this progress in human culture and preserved and reclothed the same in myth for the mind. (_b_) We may connect with the above as a similar example of a yet further degradation of animalism the traditions of famous _huntings_, such as we find ascribed to heroes, and handed down as sacred to grateful memory. In these the slaying of animals which appear as injurious foes, such as the strangling of the Numean lion by Heracles, the slaying of the Lernean hydra, the hunting of the Caledonian boar are set forth as something famous, by means of which the heroes contended for godlike rank, whereas the Hindoos punished with death as a crime the slaughter of certain animals. Unquestionably there is a further interplay of symbolism in deeds of this kind or they lie at the base of them. In the case of Hercules there is the fact of the sun and its course, so that such heroic actions supply an essential aspect of symbolical interpretation. These myths are, however, at the same time accepted in their express significance as beneficial hunts and were consciously recognized as such by the Greeks. We must here again in a similar relation recall certain fables of Aesop, especially those already referred to of the dung beetle. The dung beetle, that primitive Egyptian symbol, in whose balls of dung the Egyptians or the interpreters of their religious conceptions saw the world balls, comes in Aesop again before Jupiter, and with the important change that the eagle does not respect his protector the hare. Aristophanes, on the other hand, has wholly made fun of him. (_c_) _Thirdly_, the degradation of the animal is directly indicated in many of the tales of metamorphosis as Ovid has delineated them for us in detail with grace and talent and fine traits of feeling and intuition, but also composed in a rambling way without their great and commanding ideal significance, treating them merely as the sport of mythos and external fact and failing to recognize a deeper significance. Such a deeper significance is, however, there, and we will consequently, now we mention the subject, make further allusion to it. For the most part the particular narratives are if we look at this material, quaint and primitive, not so much on account of the depraved condition of the culture, but rather, as in the Nibelungenlied, on account of the condition of a still raw nature. As far as the thirteenth book, according to their content, they are older than the Homeric tales; add to this they are a medley of cosmogony and heterogeneous elements of Phoenician, Phrygian, Egyptian symbolism, treated no doubt in a human way, but in such wise that the uncouth stock still remains, whereas the metamorphoses which enumerate tales of a later period subsequent to the Trojan war, although their material is also borrowed from fabulous times, clash awkwardly with the names of Ajax and Aeneas.