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NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.
title had ever given utterance to the opinions just stated. But the science of mythology, as it is now represented by many writers in England, France, Italy, Germany, proposes • the very opposite view. It holds that the conception of impersonal powers is always later than that of personal powers, and that, in an early stage of thought and language, such distinction had not yet been made; while the idea of worshipping impersonal powers belongs to the very latest stage of mental development, if, in fact, it has ever been held in that crude form at all.
But however unfair and inaccurate the representation may be which Mr. Herbert Spencer gives of that view of mythology of which he does not approve, the explanation which he gives of his own view may safely be accepted as correctly stated, if we state it in his own words :
Contrariwise [he says], the view liere held is that the human personality is the primary element; that the identification of this with some natural power or object is due to identity of name; and that the worship of this natural power thus arises secondarily.
Let us at once take an instance, and compare the view put forward by the science of mythology with that propounded by Mr. Herbert Spencer.
The comparative mythologist would say that, in accordance with the laws which govern the growth of human thought and language, it was inevitable that our earliest ancestors should think and say, 'The Sun dies,' or 'the Sun is killed by the Night,' a saying which has been varied in a thousand different ways in all the mythologies of the world, ending generally in a story of a bright being, divine, half-divine, or
