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Updated: June 1, 2025
How far this view had been held before the time of Euhemeros is uncertain, but he gave it vogue, and it is called, after him, Euhemerism. In recent times it has been revived in part by Herbert Spencer and Allen, who derive all gods from ghosts. Similar to it is the rationalizing of myths, which has met with favor at various times. +360+. The dead kin.
But this support could neither be Euhemerism, nor the system of Carneades or of Epicurus. Euhemerism Not an Adequate Support The historical version of the myths came far too rudely into collision with the popular faith, when it declared the gods directly to be men; Carneades called even their existence in question, and Epicurus denied to them at least any influence on the destinies of men.
Euhemerism, which plays a great part in the apologists, helped in the same direction: the supposition that the idols were originally men existed among the Pagans themselves, and it was too much in harmony with the tendency of the apologists to be left unemployed.
The plain intelligible character of Euhemerism exerted doubtless a certain power of attraction over the Romans, and in particular produced only too deep an effect on the conventional history of Rome with its at once childish and senile conversion of fable into history; but it remained without material influence on the Roman religion, because the latter from the first dealt only in allegory and not in fable, and it was not possible in Rome as in Hellas to write biographies of Zeus the first, second, and third.
Yet it found more partisans than Euhemerism and the sophistic school, and this was probably the reason why the police continued to wage war against it longest and most seriously.
It is characteristic, too, that both Jews and Christians, in their attacks on Paganism, reckoned with Euhemerism as a well-established theory. As every one knows, it has survived to our day; Carlyle, I suppose, being its last prominent exponent. It is characteristic of Euhemerism in its most radical form that it assumed that the gods of polytheism did not exist; so far it is atheism.
+382+. Between Euhemerism and the theory that explains myths as a "disease of language" there is little or no essential difference of principle. Both theories assume that man, having devised certain epithets, later came to misunderstand them and to build up histories on the misunderstanding.
But this support could neither be Euhemerism, nor the system of Carneades or of Epicurus. Euhemerism Not an Adequate Support The historical version of the myths came far too rudely into collision with the popular faith, when it declared the gods directly to be men; Carneades called even their existence in question, and Epicurus denied to them at least any influence on the destinies of men.
Bucolic paradise of Battus and Bombyce, of Corydon and Daphnis, may it please the hierophants of Sanskrit lore, of derivative Aryan philology, of iconoclastic euhemerism, to spare us yet awhile the lovely myths that dance across the asphodel meads of sunny Sicily.
On the lower plane, Chinese religion is overrun, as everyone knows, by Animism and ancestor-worship. This is so powerful that it has given rise to a native theory of Euhemerism.
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