307 
away.* To take a more elaborate instance : — Zeus, the upper 
heaven, the ethereal blue, loves Io, the horned moon ; and 
thus, anthropomorphically regarded, excites the jealousy of his 
mythological consort Hera, the lower and gleaming heaven. 
She appoints the hundred-eyed Argus to watch the damsel, 
and Zeus sends Hermes, the wind-power in connection with 
the clouds, who slays Argus, i.e., covers the starry eyes, which 
Hera afterwards puts in the tail of her bird, the peacock ; and 
thus Zeus can love Io unobserved. Translated into an actual 
occurrence amongst sentient beings, the crude, and indeed 
awful result is, that the highest of the gods is represented as 
an adulterer ; and it was because they knew no other point of 
view in which to regard it, that many Greek philosophers 
hated mythological story, and from their standpoint rightly 
deemed it impious. Had such a mind as that of Plato pos- 
sessed our key to these enigmas, with what keen lucidity 
would he have illustrated them, in what thoughts of imperish- 
able beauty would he not have clothed them ! Thus upon a 
simple mythology has intruded sooner or later a corrupted 
religion, and as a result has produced disorder and every evil 
work. But religion and mythology, originally distinct, have, 
as I observed on a former occasion, always existed contempo- 
raneously ; Zeus, the broad, bright, ethereal heaven, is the 
visible and mythological counterpart of Zeus, the supreme and 
spiritual God. 
4. Certain Primary Unities. 
In our investigations into the archaic period we are sup- 
ported by the unity of the human mind and of religion ; and 
these in turn rest upon two prior unities, the unity of God and 
of the Kosmos. As to the human mind, Emerson well observes, 
“ there is one mind common to all individual men.”t The 
standpoints and ideas of far-off generations are not wholly 
strange to us ; we can put ourselves in their place, having the 
same nature, passions, aspirations, difficulties, living on the 
same planet, and observing the same natural phenomena. 
“ The last Bear of the [human] host will read traces of the 
earliest Van” yes, will read them, they will not be unde- 
cypherable. As to language, again, or, at all events, as to 
* Vide Jowett, The Dialogues of Plato, ii. 105. The myth is the subject 
of a beautiful bronze group, discovered by Mr. C. T. Newton at Kalymnos. 
“Boreas is represented with buskins and large wings as a wind-god. 
Orithyia seems to be looking back to the world from which she is snatched 
away ” {Travels and Discoveries in the Levant, i., 330). 
f Essay on History , 1 . + Carlyle, Sartor Eesartus , 163. 
