root in the mental habits of primeval humanity. They are the
earliest recorded utterances of men concerning the visible
phenomena of the world into which they were born.

[8] "Retrancher le merveilleux d'un mythe, c'est le
supprimer."--Breal, Hercule et Cacus, p. 50.

That prosaic and coldly rational temper with which modern men
are wont to regard natural phenomena was in early times
unknown. We have come to regard all events as taking place
regularly, in strict conformity to law: whatever our official
theories may be, we instinctively take this view of things.
But our primitive ancestors knew nothing about laws of nature,
nothing about physical forces, nothing about the relations of
cause and effect, nothing about the necessary regularity of
things. There was a time in the history of mankind when these
things had never been inquired into, and when no
generalizations about them had been framed, tested, or
established. There was no conception of an order of nature,
and therefore no distinct conception of a supernatural order
of things. There was no belief in miracles as infractions of
natural laws, but there was a belief in the occurrence of
wonderful events too mighty to have been brought about by
ordinary means. There was an unlimited capacity for believing
and fancying, because fancy and belief had not yet been
checked and headed off in various directions by established
rules of experience. Physical science is a very late
acquisition of the human mind, but we are already sufficiently
imbued with it to be almost completely disabled from
comprehending the thoughts of our ancestors. "How Finn