Myths, then, belong to that period of human progress in which the untaught mind regards “history as all a fairy tale.” Before the dawn of science, and the increase of knowledge by the general dissemination of books, men’s fancies respecting the past, and the uncertain conjectures of their nascent philosophy could be preserved only by these traditional and semi-poetical tales of the mythologists. To borrow the fine expression of Tacitus—_Fingunt simul creduntque_—“They at once fabricate and believe.” “The real and the ideal,” again says Mr. Grote, “were blended together in the primitive conceptions.… The myth passed unquestioned from the fact of its currency, and its harmony with existing sentiments and preconceptions.” So to the intensity of a fresh, undisciplined imagination, and the paucity of terms in the language yet in its extreme adolescence, the origin of a vast number of myths can easily be traced. “In those early days men looked at all things with the large open eyes of childish wonderment, and much of what they saw was incapable of any other than a metaphorical description at their hands. They had no words for the purpose, and if the language had been richer it would have responded less accurately to their thoughts, since they transferred their own feelings and sentiments to the world about them, and made themselves the measure of all things.” “Thus,” says one, “the hunter regarded the moon which glanced rapidly along the clouded heavens, as a beaming goddess with her nymphs,” and Sunbeams upon distant hills, Gilding space with shadows in their train, Might, with small help from fancy, be transferred Into fleet Oreads, sporting visibly.—_Wordsworth._ Among a race of unlettered, but intellectually active, stalwart men, on whose path science shed but a dim, uncertain light, even natural phenomena so imperfectly understood, and many things in the realm of the spiritual and unseen being imaginatively conceived, and described in metaphors, myths must abound. Nor is it wonderful that those belonging to a remote prehistoric age are sometimes shrouded in a veil of impenetrable mystery. We may not be able to reach their true meaning, since when personifications are so manifold, it is often impossible for us to tell just what was regarded as fancy and what was believed to be fact. It is worthy of remark that the same is as true of the grotesque incredible legends current among semi-barbarian tribes at the present day, as in the earliest Grecian myths. In many of them there is a substratum of facts, of which there was some rather shadowy knowledge; after some progress, and the introduction of letters among them, their guesses and imaginings that were uttered in metaphorical expressions not fully understood, are in a manner evaporated, or crystallize into dogmas that are accepted as parts of the tribal faith.