ABSTRACT
The myth pre-exists the gods, and it is in this totemic sphere that the root of mythic creation must be sought. On the evidence of classical mythology and the plastic commentaries on it which we have had from modern painters in search of picturesque or 'poetic' subjects, we have for a long time believed that myths were nothing but stories about gods, descents into Hell, heroic fights. The myth is neither 'true' nor 'false'; it is born, beyond our logic's horizon, in that 'pang' which comes upon man in the midst of things. Myths of causality or origin-myths nevertheless seem to invoke, like the ancient cosmologies, some fixed periods and moments. The rationalisation which fixes this long maturation removes the ancestral female from the myth of life, to set her up as the goddess of fertility. The male ancestor, exalted through hero and chief, grows in power, and becomes a god.
