Chapter XVI

GRECIAN MYTHES, AS UNDERSTOOD, FELT, AND INTERPRETED BY THE GREEKS THEMSELVES.

The mythes formed the entire mental stock of the early
Greeks.—State of mind out of which they arose.—Tendency to
universal personification.—Absence of positive knowledge—supplied
by personifying faith.—Multitude and variety of quasi-human
personages.—What we read as poetical fancies, were to the Greeks
serious realities.—The gods and heroes—their chief agency cast
back into the past, and embodied in the mythes.—Marked and
manifold types of the Homeric gods.—Stimulus which they afforded
to the mythopœic faculty.—Easy faith in popular and plausible
stories.—Poets—receive their matter from the divine inspiration
of the Muse.—Meaning of the word _mythe_—original—altered.—Matter
of actual history—uninteresting to early Greeks.—Mythical
faith and religious point of view—paramount in the Homeric
age.—Gradual development of the scientific point of view—its
opposition to the religious.—Mythopœic age—anterior to this
dissent.—Expansive force of Grecian intellect.—Transition
towards positive and present fact.—The poet becomes the organ
of present time instead of past.—Iambic, elegiac, and lyric
poets.—Influence of the opening of Egypt to Grecian commerce,
B. C. 660.—Progress—historical, geographical, social—from that
period to B. C. 500.—Altered standard of judgment, ethical
and intellectual.—Commencement of physical science—Thalês,
Xenophanês, Pythagoras.—Impersonal nature conceived as an
object of study.—Opposition between scientific method and the
religious feeling of the multitude.—How dealt with by different
philosophers.—Socratês.—Hippocratês.—Anaxagoras.—Contrasted
with Grecian religious belief.—Treatment of Socratês by
the Athenians.—Scission between the superior men and the
multitude—important in reference to the mythes.—The mythes
accommodated to a new tone of feeling and judgment.—The
poets and logographers.—Pindar.—Tragic poets.—Æschylus and
Sophoklês.—Tendencies of Æschylus in regard to the old
legends.—He maintains undiminished the grandeur of the
mythical world.—Euripidês—accused of vulgarizing the mythical
heroes, and of introducing exaggerated pathos, refinement,
and rhetoric.—The logographers—Pherekydês, etc.—Hekatæus—the
mythes rationalized.—The historians—Herodotus.—Earnest piety
of Herodotus—his mystic reserve.—His views of the mythical
world.—His deference for Egypt and Egyptian statements.—His
general faith in the mythical heroes and eponyms—yet combined
with scepticism as to matters of fact—His remarks upon the
miraculous foundation of the oracle at Dôdôna.—His remarks
upon Melampus and his prophetic powers.—His remarks upon
the Thessalian legend of Tempê.—Allegorical interpretation
of the mythes—more and more esteemed and applied.—Divine
legends allegorized.—Heroic legends historicized.—Limits
to this interpreting process.—Distinction between gods and
dæmons—altered and widened by Empedoclês.—Admission of dæmons as
partially evil beings—effect of such admission.—Semi-historical
interpretation—utmost which it can accomplish.—Some positive
certificate indispensable as a constituent of historical
proof—mere popular faith insufficient.—Mistake of ascribing to an
unrecording age the historical sense of modern times.—Matter of
tradition uncertified from the beginning.—Fictitious matter of
tradition does not imply fraud or imposture.—Plausible fiction
often generated and accredited by the mere force of strong and
common sentiment, even in times of instruction.—Allegorical
theory of the mythes—traced by some up to an ancient priestly
caste.—Real import of the mythes supposed to be preserved in
the religious mysteries.—Supposed ancient meaning is really
a modern interpretation.—Triple theology of the pagan world.
Treatment and use of the mythes according to Plato.—His views
as to the necessity and use of fiction.—He deals with the
mythes as expressions of feeling and imagination—sustained
by religious faith, and not by any positive basis.—Grecian
antiquity essentially a religious conception.—Application of
chronological calculation divests it of this character.—Mythical
genealogies all of one class, and all on a level in respect
to evidence.—Grecian and Egyptian genealogies.—Value of
each is purely subjective, having especial reference to
the faith of the people.—Gods and men undistinguishable in
Grecian antiquity.—General recapitulation.—General public
of Greece—familiar with their local mythes, careless of
recent history.—Religious festivals—their commemorative
influence.—Variety and universality of mythical relics.—The
mythes in their bearing on Grecian art.—Tendency of works of art
to intensify the mythical faith. 340-461