The modern attitude.
§ 15. I think, moreover, that even the most
trenchant of sceptics does not consistently deny that there must be some truth in legendary history, though we may not be able to disentangle it from miracles and misunderstandings. And when once we have abandoned Grote's position, and hold it more probable that old legends are based on facts than purely invented, nothing will prevent the sanguine student from striving to pick out for himself the facts and making a probable, if not a certain, sketch of the otherwise unrecorded incunabula of a nation's history.
Pure invention a rare occurrence;
plausible fiction therefore not an adequate cause.
This view and these attempts are based upon an ascertained truth in the psychology of all human societies. Just as people will accommodate a small number of distinct words to their perpetually increasing wants, and will rather torture an old root in fifty ways than simply invent a new combination of sounds for a new idea; so in popular legends the human race will always attach itself to what it knows, to what has gone before, rather than set to work and invent a new series of facts. Pure invention is so very rare and artificial that we may almost lay it aside as a likely source for old legends[31:1];
and we may assume either a loose record of real facts, or the adoption and adaptation of the legends of a previous age, as our real, though treacherous, materials for guessing pre-historic truth. This is the reason why we later students have not adhered without hesitation to the sceptical theory that plausible fiction may account for all the Greek myths, and we look for some stronger reason to reject them altogether.
Cases of deliberate invention,
at Pergamum,
which breed general suspicion of marvellous stories.