related. And those gods existed in the belief of the community, before
tales were told, or could be told, about them. Myths therefore are the
outcome of reflection--of reflection about the gods and their
relations to one another, or to men, or to the world. Mythology is not
the source of man's belief of the gods. Man did not begin by telling
tales about beings whom he knew to be the creations of his own
imagination, and then gradually fall into the error of supposing them
to be, after all, not creatures of his own imagination but real
beings. Mythology is not even the source of man's belief in a
plurality of gods: man found gods everywhere, in every external object
or phenomenon, because he was looking for God everywhere, and to every
object, in turn, he addressed the question, 'Art thou there?'
Mythology was not the source of polytheism. Polytheism was the source
of mythology. Myths preserve to us the reflections which men have made
about their gods; and reflection, on any subject, cannot take place
until the thing is there to be reflected upon. The result of prolonged
reflection may be, indeed must be, to modify the ideas from which we
started, for the better--or, it may be, for the worse. But, even so,
the result of reflection is not to create the ideas from which it
started.
From this point of view, it becomes impossible to accept the theory,
put forward by Max Mueller, that mythology is due to 'disease of
language.' According to his theory, simple statements were made of
such ordinary, natural processes as those of the rising, or the
setting, of the sun. Then, by disease of language, the meaning of the
words or epithets, by which the sun or the dawn were, at the
beginning, designated or described, passed out of mind. The epithets
then came to be regarded as proper names; and so the people, amongst
which these simple statements were originally made, found itself
eventually in possession of a number of tales told of persons
possessing proper names and doing marvellous things. Thus, Max
Mueller's theory not only accounted for the origin of tales told about
the gods: it also explained the origin of the gods, about whom the
tales were told. It is a theory of the origin, not merely of
mythology, but also of polytheism.
Thus, even on Max Mueller's theory, mythology is the outcome of
reflection--of reflection upon the doings and behaviour of the sun,
the clouds, wind, fire etc. But, on his theory, the sun, moon etc.,
were not, at first, regarded as persons, at all: it was merely owing
to 'disease of language' that they came to be so regarded. Only if we
make this original assumption, can we accept the conclusions deduced
from it; and no student now accepts the assumption: it is one which is
forbidden by the well-established facts of animism. Sun, moon, wind
and fire, everything that acts, or is supposed to act, is regarded by
early man as animated by personal power. If, therefore, the external
objects, to which man turned with his question, 'Art thou there?' were
regarded by him, from the beginning, as animated by personal power,
the theory that they were not so regarded falls to the ground; and,
consequently, we cannot accept it as accounting for the origin of
polytheism.
Doubtless, during the time of its vogue, Max Mueller's theory was
accepted precisely because it did profess to account for the origin of
polytheism, and because it denied polytheism any religious value or
meaning whatever. On the theory, polytheism did not originate from any
religious sentiment whatever, but from a disease of language. And this
was a view which naturally commended itself to those who were ready to
say and believe that polytheism is not religion at all. But the
consequences of saying this are such as to make any science of
religion, or indeed any history of religion, impossible. Where the
idea of God is to be found, there some religion exists; and to say
that, in polytheism, no idea of God can be found, is out of the
question. If then polytheism is a stage in the history of religious
belief, we have to consider it in relation to the other stages of
religious belief, which preceded or followed it. We have to relate the
idea of God, as it appeared in polytheism, with the idea as it
appeared in other stages of belief. In order to do this, we must first
discover what the polytheistic idea of God is; and for that purpose we
must turn, at any rate at first, to the myths which embody the
reflections of polytheists upon the attributes and actions of the
Godhead, or of those beings, superior to man, whose existence was
accepted by the common consciousness. It may be that the reflections
upon the idea of God, which are embodied in mythology, have so tended
to degrade the idea of God, that religious advance upon the lines of
polytheism became impossible, just as the conception of God as a being
who would promote the anti-social wishes of an individual, rendered
religious advance upon the lines of fetishism impossible. In that
case, religion would forsake the line of polytheism, as it had
previously abandoned that of fetishism.
A certain presumption that myths tend to the degradation of religion
is created by the mere use of the term 'mythology.' It has come to be
a dyslogistic term, partly because all myths are lies, but still more
because some of them are ignoble lies. It becomes necessary,
therefore, to remind ourselves that, though we see them to be untrue,
they were not regarded as untrue by those who believed in them; and
that many of them were not ignoble. Aeschylus and Sophocles are
witnesses, not to be disbelieved, on these points. In their writings
we have the reflections of polytheists upon the actions and attributes
of the gods. But the reflections made by Aeschylus and Sophocles, and
their treatment of the myths, must be distinguished from the myths,
which they found to hand, just as the very different treatment and
reflection, which the myths received from Euripides, must be
distinguished from them. In both cases, the treatment, which the myths
met with from the tragedians, is to be distinguished from the myths,
as they were current among the community before and after the plays
were performed. The writings of the tragedians show what might be made
of the myths by great poets. They do not show what the myths were in
the common consciousness that made them. And the history of mythology
after the time of the three great tragedians makes it clear enough
that even so noble a writer as Aeschylus could not impart to mythology
any direction other than that determined for it by the conditions
under which it originated, developed and ran its course.
Mythology is the work and the product of the common consciousness. The
generation existing at any time receives it from preceding
generations; civilised generations from barbarous, and barbarous
generations from their savage predecessors. If it grows in the process
of transmission, and so reflects to some extent the changes which take
place in the common consciousness, it changes but little in character.
The common consciousness itself changes with exceeding slowness; it
retains what it has received with a conservatism like that of
children's minds; and, what it adds must, from the nature of the case,
be modelled on that which it has received, and be of a piece with it.
But, though the common consciousness changes but slowly, it does
change: with the change from savagery to civilisation there goes moral
development. Some of the myths, which are re-told from one generation
to another, may be capable of becoming civilised and moralised in
proportion as do those who tell them; but some are not. These latter
are incidents in the personal history of the gods, which, if told at
all, can only be told, as they had been told from the beginning, in
all their repulsiveness. They survive, in virtue of the tenacity and
conservatism of the common consciousness; and, as survivals, they
testify to the moral development which has taken place in the very
community which conserves them. By them the eye of modern science
measures the development and the difference between the stage of
society which originally produced them and the stage which begins to
be troubled by them. They are valuable for the purposes of modern
science because they are evidence of the continuity with which the
later stages have developed from the earlier; and, also, because they
are the first outward indications of the discovery which was
eventually to be made, of the difference between mythology and
religion--a difference which existed from the beginning of mythology,
and all through its growth, though it existed in the sphere of feeling
long before it found expression for itself in words.
The course of history has shown, as a matter of fact, that these
repulsive and disgusting myths could not be rooted out without
uprooting the whole system of mythology. But the course of history has
also shown that religion could continue to exist after the destruction
of mythology, as it had done before its birth. But, of this the
generations to whom myths had been transmitted and for whom mythology
was the accepted belief, could not be aware. In their eyes the attempt
to discredit some myths appeared to involve--as it did really
involve--the overthrow of the whole system of mythology. If they
thought--as they undoubtedly did think--that the destruction of
mythology was the same thing as the destruction of religion, their
error was one of a class of errors into which the human mind is at no
time exempt from falling. And they had this further excuse, that the
destruction of mythology did logically and necessarily imply the
destruction of polytheism. Polytheism and mythology were complementary
parts of their idea of the Godhead. Demonstrations therefore of the
inconsistency and immorality involved in their idea were purely
negative and destructive; and they were, accordingly, unavailing until
a higher idea of the unity of the Godhead was forthcoming.
Until that time, polytheism and mythology struggled on. They were
burdened, and, as time went on, they were overburdened, with the
weight of the repulsive myths which could not be denied and disowned,
but could only be thrust out of sight as far, and as long, as
possible. These myths, however offensive they became in the long run
to the conscience of the community, were, in their origin, narratives
which were not offensive to the common consciousness, for the simple
reason that they were the work of the common consciousness, approved
by it and transmitted for ages under the seal of its approval. If they
were not offensive to the common consciousness at the time when they
originated, and only became so later, the reason is that the morality
of the community was less developed at the time of their origin than
it came to be subsequently. If they became offensive, it was because
the morality of the community tended to advance, while they remained
what they had always been.
It may, perhaps, be asked, why the morality of the community should
tend to change, and the myths of the community should not? The reason
seems to be that myths are learned by the child in the nursery, and
morality is learned by the man in the world. The family is a smaller
community than the village community, the city, or the state; and the
smaller the community, the more tenacious it is of its customs and
traditions. The toys of Athenian children, which have been discovered,
are, all, the toys which children continue to use to this day. In the
Iliad children built sand-castles on the sea-shore as they do now; and
the little child tugged at its mother's dress then as now. Children
then as now would insist that the tales told to them should always be
told exactly as they were first told. Of the discrepancy between the
morality exhibited by the heroes of nursery-tales and that practised
by the grown-up world the child has no knowledge, for the sufficient
reason that he is not as yet one of the grown-up world. When he enters
the grown-up world, he may learn the difference; but he can only enter
the grown-up world, if there is one for him to enter; and, in the
childhood of man, there is none which he can enter, for the adults
themselves, though of larger growth, are children still in mind.
Custom and tradition rule the adult community then as absolutely as
they rule the child community. In course of time, the adult community
may break the bonds of custom and tradition; but the community which
consists of children treasures them and hands them on. Within the
tribe, thenceforth, there are two communities, that of the adults and
that of the children. The one community is as continuous with itself
as the other; but the children's community is highly conservative of
what it has received and of what it hands on--and that for the simple
reason that children will be children still. It is this homogeneity of
the children's community which enables it to preserve its customs,
traditions and beliefs. And as long as the community of adults is
homogeneous, it also departs but little from the customs, traditions
and beliefs, which it has inherited from the same source as the
children's community has inherited them. The two communities, the
children's and the adults', originate and develop within the larger
community of the tribe. They differentiate, at first, with exceeding
slowness; the children's community changes more slowly even than the
adults'--its weapons continue to be the bow and arrow, long after
adults have discarded them; and the bull-roarer continues sacred in
its eyes to a period when the adult community has not only discarded
its use but forgotten its meaning. In its tales and myths it may
preserve the memory of a stage of morality which the adult community
has outgrown, and has left behind as far it has left behind the
bull-roarer or the bow and arrow. And the stage of morality, of which
it preserves the memory, is one from which the adult community in past
time emerged. Having emerged, indeed, it found itself, eventually,
when made to look back, compelled to condemn that which it looked back
upon.
What, then, were these myths, with which the moralised community might
find itself confronted? They were tales which originated in the mind
of the community when it was yet immature. They preserve to us the
reflections of the immature mind about the gods and what they did. And
it is because the minds, which made these reflections, were immature,
that the myths which embodied or expressed these reflections, were
such as might be accepted by immature minds, but were eventually found
intolerable by more mature minds. It may, perhaps, be said--and it may
be said with justice--that the reflections even of the immature mind
are not all, of necessity, erroneous, for it is from them that the
whole of modern knowledge has been evolved or developed, just as the
steam-plough may be traced back to the primitive digging-stick:
reflection upon anything may lead to better knowledge of the thing, as
well as to false notions about it. But the nations, which have
outgrown mythology, have cast it aside because in the long run they
became convinced that the notions it embodied were false notions. And
they reached that conclusion on this point in the same way and for
the same reason as they reached the same conclusion in other matters;
for there is only one way. There is only one way and one test by which
it is possible to determine whether the inferences we have drawn about
a thing are true or false, and that is the test of experience. That
alone can settle the question whether the thing actually does or does
not act in the way, or display the qualities alleged. If it proves in
our experience to act in the way, or to display the qualities, which
our reflection led us to surmise, then our conception of the thing is
both corrected and enlarged, that is to say, the thing proves to be
both more and other than it was at first supposed to be. If experience
shows that it is not what we surmised, does not act in the way or
display the qualities our reflection led us to expect, then, as the
conclusions we reached are wrong, our reflections were on a wrong
line, and must have started from a false conception or an imperfect
idea of the thing.
It is collision of this kind between the conclusions of mythology and
the idea of the gods, as the guardians of morality, that rouses
suspicion in a community, still polytheistic, first that the
conclusions embodied in mythology are on a wrong line, and next that
they must have started from a false conception or imperfect idea of
the Godhead. By its fruits is the error found to be error--by the
immorality which it ascribes to the very gods whose function it is to
guard morality. Mythology is the process of reflection which leads to
conclusions eventually discarded as false, demonstrably false to
anyone who compared them with the idea of the Godhead which he had in
his own soul. Mythology worked out the consequences of the assumption
that it is to the external world we must look for the divine
personality of whose presence in the common consciousness, the
community has at all times, been, even though dimly, aware. Doubts as
to the truth of myths were first aroused by the inconsistency between
the myths told and the justice and morality which had been from the
beginning the very essence of divine personality. The doubts arose in
the minds and hearts of individual thinkers; and, if those individuals
had been the only members of the community who conceived justice and
morality to be essential qualities of the divine personality, then it
would have been necessary for such thinkers first to convert the
community to that view. Now, one of the consequences of the prevalence
of mythology is that the community, amongst whom it flourishes, comes
to be, if not doubtful, then at times forgetful, of the fact that the
gods of the community are moral beings and the guardians of morality.
That fact had to be dismissed from attention, for the time being,
whenever certain myths were related. And, the more frequently a fact
is dismissed from attention, the less likely it is to reappear on the
surface of consciousness. Thus, the larger the part played by
mythology in the field of the common consciousness, the greater its
tendency to drive out from attention those moral qualities which were
of the essence of divine personality. But, however large the part
played by mythology, and however great its tendency to obliterate the
moral qualities of the gods, it rarely, if indeed ever, entirely
obliterates them from the field of the common consciousness.
Consequently, the individual thinkers, who become painfully aware of
the contrast and opposition between the morality, which is essential
to a divine personality, and the immorality ascribed to the gods in
some myths, have not to deal with a community which denies that the
gods have any morality whatever, but with a community which is ready
to admit the morality of the gods, whenever its attention is called
thereto. Thus, though it may be that it is in this or that individual
that the inconsistency between the moral qualities, which belong to
the gods, and the immoral actions which mythology ascribes to the
gods, first manifests itself, to his distress and disturbance, still
what has happened in his case happens in the case of some, and may
happen in the case of all, other members of the community. The
inconsistency then comes to exist not merely for the individual but
for the common consciousness.
It was the immorality of mythology which first drew the attention of
believers in polytheism to the inconsistency between the goodness,
which was felt to be of the essence of the divine nature, and the
vileness, which was imputed to them in some myths; but it is the
irrationality and absurdity of mythology that seems, to the modern
mind, to be its most uniform characteristic. So long as the only
mythology that was studied was the mythology of Indo-European peoples,
it was assumed, without question, that the myths could not really be,
or originally have been, irrational and absurd: they must conceal,
under their seeming absurdity and outwardly irrational appearance,
some truth. They must have had, originally, some esoteric meaning.
They must have conveyed--allegorically, indeed--some profound truths,
known or revealed to sages of old, which it was the business of modern
students to re-discover in mythology. And accordingly profound
truths--scientific, cosmographic, astronomical, geographical,
philosophic or religious--were discovered. There was no knowledge
which the early ancestors of the human race were not supposed to have
possessed, and their descendants to have forgotten.
But, when it came to be discovered, and accepted, that the ancestors
of the Indo-European peoples had once been savages, and that savages,
all the world over, possessed myths, it became impossible to maintain
that such savages possessed in their mythologies treasures of truth
either scientific or religious. Myths have no esoteric meaning.
Obviously we must take them to be what we find them to be amongst
present-day savages, that is, absurd and irrational stories, with no
secret meaning behind them. Yet it is difficult, indeed impossible, to
accept this as the last word on the subject. The stories are rejected
by us, because they are patently absurd and irrational. But the savage
does not reject them: he accepts them. And he could not accept and
believe them, if he, as well as we, found them irrational and absurd.
In a word, it is the same with the irrationality as it is with the
immorality of mythology: myths are the work and the product of the
common consciousness. As such, myths cannot be viewed as irrational by
the common consciousness in which they originated, and by which they
were accepted and transmitted, any more than they were regarded as
immoral.
Obviously, the common consciousness which produces mythology cannot
pronounce the myths, when it produces them, and accepts them, absurd.
On the contrary, they are rational, in its eyes, and according to its
level of understanding, however absurd the growth of knowledge may
eventually show them to be. Myths, then, in their origin, are told and
heard, narrated and accepted, as rational and intelligible. As
narrated, they are narratives: can we say that they are anything more?
or are they tales told simply for the pleasure of telling? Tales of
this latter kind, pure fiction, are to be found wherever man is. But,
we have already seen some points in which myths differ from tales of
this kind: in fiction the artist creates his hero, but in myths the
being superior to man, of whom the story is told is not the creation
of the teller of the tale; he is a being known to the community to
exist. Another point of difference is that a myth belongs to the god
of whom it is told and cannot properly be told of any other god. These
are two respects in which the imagination is limited, two points on
which, in the case of myths, the creative imagination is, so to speak,
nailed down. Is it subject to any further restriction in the case of
myths? Granted that an adventure, when once it has been set down to
one god, may not be set down to another, is the creative imagination
free, in the case of mythology, as it is in the case of pure fiction,
to invent the incidents and adventures, which eventually--in a lexicon
of mythology--go to make up the biography of the god? The freedom, it
appears, is of a strictly limited character.