In some
cases, doubtless, the natives themselves came, in time, to confound the
symbol with the idea, by that familiar process of personification and
consequent debasement exemplified in the history of every religion; but
I do not believe that a single example could be found where an Indian
tribe had a tradition whose real purport was that man came by natural
process of descent from an ancestor, a brute.
The reflecting mind will not be offended at the contradictions in these
different myths, for a myth is, in one sense, a theory of natural
phenomena expressed in the form of a narrative. Often several
explanations seem equally satisfactory for the same fact, and the mind
hesitates to choose, and rather accepts them all than rejects any. Then,
again, an expression current as a metaphor by-and-by crystallizes into a
dogma, and becomes the nucleus of a new mythological growth. These are
familiar processes to one versed in such studies, and involve no logical
contradiction, because they are never required to be reconciled.
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