This theory would also explain the fact that one nation's myths are not
only similar to, but to a large extent practically identical with, those
of other nations. There is a common stock of ideas supplied by the
common elements of human nature in all lands and times; and these, when
finely expressed, produce a common fund of ideals which will appeal to
the majority of the human race.

Thus mythology was originally simple storytelling. But men, even in the
telling of the story, began to find meanings for it beyond the mere
narration of events; and thus there arose in connection with all stories
that were early told, a certain number of judgments of what was high and
admirable in human nature. These were not grounded upon philosophical or
scientific bases, but upon the bed-rock of man's experience. Out of
these judgments there grew the great ideals which from first to last
have commanded the spirit of man.

In this connection it is interesting to remember that in Homer the men
were regarded as the means of revealing ideas and characters, and not as
mere natural objects in themselves. The things among which they lived
are described and known by their appearances; the men are known by their
words and deeds. "There is no inventory of the features of men, or of
fair women, as there is in the Greek poets of the decline or in modern
novels. Man is something different from a curious bit of workmanship
that delights the eye. He is a 'speaker of words and a doer of deeds,'
and his true delineation is in speech and action, in thought and
emotion." Thus, from the first, ideas are the central and important
element. They spring from and cling to stories of individual human
lives, and the finest of them become ideals handed down for the guidance
of the future race. The myths, with their stories of gods and men, and
their implied or declared religious doctrines, are but the forms in