probable and common as duels and concealments of wills seem to be
thought by European novelists. It is obvious that we need look no
farther for the explanation of the supernatural events in Arab
romances. Now, let us apply this system to mythology. It is
admitted that Greeks, Romans, Aryans of India in the age of the
Sanskrit commentators, and Egyptians of the Ptolemaic and earlier
ages, were as much puzzled as we are by the mythical adventures of
their gods. But is there any known stage of the human intellect in
which similar adventures, and the metamorphoses of men into animals,
trees, stars, and all else that puzzles us in the civilised
mythologies, are regarded as possible incidents of daily human life?
Our answer is, that everything in the civilised mythologies which we
regard as irrational seems only part of the accepted and natural
order of things to contemporary savages, and in the past seemed
equally rational and natural to savages concerning whom we have
historical information.[1] Our theory is, therefore, that the
savage and senseless element in mythology is, for the most part, a
legacy from the fancy of ancestors of the civilised races who were
once in an intellectual state not higher, but probably lower, than
that of Australians, Bush-men, Red Indians, the lower races of South
America, and other worse than barbaric peoples. As the ancestors of
the Greeks, Aryans of India, Egyptians and others advanced in
civilisation, their religious thought was shocked and surprised by
myths (originally dating from the period of savagery, and natural in
that period, though even then often in contradiction to morals and
religion) which were preserved down to the time of Pausanias by
local priesthoods, or which were stereotyped in the ancient poems of
Hesiod and Homer, or in the Brahmanas and Vedas of India, or were
retained in the popular religion of Egypt. This theory recommended
itself to Lobeck. "We may believe that ancient and early tribes