But the popular fancy, intolerant of such a vacuum, in other words,
unable to conceive anything as inanimate, immediately creates a
fresh mythical being, with which it peoples the vacant object. Thus
the same natural object comes to be represented in mythology by two
distinct beings: first by the old spirit now separated from it and
raised to the rank of a deity; second, by the new spirit, freshly
created by the popular fancy to supply the place vacated by the old
spirit on its elevation to a higher sphere. In such cases the
problem for mythology is, having got two distinct personifications
of the same object, what to do with them? How are their relations to
each other to be adjusted, and room found for both in the
mythological system? When the old spirit or new deity is conceived
as creating or producing the object in question, the problem is
easily solved. Since the object is believed to be produced by the
old spirit, and animated by the new one, the latter, as the soul of
the object, must also owe its existence to the former; thus the old
spirit will stand to the new one as producer to produced, that is,
in mythology, as parent to child, and if both spirits are conceived
as female, their relation will be that of mother and daughter.
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