Another method of explanation may be called the alkfjnrical, which was generally a way of conveying moral or philosophical truth, without necessarily assert- ing in all cases that the old mytliology meant just what tlie philosophers made it to mean. Philo deals willi the history of the Old Testainent just in the same way. An instance may be found of this and other interpre- tations in Plutarch's essay on Isis and Osiris. Isis is the principle which receives ideas, Osiris is reason, Ty- ])hon unreason, and so on. The same method applied to the mysteries of Eleusis brought into them, as we supiiose, the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. A playful s|iecimen of this method is found in Plato's Gor- f/i(is, where he exjilains the perforated vessels of the Danaidcs to mean the souls of men whose desires arc unl)ounded; administering supplies to the desires, yet never able to satisfy them. A ridiculous specimen of a physical inter]. retation is the explanation of the al- ternate appearance of Castor and Pollux above ground by the two celestial hemispheres, the one under, tlie other above, the earth (Sextus Empiricus, p. 399, cd. Bekker).
The scientitic study of mythology commenced with the ancient nations wlio produced it, specially with the acute and speculative (Jreeks. The great mass of the (Ireek people, indeed — of whom we have a characteris- tic type in tlie traveller Pausanias— accepted their oldest legends, in the mass, as divine and human facts; but as early as the time of Euripides, or even before his day, in the case of the Sicilians Epicliarmus and Empedo- cles, we lind that philoso|)hor8 and poets had begun to identify Jove with tlic njiper sky, Apollo with the sun, Juno with the nether atmosphere, and so forth ; that is, they interpreted their mythology as a theology and po- etry of nature. This, indeed, may be regarded as the prevalent view among the more rellcctive and pliil- oso|)hical heatliens (who were not. like Xenophon, or- thodox Ijclievers) from the age of Pericles, I$.C. 450, to the establishment of Christianity. But there was an altogether opposite view, which arose at a later period
under less genial circumstances, and exercised no small influence both on Greek and Poman writers. This view was first prominently put forth by the Messenian Eu- cmerus in the time of the first Ptolemies, and consisted in the flat prosaic assertion that the gods, equally with the heroes, were originally men, and all the tales about them only human facts sublimed and elevated by the imagination of pious devotees. This view seemed to derive strong support from the known stories about the birth and death of the gods, especially of Jove in Crete; and the growing sceptical tendencies of the scientific school at Alexandria were of course favorable to the promulgation of such views. The work of Euemerus accordingly obtained a wide circulation; and having been translated into Latin, went to nourish that crass form of religious scepticism wliich was one of the most notable symptoms of the decline of Roman genius at the time of the emperors. Historians, like Diodorus, glad- ly adopted an interpretation of the popular mythology which promised to swell their stores of trustworthy ma- terial; the myths accordingly were coolly emptied of the poetic soul which inspired them, and the early tradi- tions of the heroic ages were set forth as plain liistorj-, with a grave sobriety equally opposed to sound criti- cism, natural piety, and good taste. In modern times, the Greek mythology has again formed the basis of much speculation on the character of myths and the general laws of mythical interpretation. The first ten- dency of modern Christian scholars, following the track long before taken by the fathers, was to refer all Cireek mythology to a corruption of Old-Testament doctrine and history. Of this system of interpreting myths we liave examples in Vossius, in the learned and fanciful works of Bryant and Faber, and very recently, though with more pious and poetic feeling, in Gladstone. But the (iermans, who have taken the lead here, as in other regions of combined research and speculation, have long ago given up this ground as untenable, and have intro- duced the rational method of interpreting every system of myths, in the first place, according to the peculiar laws traceable in its own genius and growth. Ground was broken in this department by Heyne, whose views have been tested, corrected, and enlarged by a great number of learned, ingenious, and philosophical writers among his own countrymen, specially by Buttmann, Voss, Creuzer, !Miiller, Welckcr, Gerhard, and Preller. The general tendency of the Germans is to start — as Wordsworth does in his Excursion, book iv — from the position of a devout imaginative contemplation of nat- ure, in which the myths originated, and to trace the working out of those ideas, in different places and at different times, with the most critical research and the most vivid reconstruction. If in this work they have given birth to a large mass of ingenious nonsense and brilliant guess-work, there has not been wanting among them abundance of sober judgment and sound sense to counteract such extravagances. It may be noticed, however, as characteristic of tlieir over-speculative in- tellect, that they have a tendency to bring the sway of theological and physical symbols down into a region of what appears to be plain, historical fact ; so that Achilles becomes a water-god, Peleus a mud-god, and the whole of the Jlidd, according to Eorclihammer, a poetical ge- ology of Thessaly and the Troad ! (ioing to the oppo- site from Euemerus, they have denied the existence even of deified heroes; all the heroes of Greek tradition, according to Uschold, arc only degraded gods; and gen- erally in German writers a preference of transcendental to simple and obvious explanations of my t lis is notice- able. Creuiser, some of whose views had been antici- pated by Blackwell. in Scotland, is specially remarkable for the high ground of religious and philosophical con- ception on which he has placed the interpretation of myths; and he was also the first who directed attention to the Oriental element in Greek mythologj- — not, in- deed, with sufiicient discrimination in many cases, but to the great enrichment of mvthological material, and