different Greek
tribes believed men to have sprung. "Hard it is to find out whether
Alalkomeneus, first of men, arose on the marsh of Cephissus, or whether
the Curetes of Ida first, a stock divine, arose, or if it was the
Phrygian Corybantes that the sun earliest saw--men like trees
walking;" and Pindar mentions Egyptian and Libyan legends of the same
description.(1) The Thebans and the Arcadians held themselves to be
"earth-born". "The black earth bore Pelasgus on the high wooded hills,"
says an ancient line of Asius. The Dryopians were an example of a race
of men born from ash-trees. The myth of gens virum truncis et duro
robore nata, "born of tree-trunk and the heart of oak," had passed into
a proverb even in Homer's time.(2) Lucian mentions(3) the Athenian myth
"that men grew like cabbages out of the earth". As to Greek myths of
the descent of families from animals, these will be examined in the
discussion of the legend of Zeus.

(1) Preller, Aus. Auf., p. 158.

(2) Virgil Aen., viii. 315; Odyssey, xix. 163; Iliad, ii. xxii. 120;
Juvenal, vi. 11. Cf. also Bouche Leclerq, De Origine Generis Humani.

(3) Philops. iii.

CHAPTER XI. SAVAGE DIVINE MYTHS.

The origin of a belief in GOD beyond the ken of history and of
speculation--Sketch of conjectural theories--Two elements in all
beliefs, whether of backward or civilised races--The Mythical and
the Religious--These may be coeval, or either may be older than the
other--Difficulty of study--The current anthropological theory--Stated
objections to the theory--Gods and spirits--Suggestion that savage
religion is borrowed from Europeans--Reply to Mr. Tylor's arguments on
this head--The morality of savages.

"The question of the origin of a belief in Deity does not come within
the scope of a strictly historical inquiry. No man can watch the idea
of GOD in the making or in the beginning. We are acquainted with no race
whose beginning does not lie far back in the unpenetrated past. Even
on the hypothesis that the natives of Australia, for example, were
discovered in a state of culture more backward than that of other known
races, yet the institutions and ideas of the Australians must have
required for their development an incalculable series of centuries.
The notions of man about the Deity, man's religious sentiments and his
mythical narratives, must be taken as we find them. There have been, and
are, many theories as to the origin of the conception of a superna