MYTHOLOGY 



4041 



MYTHOLOGY 



YTHOLOGY, mithol'oji. Hun- 

 :md hundreds of years ago, when the 

 nations of the world were in their infancy, there 

 were many questions for which people could 

 find no answers. There were no works on 

 astronomy to explain to them that the sunrise 

 is not a real rising of the sun, but is caused 

 by the turning of the earth on its axis ; or that 

 the coming of winter after summer is a natural 

 effect of natural causes, and not the work of 

 some malignant power. There were no works 

 on geology to tell of the slow upbuilding of the 

 world through thousands and hundreds of thou- 

 sands of years; no works on physics to explain 

 that an echo is not an answering voice, but the 

 same voice thrown back by some obstruction. 

 But all of these were natural questions, and 

 the inquiring minds of those primitive people 

 must have satisfaction, so they made up an- 

 swers and wove them into some of the most 

 beautiful stories and fancies the world has ever 

 known. 



This does not mean that some wise man 

 simply invented, all at once, the explanation of 

 such a marvel, for instance, as the sun, with it> 

 rising and setting. The explanation grew up 

 gradually. So wonderful an object, which 

 made the whole world bright when it appeared 

 in the east and left the whole world dark when 

 it disappeared in the west, must be more than 

 human; and thus there grew up the idea that 

 the sun was a god one of the strongest of th 

 gods. Even a god could not walk across the great 

 i of the sky between morning and <M- 

 ning.so be was given a chariot with two. : 

 six horses. True, his face and form could not 

 be seen, but that was because his chariot, hi- 

 raiment and his crown were so brilliant. In 

 such stories grouped themselves about 

 almost every natural object: the rustling of 

 the leaves was but the murmuring voice 



who lived in the tree; the hurrying 

 was a nymph rushing to join her lover, 



the sea; the stars were virtuous people placed 

 by the gods in the sky .that their virtues might 

 never be forgotten. And the sum of tlu>. 

 stories which any people built up for itself is 

 its mythology. 



Classes of Myths. Many of the legends and 

 myths were of this kind, answering natural 

 questions about natural objects, and these are 

 known as explanatory myths. But there are 

 others which have no such object which seem, 

 indeed, to have no object but to entertain and 

 these are called aesthetic myths. They tell of 

 the doings of gods and heroes marvelous do- 

 ings, often, which prove that however strong 

 the gods may have been, they were not always 

 very good. Such stories as that of Jup 

 pursuit of Europa, or of Jason in search of the 

 Golden Fleece, are of this kind. 



Why Study Mythology ? Why should learned 

 men, with the knowledge of the world at their 

 fingers' ends, interest themselves in these old 

 fables and legends? What is there to be gained 

 from such study? Much, they "tell us, which 

 can be gained in no other way, for the my- 

 thology of a people makes clear its ideals, its 

 attitude toward natural happenings, and much 

 about its state of civilization and mode of life. 

 For a mythology is the religion of a primitive 

 . and its science and literature as well. 

 To be sure, those words cannot be taken in just 

 tlu ir modern meaning. The old myths were a 

 religion because they set forth the doings of 

 the gods and told the people what worship and 

 es and # ceremonies the gods demanded 

 !" them; but in other ways they wen 

 unlike a religion as that word is commonly 

 understood to-day. For one thing, the gods 

 whom these myths centered about would seem 

 to the modern mind very unfit to be < 

 for they were not only jealous and cruel and 

 vengeful, but actually immoral as well. There 

 is a very long word which scholars apply to this 

 sort of a religion ant hropomorphiem ; but it is 



