Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/483

 GENERAL RECAPITULATION. 451 3. The mythes were originally produced in an age which had no records, no philosophy, no criticism, no canon of belief, and scarcely any tincture either of astronomy or geography but which, on the other hand, was full of religious faith, distinguished for quick and susceptible imagination, seeing personal agents where we look only for objects and connecting laws; an age, moreover, eager for new narrative, accepting with the unconscious impressibility of children (the question of truth or falsehood being never formally raised) all which ran in harmony with its pre- existing feelings, and penetrable by inspired prophets and poets in the same proportion that it was indifferent to positive evidence. To such hearers did the primitive poet or story-teller address himself: it was the glory of his productive genius to provide suitable narrative expression for the faith and emotions which he shared in common with them, and the rich stock of Grecian mythes attests how admirably he performed his task. As the gods and the heroes formed the conspicuous object of national reverence, so the mythes were partly divine, partly heroic, partly both in one. 1 The adventures of Achilles, Helen, and Diomedes, of (Edipus and Adrastus, of Meleager and Athiea, of Jason and the Argo, were recounted by the same tongues, and accepted with the same unsuspecting confidence, as those of Apollo and Artemis, of Ares and Aphrodite, of Poseidon and Herakles. 4. The time however came, when this plausibility ceased to be complete. The Grecian mind made an important advance, social- ly, ethically, and intellectually. Philosophy and history were constituted, prose writing and chronological records became famil- iar ; a canon of belief more or less critical came to be tacitly recognized. Moreover, superior men profited more largely by the stimulus, and contracted habits of judging different from the 1 The fourth Eclogue of Virgil, under the form of a prophecy, gives a faithful picture of the heroic and divine past, to which the legends of Troj nd (he Argonauts belonged : c Hie Deftm vitam accipiet, Divisque videbit Permixtos heroas," etc. " Alter erit turn Tiphys et altera quse vehat Argo Delectos heroas : erunt etiam altera bella, Atquc iteram ad Trojam magnus mittetur Achilles."