We will a little further extend, and corroborate these views by another quotation from a high authority on the subject.
“Myths,” he says, “are figurative representations of events or ideas in the garb of history; they develop themselves spontaneously, and unartificially in the consciousness of a primitive people; instead of being products of design and invention, they symbolize the forces of nature under whose influence they are formed, and have an essentially religious character.”
The same authority further says: “The myth proceeds from an idea, either true or false; the legend proceeds from facts, more or less clearly apprehended, in which the idea was discovered. The one transforms poetry, religion or philosophy into history; the other modifies history with reference to conceptions of poetry, religion and philosophy.”
All persons interested in classical studies, and having given much attention to comparative philology, find in the early history of mankind an age in which words were very few—mostly names of things, and not used to express abstract ideas, or any other than those things necessary to the simplest modes of life. As words increased in number, some were introduced expressive of qualities, relations and acts. They are found variously related, phrases and brief sentences appear, the language becomes organic, and the first elements of its grammar are discovered.
In a second period, as in the Aryan and Semitic tongues, language is found advanced to a more systematic, grammatical development, and invites us to a more critical study and analysis of its forms. As yet there were neither abstract nor collective nouns, and every name designated a definite individual object. All these names of things had terminations suggestive of sex. Neuter nouns were yet unknown. Of course it was impossible for them to speak of any object, though inanimate, without ascribing to it something of an active, individual, sexual, personal character; and for this reason, if for no other, personification is a special characteristic of all languages in their earlier stages of development, and it is found to have a close correspondence with the mythical conceptions in the development of thought in those remote ages. There was then nothing prosaic in men’s thinking or speaking. Their language was a kind of unconscious poetry, every word a poem, every phrase embracing the germs of something metaphorical, or sparkling with the scintillations of some bright conceptions. Verbs, too, were strongly expressive of the mind’s various moods and emotions, and needed few auxiliaries that are employed in more abstract prose. Thus sunset was described as the sun growing old, decaying, dying; the sunrise as night giving birth to a brilliant, beautiful child. Spring was Sol greeting the happy earth with a warm embrace, and showering his treasures into the lap of nature. Rivers, fountains, grottoes, forests, mountains, rain, storm, the ocean, fire, thunder clouds and the heavenly bodies were all clothed with the attributes of living beings, and all descriptions of them were myths.
Volumes have been written, and much more might here be said explanatory of the general subject, and to remove prejudice against mythological studies as useless or misleading in their tendency.
Some well meaning persons ask how Christians who know the truth and rejoice in it can be either pleased or profited by communing with the thoughts or fancies of those on whom the sun did not shine, and who had none to lead them.
It is important for all such to distinguish the point of view in which mythological narratives were contemplated by the ancients, by mythologists themselves, and that in which we are to regard them. To them they were in many respects realities closely connected with their national history and their religious faith. To us they are unreal, but affording evidence of the little nature taught them or that was acquired by merely intellectual processes, and their evident, but often vaguely felt, need of supernatural manifestations.
Classical study and literature are regarded as so important in education, and a knowledge of Greek mythology is so obviously necessary to a full understanding of the best Greek authors, that many works have been published on the subject. The writers have either merely stated the fables as reported among the ancients, or in addition have sought to trace them to their origin, either by making conjectures of allegorical, historical and physical meanings in the stories, or deriving them from the events of the early ages, recorded in the Bible. But as these traditions themselves arose in various ways, and often accidentally, there of course must be error in every system which attempts to refer them to a common cause and purpose.
The foundation of very many of the fictions of mythology is laid in ideas that arose from the simplicity and inexperience of persons conversant only with objects of sense. Wherever an unusual fact or appearance was observed it was ascribed to a distinct being or existence, operating directly or immediately. This creation by them of personal existences out of natural phenomena, this ever ready personification of physical objects and events, was, in all probability, one of the most fruitful sources of fable and of idolatry, for which the stars and the elements seem to have furnished the most common occasion.