Between the traditions of real events, which are History,
and the pure myths, whose origin and development are being
brought more and more clearly into view in our own times
by the labours of Adalbert Kuhn and Max Muller, and their
school, there lie a mass of stories which may be called " Myths
of Observation." They are inferences from observed facts,
which take the form of positive assertions, and they differ
principally from the inductions of modern science in be'ng
much more generally crude and erroneous, and in taking to
themselves names of persons, and more or less of purely sub-
jective detail, which enables them to assume the appearance of
real history. When a savage builds upon the discovery of great
bones buried in the earth a story of a combat of the giants and
monsters whose remains they are, he constructs a Myth of Ob-
servation which may shape itself into the form of a historical



HISTORICAL TRADITIONS AND MYTHS OF OBSERVATION. 307

tradition, and be all the more puzzling for the portion of scien-
tific truth which it really con ains. The object of the present
chapter is to collect a quantity of evidence, bearing on the
problem how to separate Historical Traditions and Myths of
Observation from pure Myths, and from one another.
