I have exhibited Bunsen’s position at some length, because, with all his advanced ideas on the essence and significance of Mythology, he still to this day dominates the minds of those who, while admitting the possibility of Semitic Mythology, are up in arms against the existence of Hebrew myths. § 5. Nevertheless, I hope it is clear from the above that Hebrew mythology is _a priori_ possible. The following chapters will give occasion to prove in what this existence consists. It will then appear that the Hebrew myths, necessarily owing their existence to the same psychological operation as the Aryan or the so-called Turanian, must consequently have the same original signification as these. Hence the figures of Hebrew mythology denote the very natural phenomena whose appellations lie before us in those figures’ names. These names, however, are _not symbolic_,[65] but are antiquated appellatives of the natural phenomena denoted by them, just as the words, _Sun_, _Moon_, _Rain_, &c. This must be distinctly proclaimed, as some who misunderstand the modern method of Mythology pervert it in a false and antiquated way by the introduction of symbolism. We must also beware of confounding the original Myth with Religion or, still worse, with the Consciousness of God. This confusion is the source of most of the erroneous estimates and notions of Mythology, which even the latest methods of investigating myths has not entirely removed. The very earliest activity of the human intellect can only work upon what falls immediately under the cognisance of the senses, and upon what through its frequency and the regularity of its return prompts men most readily to speech. Such things are the daily natural phenomena, the change of light and darkness, of rain and sunshine, and all that accompanies these changes. What primitive man spoke on these things, is the Myth. It is psychologically impossible that the earliest activity of the human mind should have been anything else but this. We cannot speak of a consciousness of God, a _sensus numinis_, as existing in the earliest Mythological period. Not till later, when some process in the history of language gives the ancient myths a new direction, do they turn into either History or Religion. The latter always arises out of the materials of Mythology, and then finds its historical task to be to work itself upwards into independence. Then, while the mythology out of which it sprang is growing less and less intelligible, and therefore also less and less expressive, Religion must in the progress of its development sever its connexion with Mythology, and unite itself with the scientific consciousness, which now occupies the place of the mythological.