302 NATURE MYTHS AND ALLEGORIES 



II 



Minute attention has been paid to the origins of myths and 

 sagas ; but we have lost sight of their enduring symbolical 

 importance. Those ancient stories which our remote fore- 

 fathers held to be the sum and abstract of world-wisdom, 

 have been submitted to solar, meteorological, linguistic 

 explanations. Learned and ingenious scholars have resolved 

 them into tales about the sun and stars, the storms and 

 clouds, and also into a disease of language. These methods, 

 carried to extravagance, provoked a reaction of common sense, 

 and another school of students are now seeking less mechanical 

 solutions of the problem, by treating myths as relics of pre- 

 historic culture, custom, and religion. 



Few have the temerity to regard mythology as a necessary 

 moment in human thought, the significance of which is by no 

 means exhausted. At a distant period, myths were certainly 

 ways of explaining the spiritual essence of the world and man 

 to the imagination. That essence must, except in symbol 

 and parable, remain for ever inscrutable and incognisable for 

 the human mind. It is therefore by no means proved that 

 the intuitions embodied in the myths of races like the Greek 

 are even now devoid of actuality. 



Nature myths assume an indwelling spirit in the universe, 

 and express the sense Of it by ascribing personality to inorganic 

 things and vegetables. Allegory myths attribute independent 

 existence to the moral and intellectual qualities of human 

 beings. In the antique polytheistic systems, notably in the 

 Hellenic, these two kinds were never wholly distinguished ; 

 for, when a natural object comes to be personified, the being 

 thus evolved assumes the properties of humanity. Further- 

 more, all polytheisms known to us are composite of still more 

 ancient creeds, combining divers elements of nature-worship 

 and moral allegory in heterogeneous admixture. Still, for the 

 purpose of analysis, the two species may be isolated, especially 

 as we can no longer treat of either from the purely religious 

 point of view. The utmost we can do is to raise the question 

 whether the myths of antiquity do not still supply a suggestive 



