localisation—preserved a cosmopolitan character; for Zeus, Indra, and others have no special national character. But the figures of the Hebrew myths at this period became the national progenitors of the Hebrew people, and the mythology itself the national primeval history of the Hebrews before their settlement in the land of Canaan. Abhrâm, the ‘High Father,’ is converted into Abhrâhâm, the abh hamôn gôyîm, ‘Father of a mass of Nations,’ and at the same time into hâ-ʿIbhrî, ‘the Hebrew’ (Gen. XVII. 4, 5, XIV. 13); and all other figures of the myth are made to subserve the national idea. On the one hand, they are eager to have documentary proof of their nation’s noble origin and glorious past; on the other, they nourish a feeling of opposition towards other nationalities, on which they cast shame. The nation of Edom receives Esau as ancestor: and the reminiscence of nomadic conceptions which draws their sympathy towards Jacob, the persecuted brother, and turns with antipathy away from the red solar hunter, is again revived in the service of the formation of a national myth which paints Esau in the most repulsive colours. The old mythological incest of Lot’s daughters is made the cause of the origin of two Canaanitish tribes, the Ammonites and the Moabites.[637] The Philistines also are dragged through this story-making process of national antagonism. The primeval heavenly ‘Father-King’ Abimelek, who conceives a warm love for the wife of the Morning-sky and thinks to carry her off, is made a king of the Philistines, and Shechem, the Early Morning, the seducer of Dinah, is converted into a prince of the Hivvites. In the story of Dinah, as given in Genesis, we have an especially eloquent testimony to the national animosity to which this conversion of the myth owes its origin. This aspect of the story has been very fully proved by a Dutch scholar, Dr. Oort. It exhibits in the people newly awakened to national self-consciousness a tendency to abominate all connexion with the Canaanites, and introduces as representatives or types of this tendency the brothers Simeon and Levi, the zealots for the purity of the Hebrew family.[638] Thus we see that the national treatment of the myth is not merely of the nature of narrative, but at the same time also instructive or didactic. Ham, the unworthy son who reveals the nakedness of the solar hero, is regarded as the denier of his father and made the ancestor of all the Canaanites, and visited by his father’s curse. ‘And Noah awoke from his wine and learned what his youngest son had done to him. And he said, Cursed be Canaan, let him be a slave of slaves to his brethren. And he said, Blessed be Jahveh, the God of Shem, and let Canaan be a slave to them’ (Gen. IX. 24–26). We see that the national passion turns especially on Canaan: for the story makes the offended father curse, not the offender Ham, but Canaan, who is in the ethnographical genealogy only his grandson. It is impossible to be blind