Myths and Dreams

The object of this book is to present in compendious form the evidence which myths and dreams supply as to primitive man’s interpretation of his own nature and of the external world, and more especially to indicate how evidence carries within itself the history of the origin and growth of beliefs in the supernatural. The examples are selected chiefly from barbaric races, as furnishing the nearest correspondences to the working of the mind in what may be called its “eocene” stage, but examples are also cited from civilised races, as witnessing to that continuity of ideas which is obscured by familiarity or ignored by prejudice. Had more illustrations been drawn from sources alike prolific, the evidence would have been swollen to undue dimensions without increasing its significance; as it is, repetition has been found needful here and there, under difficulty of entirely detaching arguments advanced in the two parts of this work: Such as: Solar Theory of Myth, Totemism: Belief in from Animal or Plants.