The mystic allegory with which such modern writers
as Lord Bacon have invested the myths of antiquity is no part
of their original clothing, but is rather the late product of
a style of reasoning from analogy quite similar to that which
we shall perceive to have guided the myth-makers in their
primitive constructions. The myths and customs and beliefs
which, in an advanced stage of culture, seem meaningless save
when characterized by some quaintly wrought device of symbolic
explanation, did not seem meaningless in the lower culture
which gave birth to them. Myths, like words, survive their
primitive meanings. In the early stage the myth is part and
parcel of the current mode of philosophizing; the explanation
which it offers is, for the time, the natural one, the one
which would most readily occur to any one thinking on the
theme with which the myth is concerned. But by and by the mode
of philosophizing has changed; explanations which formerly
seemed quite obvious no longer occur to any one, but the myth
has acquired an independent substantive existence, and
continues to be handed down from parents to children as
something true, though no one can tell why it is true: Lastly,
the myth itself gradually fades from remembrance, often
leaving behind it some utterly unintelligible custom or
seemingly absurd superstitious notion.
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