The History of Magic PDF

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But it is not merely the question of a Grecian mythology every original race has its mythology the Indians, the Egyptians, the Scandinavians, and the Germans.

Every where it stands prior to history, and possesses a universal internal resemblance, although the remaining means of under standing these mythologies are greater or less in different countries.

The German mythology, for instance, is of all others the poorest and most circumscribed in the means of demonstrating its original completeness.

Grimm laments this in his German Mythology Here on a dead ground stand trees whose topmost boughs bear green leaves there the ground is still verdant below, but all the trees are dried up.

Seldom are we able to call up to us shapes from the far distant twilight into sufficient distinctness to be able to recognise and describe them.

But as the imagi nation originally embodied objective things and expressive signs and symbols, which is its essential function, the myths have everywhere sprung out of the symbolising, poetical fantasy, and were not first invented by Homer and Hesiod and their age.

Mythology originated in a necessity of nature, and in accordance with ideas which nations enter tained of the world, and with the spirit of their language.