the same as that which the Hellenes invented for themselves. It is now demonstrable that the epos of Theogony had its origin in Asia, and the tradition of every civilised nation in the Old World bears some relation or other to it; even that of the Jews, although in their case the relation is one of a decidedly theoretical antithesis. The Hebrews abandoned all mythological religion in the time of the patriarch Abraham. Out of the Abrahamites, who had grown into a people in Egypt, Moses endeavoured to form a nation by means of the unity of this religious feeling, as contrasted with the natural religion of the oldest popular tradition, and with that of the cognate and neighbouring races. This, however, was only fully effected by the ordinances of Ezra and Nehemiah after the fall of the kingdom. From that time all mythology and natural religion cease. The "Gentiles," however, the so-called heathen, kept it up, and carried it out to a greater or less extent. The Egyptians, indeed, created a distinct Africanised system upon the basis of the oldest religious consciousness of the Western or Semitic East before its entire separation, by shrouding over and keeping under the old feeling, rather than by identifying themselves with and extending it. The people of Western Asia and Asia Minor, in their fanaticism, pushed to the verge of absurdity or immorality the elements of natural enthusiasm which were contained in the old religion. The Greek misunderstood the tradition, but with a good and holy purpose, because he humanised it from a deep religious feeling. At the same time, he maintained, side by side. with religious fiction and symbolism, a political and intellectual reality which is pleasing to God. The further researches in this Book will show the correctness of these fundamental assumptions. But, as regards essentials, they result from the investigations and evidence adduced in the preceding volumes.

We now proceed to the philosophical view of the case.

E.

IMPORT AND CONNEXION BETWEEN THE KOSMOGONICAL, THE ASTRAL, AND THE PSYCHICAL MYTHS.

We will now examine a little more closely the three classes of myths, in order to see how far they may be regarded as different stages of the same mythological idea, and whether we are in a condition to explain one by means of the others. The Kosmogonical myth represents the forces and substances which were at work in the origines, without entering very deeply into their nature, their physical phenomena, and their specialties. The Astral necessarily presupposes the Kosmogonical conception. The centres of its contemplation, and consequently of its divine worship, are the different heavenly bodies, especially such as are directly connected with the earth and the life of man, namely the sun and moon; and then the planets and most prominent constellations, or those which are connected with the annual course of the sun. The Psychical, lastly, is no more based on psychological notions than the Astral is on astronomical systems, or the Kosmogonical on physico-chemical axioms. All three, on the contrary, originate, but in very different ways, in the primary impulse of the unsophisticated human mind to worship truth and goodness, as being the real foundation of the world and of life. does not regard the Divine as a fanciful device of the imagination, but rather as something beyond the reach of waywardness and change, as eternal law, as objective truth. The unity of the two, indeed, is effected by their palpable realisation in the beautiful.

Man

Hence the Astral view necessarily implies the idea of Divinity, and in so far can never be the original. But it is the original objective symbol. This symbol is combined with the psychical elements by means of

the original aspiration of the human soul to view itself in the Kosmos, and to recognise itself in the Deity. Everything, even the Kosmogonical, is based on a psychological foundation. The Astral is neither the beginning nor end of the mythological thought, although the symbol of both. It is, however, necessary to define with accuracy what portion of it is phenomenal or objective, what psychical or subjective.

It may be that a student in his chamber, or men of dissatisfied mind, would base their faith in the Deity and their worship of him on astronomical appearances, and form a mythology out of shadowy facts of their own observation; but this can never be the case with a people and its leaders. Religion never springs out of priestcraft or out of metaphysical systems, although they both, and frequently in conjunction, work together in it. There is nothing more foreign to the inmost necessities of the soul than astronomical theories about the course of the sun and moon and stars, changes in the hours and seasons, solar and lunar eclipses. It is true that observations connected with these penetrate deep into the life of the primitive world. Civilisation and progress towards political life are inseparably connected with these phenomena, and the unsatisfying comprehension of them.

This, however, is not the basis of religion, but the symbol of the religion already impliedly existing. The basis of this symbol is the consciousness of a Kosmos as the universe, in which man finds himself placed. He marks the undeviating movement of the greater luminaries, especially of the two which operate so powerfully upon the life of the earth and of man: he looks upon mother earth herself with her mighty rocks, her wonderful plants, and active animal kingdom, which is so far removed from, yet so near to, man. With all this, man in the primitive ages, who had to form a notion of Being for himself, was sensible of the living

communion between himself and nature; and recognised, or at least had a secret intuition of, eternal laws which regulate the phenomena allied to those which he feels within himself and observes in others, as being the conditions of human existence.

What more natural symbol, then, could he conceive ideally, than those great kosmical phenomena? Whereever the mythological process has once begun, that is to say, the epico-dramatic conception of the history of creation, and especially of its origines, this symbol will also offer itself; and preeminently indeed in those warm regions which were, and must have been, the cradle of the human race.

Now when once the constellations were regarded as divine beings, and consequently more or less as superhuman personalities, that is, as ideal men, there might, and, under certain conjunctures, must, have been a state when the religious contemplation of those starry symbols would gain the mastery over man.

Every symbol has a tendency to be regarded and worshipped as unconditionally one with the idea, and this tendency will show itself with very peculiar force in the astral element. The star becomes God; whoever does not worship it denies God. In like

manner the sacred ox becomes God; and every one who refuses to sacrifice to it is godless. In like manner Moloch in the human form; any one who declines to offer up his favourite child to him in the fire is an atheist, and consequently deserving of death.

We may therefore regard all the representations which are formed out of the original religious consciousness, by means of natural phenomena, simply as a degeneration. They may be the consequence of a downward tendency to materialism and externality, or of an intentional sacerdotal delusion and entanglement in astronomico-astrological mysteries, but they can never be a representation of the original.

F.

THE RESULT: INDIVIDUAL

RELIGIOUS THOUGHT AND PO

ETRY THE BASIS OF ALL MYTHOLOGY: AND THE PERCEPTION OF A MORAL AND INTELLECTUAL KOSMOS THE FOUNDATION OF ALL MYTHOLOGICAL CREEDS.

Now if we revert from the consideration of this tripartite sphere of mythological representation to the distinction, which is its crowning point, between Mythology considered as the formation of separate gods, and Theogony considered as mythology worked up into a doctrine about the origines of God, of the world, and of man, we have before us the two primitive antitheses, the assumptions either that the gods of natural religions are powers invented by man, or else deified men. The second view, known by the name of Euhemerus of the Ptolemaic age, wherever we have been able to find a trace of it, has hitherto invariably turned out to be false. Kosmogonical or Astral deities may dwindle down into demons and heroes, but we never find a human being converted into a deity and made an object of worship. Must not this be the case in Egypt also? In the worship of Osiris there is palpable evidence of the psychical element: the destiny of the human soul in time is ideally represented in it, under and with the symbols of the course of the sun. Osiris, as we shall see, is the ideal manhood, not a human historical individual.

The high position of intellectual human individuality becomes clear, however, as soon as we take a full view of the formation of myths, and of the origin of mythological deities themselves. It is an unmistakable element in myths at the very latest stage of their development. But then, who invented mythology, if not human individuals as the organs of the whole tribe or people? We must abandon altogether the priestly fables about