and that accordingly the configuration of the myth is a faithful mirror of the stage of civilisation at which it has taken this particular configuration. Obviously therefore, we can duly estimate the myth through all its stages of development only in connexion with a comprehensive view over the historical development of the civilisation of the nation itself. And to gain this view we must especially attend to those phenomena which might produce an altered direction of the mind, and thus impress a new form on the myth also. But as in the methodical observation of the intellectual development of a nation in the course of its history psychological points of view must again occupy the foreground, we may assert that psychological observation must take up a prominent position in the method of mythological investigation; for the question will always be, What transformation does this or that historical vicissitude produce in that which makes up the sum of the human mind? The answer will however evidently turn out different according to the nature of these historical vicissitudes. But there is one special step of transformation which stands earlier than and in no connexion with the separate history of the nation, and is produced by a purely psychological operation. This transformation is therefore common to all myths—so much so that most inquirers, and especially Max Müller, make the life of the myth to begin only at this stage. It is the stage of mental development which is signalised by a remarkable fact in the history of language: viz., that an endless multitude of names, bestowed upon the phenomena and processes of nature, in virtue of various features of which there is a preponderating consciousness at the moment of perception, gradually lose their meaning; while some few features of the total phenomenon are retained, to represent all those particular factors and supply comprehensive general terms for their sum total. For example, the Sun has at first a countless number of designations. It is not merely that, in its various aspects, the Sun is treated as the subject of detached observation unrelated in thought to that of other aspects of the same Sun; but the very same aspect, on repeated notice, is regarded as something different every time, and is accordingly denoted by other names. In other words, borrowed from the terminology of modern psychology, no _fusion_ (_Verflechtung_) has yet been effected. Long-continued observation of the same aspects gives consciousness of their identity under repetition, and makes possible the fusion of their ideas. Next, by a further advance in development, the psychological change emerges, through which the various features of the same phenomenon cease to be essential difference-marks in the idea, and, dropping into the background, give place to a general conception gained by their fusion, an aggregate of fusion (_Verflechtungsmasse_), the product of often-repeated