332 
power of the mind, the physical struggle in nature was spiri- 
tualized ; abstract ideas, such as good and evil, entered the 
field of human reason, and ultimately Religion, i.e ., mythology- 
with-a-bad-memory, appeared upon the scene. This subtle 
position, in itself so lucid and apparently so truly scientific, 
one, moreover, which appears to be capable of being illustrated 
by an almost infinity of instances, many of them startling in 
their seeming appropriateness, and which if true would simply 
annihilate Religion as we understand the term, inasmuch as in 
this case Religion would have sprung from man and not from 
God, this most dangerous mythological half-truth, is chiefly 
supported ; — 
1. By previous failures to explain the system of mythology, 
especially by crude-historical* * * § (Euemeristicf), allegorical, J 
moral, or metaphysical§ (so-called) explanations. 
2. By the undoubted exceedingly important part which 
natural phenomena have played in mythology, and in connec- 
tion with the religious thought of archaic man. 
3. By the previous absence of any searching analysis, which, 
whilst accurately setting forth the sphere and influence of the 
physical, will show that there is also another element in primi- 
tive idea. 
Thus, in the foregoing view of the gods and their opponents, 
we see at a glance how large is the part played by the physical; 
the representatives of darkness, disorder, storm, and destruc- 
tion do not necessarily postulate any element of metaphysical 
or moral evil. We can trace the career of the great sea-ser- 
pent from the Oversea to the Ocean-stream, and from the 
climate of Central Asia to the pages of Aldrovandus|| and Pont- 
oppidan ; but that fact is no more conclusive against the occa- 
sional use by archaic man of the serpent as a symbol of moral 
evil, than it is proof positive that no large marine monster has 
ever actually existed. When we have removed all personages 
who are merely representatives of natural phenomena from 
both sides, there is a most important residuum. On the one 
* Thus, J upiter, even in recent editions of the Encyclopedia Britannica 
appears as a king of Krete ; and Odhinn has often been described as a friend 
of JMithradates, who fled to the North from the Romans. 
f Euemeros, B.C. 316, “ dressed up the myths as so many plain histories ” 
(vide Grote, History of Greece , Part I. cap. xvi. ; Sir G. W. Cox, Mythology 
of the Aryan Nations , vol. I. cap. ix.). 
X The Baconian. Thus, according to Lord Bacon, the sharp and hooked 
talons of the Sphinx represent “ the axioms and arguments of science.’ 5 
§ The Neo-Platonic (vide The Great Dionysiak Myth , i. 66, et seq.). These 
pretended explanations are quite arbitrary, and therefore worthless. 
|| Serpentum et Draconum Historia , 1640. 
