The construction of such a name as Eos does not differ materially from that of any other name, but as all roots expressed at the first denote action, it follows that for all an agent must be found; the name of Eos in Sanscrit is Ushas, dawn, or “the bright one” from the root Vas, to shine; thus Eos meant originally “he or she shines.” But who was “he” or “she”? Thus the inevitable myth is evolved. For us the dawn is only the natural illumination of the sky, the brightness of the morning; our ancestors received a different impression by the break of day. After having coined a word meaning “he or she shines,” that is the light, or Eos, the Greeks continued to portray each step of Eos as she preceded the appearance of the sun on the celestial vault; “Eos is followed by the sun--is loved by the sun”; she is conceived as a bright and beautiful woman; if she appeared veiled in clouds, she would be considered as a veiled bride; thus the epithets and relationships showered on Eos become intelligible, she is the daughter of Hyperion, thus her father would be the high heaven, since _hyper_ corresponds to the Latin _super_; she is the sister of Helios and Selene, the sun and the moon. As soon as a name such as Eos was first enunciated and used in daily conversation, it grew and gathered new materials round itself; all the names surrounding Eos in Greek and Aurora in Latin show us how inevitably what we call mythology springs up from the soil of language. Even such simple sentences as “Eos appears, disappears, or dies” are changed at once into myth, fable, and legend, and it soon becomes impossible to draw a line between what is simple language and what is myth. We do not unfortunately always possess the original form of each legend as it first passed from mouth to mouth in the towns and country; thus our chief sources are the ancient chroniclers, who took mythology for history, and used only so much of it as answered their purpose, and these accounts do not reach us at first hand. We find a legend in Greek mythology which has much exercised the learned; the nymph Daphne flies before Phœbus Apollo, her mother, the earth, moved by compassion, takes her to her bosom, and immediately a laurel appears and fills the abyss into which Daphne had vanished. The mythologists asked themselves what could be the meaning of this; the more phlegmatic amongst them considered that it had no special meaning at all, but was simply to be looked upon as a fable; why seek further for a hidden import? Why? Because people do not relate such stories concerning their gods and heroes without some good motive.