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I can remember perfectly the downfall of the Homeric deities how many years there were when the common people believed in the divine origin of the Odyssey, while the educated classes were more or less discreetly heretical, until at last the whole Olympian outfit became poetic myths. But strangely enough I do not recall just the date when we began to demand a god of dignity and morality."
It is in this intellectual condition that ignorant and savage man really begins the spontaneous yet reflective research into the causes of things, and it is in this condition only that he hypothetically interprets the order of phenomena through myths, which have then become secondary, and are no longer primitive.
We might also say that when the soul advances beyond the stage of mythological consciousness to deeper truths, these bear the same stamp as did the myths, for one and the same force was at work in their formation.
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 is undeniably true that the great majority of the cases of so-called rabies are pure myths. Under investigation they melt away into nothing but alarm and fiction. However, there appeared to be a residue of actual hydrophobia, though the disease as tested by its name exists in fancy rather than fact.
The stage has been reached which discerns fact from fable; the myths which to an earlier age seemed the highest embodiment of truth, are now mere graceful ornaments, or at most faint images of hidden realities.
Therefore his cycle of myths, or his Edda, occupies a higher place. It is less chaotic; it is more consistent; it is a chorus in which every voice is trained to respond to or correspond with the leader. In this respect it has a remarkable resemblance to the Scandinavian myths and poems.
The story of AE-ne'as, as related by the Roman poet Ver'gil in his celebrated poem called the AE-ne'id, which we are to tell about in this book, is one of the most interesting of the myths or legends that have come down to us from ancient authors.
Perhaps: but then, in losing its force, in abandoning its myths, and threats, and rhetoric, this religion has lost its deceptive sanctimony and hypocrisy; and in retaining its rigidity it has kept what made it noble and pathetic; for it is a clear dramatic expression of that human spirit in this case a most pure and heroic spirit which it strives so hard to dethrone.
Among scholarly folk he made not the slightest pretence of regarding the fundamental tenets of the Christian faith in the light of anything more serious than interesting historical myths, notable sections in the mosaic of folk-lore, which it was his pride and delight to study and understand.
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