I find this identification, it is true, only in later books, Tânâ de-bhê Elîyâ, c. 27; Sêder ʿôlâm, c. 21; see Halâkhôth gedôlôth (hilkhôth haspêd). In the Sêder had-dôrôth, under the year 2189, Beor is called son of Laban. On Laban see Chap. V. § 11. Besides the name Loḳmân, which in signification corresponds with Bileʿâm (Balaam), we find in the Preislamite genealogy of the Arabs, which in my opinion is largely mixed up with mythical names, the chief Balʿâʾu, who is said to have been a leper (Ibn Dureyd, _Kitâb al-ishtiḳâḳ_, p. 106. 8). It should be observed that this is a man’s name with the grammatical form of a feminine adjective. Footnote 101: See Chap V. § 10 end. Footnote 102: Sôṭâ, fol. 10. _a._ Footnote 103: See Excursus B. ----- CHAPTER III. _THE METHOD OF INVESTIGATING HEBREW MYTHS._ § 1. The method of investigation is intended to discover—how the original myth is to be reached through the sources described in the preceding chapter, how the primitive germ of the myth is to be freed from the husk which in the course of its growth has been formed around it, and further how the progress and lapse of this growth itself are to be recognised. Then we shall be enabled to determine how stratum upon stratum has fastened itself round the original myth until it reached that configuration which is the concrete material of our investigation. The development of the myth in any nation is mainly determined by two factors, which give to this development the direction actually taken. One group of these factors is _psychological_, the other belongs to the _history of civilisation_.[104] The psychological factors in the development of all myths are the same, not changing with the special character of the people whose myths form the subject of our consideration. For the same general laws everywhere determine the life of the soul; no difference in them is introduced by the ethnological life and the peculiarity of race of the people in question. There is a psychology of mankind, or as it was called when Lazarus introduced the science, a Psychology of Nations (_Völkerpsychologie_). This is not a contemplation of the modes in which the intellectual life of various nations exhibits itself as acting in opposite directions, but of the modes in which the same laws find their expression and validity in the intellectual life of the most various nations. But there is no special psychology of races. On the other hand, the factors belonging to the _history of civilisation_ are not everywhere alike, but are as various as the historical fates of the nations among themselves are various. We shall subsequently come back to the subject to show more fully that myths share in the historical vicissitudes of their nation, that they are always transformed in accordance with the stages of civilisation which the nation itself passes through in its historical development,