evoid of religious thoughts?" Although it is very
doubtful that there are such now, it is probable that there were in the
beginning, when man had scarcely left the brute level--at least if we
agree with Vignoli[56] that we already find in the higher animals
embryonic forms of animism.

In any event, mythic creation appears early. We can infer this from the
signs of puerility of certain legends. Savages who could not know
themselves--the Iroquois, the Australian aborigines, the natives of the
Andaman Islands--believed that the earth was at first sterile and dry,
all the water having been swallowed by a gigantic frog or toad which was
compelled, by queer stratagems, to regurgitate it. These are little
children's imaginings. Among the Hindoos the same myth takes the form of
an alluring epic--the dragon watching over the celestial waters, of
which he has taken possession, is wounded by Indra after a heroic
battle, and restores them to the earth.

Cosmogonies, Lang remarks, furnish a good example of the development of
myths; it is possible to mark out stages and rounds according to the
degree of culture and intelligence. The natives of Oceania believe that
the world was created and organized by spiders, grasshoppers, and various
birds. More advanced peoples regard powerful animals as gods in disguise
(such are certain Mexican divinities). Later, all trace of animal worship
disappears, and the character of the myth is purely anthropomorphic.[57]
Kuehn, in a special work, has shown how the successive stages of social
evolution express themselves in the successive stages of mythology--myths
of cannibals, of hunters, of herders, land-tillers, sailors. Speaking of
pure savagery, Max Mueller[58] admits at least two periods--pan-Aryan and
Indo-Iranian--prior to the Vedic period. In the course of this slow
evolution the work of the imagination passes little by little from
infancy, becomes more and more complex, subtle and refined.

In the Aryan race, the Vedic epoch, despite its sacerdotal ritualism, is
considered as the period _par excellence_ of mythic efflorescence. "The
myth," says Taine, "is not here (in the Vedas) a disguise, but an
expression; no language is more true and more supple: it permits a
glimpse of, or rather causes us to discern, the forms of mist, the
movements of the air, change of seasons, all the accidents of sky, fire,
storm: external nature has never found a mode of thought so graceful and
flexible for refl