Page:Myths and Folk-Lore of Ireland (Curtin).djvu/24

 When mythos received its most definite as well as its most important application as a story of prehistoric Greece, its fate was settled; for these stories, on account of being understood neither in their origin nor true character, fell into discredit among the Greeks themselves before the Christian era. After the Christian era they found a lower deep still: they were not only fables, but wicked and harmful fables,—the lies and absurdities of a false religion.

Logos and mythos, two words with such a long history, words starting with the same value, but reaching results diametrically opposite,—one becoming during its career the reason of the universe, everything; the other, a fiction, nothing,—gave us the term "mythology," which, analyzed in dictionary fashion, means, "an account of myths, a body of myths," or, as some define it, "the science of myths." But no man, I think, who knows the present vagueness of opinion as to the origin and nature of myths would venture to call mythology a science. It will undoubtedly become a science, but it is not a science yet, and cannot be till we are in a position to give a scientific statement of what myths are.

The application of the word "myth" among scholars is plain enough up to a certain point; for