for Elôhîm.’ But again, the myth could take this form only in a time when the religious idea of Elôhîm had already gained such full life in the Hebrew people as to impel them to sacrifice what was dearest to them. When the myth had this form, accordingly, there was in Canaan already a monotheistic religion, the centre of which was Elôhîm the object of adoration, while the ancestors of the Hebrew people were his pious servants and favourites. This coating also must be stripped off, if we wish to trace the myth analytically to its primitive form. When we have stripped off the religious coating, we have still not yet penetrated to the central germ; for, independently of any religious tendency, Abraham remains as Patriarch, as a national figure; and this brings us into the historical epoch when the Hebrew people, attaining to a consciousness of national peculiarity and opposition to the surrounding Canaanitish peoples, constructed their own early history. Accordingly, the national coating has now to be thrown off; and then Abraham meets us as a (so to say) cosmopolitan figure—not yet transformed into the likeness of one nation, but still as a person, an individual. This stage of mythic development brings us to the psychological process which caused the mythological _persons_ to come forth at the beginning; and behind this stage we find the original form of the myth: ‘Abram kills his son Isaac’ At that primitive stage these expressions naturally signified no more than the words imply. ‘אַבְרָם Abh Râm, the _Lofty Father_, kills his son יִצְחָק Yiṣchâḳ, the _Laugher_.’ The Nightly Heaven and the Sun, or the Sunset, child of the Night,[119] fell into a strife in the evening, the result of which is that the Lofty Father kills his child; the day must give way to night. In the above example we have endeavoured to give a short sketch, less of the progress of development of the Hebrew myth, than of the method by which, observing the most prominent forces in the historical development of the intellectual life of the Hebrews, we can rise by analysis from the latest form of the myths to the original. Having reached this, we must confide ourselves to the guidance of the Science of Language; for that particular source for mythic inquiry which was treated in § 5 of the preceding chapter has chiefly to do with the primitive form of the myth. The myth is accompanied through all its stages of development by the same constant terms of language: these are, accordingly, the oldest matter for investigation on the mythological field. Thus, taking it all together, the Method of mythic investigation turns on three hinges: 1. Psychology, 2. History, 3. Science of Language. ----- Footnote 104: ‘Die andere _culturhistorisch_.’ I am obliged to render this convenient adjective by a circumlocution, as ‘civilisation-historical’ would be too cumbrous and hardly intelligible.—TR. Footnote 105: