. A child's guide to mythology . peciallyinterested in collecting the stories, while the mythsof the most primitive men are preserved in the sur-vivals of them among the races still remaining un-civilized in various parts of the globe. These havebeen for several centuries taken down from themouths of the people, or observed in their customsand recorded by students. Among these less civi-lized races there are besides crude monuments, andeven crude forms of writing by means of which prim-itive men liave recorded their own myths. You will realize by this time what an extensiveand wonderful forest
. A child's guide to mythology . peciallyinterested in collecting the stories, while the mythsof the most primitive men are preserved in the sur-vivals of them among the races still remaining un-civilized in various parts of the globe. These havebeen for several centuries taken down from themouths of the people, or observed in their customsand recorded by students. Among these less civi-lized races there are besides crude monuments, andeven crude forms of writing by means of which prim-itive men liave recorded their own myths. You will realize by this time what an extensiveand wonderful forest this forest of myths is whichwe imagine ourselves looking down upon from ourhilltop, and after having taken this birds-eye viewof the whok forest, you will be the better able toenjoy going down into the forest and making littlejourneys in different directions and becoming betteracquainted with some of the most beautiful of themyths as you will in the following chapters. Andnow, moreover, you will have no difficulty in under- 38. o a o bJO What Is a Myth? standing me when I answer the question, What isa myth ? by saying: A myth is any imaginative explanation or inter-pretation by man of himself or of the objects andevents in nature outside of himself, including theirappearance, their effects and the still greater mys-tery of their causes. It may exist in many formsfrom the simple myth of explanation to the compli-cated systems of religious myths in which the objectsof nature are regarded as gods in human form. Thechief thing to be remembered about myths is thatthey are not true, though they may contain some ele-ments of truth; another, that though not actuallytrue they seemed to be true to the people who madethem. 39 CHAPTER IIANIMALS IN PRIMITIVE MYTHS THE stories now to be told belong to that veryearly time in human life, when, as we learnedin the last chapter, men regarded every thing in na-ture as if it were gifted with life like strange ideas to which this b
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