Moses 13 Karna 15 Œdipus 18 Paris 20 Telephos 21 Perseus 22 Gilgamos 23 Kyros 24 Tristan 38 Romulus 40 Hercules 44 Jesus 47 Siegfried 53 Lohengrin 55 Index 95 THE MYTH OF THE BIRTH OF THE HERO [A PSYCHOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION OF MYTHOLOGY] INTRODUCTION The prominent civilized nations, such as the Babylonians, Egyptians, Hebrews, and Hindoos, the inhabitants of Iran and of Persia, the Greeks and the Romans as well as the Teutons and others, all began at an early stage to glorify their heroes, mythical princes and kings, founders of religions, dynasties, empires or cities, in brief their national heroes, in a number of poetic tales and legends. The history of the birth and of the early life of these personalities came to be especially invested with fantastic features, which in different nations even though widely separated by space and entirely independent of each other present a baffling similarity, or in part a literal correspondence. Many investigators have long been impressed with this fact, and one of the chief problems of mythical research still consists in the elucidation of the reason for the extensive analogies in the fundamental outlines of mythical tales, which are rendered still more enigmatical by the unanimity in certain details, and their reappearance in most of the mythical groupings.[1] The mythological theories, aiming at the explanation of these remarkable phenomena, are, in a general way, as follows: (1) The “Idea of the People,” propounded by Adolf Bastian[2] [1868]. This theory assumes the existence of _elementary thoughts_, so that the unanimity of the myths is a necessary sequence of the uniform disposition of the human mind, and the manner of its manifestation, which within certain limits is identical at all times and in all places. This interpretation was urgently advocated by Adolf Bauer[3] [1882], as accounting for the wide distribution of the hero myths.