The Prehistoric Gods I49
may say with inevitable logic. The perplexed search after a first man, a first pair; the propagation of man ; and man’s destiny after death is more subjective, yet carried out with clever realism. There is no better way until we come to the clarified, yet intrinsically no less impotent philosophies of a much later time. Because all these myths, fancies, poems, and chains of logic are founded on the outer universe and on human consciousness, therefore we are reasonably sure that they are real. This is an even more valu~ able guaranty than philological exactness and his- torical sense which, of course, should strengthen the hands of the trained investigator in every detail. In my opinion the mental sanity of Comparative Mythology is its brief to practise the profession of a true science; and it is permissible to say with re— newed emphasis that the religion of the Veda is the child in direct succession of the prehistoric ideas which this science calls out from the dim past.
