A book of myths
by Jean Lang
Category: Social Science

Those who are interested in watching the mental development of a child must have noted that when the baby has learned to speak even a little, it begins to show its growing intelligence by asking questions. "What is this?" it would seem at first to ask with regard to simple things that to it are still mysteries. Soon it arrives at the more far-reaching inquiries-"Why is this so?" "How did this happen?" And as the child's mental growth continues, the painstaking and conscientious parent or guardian is many times faced by questions which lack of knowledge, or a sensitive honesty, prevents him from answering either with assurance or with ingenuity. As with the child, so it has ever been with the human race. Man has always come into the world asking "How?" "Why?" "What?" and so the Hebrew, the Greek, the Maori, the Australian blackfellow, the Norseman-in a word, each race of mankind-has formed for itself an explanation of existence, an answer to the questions of the groping child-mind-"Who made the world?" "What is God?" "What made a God think of fire and air and water?" "Why am I, I?" Into the explanation of creation and existence given by the Greeks come the stories of Prometheus and of Pandora.