United States or Åland ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
As a background for our discussion we shall need to consider first, the nature and significance of mythology, since there is some, indeed much, difference of opinion on the subject, and to arrive at some basis of understanding as to its function.
One does not need to know much mythology to know that this is a myth. It is commonly called the Solar Myth. Quite plainly, of course, the case was just the other way. The god was never a symbol or hieroglyph representing the sun. The sun was a hieroglyph representing the god.
Velleius first sets forth the doctrine of his master Epicurus; speaking about the gods, says one of his opponents, with as much apparent intimate knowledge "as if he had just come straight down from heaven". All the speculations of previous philosophers which he reviews one after the other are, he assures the company, palpable errors. The popular mythology is a mere collection of fables.
"That you will offer me your arm and guide me yourself, like another like another I used to know mythology, but other important matters have made me forget it; pray come with me, then?" "And am I to be abandoned, then?" cried Malicorne. "It is quite impossible, monsieur," said Montalais to Manicamp; "if I were to be seen with you at such an hour, what would be said of me?"
So long and so far as the question is thus put and thus answered, there is little room for mythology to grow in. And it did not grow round the di indigites in Italy, or round corresponding deities in other countries. But the question, 'Why did the god do it? is susceptible, on reflection, of another kind of answer.
Everywhere and always, beings who have no more reality than Putois have inspired nations with hatred and love, terror and hope, have advised crimes, received offerings, made laws and customs. Monsieur Goubin, think of the eternal mythology. Putois is a mythical personage, the most obscure, I grant you, and of the lowest order.
Such Christian texts and mottoes, which fill our American homes, churches and public places, are little in evidence in Germany because they do not enter into the life. The popular nomenclature is pagan rather than Biblical. Already in this war we behold the Kaiser drawing his names for forts and trenches from his wild pagan mythology, not from Christian sources.
"Don't you know," he continued, "that the superstitions of the East have perpetuated the mystical form and the counterfeit characters of the symbol, which represents a mythical dominion? I have no more laid myself open to a charge of credulity in this case, than if I had mentioned sphinxes or griffins, whose existence mythology in a manner admits."
It is the humanized god that has emotional life, and it is in this mythical life that the religious feeling of the worshiper is expressed with greatest fullness of detail. +952+. The development of mythology through all its gradations of fullness and fineness can be traced in the religious systems of the world. Where there is no recognizable worship there is, of course, no mythology.
Prochnow spent the whole day working for Preciosa, oblivious of Virgilia's snares or of the debut of Robin Morrell. He heaved history, tradition, legend, mythology into the furnace, worked the bellows with indefatigable hand, blew his brains to a white heat and kept them there, and dropped down at dusk with his project complete.
Word Of The Day