is designated by more than twenty names in the Vedas; Apollo,
Phaethon, Hercules are three personifications of the sun; _Varouna_
(night) and _Yama_ (death) express at first the same conception, and
have become two distinct deities. In short, every word tends to become
an entity having its attributes and its legends. (b) Homonomy, a single
word for several things. The same adjective, "shining," refers to the
sun, a fountain, spring, etc. This is another source of confusion. Let
us also add metaphors taken literally, plays upon words, wrong
construction, etc.

The opponents of this doctrine maintain that in the formation of myths,
words represent scarcely five per cent. Whatever may be the worth of
this assertion, the purely philological explanation remains without
value for psychology: it is neither true nor false--it does not solve
the question; it merely avoids it. The word is only an occasion, a
vehicle; without the working of the mind exciting it, nothing would
change. Moreover, Max Mueller himself has recently recognized this.[50]

The anthropological theory, much more general than the foregoing,
penetrates further to psychological origins--it leads us to the first
advances of the human mind. It regards the myth not as an accident of
primitive life, but as a natural function, a mode of activity proper to
man during a certain period of his development. Later, the mythic
creations seem absurd, often immoral, because they are survivals of a
distant epoch, cherished and consecrated through tradition, habits, and
respect for antiquity. According to the definition that seems to me best
adapted for psychology, the myth is "the psychological objectification
of man in all the phenomena that he can perceive."[51] It is a
humanization of nature according to processes peculiar to the
imagination.

Are these two views irreconcilable? It does not seem so to me, provided
we accept the first as only a partial explanation. In any event, both
schools agree on one point important for us--that the material for myths
is furnished by the observation of natural phenomena, including the
great events of human life: birth, sickness, death, etc. This is the
objective factor. The creation of myths has its explanation in the
nature of human imagination--this is the subjective factor. We can not
deny that most works on mythology have a very decided tendency to give
the greater importance to the first factor; in which respect they need a
lit