NATURE MYTHS AND ALLEGOEIES 311 



Ages the best thinkers remained in the grossest ignorance 

 and darkness with regard to nature on account of the false 

 attitude forced upon them by theology. In modern times 

 materialism, which is perhaps the hollowest and shabbiest 

 idolum species which has ever haunted the cavern of man's 

 intellect, owes its arrogance to a similar false attitude assumed 

 by physics. Yet dogmatic theology is losing its rigid grasp 

 apon the mind and heart of man, while science is leading us 

 back by circuitous routes to the primitive belief in a life- 

 penetrated universe. This being the case, we can indulge 

 the expectation that though the Hellenic point of view with 

 respect to myths of nature and of allegory may never be 

 resumed, yet we shall be able better in the future to appre- 

 ciate their value. Both poetry and art may be destined, on a 

 far more elevated platform and with far profounder assurance 

 of the truth, to use them both again for the illumination and 

 instruction of mankind. 



VII 



The arts are not bound to occupy themselves exclusively 

 with subjects of the present epoch. It is true that they are 

 exhorted to do so by critics who profess themselves indignant 

 with * the idle singer of an empty day.' Such critics, how- 

 ever, have forgotten the treasures of old-world speculation, 

 the jewels of experience collected by our ancestors in times 

 when life was simpler, the types of ever-recurring tragedy and 

 ever-fresh emotion which lie embedded in primeval myths and 

 allegories. View them as we may, the thoughts of bygone 

 races, of men who laid the foundations of knowledge, who 

 first used language with a conscious purpose, who were closer 

 to the origins of life than we are, deserve reverent study by 

 all thinkers who accept man's emergence from the common 

 stuff of nature. They possess not merely an antiquarian or 

 an historic interest. They have something to say to us, which 

 we run the risk of ignoring in this positive age. 



It is not in the cruder myths of savage tribes that 

 modern art can seek material for profitable treatment. These 



