Such parallelisms, to reach satisfactory results, should be attempted only by those who have studied the Oriental religions in their original sources, and thus are not to be deceived by superficial resemblances.
The term "comparative mythology" reaches hardly far enough to cover all that I have aimed at.

The professional mythologist thinks he has completed his task when he has traced a myth through its transformations in story and language back to the natural phenomena of which it was the expression.
This external history is essential.

But deeper than that lies the study of the influence of the myth on the individual and national mind, on the progress and destiny of those who believed it, in other words, its true _religious_ import.

I have endeavored, also, to take some account of this.
The usual statement is that tribes in the intellectual condition of those I am dealing with rest their religion on a worship of external phenomena.
In contradiction to this, I advance various arguments to show that their chief god was not identified with any objective natural process, but was human in nature, benignant in character, loved rather than feared, and that his worship carried with it the germs of the development of benevolent emotions and sound ethical principles.
_Media, Pa., Oct., 1882._ CONTENTS..