'If I were reduced to choose between this method and that of comparative
philology, I would prefer the former without the slightest hesitation.
This method alone enables us to explain the fact, such a frequent cause
of surprise, that the Greeks like the Germans . . . could attribute to
their gods all manner of cruel, cowardly and dissolute actions. This
method alone reveals the cause of all the strange metamorphoses of gods
into animals, plants, and even stones. . . . In fact, this method
teaches us to recognise in all these oddities the survivals of an age of
barbarism long over-past, but lingering into later times, under the form
of religious legends, the most persistent of all traditions. . . . This
method, enfin, can alone help us to account for the genesis of myths,
because it devotes itself to studying them in their rudest and most
primitive shape. . . . '