ecause we ourselves live in the very shadow of it, and
because we all shrink from the full meridian light of truth. We are ready
enough to see that if the ancients called their kings and heroes
{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER DELTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER GAMMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH PERISPOMENI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~}, sprung of Zeus, that expression, intended originally to convey
the highest praise which man can bestow on man, was apt to lapse into
mythology. We easily perceive how such a conception, compatible in its
origin with the highest reverence for the gods, led almost inevitably to
the growth of fables, which transferred to divine beings the incidents of
human paternity and sonship. But we are not so ready to see that it is our
fate, too, to move in allegories which illustrate things intellectual by
visions exhibited to the fancy. In our religion, too, the conceptions of
paternity and sonship have not always been free from all that is human,
nor are we always aware that nearly every note that belongs to human
paternity and sonship must be taken out of these terms, before they can be
pronounced safe against mythological infection. Papal decisions on
immaculate conception are of no avail against that mythology. The mind
must become immaculate and rise superior to itself; or it must close its
eyes and shut its lips in the presence of the Divine.

If then we want to understand mythology, in the ordinary and restricted
sense of the word, we must discover the larger circle of mental phenomena
to which it belongs. Greek mythology, is but a small segment of mythology;
the religious mythologies of all the races of mankind are again but a
small segment of mythology. Mythology, in the highest sense, is the power
exercised by language on thought in every possible sphere of mental
activity; and I do not hesitate to call the whole history of philosophy,
from Thales down to Hegel, an uninterrupted battle against mythology, a
constant protest of thought against language. This will require some
explanation.

Ever since the time of Wilhelm von Humboldt, all who have seriously
grappled with the highest problems of the Science of Language have come to
the conviction that thought and language are inseparable, that language is
as impossible without thought as thought is without language