[825]. Further, a distinction must be made between general resemblances and minute agreement or complete identity; there may be a similarity so great as to force on us the hypothesis of imitation, and there may be general similarities that may be ascribed to ordinary human thought working in different places under similar conditions. In fact, the conditions of existence have not varied very greatly over the globe. There are differences of climate and soil and surface-configuration, but everywhere there have been the sky with the heavenly bodies, the sequence of day and night, sunshine and rain, hunting and fishing, trees, rivers, beasts and birds, and the cultivable soil; and as man's problem was everywhere the same—namely, how to put himself into good relation with his surroundings—and as his intellectual equipment was everywhere substantially the same, it would not be surprising if he should fall on similar methods of thought and procedure independently in various parts of the world. It was natural to early man to think of the sun as a ball of fire which had somehow been thrown up into the sky, and of the moon as associated with the sun as sister or wife or husband, and of the stars as children of these two. For creative agents early man had to look to the beings about him, particularly to beasts, birds, and insects. The process of creation was simple—the story usually amounts merely to saying that such and such a beast or other being made this or that object; and there is very rarely, if ever, a conception of an absolute beginning; almost always a reconstruction of existing material is assumed.
[826]. Both explanations of the resemblances in myths, it thus appears, are reasonable in themselves, and every case must be considered separately. That a community has borrowed one story does not prove borrowing in the case of any other story; and that a people has been a center of distribution of certain myths does not prove that it was the originator of all myths. These two propositions appear to be self-evident, but they have often been ignored in discussions of the provenance of mythical material.[1417]
[827]. The similarities in myths all over the world extend over the whole domain of religion. Myths may be divided into those which deal with the creation of the world and of man (cosmogonic), those which deal with the origins of tribes and nations (ethnogonic), those which refer to the origin of customs and institutions (sociogonic), and those which are based on the forms and movements of the heavenly bodies, clouds, winds, and so forth (solar, lunar, procellar, and so forth).
[828]. Cosmogonic myths.[1418] Among early tribes the creators are very often familiar animals, such as the coyote, the raven, the hare (North America), the wagtail (among the Ainu), the grasshopper (among the Bushmen)—in general, whatever animals appear to the men of a particular tribe to show skill and power. Reference is made above to the reasons which led early men to pay such high regard to the lower animals.[1419] But in more advanced savage communities the creative function is ascribed to a man, as among the Thompson River Indians and in Southeast Australia; in Central Australia the authors of creation or of the arrangement of things are beings who are indifferently men or animals, but are regarded as the ancestors of the tribes. In the higher religions the creators are nature gods and great gods, and finally the one God stands alone as creator.
[829]. The act of creation is commonly represented as a process. Mud is brought up from a pool, or an island is raised from the sea (the Maoris, the Redmen), and these are stretched out so as to meet the needs of men; or a dragon or a giant is cut to pieces and the various parts of the universe are made from the pieces (Babylonia, India, Scandinavia); or, in still later times, an unformed mass of water is conceived of as the original state out of which all things are fashioned (Babylonians, Hebrews, Hindus, Greeks); or the universe issues from an egg (the origin of the egg being left unexplained),[1420] or the earth is represented as the mother of all things (California). Elaborate cosmogonies are found in New Zealand (the Maoris), in North America (the Pawnees, the Lenâpé, and so forth), in Australia, and elsewhere. An interesting example is the Californian Achomāwi cosmogony. In the beginning, according to this scheme, were only the sea and the sky, and from the sky came down the Creator; or a cloud, at first tiny, grew large, condensed, and became the Silver-Gray Fox, the Creator, and out of a fog, which in like manner was condensed, came the Coyote, and these two made the earth and man.[1421]
[830]. In all these cases the creation is out of already existing material[1422] and the creator is really a culture-hero or transformer, a character that clings to deities in the most advanced religions, as the Egyptian, Babylonian, and Greek. The character of these early transformers and creators is that of the communities in which they originate. Morally they represent both the higher and the lower sides of life, and this is true in all periods—the Hindu Indra is as tricksy and unmoral as the North American Coyote, and the early form of Zeus resembles these and other savage figures.[1423] The conceptions of the creator grew more and more ethically good, but the lower representations continued to exist side by side with the higher.[1424]
[831]. It is not altogether strange that the two sorts of creative Powers should be early thought of as mutually antagonistic. The Maidu bad creator is constantly opposing and bringing to naught the work of his good rival, and their collision produces the actual state of things on the earth.[1425] It is probably by way of explanation of the evil in the world that in this myth the bad Coyote finally overcomes his rival. The resemblance of this scheme to the Mazdean dualism, except in the outcome, is obvious. For a full account of these systems we must await further information; but at present there is no ground for holding that the similarity is due to borrowing.
[832]. In various early cosmogonies the representation is found of an earlier race or an early world that had been destroyed, sometimes by a flood (Babylonia, India, Greece, Polynesia, North America, South America), sometimes in other ways.[1426] Flood stories probably arise from local inundations, and may therefore have been constructed independently in various regions. In some cases the general conditions favor the supposition of distribution from one point: it seems probable, for example, that the Babylonian flood story was adopted by the Canaanites and from them by the Hebrews (the supposition of common descent from an original Semitic myth is made improbable by the closeness of resemblance between the Babylonian and Hebrew forms); it may have passed to India, but the Hindu story may be accounted for from local conditions. But we know of no such intercourse between the Americas, Polynesia, and Western Asia, as would suggest a migration of the myth from the latter to the two former, though this is conceivable.
[833]. The origin of man is included in that of the world. He is made from clay or wooden figures or stones, or, as in Australia, out of a shapeless mass. The conception found in various parts of the world, that the present race of men was preceded by another, appears to be due sometimes to a real, though often confused, tradition of an earlier population, sometimes to a vague conception of the conflict and incompleteness in the world. Traditions of predecessors are found in various parts of the world. In North America—as, for example, among the Navahos—a part of the early history is the conflict with certain mighty and evil beings who made good life impossible—a semidualistic scheme.[1427] This view comes from the general disposition to conceive of the past as the time of mightier agencies, good and bad, than now exist.
[834]. A not uncommon representation is that man was originally not mortal, or that it was a question whether or not he should be mortal (death being generally regarded by early man as an abnormal event, produced by supernatural agency). In such cases mortality is brought about by an accident or an error: among the Maoris by a mistake of the hero Maui;[1428] among the Hebrews by the disobedience of the first man, or by his failure to eat of the tree of life; in South Africa by the accident that the messenger who was to announce immortality was outrun by one who announced mortality.[1429]