"[38-2]
Penetrated with the truth of these views, all artificial divisions into
tropical or temperate, civilized or barbarous, will in the present work,
so far as possible, be avoided, and the race will be studied as a unit,
its religion as the development of ideas common to all its members, and
its myths as the garb thrown around these ideas by imaginations more or
less fertile, but seeking everywhere to embody the same notions.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE.
As the subject of American mythology is a new one to most readers,
and as in its discussion everything depends on a careful selection
of authorities, it is well at the outset to review very briefly
what has already been written upon it, and to assign the relative
amount of weight that in the following pages will be given to the
works most frequently quoted. The conclusions I have arrived at are
so different from those who have previously touched upon the topic
that such a step seems doubly advisable.
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