mother-tongue for the purpose of University lectures, and then translated it myself into German. Some parts of these essays have been already published in Hungarian, in a different connexion and with special reference to linguistic results, in the first and second parts of Vol. XII. of the _Nyelvtudományi Közlemények_ (Philological Essays), edited by Paul Hunfalvy for the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. In adducing Aryan parallels, I am very far from thinking that where the Hebrew exhibits a striking similarity to something Aryan it has borrowed from the latter, or that, as a recent scholar tried to make out, the Hebrews themselves were originally Aryans, who afterwards took a Semitic language and preserved their Aryan habits of thought. I start from the conviction that the Myth is something universal, that the faculty of forming it cannot _a priori_ be denied to any race as such, and that the coincidence of mythical ideas and modes of expression is the result of the uniformity of the psychological process which is the foundation of the creation of myths in all races; and this very uniformity of mythical ideas may consequently serve to psychologists as an argument for the thesis of the psychological uniformity of all races.[3] ‘Where no historical transference of myths can be proved,’ says Bastian very justly,[4] ‘the uniformity must be referred to the organic law of the growth of the mind, which will everywhere put forth similar products, corresponding and alike, but variously modified by surrounding influences.’ The oldest history of paleography exhibits on the ideographic and figurative stage the most striking similarities in the modes of apperception belonging to nations of the most various races. Lenormant says: ‘Nous pourrions faire voir, si nous voulions nous laisser aller à la tentation d’entreprendre un petit traité de l’écriture symbolique chez les différents peuples, comment certaines métaphores naturelles ont été conçues spontanément par plusieurs races diverses sans communication les unes avec les autres, et comment, par suite, le même symbole se retrouve avec le même sens dans plusieurs systèmes d’origine tout-à-fait indépendante. L’exemple le plus frappant peut-être de ce genre est celui du symbole de l’abeille, qui, ainsi que nous venons de le dire, signifie Roi dans les hiéroglyphes égyptiens, et se reconnaît encore clairement dans le type le plus ancien de l’idéogramme doué du même sens dans le cunéiforme anarien.’[5] The same lesson is taught by Prehistoric Archeology, the comparative study of which among the various races would present very instructive examples. In our museums we see identical implements used by men of the most various races at the same primitive stage of civilisation,[6] yet in this case the idea of one having borrowed from another enters no one’s head. Why should we be surprised at meeting with the very same phenomenon in Comparative Mythology?