the various peoples who use the legend; it is in this immutable name that the continuity of ideas lies, which nothing obliterates, and which traverses the centuries, and connects the mythologies of countries as totally distinct as India, Greece, and Ireland. But we must remember that all that is taken for etymology is not always so; the explanations which Homer gives of the names of the divinities only proves that at his time the original meaning had been forgotten. To us who now know the true principles of mythology, it is clear that it represents a prehistoric period of language, and the light it throws on the times that followed, has the same importance with regard to the study of the human mind, that geology and paleontology have for the knowledge of the earth. Sometimes we come upon difficulties of another kind when we seek to translate the language of the poets into our modern forms of thought and speech. In consequence of the absence of merely auxiliary words in mythological language, each word, whether noun or verb, had its full original power, it was heavy and unwieldy, it said more than it ought to say. Here is an example: _Nyx_ (night), the mother of _Moros_ (fate), of _Ker_ (destruction), of _Thanatos_ (death), of _Hypnos_ (sleep), and of the _Oneïroi_ (dreams), and these,--her progeny, _Night_ is said, by the poet, to have borne without a father. She has also other children: _Momos_ (blame), _Oizys_ (woe), the _Hesperides_, which are the evening stars, _Nemesis_ (vengeance), _Apate_ (fraud), _Philotes_ (lust), _Geras_ (old age), and _Eris_ (strife). Now let us use our modern expressions. “The stars are seen as the night approaches,” “we sleep, we dream, we die,” “we run into danger during night,” “nightly revels lead to strife, angry discussions, and woe,” “many nights bring old age, and at last death,” “an evil deed concealed at first by the darkness of night will at last be revealed by the day,” “night herself will be revenged on the criminal”; and we have translated the language of Hesiod, a language to a great extent understood by the people to whom it was addressed many hundreds of years ago, and it is made comprehensible to us by the addition of some auxiliary words. This is hardly mythological language, but rather a poetical and proverbial kind of expression known to all poets whether modern or ancient, and frequently to be found in the language of common people when it becomes proverbial.