46 PROFESSOR BLACKIE ON INTERPRETATION OF POPULAR MYTHS, 



XXI. The best authorities for the facts of a myth are not always the poets, 

 nor even the most ancient poets, as Homer, who in the exercise of their art 

 often took large liberties with sacred tradition; but the reliable witnesses are 

 rather such as Pausanias, who record the old temple lore in its fixed local 

 forms. This distinction, often forgotten, has given rise to not a little con- 

 fusion, and created some needless difficulty in mythological interpretation ; 

 and Hartung (i. 184) has done important service to comparative mythology by 

 drawing attention emphatically to the difference between sacred legends as 

 believed by the people, and religious myths freely handled by the poets. 



XXII. In the interpretation of any popular myth, the first thing to be done 

 is to ascertain carefully what the thing to be interpreted actually is ; and this 

 can only be done by collecting all the facts relating to it, working them up 

 into a complete, and if possible consistent picture, and not till then attempting 

 an explanation. Now, as the facts relating to any single god, let us say in the 

 Greek Pantheon, are scattered over a wide space, and come from various sources, 

 to attempt the explanation of these facts without the previous labour of critical 

 and well-digested scholarship, may be an ingenious amusement, but never can 

 be a scientific procedure. All the facts must be collected, and all the criticisms 

 weighed, before a verdict can be pronounced. 



XXIII. But the mere collection of facts will never help a prosaic or an 

 irreverent man to the interpretation of what is essentially j)oetic and devout. 

 A book supplies what must be read ; but the eye that reads it can see only 

 what by natural faculty and training it is fitted to see. As the loving and rever- 

 ential contemplation of nature was the original source of the polytheistic myths, 

 so the key to them will often be recovered by a kindred mind acting under influ- 

 ences similar to those which impressed the original framers of the myth ; and if 

 this may be done with a considerable amount of success by a poetical mind, 

 acted on by nature in any country, much more will such success be achieved by 

 such a mind in the country where the myths were originally formed. But as 

 the aspects of nature are various, and the fancies of poetic minds no less so, it 

 will always be necessary to verify any modern notion of an ancient deity, thus 

 acquired, by confronting it accurately and continuously with the traditional 

 materials contained in books and works of art. Highly poetical minds, such as 

 Shelley, Keats, and Buskin, when dealing with Greek mythology, without the 

 constant correction of accurate scholarship, are not seldom found using Greek 

 myths to represent modern ideas, rather than human ideas to interpret Greek 

 myths. And the example of the Germans proves, that in minds naturally fertile 

 and ingenious, no amount of erudition affords a safeguard against the besetting 

 sin of mythological interpreters, to find in all myths a select field and enclosed 



