(1) Praep. E., ii. 5.
(2) Ibid., 6,19.
As Eusebius, like Clemens of Alexandria, Arnobius, and the other early Christian disputants, had no prejudice in favour of Hellenic mythology, and no sentimental reason for wishing to suppose that the origin of its impurities was pure, he found his way almost to the theory of the irrational element in mythology which we propose to offer.
Even to sketch the history of mythological hypothesis in modern times would require a book to itself. It must suffice here to indicate the various lines which speculation as to mythology has pursued.
All interpretations of myth have been formed in accordance with the ideas prevalent in the time of the interpreters. The early Greek physicists thought that mythopoeic men had been physicists. Aristotle hints that they were (like himself) political philosophers.(1) Neo-platonists sought in the myths for Neo-platonism; most Christians (unlike Eusebius) either sided with Euhemerus, or found in myth the inventions of devils, or a tarnished and distorted memory of the Biblical revelation.
(1) Met., xi. 8,19.
This was the theory, for example, of good old Jacob Bryant, who saw everywhere memories of the Noachian deluge and proofs of the correctness of Old Testament ethnology.(1)
(1) Bryant, A New System, wherein an Attempt is made to Divest Tradition of Fable, 1774.
Much the same attempt to find the Biblical truth at the bottom of savage and ancient fable has been recently made by the late M. Lenormant, a Catholic scholar.(1)
(1) Les Origines de l'Histoire d'apres le Bible, 1880-1884.