of devils, or a tarnished and distorted memory of the Biblical revelation.
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]
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.[2]
In the beginning of the present century Germany turned her attention to mythology. As usual, men's ideas were biassed by the general nature of their opinions. In a pious kind of spirit, Friedrich Creuzer sought to find symbols of some pure, early, and Oriental theosophy in the myths and mysteries of Greece. Certainly the Greeks of the philosophical period explained their own myths as symbols of higher things, but the explanation was an after-thought.[3] The great Lobeck, in his Aglaophamus (1829) brought back common sense, and made it the guide of his vast, his unequalled learning. In a gentler and more genial spirit, C. Otfried Müller laid the foundation of a truly scientific and historical mythology.[4] Neither of these writers had, like Alfred Maury,[5] much knowledge of the myths and faiths of the lower races, but they often
- ↑ Bryant, A New System, wherein an Attempt is made to Divest Tradition of Fable, 1774.
- ↑ Les Origines de l'Histoire d'après le Bible, 1882.
- ↑ Creuzer, Symbolik und Mythologie, 2d edit., Leipzig, 1836–43.
- ↑ Introduction to a Scientific System of Mythology, English trans., London, 1844.
- ↑ Histoire des Religions de la Grèce Antique, Paris, 1857.
