ral part, or they have at least
tolerated its growth in the very precincts of their temples.

After we have thus seen what limitations we must place on the meaning of
the word Religion, if we call mythology the religion of the ancient world,
we may now advance another step.

We have glanced at the principal interpretations which have been proposed
by the ancients themselves of the original purpose and meaning of
mythology. But there is one question which none, either of the ancient or
of the modern interpreters of mythology, has answered, or even asked, and
on which, nevertheless, the whole problem of mythology seems to turn. If
mythology is history changed into fable, why was it so changed? If it is
fable represented as history, why were such fables invented? If it
contains precepts of moral philosophy, whence their immoral disguise? If
it is a picture of the great forms and forces of nature, the same question
still returns, why were these forms and forces represented as heroes and
heroines, as nymphs and shepherds, as gods and goddesses? It is easy
enough to call the sun a god, or the dawn a goddess, after these
predicates have once been framed. But how were these predicates framed?
How did people come to know of gods and goddesses, heroes and nymphs, and
what meaning did they originally connect with these terms? In fact, the
real question which a philosophy of mythology has to answer is this--Is the
whole of mythology an invention, the fanciful poetry of a Homer or Hesiod,
or is it a growth? Or, to speak more definitely, Was mythology a mere
accident, or was it inevitable? Was it only a false step, or was it a step
that could not have been left out in the historical progress of the human
mind?

The study of the history of language, which is only a part of the study of
the history of thought, has enabled us to give a decisive answer to this
question. Mythology is inevitable, it is natural, it is an inherent
necessity of language, if we recognize in language the outward form and
manifestation of thought: it is, in fact, the dark shadow which language
throws on thought, and which can never disappear till language becomes
altogether commensurate with thought, which it never will. Mythology, no
doubt, breaks out more fiercely during the early periods of the history of
human thought, but it never disappears altogether. Depend upon it, there
is mythology now as there was in the time of Homer, only we do not
perceive it, b