Ragnarok : the age of fire and gravel

THE NATURE OF MYTHS. 117

from which the surrounding waters have excluded the decaying atmosphere, have remained altogether unchanged in their condition. If this has been the case for two thousand years, why would they not remain unchanged for ten thousand, for a hundred thousand years? If the ice in which that Siberian mammoth was incased had ‘preserved it intact for a hundred years, or a thousand years, why might it not have preserved it for ten thousand, for a hundred thousand years ?

Place a universal legend in the minds of a race, let them repeat it from generation to generation, and time ceases to be an element in the problem.

Legend has one great foe to its perpetuation—civilization. Civilization brings with it a contempt for everything which it can not understand ; skepticism becomes the synonym for intelligence ; men no longer repeat ; they doubt ; they dissect ; they sneer ; they reject ; they invent. Ifthe myth survives this treatment, the poets take it up and make it their stock in trade: they decorate it in a masquerade of frippery and finery, feathers and furbelows, like a clown dressed for a fancy ball ; and the poor barbarian legend survives at last, if it survives at all, like the Conflagration in Oyid or King Arthur in Tennysona hippopotamus smothered in flowers, jewels, and laces.

Hence we find the legends of the primitive American Indians adhering quite closely to the events of the past, while the myths that survive at all among the civilized nations of Europe are found in garbled forms, and only among the peasantry of remote districts.

Jn the future more and more attention will be given to the myths of primitive races ; they will be accounted as more reliable, and as reaching farther back in time than many things which we call history. Thoughtful men will