The term "comparative mythology" reaches hardly far enough to cover all that I have aimed at. The professional mythologist thinks he has completed his task when he has traced a myth through its transformations in story and language back to the natural phenomena of which it was the expression. This external history is essential. But deeper than that lies the study of the influence of the myth on the individual and national mind, on the progress and destiny of those who believed it, in other words, its true _religious_ import. I have endeavored, also, to take some account of this. The usual statement is that tribes in the intellectual condition of those I am dealing with rest their religion on a worship of external phenomena. In contradiction to this, I advance various arguments to show that their chief god was not identified with any objective natural process, but was human in nature, benignant in character, loved rather than feared, and that his worship carried with it the germs of the development of benevolent emotions and sound ethical principles. _Media, Pa., Oct., 1882._ CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY. Some Kind of Religion Found among all Men--Classifications of Religions--The Purpose of Religions--Religions of Rite and of Creed--The Myth Grows in the First of these--Intent and Meaning of the Myth. Processes of Myth Building in America--Personification, Paronyms and Homonyms--Otosis--Polyonomy--Henotheism--Borrowing--Rhetorical Figures--Abstract Expressions--Esoteric Teachings. Outlines of the Fundamental American Myth--The White Culture-hero and the Four Brothers--Interpretation of the Myth--Comparison with the Aryan Hermes Myth--With the Aryo-Semitic Cadmus Myth--With Osirian Myths--The Myth of the Virgin Mother--The Interpretation thus Supported. CHAPTER II. THE HERO-GODS OF THE ALGONKINS AND IROQUOIS. §1. _The Algonkin Myth of Michabo._ The Myth of the Giant Rabbit--The Rabbit Creates the World--He Marries the Muskrat--Becomes the All-Father--Derivation of Michabo--of Wajashk, the Musk-rat--The Myth Explained--The Light-God as God of the East--The Four Divine Brothers--Myth of the Huarochiris--The Day-Makers--Michabo's Contests with His Father and Brother--Explanation of These--The Symbolic Flint Stone--Michabo Destroys the Serpent King--Meaning of this Myth--Relations of the Light-God and Wind-God--Michabo as God of Waters and Fertility--Represented as a Bearded Man. §2. _The Iroquois Myth of Ioskeha._ The Creation of the Earth--The Miraculous Birth of Ioskeha--He Overcomes his Brother Tawiscara--Creates and Teaches Mankind--Visits his People--His Grandmother Ataensic--Ioskeha as Father of his Mother--Similar Conceptions in Egyptian Myths--Derivation of Ioskeha and Ataensic--Ioskeha as Tharonhiawakon, the Sky Supporter--His Brother Tawiscara or Tehotennhiaron Identified--Similarity to Algonkin Myths. CHAPTER III. THE HERO-GOD OP THE AZTEC TRIBES. §1. _The Two Antagonists._