In respect of art a similar inspiration, aid, instruction, are afforded by the study. This volume is liberally supplied with cuts of famous paintings and sculptures of mythical subjects. Familiarity with specimens of ancient art, even through the medium of photography and engraving, must not only cultivate the historic sense but stimulate the æsthetic. The cruder efforts of the ancients, no less than the more refined, are windows through which we view the ancient mind. The frequent contemplation of their nobler efforts and of the modern masterpieces here reproduced may avail to lift some from the level of apathy or provinciality in matters of imagination; some it may spur to a study of the originals, some to artistic creation. A public which, from year to year, displays a deeper interest in the art of foreign lands will despise no auxiliary to a more intelligent appreciation of that art. A country whose future in artistic achievement cannot be prophesied in a paragraph will more and more truly recognize the value of a study that is an introduction to much that is best in art as it exists. 3. Furthermore, it must be borne in mind that the myths of the ancients, as the earliest literary crystallization of social order and religious fear, record the incipient history of religious ideals and of moral conduct. For though ethnologists may insist that to search for truth _in_ mythology is vain, the best of them will grant that to search for truth _through_ mythology is wise and profitable. If we accept the statement (often stretched beyond its proper limit) that mythology is primitive philosophy, and the other statement that an ancient philosophy never dies, but by process of internal growth, of modification, and of accretion acquires a purer spirit and a new and higher form,--then, since truth was never yet conceived of error (_ex nihilo nihil fit_), the truth now recognized, while it did not exist in that fraction of myth which happens to be irrational, existed as an archetypal impulse,--set the myth in motion, and, as a process refining the mind of man, tended steadily to eliminate from primitive philosophy (that is, from the myths that embodied primitive philosophy) the savage, ephemeral, and irrational element. For all myths spring from the universal and inalienable desire to know, to enjoy, to teach. These impulses of knowledge, of imaginative relaxation, of conduct, are the throbbing of the heart of reason; the first or the second is the primal pulse of every myth, and to the life of every myth each impulse may be, at some period, contributory. This study has led men to trace soberly the progress of their kind from the twilight of gray conjecture to the dawn of spiritual conviction and rational individuality; to discern a continuity of thought, an outward reach of imagination, an upward lift of moral and religious ideas; to confess the brotherhood of humanity and an inspiring purpose which holds good for every race and through all time.