s extent, so there are many like differing mythologies.

As in language, so in mythology, investigation has proceeded from, the
known to the unknown--from the higher to the lower mythologies. In each
step of the progress of opinion on this subject a particular phenomenon
may be observed. As each lower status of mythology is discovered it is
assumed to be the first in origin, the primordial mythology, and all
lower but imperfectly understood mythologies are interpreted as
degradations, from this assumed original belief; thus polytheism was
interpreted as a degeneracy from monotheism; nature worship, from
psychotheism; zooelotry, from ancestor worship; and, in order, monotheism
has been held to be the original mythology, then polytheism, then
physitheism or nature worship, then ancestor worship.

With a large body of mythologists nature worship is now accepted as the
primitive religion; and with another body, equally as respectable,
ancestor worship is primordial. But nature worship and ancestor worship
are concomitant parts of the same religion, and belong to a status of
culture highly advanced and characterized by the invention of
conventional pictographs. In North America we have scores or even
hundreds of systems of mythology, all belonging to a lower state of
culture.

Let us hope that American students will not fall into this line of error
by assuming that zooetheism is the lowest stage, because this is the
status of mythology most widely spread on the continent.

Mythology is primitive philosophy. A mythology--that is, the body of
myths current among any people and believed by them--comprises a system
of explanations of all the phenomena of the universe discerned by them;
but such explanations are always mixed with much extraneous matter,
chiefly incidents in the history of the personages who were the heroes
of mythologic deeds.

Every mythology has for its basis a theology--a system of gods who are
the actors, and to whom are attributed the phenomena to be
explained--for the fundamental postulate in mythology is "some one does
it," such being the essential characteristic of subjective reasoning. As
peoples pass from one stage of culture to another, the change is made by
developing a new sociology with all its institutions, by the development
of new arts, by evolution of language, and, in a degree no less, by a
change in philosophy; but the old philosophy is not supplanted. The
change is made by internal growt