The age of myth, then, corresponds to a naive extension of human characteristics to natural phenomena. The world becomes a drama to which man holds the key in his own life. He feels himself surrounded by mysterious forces and agencies, far surpassing his own puny strength, and inevitably conceives them in analogy with his own activities. They differ not so much in how they work as in what they do. In this way, the gods were born into the world--and once born man has been unable to free himself from them. As he has grown in mental and moral stature, he has unconsciously reflected into them this increased knowledge and these higher ideals. And the process, once begun, has continued to the present. _Not until he has outgrown old fears and relinquished unwarranted hopes will these beliefs lose their power. Then and not till then, will reason be able to supplant mythology by knowledge._ {30} CHAPTER III STORIES OF CREATION In stories of creation we have the imagination of primitive man at work, trying to answer questions which it was no more prepared to answer than a child of seven is in a position to understand higher mathematics. The savage has an answer for every question because he has no idea of the difficulty of the problems involved. A name or a story will completely satisfy him because he is uncritical. Now the stories of creation, or cosmogonies, as they are technically called, are peculiarly interesting because they give us an insight into the concrete terms which the imagination was forced to use in its attempt to picture the past and the origin of things. Moreover, we can trace the changes these naive stories underwent as man's experience broadened and he was able to think more abstractly. We can become acquainted with the materials with which the poet-priest of the pre-scientific past worked to build himself a marvelous and soul-satisfying tale; and we are able, as history unrolls, to watch myth gradually pass into theology.