Nozze
di Figaro_ and he creates without effort an immortal masterpiece.

It is a question whether there is any essential difference between
history and mythology. History is made up of what probably happened;
mythology of what probably did not happen. There are myths in history
and history in myths. Mythology is merely the old form of history.
Every myth is rooted in truth. And we have to seek for this truth in
the fable, just as we try to reconstruct extinct animals from the
remains Time has preserved to us. Behind the story of Prometheus we see
the invention of fire; behind the loves of Ceres and Triptolemus the
invention of the plow and the beginnings of agriculture. The adventures
of the Argonauts show us the first attempts at voyages of exploration
and the discovery of gold mines. Volumes have been written about the
truths behind the fables, and explanations have been found for the
strangest facts of mythology, even for the metamorphoses which Ovid
described so poetically.

Halfway between history and mythology come the sacred writings. Each
race has its own. Ours are the Old and New Testament. Many believe that
these books are myths; a larger number--the Believers--that they are
history, Sacred History, the only true history--the only one about which
it is not permitted to express a doubt. If you want a proof of this,
recall that not so many years ago a clergyman in the Church of England
was censured by his ecclesiastical superiors for daring to say in a
sermon that the Serpent in the Garden of Eden was symbolical and not a
real creature.

And the ecclesiastical authorities were right. The basis of Christianity
is the Redemption--the incarnation and sacrifice of God himself to blot
out the stain of the first great sin and also to open the Kingdom of
Heaven to men. That original sin was Adam's fall, when he followed the
example of Eve, a victim of the Serpent's treacherous counsels, and
disobeyed the command not to taste the Forbidden Fruit. Eliminate the
Garden of Eden, the Serpent, the Forbidden Fruit, and the entire fabric
of Christianity crumbles.

If we turn to profane history and take any historical work, we find that
the facts are told in such a way that they seem to us beyond dispute.
But if we see the same facts from the pen of another historian, we no
longer recognize them. The reason is that a writer almost never
undertakes the task of wrestling with the giant, History, unless he is
impelled to do