THE AGE OF MYTH
We must, perforce, admit that our ancestors awoke to consciousness of
themselves and their surroundings at a time when they knew practically
nothing, as we understand knowledge. Theirs was a world of sights and
sounds, a world of woods and streams, of moving things, of growing
things, of things to be eaten, of things good and evil. It was a
driving, fearful, fascinating world. Unconsciously and inevitably, man
interpreted his surroundings in terms of his own eager, childish life.
Force and desire peeped from every corner.
The sky was not very high above him for it seemed to touch the mountain
tops; and yet he could never hope to climb there. But he could see
very well that it was inhabited. And was it not a wonderful place,
since the heat and light of the sun and the warm, fructifying rain came
from it? And what were the clouds that floated across it like huge
birds or strange, gigantic creatures? Even the lush grass of the
spring-time seemed full of a hidden life. Everywhere was force and
will--the power for good and harm.
Perhaps only an imaginative child, or an adult with something of the
poet's gift, can appreciate vividly the type of world in which these
early men found themselves. The city-dweller of to-day lives in a
subdued {14} and mechanically controlled region whose every clank and
rattle speaks of routine and order. The myth-making faculty of the
street-urchin has little to feed upon--all is so obvious and open to
inspection. The ordinary lad, again, is so soon filled with the
conventionalized views of his elders that the hand of fancy soon ceases
to write upon his soul or give a touch of wonder to familiar things.
There can be no doubt, therefore, that a conscious effort is required
before a man of to-day can give even a fleeting glimpse at the
capricious, magical, animated, and intensely personal world of his
distant ancestors. And yet the guesses and surmises of these earlier
men were the source of more of his beliefs than he would care to admit.
In these pages we shall see how much of mythology still lingers with us.
Mythology is a product of the social group, of clans and tribes and
peoples, and is of slow growth. Story added itself to story, this
feature to that. Hence it was often a work of art, though of
unconscious art. It was an expression of the life of groups who had
gods and totems. It was inextricably bound up with the whole savage
outlook upon nature; and yet only recently has this setting been
adequately appreciated. Until the middle of the nineteenth century,
knowledge of mythology was practically limited to the poetized
mythology of the Greeks and Romans. And so, because it was found in
the poets, it was thought of as an artificial product, as a series of
stories invented and embroidered by the fancy of bards and narrators.
But the wider knowledge due to exploration changed this narrow
approach. The discoveries of travelers in the Americas, Africa, and
Oceania gave pause to this too {15} civilized and superficial theory of
myth. Gradually, a more realistic view arose. The idea of evolution
gave a genetic way of approach and made investigators aware of the
slowness of human advance. The next steps followed quickly. Social
psychology replaced the individualistic and overly rationalistic
psychology of the early nineteenth century. All the phenomena of
primitive society were seen to be the products of relatively
non-reflective groups who felt and stumbled their way into rituals and
beliefs. As the material accumulated, comparative methods were applied
in the field. The result has been astounding. In place of the
romantic conception of primitive life, which made the savage
essentially a civilized child, a grimmer picture unfolded itself.
Fetichism, shamanism, magic, human sacrifice, totemism, ritualism, all
were found combined and interactive in a scheme of life alien to our
own enlightened outlook. In such an atmosphere it was that mythology
arose. It arose as an account of acts and beliefs, and, as these were
purified and deepened, it, also, advanced in purity and depth. Yet,
always, there remained the trace of the savagery from which it had
sprung.
While primitive religion and mythology are not identical, they are
closely bound up with one another. Both rest upon animism, totemism
and magic as these are brought into relation with man's needs and
fears. Religion is chiefly an affair of sentiment and cult, actively
guided by belief in superhuman powers capable of helping and hurting
man. Mythology, on the other hand, consists of the stories told about
these dynamic powers as they are more and more personified and given a
history and a name. And such stories are naturally {16} built up
around acts whose significance has been forgotten, or around dramatized
interpretations of processes in nature. Myths are explanations of acts
and events and names which aroused curiosity and therefore demanded
some explanation. It was only after modern anthropology had unearthed
the characteristic beliefs of primitive man that many myths became
intelligible. A few examples will make this relationship clearer.
Totemism is a sort of cult rendered to animals and plants which are
regarded as akin to the tribe. It must be remembered that primitive
man was not nearly so convinced of his superiority as is modern man.
Wolves and bears and foxes are strong and cunning, and seem to him to
have a power and knowledge even superior to his own. Strange as it
appears to us to-day, savages quite often assign their origin to some
animal and regard that animal as the possessor of a force which is
valuable to his kin. This cult of totemistic animals and plants is at
the base of the tales of metamorphosis which we read in Classic
literature or in our own fairy tales. "Beauty and the Beast" is an
example of this transformation, which our ancestors looked upon as
quite natural; while the savage tales of the werewolf go back to the
same outlook. The serpent in the Garden of Eden is another instance of
the same cycle of ideas. The application of our present knowledge of
totemism to mythology has been very enlightening. Students of Greek
literature used to wonder why all the gods had birds and animals as
companions. As a matter of fact, these animals were once sacred
totems. The eagle and the swan were gradually displaced by Zeus, the
sky deity. But so gradual was {17} this displacement that the animals
became attributes of the younger deity, while he was thought to change
himself at times back into the totem animal. The story of Leda and the
swan can, in this way, be easily understood.
Many myths are explanations of rites which were no longer understood.
Such myths are called aetiological. They are answers to questions which
worshipers were bound, sooner or later, to ask. The myth of
Prometheus, the Titan who stole the fire from heaven to succor men, was
connected with the use of eagles on the front of temples to ward off
lightning. Originally, the story concerns the punishment of the eagle,
but is later attached to Prometheus. It is, according to Reinach, the
development of the following naive dialogue: "Why is this eagle
crucified? It is its punishment for having stolen the fire from
heaven." Other examples of aetiological myths are the Phaethon legend,
the story of Hippolyte, and some of the stories told about Heracles.
Another source of myth is to be found in the sacrifice of animal-gods
who are supposed to possess a secret strength. Such animal-gods are
not anthropomorphized in early times. They are simply regarded as
seats of vital power or _mana_. We must bear in mind the fact that
savage man would not have been shocked by Darwinism as Bishop
Wilberforce was. No distinction worth mentioning was made between men
and animals in those ancient days. "English-lore," writes Andrew Lang,
"has its woman who bore rabbits." The religions of Greece and of Asia
Minor had rites and myths which introduced the sacred bull. In
Mithraism, a religion which almost won against Christianity, the
sacrifice of the bull and the consumption of its {18} blood and flesh
in a communion feast were prominent features. Again, in the rites of
Dionysus Zagreus, a bull was torn to pieces and eaten. From this arose
the myth of Dionysus Zagreus as a son of Zeus and Persephone changed
into a bull and eaten by the Titans. He is born again under the name
of Dionysus, yet carries horns on his forehead, evident signs of his
animal origin. Thus different strata of religion and belief meet and
blend and necessitate the growth of explanatory myths.
But we must not allow the newer recognition of the part played by
misinterpretation in the development of myths to obscure the genuine
role of naive reflection upon the phenomena of nature. Yet the savage
imagination was limited by the experience at its command. The Homeric
hymn to Helios "looks on the sun as a half-god, almost a hero, who had
once lived on earth." Still more naive are legends which make it a
beast which has once been trapped. Myths arise to account for
eclipses, the waxing and waning of the moon, sunset, etc. The
explanation of the rainbow as a sign of a covenant between Yahweh and
Noah, is an excellent example of a nature-myth introduced as a part of
a legend.
There are many other sources of myths. Around all striking events,
such as the first punishment of homicide, legends arise. Bellerophon
and Ixion are compelled to flee into exile. Again, the facts and
ritual of death are a fruitful center for the working of the
imagination. The _sheol_ of the Hebrews is first the grave; and only
later does it become even the shadowy underworld which is pictured in
Isaiah.
But our purpose is not to present an exhaustive {19} analysis of the
types of myth which early man wove about the world in which he found
himself. What it is important to grasp is the slow growth from an
almost animal state of ignorance to a more enlightened, moral, and
socially ordered life. This evolution took time, and such progress as
was made was always in danger of being overthrown by the hardening of
myth and cult into a strait-jacket of superstition and hysterical fear.
This danger was always great just because reason could secure no firm
foothold upon reality. Man's life was one of constant fear. He felt
himself assailed by evil spirits and surrounded by taboos and laws, to
violate which meant disaster. When we glance over history, we find
only two things which have shown promise of power to raise man out of
this slough of fear,--ethical monotheism and reason. How far is this a
genuine antithesis? May it not be that the real strength and freeing
power of ethical monotheism is due to the reason which created it and
speaks through it?
Upon one set of myths of extreme importance for religion we have,
however, scarcely touched. Yet the study of this group and its
explanation has been a signal triumph for the science of comparative
religion. It is a great pity that the general public knows, as yet, so
little about the researches made by scholars into the wide-spread
ritual of communion and purification, by means of which the participant
becomes one with his deity and is even assured of salvation and
immortality. The interesting fact is, that, here again, we find ideas
which are essentially primitive and magical given a new setting. What
was once social, and largely a ritual concerned with the re-birth of
vegetation in the Spring, becomes personal, and a symbol of the
resurrection of a {20} believer in another world. In its first form
and motivation, this set of ideas turns around the tribe's material
needs. Only with the growth of self-consciousness is it applied to the
individual.
Why did this type of ritual arise? And why was it celebrated with such
fervor? These questions lead us into the very heart of early religion.
Religion was the expression of man's very real need, in the light of
his view of the world as the seat of spiritual agencies. "The
extraordinary security of our modern life in times of peace makes it
hard for us to realize, except by a definite effort of the imagination,
the constant precariousness, the frightful proximity of death, that was
usual in these weak ancient communities. They were in fear of wild
beasts; they were helpless against floods, helpless against
pestilences. Their food depended on the crops of one tiny plot of
ground; and if the Savior was not reborn with the spring, they slowly
and miserably died. And all the while they knew almost nothing of the
real causes that made crops succeed or fail. They only felt sure it
was somehow a matter of pollution, of unexpiated defilement. It is
this state of things that explains the curious cruelty of early
agricultural works, the human sacrifices, the scapegoats, the tearing
in pieces of living animals, and perhaps of living men, the steeping of
the fields in blood." To men at this stage, religion is the most
natural of attitudes. It is the child of animism, of magic, of
ignorance and of need. But to explain the origin of an attitude is not
to explain it away. May it not be that these sentiments can be given
another setting and other objects?
While all races have passed through this myth-making {21} stage,
certain races have been more gifted, or else more favored by the
circumstances of their development. A vivid imagination, a relatively
complex society with different traditions, a diversified landscape, an
inviting climate, and a leisurely, yet vigorous life were necessary to
the highest efflorescence of this poetic power to weave human motives
into nature and into the conduct of supernatural powers conceived after
the manner of men. These conditions were fulfilled to a remarkable
degree among the Greeks, whose mythology constantly surprises us by its
richness, variety and delicacy. As the years rolled by, every striking
aspect of nature or of traditional ritual was interpreted in terms of
the passion, plan or caprice of some being, different from, yet by no
means alien to, man. The daring and beauty of the legends woven by
this race and the immensity of their range have made them the
admiration and wonder of other times more given to reflection than to
phantasy. The childhood of the race was productive in a memorable
fashion which has made art and literature forever its debtors.
In our admiration for Greek mythology, we must not forget that other
races and nations wove stories to account for human life and to
interpret those features of nature which aroused their fear, love or
wonder. Our own Northern mythology had its beauties and wild reaches
of imagination which made it, in certain regards, a fit rival of that
of the Mediterranean. The story of Balder, the joyous and kindly god
whom all things loved, is evidently the mythical form of the passing of
summer sunshine and the coming of winter with its darkness and gloom.
We must always remember that our remote ancestors interpreted their
world concretely, {22} and mainly in terms of human life, because they
had no abstract ideas at their command. Psychical and physical
concepts were interfused in their minds: prose and poetry, fact and
figure combined together without that feeling of disharmony which is so
distinctive of the modern mind. Nature welcomed personification, and
to read the conflict of light and darkness, warmth and cold, in terms
of human struggles and hates was the inevitable course for human
thought to take. The simple grandeur of many of these tales of the
gods comes from the poignancy of life itself. Those events in nature
which affected man intensely received an intense meaning. We, who have
conquered nature in large measure, or can so predict her convulsions as
to escape the first shock of her rude forces; we, who think of her
processes as ruled by impersonal laws, cannot appreciate the directness
and unveiled immediacy of those ancient dramas which man saw around
him. Darkness is for us the absence of light, not a mysterious and
threatening presence which fills the sky while the kindly god of day
sleeps. Light consists of vibrations in ether emitted from a
tremendously hot, material substance instead of being a beneficent
force under the control of a radiant being.
But other races than the Aryan were less inclined to embellish and
humanize nature. The imagination worked less freely to add to the
visible aspect of things. The consequence of this thinness of reaction
was, that the mind rested in things as they appeared, although it could
not desist from assigning to them capacities and powers which were
superhuman. Nature was at least instinct with will, even while this
vaguely stirring will did not clothe itself in definite forms. Man
believed {23} himself surrounded by forces which affected him for good
and evil; he felt himself immersed in an ocean of life, yet he could
not discern any forms back of that which he saw with his bodily eyes.
Perhaps these other races had less of the dramatic in their
composition, less of that genial delight in far-fetched analogies and
the free play of ideas.
As time passed, the first stage of mythology with its simple naturalism
and its relative lack of imaginative elements gave way to a more human
stage. Myths of the next world came to the front, and man became more
and more concerned with his salvation in an afterlife. Comparative
religion has proven how widespread was the belief in some sort of
immortality. The Orphic cults in Greece, the Osiris and Isis cult in
Egypt, the worship of Attis and Adonis in Syria, the purification and
communion ceremonies of Mithraism, all turned about the idea of a
secret means of salvation. A common set of ideas developed in the
Mediterranean basin and found expression in liturgies and phrases of a
striking similarity. The god dies and is resurrected; the virgin
goddess gives birth to a son; the members of a religious community eat
of their god and gain strength from the sacred meal. The Church
Fathers were aware of these similarities and sought to explain away
their resemblances with the Christian ritual by means of the theory
that the Devil had blasphemously imitated Christian rites and
doctrines. Research has shown that this theory of parody is entirely
unhistorical. The fact is, that Christianity borrowed its ritual from
the cults among which it grew up. For instance, the belief in the
death and resurrection of a savior-god was very {24} prevalent in
Tarsus, Paul's own city. The Attis mysteries were celebrated at a
season which corresponded to the end of our Lenten period and the
beginning of Easter. They were preceded by fasting and began with
lamentations, "the votaries gathering in sorrow around the bier of the
dead divinity; then followed the resurrection, and the risen god gave
hope of salvation to the mystic brotherhood, and the whole service
closed with the feast of rejoicing, the Hilaria." There can be little
doubt that this whole cycle of ideas represents a development of the
primitive ritual of eating the sacred animal or plant in spring in
order to foster the re-birth of man's necessities. From this germ
sprang reflective ideas of atonement and communion and immortality.
Along with the growth of the mysteries went the introduction of more
ethical standards of conduct. Ritual purity suggested the idea of
spiritual purity. This ethicizing of myth is very apparent in Greece.
By the time of the dramatists, moral judgments had become more severe,
and the gods were looked upon as guardians of the moral law; and yet
this view was tragically thwarted by much of the old tradition. The
savage inheritance and the later moral idealism found themselves in
conflict. The consequence was the gradual weakening of the older myths
and the welcoming of new cults.
Ethical growth is usually in large measure unconscious. Man reads
ideas into the world around him before he becomes conscious that they
are his own. His own development is thus reflected in the pantheon
with which he has peopled nature. Zeus is at first the thunderer and
the cloud-gatherer; finally he represents {25} justice and those kingly
qualities which social growth stresses. Poets and philosophers refine
away the grosser myths which shock the taste of a more advanced social
level. When we compare the conceptions of Euripides, of Plato, of
Cleanthes, of Marcus Aurelius, with the conduct of the Homeric gods, we
realize the distance traveled by the mind of man along ethical lines.
Man is now a builder of ideals. Yet the cosmic setting for these
ideals is virtually unchanged; the framework of man's universe has
remained much the same. It is at heart a realm of personal agents with
which man is in communication.
In all the nations which advanced in civilization, this transformation
within mythology makes itself felt. Ormuzd, the Persian god, passes
from a personification of the sunlight in its battle with darkness to a
spiritual deity who is the guardian of all the virtues. Indra, the
Vedic god, is likewise at first the sky through which the clouds move,
and is later conceived as the creator and sustainer of the world. The
same process reveals itself in Egyptian mythology for we pass from Ra,
the sun deity, to Neph and Pthah who represent creative energies and to
Osiris, the god of truth and goodness. Thus there is in mythology a
universal movement, from the visible aspects of nature as personified,
to supernal beings back of nature, protecting what is thought of as
highest and noblest in human conduct. The setting remains constant
while new wine is poured into the old bottles. _The truth of the
matter is that man grew faster ethically than he did intellectually_.
Philosophy and science were far harder to achieve than glimpses of
justice and kindness. The very growth of society in numbers forced man
to adapt his conduct to a {26} social life and to have regard to his
neighbors. The ideals advocated by Confucius, Buddha, Plato, Hosea and
Jesus are as noble as our own. But advance in knowledge and its
presuppositions is more revolutionary and extraordinary because more
artificial and more alien to the psychological prejudices of the mass
of the people. Ethics, like religion, remained for ages peacefully
within the mythological setting which primitive man unconsciously
constructed.
We have purposely omitted prior reference to the development of
religion among the Hebrews because their religion has been so important
for our own civilization. The mythological element in it was
relatively small for various reasons; yet this is true only if we have
regard to fable and aesthetic tale. Their world was one of personal
agency just as it was for other races. But the Hebrews made a fresh
start long after they had isolated themselves from the general Semitic
stock. Their migration from their ancient home could not help but
wither the more local myths, and this tendency was reenforced by the
adoption of a new god, Yahweh, the God of the Kenites. Yahweh was a
god of the lightning who thundered from Mount Sinai, and he was a god
of battles, just as was Thor, the thunder-god of the Scandinavians.
This war god naturally obtained their allegiance during the years of
conflict with the Canaanites, and gained in prestige as time elapsed.
The Canaanites had their local Baal cults and myths, and these were
associated with agricultural festivals and with that worship of
fertility which was so wide-spread among the ancients. The followers
of Yahweh, on the other hand, were hillmen and shepherds and their
rites were closely connected with sacrificial observances.
{27}
As time passed, the two races mingled and the tendency was toward an
amalgamation of their respective cults. But a storm of protest set in,
led by the prophets and the simpler, less concretely naturalistic
religion prevailed. The very simplicity of the cult of Yahweh made it
a fitting basis for that ethical development which we associate with
the names of Amos, Hosea, Isaiah and Jeremiah. Only an ignorance of
the ethical deepening of other religions can excuse the belief that
this ethical development was absolutely unique. Probably it is the
aspect of national monotheism, or henotheism, as it should more
accurately be called, which impresses so many, whereas this feature was
an historical accident. To claim that the Hebrew development was
unique and therefore supernatural is to assume that the relatively
unique must be supernatural. But such an assumption has no foundation
in experience, for differences in the development of nations are the
rule rather than the exception. Shall we say that English
constitutional development is supernatural because no other nation
achieved such a form of government by itself? Shall we assert that
Greek art was supernatural because it was unique? Is it not evident
that the wish has been father to the thought in this case? All early
peoples have looked upon themselves as chosen and upon other peoples as
gentiles and barbarians. We have accepted this prejudice of the
Hebrews because we have adopted a modified form of their religion with
its racial traditions.
But while conditions in Palestine were not favorable to the flowering
of a rich and delicate mythology, it would be false to deny the
presence of a mythological motive in the Hebrew outlook. The whole
story of the {28} intimate relations of Yahweh to his people and to
their ancestors is through and through mythological. Milton's epic was
made possible by the folklore incorporated in the Bible. There are
many traces in the Bible of a common Semitic tradition in spite of the
reactions which it underwent. Recent Semitic scholarship has made it
evident that Babylonian beliefs had penetrated to this kindred people.
There are sun-myths and tales of semi-divine heroes. After the exile,
under the influence of Persia and Babylonia, there arose a belief in
demons and angels as powers at work in the world for good and evil.
These mythical creatures passed into the outlook of the Western mind by
way of Christianity, and offered fruitful material for art and poetry,
and for the gradual blossoming of new myths around the Christian epic
of the universe. Milton and Dante unfold the inner meaning of life in
terms which cannot be understood apart from beliefs which have their
ultimate roots in primitive conceptions of the world.
Christian mythology, like Greek mythology, has its aesthetic value, but
it is a mistake to assume that this value is removed when the old
credence has departed. To appreciate the beauty of Botticelli's Venus,
it is not necessary to believe that Venus arose from this sea-foam; in
like manner, to enjoy Christian art it is not required that we accept
the literal truth of its symbols. Indeed, it seems to me very doubtful
whether many educated people to-day take the minor characters of the
Christian pantheon very seriously. We would be more than surprised to
hear angelic messengers chanting in the heavens above us. Only because
they are bound up with a system of attitudes and values dear to men,
are these mystic beings given that half-belief which {29} prevents them
from falling into that limbo to which dragons and griffins and nymphs
have descended. That this will be their ultimate fate is certain. In
Protestant countries, in which moral values control religion and
sensuous elements exercise little attraction, these figures have
already retreated far into the background. Yet the average religious
mind likes to dally with the thought of them, much as the child, who no
longer believes in fairies, still wishes to indulge in make-believe
when the everyday world becomes too bare and well-ordered.
The age of myth, then, corresponds to a naive extension of human
characteristics to natural phenomena. The world becomes a drama to
which man holds the key in his own life. He feels himself surrounded
by mysterious forces and agencies, far surpassing his own puny
strength, and inevitably conceives them in analogy with his own
activities. They differ not so much in how they work as in what they
do. In this way, the gods were born into the world--and once born man
has been unable to free himself from them. As he has grown in mental
and moral stature, he has unconsciously reflected into them this
increased knowledge and these higher ideals. And the process, once
begun, has continued to the present. _Not until he has outgrown old
fears and relinquished unwarranted hopes will these beliefs lose their
power. Then and not till then, will reason be able to supplant
mythology by knowledge._
{30}