phenomena, and it is this limited application which has produced the
folly and crime. I venture to think that civilised man shares with the
savage of to-day, and with the primitive ancestors of all mankind, the
charge of applying perfectly good logic to an insufficiency of facts,
and producing therefrom fresh chapters of folly and crime.

If myth is correctly defined as primitive science, as I have ventured
to suggest, it is important to know how it assumes a place among the
traditions of a people. Primitive science was also primitive belief.
If it accounted for the origin of mankind, of the sun, moon, and
stars, of the earth and the trees, it accounted for them as creations
of a higher power than man, or, at all events, of a great and
specially endowed man, and higher powers than man were of the unknown
realm. The unknown was the awful. Primitive science and primitive
belief were therefore on one and the same plane.[192] They were
subjects to be treated with reverence and with awe. The story into
which the myth was so frequently woven is not a story to those who
believe in the truth of the myth. It assumes the personal shape,
because the personal is the only machinery by which primitive man is
capable of expressing himself. It was held only by tradition, because
tradition was the only means of transmitting it, and it was of a
sacred character, because sacred things and beliefs were the only
forces which influenced primitive thought. When it was repeated to new
generations of learners, it was not a case of story-telling--it was a
matter of the profoundest importance. Everywhere among the lowest
savagery we find the secrets of the group kept from all but the
initiated, and these secrets are the traditions which have become
sacred, traditions expressed sometimes in ceremonial, sometimes in
rites, sometimes in narratives. Thus the mythological and religious
knowledge of the Bushmen is imparted in dances, and when a man is
ignorant of some myth, he will say, "I do not dance that dance,"
meaning that he does not belong to the group which preserves that
particular sacred chapter.[193] The Ashantees have an interesting
creation myth which is stated to be the foundation of all their
religious opinions.[194] Mr. Howitt, in his important chapter on
"Beliefs and Burial Practices,"[195] seems to me to exactly interpret
the savage mind. The first thing he notes is the belief--a belief that
"the earth is flat, surmounted by the solid