and he certainly knew of the dethronement of Kronos, as well as of factions in the new dynasty of the gods.[1]
Peculiar forms of Greek mythology.But if the theory of religious perversion, apart from its moral difficulties, involves some serious contradictions, it altogether fails to explain why the mythology of the Greeks assumed many of its peculiar and perhaps most striking features. It does not show us why some of the gods should be represented pure, others as in part or altogether immoral; it does not tell us why Zeus and Herakles should be coarse and sensual, rather than Athênê and Apollôn; it does not explain why Apollôn is made to serve Admêtos, why Herakles bears the yoke of Eurystheus, and Bellerophôn that of the Kilikian king. It fails to show why Herakles should appear as the type of self-restraint and sensuality, of labour and sluggishness, why names so similar in meaning as Lykâôn, Helios and Phaethôn, should be attached to beings whose mythical history is so different. If for these and other anomalies there is a method of interpretation which gives a clear and simple explanation, which shows how such anomalies crept into being, and why their growth was inevitable–if this method serves also as a key, not merely to the mythology of Greece, but to that of the whole Aryan race, nay, even to a wider system still, a presumption at least is furnished, that the simpler method may after all be the truest.
Consequences involved in the perversion of an original revelation.Yet more, the hypothesis of a corrupted revelation involves some further consequences, which have a material bearing on the question. That which is so perverted cannot become clearer and more definite in the very process of corrupt developement. Not only must the positive truths, imparted at the first, undergo distortion, but the ideas involved in them must become weaker and weaker. If the Unity ot God formed one of those primitive truths, then the personality and the power of Zeus would be more distinct and real in the earliest times than in the later. The ideas of the Trinity, of the Redeemer, and of the Divine Wisdom, would be more prominent in those first stages of belief in the case of a people who confessedly were not sustained by new or continued revelations. The personality of a Divine Wisdom is not a dogma which men in a thoroughly rude society could reason out for themselves; and if it formed part of an original revelation, the lapse of time would tend to weaken, not to strengthen
- ↑ Similarly, the Iliad says nothing about the death of Achilleus: yet the poet is aware that his life is to be short.
μῆτερ, ἐπεί μ᾽ ἔτεκές γε μινυνθάδιόν περ ἐόντα
is the frequent reproach of Achilleus to his mother Thetis. But the truth is that our Iliad and Odyssey presuppose everywhere on the part of the hearer or reader an acquaintance with legends or stories which are referred to merely in passing, and sometimes with a bare allusion.
