of culture, we may select a few conceptions. There is the conception of
a great primal anthropomorphic Being, who was in the beginning, or, at
least, about whose beginning legend is silent. He made all things, he
existed on earth (in some cases), teaching men the arts of life and rules
of conduct, social and moral. In those instances he retired from earth,
and now dwells on high, still concerned with the behaviour of the tribes.

This is a lofty conception, but it is entangled with a different set of
legends. This primal Being is mixed up with strange persons of a race
earlier than man, half human, half bestial. Many things, in some cases
almost all things, are mythically regarded, not as created, but as the
results of adventures and metamorphoses among the members of this
original race. Now in New Zealand, Polynesia, Greece, and elsewhere, but
not, to my knowledge, in the very most backward peoples, the place of
this original race, "Old, old Ones," is filled by great natural objects,
Earth, Sky, Sea, Forests, regarded as beings of human parts and passions.

The present universe is mythically arranged in regard to their early
adventures: the separation of sky and earth, and so forth. Where this
belief prevails we find little or no trace of the primal maker and
master, though we do find strange early metaphysics of curiously abstract
quality (Maoris, Zunis, Polynesians). As far as our knowledge goes,
Greek mythology springs partly from this stratum of barbaric as opposed
to strictly savage thought. Ouranos and Gaea, Cronos, and the Titans
represent the primal beings who have their counterpart in Maori and Wintu
legend. But these, in the Greece of the Epics and Hesiod, have long been
subordinated to Zeus and the Olympians, who are envisaged as triumphant
gods of a younger generation. There is no Creator; but Zeus--how, we do
not know--has come to be regarded as a Being relatively Supreme, and as,
on occasion, the guardian of morality. Of course his conduct, in myth,