Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/474

 442 HISTORY OF GREECE a class apart, abundant as well as peculiar : to remove any indi- vidual mythe from its own class into that of history or philosophy, by simple conjecture, and without any collateral evidence, is of no advantage, unless you can perform a similar process on the re- mainder. If the process be trustworthy, it ought to be applied to all ; and e converso, if it be not applicable to all, it is not trust- worthy as applied to any one specially ; always assuming no special evidence to be accessible. To detach any individual mythe from the class to which it belongs, is to present it in an erroneous point of view ; we have no choice except to admit them as they stand, by putting ourselves approximatively into the frame of mind of those for whom they were destined and to whom they appeared worthy of credit. If Plato thus discountenances all attempts to transform the mythes by interpretation into history or philosophy, indirectly recognizing the generic difference between them we find sub- stantially the same view pervading the elaborate precepts in his treatise on the Republic. He there regards the mythes, not as embodying either matter-of-fact or philosophical principle, but as portions of religious and patriotic faith, and instruments of ethical tuition. Instead of allowing the poets to frame them according io the impulses of their own genius, and with a view to imme diate popularity, he directs the legislator to provide types of his own for the characters of the gods and heroes, and to suppress all such divine and heroic legends as are not in harmony with these [^reestablished canons. In the Platonic system, the mythes are not to be matters of history, nor yet of spontaneous or casual fic- tion, but of prescribed faith : he supposes that the people will believe, as a thing of course, what the poets circulate, and he therefore directs that the latter shall circulate nothing which does not tend to ennoble and improve the feelings. He conceives the mythes as stories composed to illustrate the general sentiments of the poets and the community, respecting the character and attributes of the gods and heroes, or respecting the social relations, and ethical duties as well as motives of mankind : hence the obli- gation upon the legislator to prescribe beforehand the types of character which shall be illustrated, and to restrain the poets from following out any opposing fancies. " Let us neither believe our- ielves (he exclaims), nor permit any one to cii-culate, that The-