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There are two general classes of myths: the primitive-tribal and the artificial-literary, or myths of growth and myths of art.

From the point of view of ethnology, the myth of growth is primitive philosophy, and represents racial anthropomorphic thinking concerning the universe. Anthropomorphic is a term derived from the Greek ἄνθρωπος, meaning man, and μορφἠ, meaning shape or form, and is used to describe the tendency of people to represent invisible forces as having human form (for example, the Deity), or natural forces like fire and wind as being animate, volitional agents. It is probably true that, at a very early stage in the development of both the individual and the race, every object is looked upon as having life; and later, if any distinction is made between animate and inanimate, spirits are yet regarded as agents controlling the inanimate and causing changes therein. A myth of growth is the verbal expression of this attitude of the mind of a people in its wider and deeper imaginings.

Doubtless after the first or second repetition of a myth, which some seer of a tribe chants in rude verse, the primitive listener is confused between fact and fancy. The non-essential incidents which the narrator adds from sheer love of making up a story are not distinguished from the incidents that really express the working of natural forces. So it happens that, in the time between the first starting up of the account and the analysis and explanation of it by some philosopher, a narrative handed down from father to son is believed in, word for word, as religious truth, though gaining details and losing its original meaning as it goes. As some one has said, it was because the Greeks had forgotten that Zeus meant the bright sky that they could talk of him as a king ruling a company of manlike deities on Mount Olympus.

There are many beautiful myths existing to-day in prose and poetry. In the tribal species, there is the great mass of Greek and Roman early religious stories and there are the Oriental and the Norse cycles. In the artificial group there are the later Greek and Roman myths like those devised by Plato and Plutarch, and there are our more modern beautiful creations with myth elements like Milton's "Comus" and many of the poems of Keats, where not only the incidents are newly made but the deities also. In prose we have the delightful "Wonder Book," which Hawthorne prepared for children. We have become so familiar with "Paradise Lost" that we hardly realize that it is essentially myth—a great seer's expression of the anthropomorphism of his people. Like a true bard of old, Milton added much also to his people's thinking on the universe. How much he added we see fully only when we deliberately compare the extension and concreteness of his account with the meagerness of the Hebrew Scriptures.

Myth age not a past epoch

An error we are liable to fall into concerning myths is that of presuming that they are wholly things of the past; that nowadays nobody believes in them or tells them. In fact, many persons and many tribes believe in them and tell them. The myth age is not a past epoch, but a condition of thinking. It is always present somewhere and present to some extent always among all races. The primitive tribes of the Philippines believe implicitly in their myths. The Bontoc Igorots, for example, tell how the Moon woman, Kabigat, cut off the head of a child of the Sun man, Chal-chal, and thus taught head-hunting to earth people; some of them tell, too, how Coling, the Serpent Eagle, was made, and happens to be always hovering over their pueblo. Even the youngest child knows how the rice-bird came about, and why an Igorot never harms O-wug, the snake. These stories are being gathered to-day by American scientists and are being written down for the first time. The native college students of the Islands have joined in a movement to preserve the traditions of the more civilized tribes also, and are industriously putting into written form the stories of their people. Most of these are not beliefs that are past, but beliefs about the past—a distinction noteworthy to the student of myths. Little children of all races are naturally in a myth age, and many of their imaginings are as beautiful as those of the old Greeks, and, if made known, would be as contributive to literature, I dare say. Poets are but grown-up children to whom Nature makes a continued concrete appeal, and they are always thinking myth-wise, we well know.

So it happens that even the most learned man is willing to listen to a new myth. All the reader demands is that it shall be either a scientifically made record of some present tribal belief or a beautiful and philosophical interpretation of the workings of nature—such a one as a simple, early pagan, but poetic and essentially refined, mind might imagine. Plato's myths were advisedly artificial. He deliberately set out to modify and improve the government of his time by means of religious stories, and he begged the other philosophers to attempt the like also. He gave his magnificent "Vision of Er" as an example of what might be done.

How traditional myths are collected

If one wishes to collect traditional myths among a primitive people, this is in general the way he proceeds: He calls to his aid the more elderly folk and the little children—those that have time and inclination to talk. If he can not speak their dialect, he obtains an interpreter—if possible, one very intimate and sociable with the tribe. Then he himself tries to get into good fellowship with all, and to induce free and natural talking. He asks for tales of the sun and moon, the wind and the rain, grasses, flowers, birds, clouds, mountain-systems, river-chains, lightning, thunder, and whatever else their gods have charge of. He asks about the relation of these gods with the deities of neighboring peoples—which, if any, are to be feared and why. Then he makes note of as many historical facts as he can about the tribe—where it first lived, what are the topographical features of the remote and the immediate places of abode, how powerful the warriors are, what respect they command from outsiders, what are considered most honored occupations, and so on. These facts are not to go explicitly into the story, but are to form the background of explanation if he cares to seek or give one. Then, too, they may aid him in making a happy translation of the primitive oral narrative. The aim of the collector, however, is accuracy rather than beauty, though beauty may be present in his versions.

How original myths are composed

The writer of an original myth, on the other hand, tries to make his diction as exquisite as he can without affectation. He proceeds somewhat differently, though with no less forethought. If he wishes to use gods and goddesses already known, he attempts not to violate the generally accepted notions of their characteristics. He bears in mind that the beings of myths are large, ample, superhuman, of the race of the infinite. Above mortals, they rule mortals or ignore them. The gods are never petty, though they may be trivial. They belong to the over-world. They are essential: they make day and night, the coming of the seasons, the roll of the ocean, the rising and setting of the constellations. Connected with them too, of course, he knows, are the lesser events of Nature's activity, the speaking of echo, the blooming of the slender narcissus at the edge of the pool, the drooping of the poplars. Hence the writer of a myth of art modifies or adds, but avoids making radical changes. If he chooses wholly to invent his deities, he picks out for each a definite phenomenon and keeps it steadily in mind in order that his created personage may be an appropriate one to perform the well-known actions of the natural force he is explaining. He makes the deeds of his beings far-reaching in result and does not forget to give them euphonious and suggestive names.

Difference between myth and allegory

There is a difference between myth and allegory as narratives, although myth is fundamentally allegorical in the broad sense of the term. The actors of myth are rather representative than figurative. Being grander they are at once more simple and dignified than those of allegory. The gods are not thin abstractions raised to concreteness, but are powerful forces reduced to the likeness of men.

Pure myth is different from pure legend likewise, though legend may have gods in it. Legend is generally confined to a particular person or event, or is connected with a definite spot and a limited result; whereas myth deals with universal phenomena.

Working definition of myth

The collector or composer of myths, accordingly, posits for himself some such working definition as this: A myth is a story accounting in a fanciful way for a far-reaching natural phenomenon. The basis on which the narrator proceeds is emphatically not science, but imagination and philosophy. He pictures the activities of the universe as the conduct of personal beings, as gods and goddesses doing good or evil, creating and destroying, ruling man or ignoring him, punishing and rewarding.