Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/205

Rh CHAP. The fact that national and poUtical institutions were intertwined inextricably with the old mythology, if they were not actually based upon it, only brought out its repulsive features more prominently before all who could not bring themselves to believe that the righteous God could issue to men immoral commands or himself do the things which he condemned in them. Whether the difficulties thus in- volved in the traditional creed should lead them to covert opposition or to open antagonism, would depend much on the temper and the circumstances of those who felt them. There are some who, like Sophokles, are well content if they can express their own convictions without assailing popular ideas ; there are others who, like Euripides, cannot rest until they bring others to see inconsistencies which to themselves are palpable and glaring. Yet it cannot be denied that the thoughts of Sophokles are as true and high as those of the younger poet There is nothing in the latter more outspoken than the words in which Sophokles tells us that the laws of righteousness are established in heaven and that in them God is great and cannot grow old. But where there is an earnest yearning for truth, this happy condition of mind will not probably last long. The thought of the mischief which the popular creeds inflict on ordinary minds will lead them openly to condemn a system which they might other- wise treat with indifference or contempt ; and to this sense we may ascribe the protests of Xenophanes and Protagoras, of Anaxagoras and Herakleitos, of Pindar and of Plato. The controversy was brought to an issue, when Euripides said plainly that if the gods are righteous, the stories of the poets are wretched falsehoods, and that if they do the things which the poets ascribe to them, then they are not gods at all : and this issue was anticipated by the conviction of .^schylos that Zeus was a mere name, one of many names, for the One true God, which might serve to convey some faint notion and inadequate idea of his goodness and his greatness.^

Hindu and Greek, then, alike worshipped the same God, of whom The name they also spoke sometimes under other names. But these names ^^^'^• were in no case borrowed the one from the other. The analysis of language has proved that in some instances Greeks, Latins, or Lithuanians have preserved older forms than any which are exhibited in Sanskrit, while the variations in the incidents and local colouring of the myths carry us back to one common source for all in the home of the yet undivided Aryan tribes. The seed, however, could not germinate while as yet there was no failure of memory ; and if, when the meaning of words was in part or wholly forgotten, expressions


 * On this subject see further, Muir, Sa>is/:nt Texts, part iv. p. 41.