“We must complete the explanation of another myth, that of the excrement of the cow considered as purifying. The moon, as aurora, yields ambrosia. It is considered to be a cow; the urine of this cow is ambrosia or holy water; he who drinks this water purifies himself, as the ambrosia which rains from the lunar ray and the aurora purifies and makes clear the path of the sky, which the shadows of night darken and contaminate. “The same virtue is attributed, moreover, to cow’s dung, a conception also derived from the cow, and given to the moon as well as to the morning aurora. These two cows are considered as making the earth fruitful by means of their ambrosial excrements; these excrements being also luminous, both those of the moon and those of the aurora are considered as purifiers. The ashes of these cows which their friend the heroine preserves are not ashes, but golden powder or golden flour (the golden cake again occurs in that flour or powder of gold which the witch demands from the hero in Russian stories) which, mixed with excrement, brings good fortune to the cunning robber-hero. “The ashes of the sacrificed, pregnant cow (i. e., the cow which dies after having given birth to a calf) were religiously preserved by the Romans in the Temple of Vesta with bean-stalks, which are used to fatten the earth sown with corn, as a means of expiation. Ovid mentions this rite. (Fasti, iv. 721.) The ashes of a cow are preserved both as a symbol of resurrection and as a means of purification.”—(“Zoöl. Mythol.,” De Gubernatis, vol. i. pp. 275-277.) The learned author overlooks in his argument that cows were sacrificed and worshipped in India before they were transferred to the Zodiac and to the symbolism of the elements.[35] “Religion, at its base, is the product of imagination working on early man’s wants and fears, and is in no sense supernatural or the result of any preconceived and deliberate thought or desire to work out a system of morals. It arose in each case from what appeared to be the pressing needs of the day or season on the man or his tribe. The codification and expansion of faiths would then be merely the slow outcome of the cogitations and teachings of reflective minds, working usually with a refining tendency on the aforesaid primitive Nature-worship, and in elucidation of its ideas, symbolism, and legends. Early rude worshippers could not grasp abstractions, nor follow sermons even if they had been preached, and certainly not recondite theories on what the West designates ‘Solar,’ and other theories.”—(“Rivers of Life,” Forlong, vol. i. p. 36.) “In the Shapast la Shayast (Sacred Books of the East, vol. v. part I.) much stress is laid on bull’s urine as a purifier.”—(Personal letter from Professor R. A. Oakes, Watertown, New York, April 20, 1888.)