Mittelalters (1853); J. Görres, Die christliche Mystik (new ed., 1879–1880);
Rufus M. Jones, Studies in Mystical Religion (1909). On
the German mystics see W. Preger’s Geschichte der deutschen Mystik
(vol. i. 1874; vol. ii. 1881; vol. iii. 1893). The works of Eckhart
and his precursors are contained in F. Pfeiffer’s Deutsche Mystiker
des 14. Jahrhunderts (1845–1857).
(A. S. P.-P.)
MYTHOLOGY (Gr. μυθολογία), the science which examines μῦθα,
myths or legends of cosmogony and of gods and
heroes. Mythology is also used as a term for these legends
themselves. Thus when we speak of “the mythology of Greece”
we mean the whole body of Greek divine and heroic and cosmogonic
legends. When we speak of the “science of mythology”
we refer to the various attempts which have been made to
explain these ancient narratives. Very early indeed in the
history of human thought men awoke to the consciousness
that their religious stories were much in want of explanation.
The myths of civilized peoples, as of Greeks and the Aryans of
India, contain two elements, the rational and what to modern
minds seems the irrational. The rational myths are those
which represent the gods as beautiful and wise beings. The
Artemis of the Odyssey “taking her pastime in the chase of
boars and swift deer, while with her the wild wood-nymphs
disport them, and high over them all she rears her brow, and
is easily to be known where all are fair,” is a perfectly rational
mythic representation of a divine being. We feel, even now,
that the conception of a “queen and huntress, chaste and fair,”
the lady warden of the woodlands, is a beautiful and natural
fancy which requires no explanation. On the other hand, the
Artemis of Arcadia, who is confused with the nymph Callisto,
who, again, is said to have become a she-bear, and later a star
and the Brauronian Artemis, whose maiden ministers danced
a bear-dance, are goddesses whose legend seems unnatural,
and is felt to need explanation. Or, again, there is nothing
not explicable and natural in the conception of the Olympian
Zeus as represented by the great chryselephantine statue of
Zeus at Olympia, or in the Homeric conception of Zeus as a god
who “turns everywhere his shining eyes” and beholds all
things. But the Zeus whose grave was shown in Crete, or the
Zeus who played Demeter an obscene trick by the aid of a ram,
or the Zeus who, in the shape of a swan, became the father of
Castor and Pollux, or the Zeus who was merely a rough stone,
or the Zeus who deceived Hera by means of a feigned marriage
with an inanimate object, or the Zeus who was afraid of Attes,
is a being whose myth is felt to be unnatural and in great need
of explanation. It is this irrational and unnatural element—as
Max Müller says, “the silly, savage and senseless element”—that
makes mythology the puzzle which men have so long
found it.
Early Explanations of Myths.—The earliest attempts at a crude science of mythology were efforts to reconcile the legends of the gods and heroes with the religious sentiment which recognized in these beings objects of worship and respect. Closely as religion and myth are intertwined, it is necessary to hold them apart for the purposes of this discussion. Religion may here be defined as the conception of divine, or at least supernatural powers entertained by men in moments of gratitude or of need and distress, in hours of weakness, when, as Homer says, “all folk yearn after the gods.” Now this conception may be rude enough, and it is nearly related to, purely magical ideas, to efforts to secure supernatural aid by magical ceremonies. Still the roughest form of spiritual prayer has for its basis the hypothesis of beneficent beings, visible or invisible. The senseless stories or myths about the gods are soon felt to be at variance with this hypothesis. As an example we may take the instance of Qing, the Bushman hunter. Qing, when first he met white men, was asked about his religion. He began to explain, and mentioned Cagn. Mr Orpen, the chief magistrate of St John’s Territory, asked: “Is Cagn good or malicious? how do you pray to him?” Answer (in a low imploring tone): “ ‘O Cagn! O Cagn! are we not your children? do you not see our hunger? give us food;’ and he gives us both hands full” (Cape Monthly Magazine, July 1874). Here we see the religious view of Cagn, the Bushman god. But in the mythological account of Cagn given by Qing he appears as a kind of grasshopper, supernaturally endowed, the hero of a most absurd cycle of senseless adventures. Even religion is affected by these irrational notions, and the gods of savages and of many civilized peoples are worshipped with cruel, obscene, and irrational rites. But, on the whole, the religious sentiment strives to transcend the mythical conceptions of the gods, and is shocked and puzzled by the mythical narratives. As soon as this sense of perplexity is felt by poets, by priests, or by most men in an age of nascent criticism, explanations of what is most crude and absurd in the myths are put forward. Men ask themselves why their gods are worshipped in the form of beasts, birds, and fishes; why their gods are said to have prosecuted their amours in bestial shapes; why they are represented as lustful and passionate—thieves, robbers, murderers and adulterers. The answers to these questions sometimes become myths themselves. Thus both the Mangaians and the Egyptians have been puzzled by their own gods in the form of beasts. The Egyptians invented an explanation—itself a myth—that in some moment of danger the gods concealed themselves from their foes in the shapes of animals.[1] The Mangaians, according to W. W. Gill, hold that “the heavenly family had taken up their abode in these birds, fishes, and reptiles.”[2]
A people so curious and refined as the Greeks were certain to be greatly perplexed by even such comparatively pure mythical narratives as they found in Homer, still more by the coarser legends of Hesiod, and above all by the ancient local myths preserved by local priesthoods. Thus, in the 6th century before Christ, Xenophanes of Colophon severely blamed the poets for their unbecoming legends, and boldly called certain myths “the fables of men of old.”[3] Theagenes of Rhegium (520 B.C.?), according to the scholiast on Iliad, xx. 67,[4] was the author of a very ancient system of mythology. Admitting that the fable of the battle of the gods was “unbecoming,” if literally understood, Theagenes represented it as an allegorical account of the war of the elements. Apollo, Helios, and Hephaestus were fire, Hera was air, Poseidon was water, Artemis was the moon, καὶ τὰ λοιπὰ ὁμοίως. Or, by another system, the names of the gods represented moral and intellectual qualities. Heraclitus, too, disposed of the myth of the bondage of Hera as allegorical philosophy. Socrates, in the Cratylus of Plato, expounds “a philosophy which came to him all in an instant,” an explanation of the divine beings based on crude philological analyses of their names. Metrodorus, rivalling some recent flights of conjecture, resolved not only the gods but even heroes like Agamemnon, Hector and Achilles “into elemental combinations and physical agencies.”[5] Euripides makes Pentheus (but he was notoriously impious) advance a “rationalistic” theory of the story that Dionysus was stitched up in the thigh of Zeus.
When Christianity became powerful the heathen philosophers evaded its satire by making more and more use of the allegorical and non-natural system of explanation. That method has two faults. First (as Arnobius and Eusebius reminded their heathen opponents), the allegorical explanations are purely arbitrary, depend upon the fancy of their author, and are all equally plausible and equally unsupported by evidence.[6] Secondly, there is no proof at all that, in the distant age when the myths were developed, men entertained the moral notions and physical philosophies which are supposed to be “wrapped up,” as Cicero says, “in impious fables.” Another system of explanation is that associated with the name of Euemerus (316 B.C.). According to this author, the myths are history in disguise. All the gods were once men, whose real feats have been decorated and distorted by later fancy. This view suited Lactantius, St Augustine and other early Christian writers
