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His most famous work was his "Metamorphoses," mythologic legends involving transformations, a most poetical and imaginative production. He, with that self-conscious genius common to poets, declares that his poem would be proof against sword, fire, thunder, and time, a prediction, says Bayle, which has not yet proved false.
Obviously such fancies are purely of mythologic parentage. Now the luminiferous ether, upon which our authors make such extensive demands, may be physically "ethereal" enough, in spite of the enormous elasticity which leads Professor Jevons to characterize it as "adamantine"; but most assuredly we have not the slightest reason for speaking of it as "immaterial" or "spiritual."
In Hindustan, says Maurice, "the veneration of the serpent is evident in every page of their mythologic history, in which every fabulous personage of note is represented as grasping or as environed with a serpent."
The savage philosopher classifies by obvious resemblances analogic characters. The civilized philosopher classifies by essential affinitives homologic characteristics and the progress of philosophy is marked by changes from analogic categories to homologic categories. There are two grand stages of philosophy the mythologic and scientific.
It had an overpowering dramatic convincingness. I realize now better than ever how inevitable were men's earlier mythologic versions of such catastrophes, and how artificial and against the grain of our spontaneous perceiving are the later habits into which science educates us.
There are many examples among the animal shapes that possess peculiarities affording no hint of animals living or extinct, but which are strongly suggestive of the play of mythologic fancy or of conventional methods of representing totemic ideas. As in the case of the animal carvings, the latter suggestion is perhaps the one that best corresponds with their general character.
The dissolution of Jesus into mythologic vapour was nothing less than the death of a friend dearer to me then than any other friend whom I knew. But the worst stroke of all was that which fell upon the doctrine of a life beyond the grave. In theory I had long despised the notion that we should govern our conduct here by hope of reward or fear of punishment hereafter.
The thaumaturgic phases of mythology are the embryonic stages of philosophy, science being the fully developed form. Without mythology there could be no science, as without childhood there could be no manhood, or without embryonic conditions there could be no ultimate forms. Mythologic philosophy is the subject with which we deal.
Butler, the Romish historian, thinks he was martyred by Diocletian for telling that amiable being a little of his mind; ancient fabulists make it out that be killed a dragon, saved a fair virgin's life, and then did something better than either married her; medieval men, with a knightly turn of mind, transmuted him into the patron of chivalry; Edward III made him the patron of the Order of the Garter; the Eastern and Western churches venerate him yet; Britains have turned him into their country's tutelary saint; and many places of worship have been dedicated to this curiously mythologic individual.
The Asas, or gods, lived in Asgard, a mythic communal village, with its Thing or Council, the very counterpart of the communal village of Iceland. Olympus was a Greek city. Still further in the study of mythologic philosophy we see that more and more supremacy falls into the hands of the few, until monotheism is established on the plan of the empire.
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