MYTHOLOGY
812
MYTHOLOGY
drawn from Moloch), prior to that of Zeus, cannot be made out. Nor is there any proof that the Greeks held to a dualism something like that of the Chinese. On the contrary, the Yedic gods, worshipped seven or eight centuries before Ilesiod, show that in that early age a polytlieism had already been evolved. As was said once before, the whole theogony shows a philosopher with his materials before him, using the cement of his own reflect ions to unite them together in one structure. We do not mean to say that one man did all this, but that it was not popular tradition. This was necessarily so, for tlic popular mind knew nothing of a cosmogony. It had no facts to work upon, as it had in the formation of the religions of nature as she appears in the present order of things. We might go on and speak of the cosmogonies of other nations, but the (ireek system — the clearest of all — will show, we think, that the part of mythology in which this is treated of is neither pop- ular nor of the very earliest origin.
It is a very interesting inquiry whether any pi-ime- val traditions nf mankind, facts pertaining to the gen- eral history of man and of the world, have mingled with the mythologies of heathenism. On the one hand, if there is a tradition of a great fact appearing with marked variations in different countries, and perhaps assuming a local character, the universality is a proof of common origin, notwithstanding the variations; and the presumption is against its being propagated from one part of the world to another, since all things else in mythology seem confined to a particular race or conti- nent. On the other hand, if a myth contains an expla- nation of some interior conviction of human nature, as the sense of evil, or of a lapse of man from a better state, this may be explained on psychological grounds. To begin with the last kind of myths, the tradition of a former golden age can easily be accounted for on the l)rinciple that memory blots out what is evil in the past, and at its time hard to bear, so that the age of our fa- thers, our youth when we are old, the early history of a nation, are surrounded with a golden halo. As to tra- ilitions of a lapse, a departure from the idea of man, they are found in a number of mythologies, but they may all be the product of reflection. Let us take the Prometheus myth for a sample, as it appears in Ilesiod. Omitting some of the details, we find that Prometheus — surnamed from his forethought, as his brother Epi- mefheiis was from thinking after he acted — tried to cheat Zeus in respect to the offering of a victim. In j revenge, Zeus would not let men have fire. Promethe- us, liowever, who is really a fire-genius or daemon, stole it out of heaven, carrying it in a hollow stalk, and thus again provoked the wrath of the god. The latter bound Prometheus in chains to a rock, and tormented him by sending an eagle to devour liis liver, which grew daily as fast as it was eaten, until Hercules killed the bird and set the victim free. As a punishment to mankind for receiving the fire, a woman was fashioneil, endowed with various gifts by the gods, and sent to ICpimetheus. She brought with her as a kind of outfit a jar or cask, such as was used in housekeeping. Epimctheus was not wise enough to adopt the advice of his brother to reject the gift. The woman opened the jar, which was full of jiains and death-bringing diseases, unknown be- fore, and in conseipience of tliis act they were scattered abroad. Only Hope stayed within the jar's cover. To this we add from the Prometheus linnnd of i-Eschylus the striking trait that a condition of the prisoner's de- liverance was that some god should suffer in liis place (Hesiod, Theog. 507-5IG; \)p. 43-104; .-Eschylus, Prom. 1027). There is no objection against finding a tradi- tion of a fall in this myth arising from the fact that a state of misery, and not one of sin, is contemplated. That is just the difference between heathenism and rev- elation, that the former, although conscious of evil, yet finds it hard to come up to the idea of sin. The resein- Uanccs between this fable and the third chapter of Gen- esis arc plain enoui;h. I'rometheus, the lire-bringer,
the introducer of the arts into the world, may stand for the tree of knowledge, and Pandora may stand for Eve. " Our woe" came by a woman in both narratives. Put the differences are still greater. There is in the fable no temptation of man to evil; he is quite passive, and the craft of his benefactor is the cause of his calamity. Woman does not lead him into sin, but is contrived ex- pressly for his suffering. And, what adds to the awk- wardness of the myth in its present form, the race of man was made, and had offered religious homage to the gods, before Pandora spread malailies over the Avorld. It was no progenitor who entailed evil on his posterity, but the god sent evil on a race already spread over the earth. We are disposed, therefore, to regard the story as a Greek invention, rather than as a distorted tradi- tion of the primeval times. When the more recent form of the myth makes it the condition of the libera- tion of Prometheus that a god shall take his place of suffering, some have found in this particular an adum- bration of the Christian doctrine of vicarious suffering; but to admit this would be to admit that heathen myths make as near an approach to the highest truths of the Gospel as is made by the Old Testament itself.