Now that I have tried to give you this glimpse at the various explanations of myths proposed from the most ancient times to the present, I think we shall be a little better prepared to find out an answer for ourselves that will be satisfactory. Suppose we take the top off the castle in which we imagined the myths and the secrets of their origin to be locked up, and look down upon them from our hilltop, using as an aid to our vision all the light that comes in through the numerous breaks in the castle made by the lances of the knights. What will the wonderful treasures revealed to us be like? They will not be like jewels, all polished and placed in regular shining rows, for myths were never fashioned as a jeweler would fashion his stones—all at once—into perfectly finished and beautiful shapes. No!—the imaginary contents of our castle which will best stand as a symbol or picture of all the myths of the whole world in all their wonderful variety will be an immense forest of almost countless kinds of trees. Under the trees there are many sorts of plants and flowers; and if we look closer we shall see that some of these trees and plants are ugly in shape, some are even decaying, but there are many most lovely to behold, and a few of the trees tower up above the others and are profusely decorated with many shining ornaments, making them look like Christmas trees. You will see at once that by using this symbol to stand for all the myths of the whole world I want to point out and make clear to you the important fact that myths were not made all at once as the jeweler polishes his stones, but they grew up gradually from small beginnings, like oaks from acorns, or pines from pine cones—and the soil in which they grew was the minds of primitive men ages and ages ago. Sometimes the trees of one land will look exceedingly like those in another land—in fact, being the same sort of trees, but differing somewhat in shape. Then the smaller plants and flowers are the symbols for many kinds of little mythical stories about every thing that you can think of, or rather that primitive man could think of, for he didn’t know about trolleys and telephones and automobiles, and so there are not any myths about such things as these. And the Christmas trees are the myths which have been enlarged and glorified by having myths from other lands added to them.