Ragnarok : the age of fire and gravel

THE NATURE OF MYTHS. 119

way the myth is always brought down and attached to more recent events :

* All over Europe—in Germany, France, Spain, Switzerland, England, Scotland, Ireland—the exploits of the oldest mythological heroes, figuring in the Sagas, Eddas, and Nibelungen Lied, haye been ascribed, in the folk-lore and ballads of the people, to Barbarossa, Charlemagne, Boabdil, Charles V, William Tell, Arthur, Robin Hood, Wallace, and St. Patrick.” *

In the next place, we must remember how impossible it is for the mind to invent an entirely new fact.

What dramatist or novelist has ever yet made a plot which did not consist of events that had already transpired somewhere on earth? He might intensify events, concentrate and combine them, or amplify them ; but that is all. Men in all ages have suffered from jealousy,—like Othello ; have committed murders,—like Macbeth ; have yielded to the sway of morbid minds,—like Hamlet ; have stolen, lied, and debauched,—like Falstaff ;—there are Oliver Twists, Bill Sykeses, and Nancies ; Micawbers, Pickwicks, and Pecksniffs in every great city.

There is nothing in the mind of man that has not preexisted in nature. Can we imagine a person, who never saw or heard of an elephant, drawing a picture of such a two-tailed creature? It was thought at one time that man had made the flying-dragon out of his own imagination ; but we now know that the image of the pterodactyl had simply descended from generation to generation. Sindbad’s great bird, the roc, was considered a flight of the Oriental fancy, until science revealed the bones of the dinornis, All the winged beasts breathing fire are simply a recollection of the comet.

In fact, even with the patterns of nature before it, the

* Bancroft, “ Native Races,” note, vol. iii, p. 77.