Ragnarok : the age of fire and gravel

118 THE LEGENDS.

analyze them, despising nothing ; like a chemist who resolyes some compound object into its original elements —the very combination constituting a history of the object.

H, H. Bancroft describes myths as—

“A mass of fragmentary truth and fiction, not open to rationalistic criticism ; a partition wall of allegories, built of dead facts cemented with wild fancies ; it looms ever between the immeasurable and the measurable past.”

But he adds:

“ Never was there a time in the history of philosophy when the character, customs, and beliefs of aboriginal man, and everything appertaining to him, were held in such high esteem by scholars as at present.”

“Jt is now a recognized principle of philosophy that no religious belief, however crude, nor any historical tradition, however absurd, can be held by the majority of a people for any considerable time as true, without haying had in the beginning some foundation in fact.” *

An universal myth points to two conclusions :

First, that it is based on some fact.

Secondly, that it dates back, in all probability, to the time when the ancestors of the races possessing it had not yet separated.

A myth should be analyzed carefully ; the fungi that have attached themselves to it should be brushed off ; the core of fact should be separated from the decorations and errors of tradition.

But above all, it must be remembered that we can not depend upon either the geography or the chronology of a myth. As I have shown, there is a universal tendency to give the old story a new habitat, and hence we have Ararats and Olympuses all over the world. In the same

* “The Native Races of America,” vol. iii, p. 14.