But looking more narrowly at the second member of the word,
it is clearly capable of another and very different interpretation, of
an interpretation which discloses at once the origin and the secret
meaning of the whole story of Michabo, in the light of which it appears
no longer the incoherent fable of savages, but a true myth, instinct
with nature, pregnant with matter, nowise inferior to those which
fascinate in the chants of the Rig Veda, or the weird pages of the Edda.
On a previous page I have emphasized with what might have seemed
superfluous force, how prominent in primitive mythology is the east, the
source of the morning, the day-spring on high, the cardinal point which
determines and controls all others. But I did not lay as much stress on
it as others have. "The whole theogony and philosophy of the ancient
world," says Max Mueller, "centred in the Dawn, the mother of the bright
gods, of the Sun in his various aspects, of the morn, the day, the
spring; herself the brilliant image and visage of immortality.
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