is told in the myth expresses how each _single_ observation affects the mind of man. Hence the various modes in which the myth speaks of a phenomenon; viewing it from various positions, it constantly changes the names, and recognises different relations. Whoever finds contradictions in all this must not turn against the interpreter and reconstructor of the myth, but against the mind of man itself which created myths: his dispute lies with the latter, not with the method of mythological science. Jacob’s twelve sons, who are mentioned by name in the document in Genesis, can hardly have had their separate existence acknowledged at so early an age as that of the myth which comprised them under the general name of the twelve sons of the starry sky. Fathers of tribes with twelve or thirteen children (even in the numeration of Jacob’s children this uncertainty of number occurs) are frequently met with in Biblical genealogies, e.g. Joktan, Nahor, and Ishmael. The same tendency towards the number twelve is encountered in genealogies in other parts of the world. In the Ojibwa legend Getube has twelve children, of whom the eldest is called Mujekewis, and the youngest, who obtains great power and successfully repels the evil spirits, Wa-jeeg-e-wa-kon-ay.[494] At a later time, when a harmonising of the legendary matter, not from a set purpose, but from the acknowledged tendency of the human mind to bridge over contradictions, was going on, then a desire was felt to know the names of the twelve sons. When mythic consciousness and the stage when the mind was self-impelled to mythic conception were long passed, and the real meaning of names connected by mythology with certain deeds was no longer known, twelve such names, most of which had no longer any meaning, were taken at random and called Jacob’s twelve sons. Thus were obtained twelve names to answer the general proposition, ‘The Twelve form the Family of Jacob.’ Among these names there are true sons of Jacob, i.e. some who are declared by the myth itself to be so: here the genealogical narrator employed data derived from the myth. Next, there are some among them whom the myth treats not as sons of Jacob but as sons of his wives. For we must not forget that when Joseph is said to be son of Rachel, the myth does not trouble itself to ask who the father was. The conception that ‘the Rain is the son of the Cloud,’ which is expounded in the mythic description of Joseph’s birth, is not the result of any consideration of the names of the two parents who gave life to him; but the myth-former, seeing the cloud heavy with rain and observing the rain dripping from its lap, combined these two impressions and said, ‘The Cloud has borne the Rain.’ The later genealogical story could then easily find a father for the children of Zilpah, Rachel and others, in him whom the myth introduces as husband of those female figures.