How Mythology becomes Religion is shown most clearly by _Dualism_. Nothing can be less correct than the belief that the dualistic system of religion had from its very origin an ethical meaning. This, as well as the limitation of Dualism to Irân and Babylon,[66] is refuted by the frequent occurrence of the dualistic conception of the world among the most various savage peoples.[67] The ethical significance of Dualism is decidedly secondary; it is the form of development of the main theme of all mythology, the relation of light to darkness, proper to a higher stage of culture. Many mythological fancies, and especially the Sun’s voyage by ship in the nether world, became religious eschatological ideas when the mythical meaning itself was lost from the mind, and gave rise to new ideas of life in the nether world, resurrection, ascent to heaven, &c.; this was first established in reference to the old Egyptian mythology.[68] So also Dualism as it appears in Irân is a myth that has taken an ethical sense. This is best seen in the facts that the northern Algonquins, with whom Dualism is almost as fixed a principle as in Irân, call the good and evil principles respectively Sun and Moon, and that among the Hurons the Evil principle is the grand-mother of the Good:[69] the Night is the mother or grand-mother, or, in general, the ancestress of the Day. Here religious dualism has not quite put off the character of its origin in Mythology. On the other hand, the Iranic system at a very early age (that of the Avesta) elevated Dualism into the region of pure morals, and yet at a later (the epic period) formed out of the original myth the localised story of the war of Zohak against Ferîdûn.[70] That Dualism as a religious conception is a further development of the myth, and not first excited by the moral problem of the strife of the good against the evil, becomes evident also from the consideration of a peculiar form of dualistic religion which we find in many Semitic nations. We here frequently find a deity regarded as male, who has a corresponding female to represent, as it were, the reverse side of the same natural force, and then the two forces unite to produce a natural phenomenon. So, for instance, Sun and Earth, Baal and Mylitta, the factors of procreation. This likewise is a dualistic tendency, in which however the two deities are not represented as mutually hostile. We are justified in placing this phenomenon in the chapter on Dualism, because two such deities in the course of history are often joined together into one.[71] Now this side of dualistic religion can be traced back only to Mythology as its source and point of departure. The Hebrew myth of Judah and Tamar, which we shall consider further on (Chap. V., § 14), exhibits a mythical prototype of such dualistic views of religion. ----- Footnote 1: