator, the invention of a designing priesthood, or a spontaneous generation and natural development? So broad a question, involving as it does the weightiest matters connected with man, may scarcely expect exactly the same answer from any two persons. Origin of life, origin of mind, origin of belief, are as much problems to the profoundest philosopher of to-day, as they were to the first wondering, bewildered savage who wandered through primeval forests.

ORIGIN OF BELIEF.

Life is defined by Herbert Spencer as "the coördination of actions, or their continuous adjustment;" by Lewes as "a series of definite and successive changes, both of structure and composition, which take place within an individual without destroying its identity;" by Schelling as "the tendency to individuation;" by Richeraud as "a collection of phenomena which succeed each other during a limited time in an organized body;" and by De Blainville as "the two-fold internal movement of composition and decomposition, at once general and continuous." According to Hume, Mind is but a bundle of ideas and impressions which are the sum of all knowledge, and consequently, "the only things known to exist." In the positive philosophy of Auguste Comte, intellectual development is divided into three phases; namely, the Supernatural, in which the mind seeks for supernatural causes; the Metaphysical, wherein abstract forces are set up in place of supernatural agencies; and the Positive, which inquires into the laws which engender phenomena. Martineau, commenting upon intuition and the mind's place in nature, charges the current doctrine of evolution with excluding the element of life from developing organisms. Until the origin of mind, and the relation of mind to its environment is determined, the origin of the supernatural must remain unaccounted for. Yet we may follow the principle of worship back to very near its source, if we are unable entirely to account for it.

We have seen how the inability of brutes to form in the mind long sequences of thought, prevents speech; so, in primitive societies, when successions of unrecorded events are forgotten before any conception of general laws can be formed therefrom, polytheism in its grossest form is sure to prevail. Not until the earlier stages of progress are passed, and, from a multitude of correlative and oft-repeated experiences, general deductions made, can there be any higher religious conceptions than that of an independent cause for every consequence.

By some it is alleged that the religious sentiment is a divine idea perfected by the Creator and implanted in man as part of his nature, before his divergence from a primitive centre. Singularly enough, the Fathers of the Church referred the origin of fable as well as the origin of fact to the Hebrew Scriptures. Supported by the soundest sophistry, they saw in every myth, Grecian or barbarian, a biblical character. Thus the Greek Hercules was none other than the Hebrew Sampson; Arion was Jonah, and Deucalion Noah. Other mythological characters were supposed by them to have been incarnated fiends, who disappeared after working for a time their evil upon men.

There have been those who held myths to be the fictions of sorcery, as there are now those who believe that forms of worship were invented by a designing priesthood, or that mythology is but a collection of tales, physical, ethical and historical, invented by the sages and ancient wise men of the nation, for the purpose of overawing the wicked and encouraging the good. Some declare that religion is a factitious or accidental social phenomenon; others that it is an aggregation of organized human experiences; others that it is a bundle of sentiments which were originally projected by the imagination, and ultimately adopted as entities; others that it is a feeling or emotion, the genesis of which is due to surrounding circumstances.

Many believe all mythological personages to have been once real human heroes, the