religions where myths intrude, there exist two factors--the factor
which we now regard as rational, and that which we moderns regard
as irrational. The former element needs little explanation; the
latter has demanded explanation ever since human thought became
comparatively instructed and abstract.

To take an example; even in the myths of savages there is much that
still seems rational and transparent. If savages tell us that some
wise being taught them all the simple arts of life, the use of
fire, of the bow and arrow, the barbing of hooks, and so forth, we
understand them at once. Nothing can be more natural than that man
should believe in an original inventor of the arts, and should tell
tales about the imaginary discoverers if the real heroes be
forgotten. So far all is plain sailing. But when the savage goes
on to say that he who taught the use of fire or who gave the first
marriage laws was a rabbit or a crow, or a dog, or a beaver, or a
spider, then we are at once face to face with the element in myths
which seems to us IRRATIONAL. Again, among civilised peoples we
read of the pure all-seeing Varuna in the Vedas, to whom sin is an
offence. We read of Indra, the Lord of Thunder, borne in his
chariot, the giver of victory, the giver of wealth to the pious;
here once more all seems natural and plain. The notion of a deity
who guides the whirlwind and directs the storm, a god of battles, a
god who blesses righteousness, is familiar to us and intelligible;
but when we read how Indra drank himself drunk and committed
adulteries with Asura women, and got himself born from the same
womb as a bull, and changed himself into a quail or a ram, and
suffered from the most abject physical terror, and so forth, then
we are among myths no longer readily intelligible; here, we feel,
are IRRATIONAL stories, of which the original ideas, in their