Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/519

 SUBJECTIVE VIEW OF THE MYTHES. 487 that which he leaves out than in that which he retains. To omit the miraculous and the fantastic,, (it is that which he really mean? by " the impossible and the absurd,") is to suck the lifeblood out of these once popular narratives, to divest them at once both of their genuine distinguishing mark, and the charm by which they acted on the feelings of believers. Still less ought we to consent to break up and disenchant in a similar manner the rnythes of ancient Greece, partly because they possess the mythical beauties and characteristics in far higher perfection, partly be- cause they sank deeper into the mind of a Greek, and pervaded both the public and private sentiment of the country to a much greater degree than the British fables in England. Two courses, and two only, are open ; either to pass over the mythes altogether, which is the way in which modern historians treat the old British fables, or else to give an account of them as rnythes ; to recognize and respect their specific nature, and to abstain from confounding them with ordinary and certifiable his- tory. There are good reasons for pursuing this second method in reference to the Grecian mythes ; and when so considered, they constitute an important chapter in the history of the Grecian mind, and indeed in that of the human race generally. The his- torical faith of the Greeks, as well as that of other people, in reference to early and unrecorded times, is as much subjective and peculiar to themselves as their religious faith : among the Greeks, especially, the two are confounded with an intimacy which nothing less than great violence can disjoin. Gods, heroes, and men religion and patriotism matters divine, heroic, and human were all woven together by the Greeks into one indi- visible web, in which the threads of truth and reality, whatever they might originally have been, were neither intended to be, We shall gain little, perhaps, by such a course for the history of human events ; but it will be an important accession to our stock of knowledge on the his- tory of the human mind. It will infallibly display, as in the analysis of eveiy similar record, the operations of that refining principle which is ever obliter- ating the monotonous deeds of violence that fill the chronicle of a nation's early career, and exhibit the brightest attribute in the catalogue of man's intellectual endowments, a glowing and vigorous imagination^ bestowing upon all the impulses of the mind a splendor and virtuous dignity, which, however fallacious historically considered, are never without a powerfully redeeming good, the ethical tendency of all theii lessons "