Now these tales are necessarily cast in the mould of the savage
ideas of which a sketch has been given. The changes of the
heavenly bodies, the processes of day and night, the existence of
the stars, the invention of the arts, the origin of the world (as
far as known to the savage), of the tribe, of the various animals
and plants, the origin of death itself, the origin of the
perplexing traditional tribal customs, are all accounted for in
stories. At the same time, an actual divine Maker is sometimes
postulated. The stories, again, are fashioned in accordance with
the beliefs already named: the belief in human connection with and
kinship with beasts and plants; the belief in magic; the belief in
the perpetual possibility of metamorphosis or "shape shifting"; the
belief in the permanence and power of the ghosts of the dead; the
belief in the personal and animated character of all the things in
the world, and so forth.

No more need be said to explain the wild and (as it seems to us
moderns) the irrational character of savage myth. It is a jungle
of foolish fancies, a walpurgis nacht of gods and beasts and men
and stars and ghosts, all moving madly on a level of common
personality and animation, and all changing shapes at random, as
partners are changed in some fantastic witches' revel. Such is
savage mythology, and how could it be otherwise when we consider
the elements of thought and belief out of which it is mainly
composed? We shall see that part of the mythology of the Greeks or
the Aryans of India is but a similar walpurgis nacht, in which an
incestuous or amorous god may become a beast, and the object of his
pursuit, once a woman, may also become a beast, and then shift