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The Prehistoric Gods
117

quarian will ignore such parallels as shows the story of the two "Sons of Heaven" with the Hindus, the Greeks, and the Letts,[1] or be so abstemious as to refrain from looking for reasonable motives for the creation of a myth that has so marked a physiognomy.

In brief, once more, there are two luminous sons of heaven, conceived as horsemen, and as helpers of men in all kinds of sore straits. They are in loving relation with another, feminine, heavenly divinity conceived as a "Sun-Maiden," or "Daughter of the Sun." This relation is crossed by another affair between the "Sun-Maiden" and the Moon. To conceptions of this sort the Indo-Europeans, before their separation into the peoples of historical times, had advanced. The changes and additions to the myth are not surprising; surprising is, that the myth should have retained its chief features during great periods of time, in very various surroundings, and under the constant pressure of a flood of remodelling ideas poured out upon it by the fertile mind of man, and tending constantly to obliterate the more primitive and simple fancies.

I have dwelt before upon the almost romantic interest which attaches itself to the relationship of the

  1. ↑ For possible traces of the same myth among the Teutons see De la Saussaye, The Religion of the Teutons, pp. 68 and 140 ff.
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