outlook. The whole
story of the {28} intimate relations of Yahweh to his people and to
their ancestors is through and through mythological. Milton's epic was
made possible by the folklore incorporated in the Bible. There are
many traces in the Bible of a common Semitic tradition in spite of the
reactions which it underwent. Recent Semitic scholarship has made it
evident that Babylonian beliefs had penetrated to this kindred people.
There are sun-myths and tales of semi-divine heroes. After the exile,
under the influence of Persia and Babylonia, there arose a belief in
demons and angels as powers at work in the world for good and evil.
These mythical creatures passed into the outlook of the Western mind by
way of Christianity, and offered fruitful material for art and poetry,
and for the gradual blossoming of new myths around the Christian epic
of the universe. Milton and Dante unfold the inner meaning of life in
terms which cannot be understood apart from beliefs which have their
ultimate roots in primitive conceptions of the world.

Christian mythology, like Greek mythology, has its aesthetic value, but
it is a mistake to assume that this value is removed when the old
credence has departed. To appreciate the beauty of Botticelli's Venus,
it is not necessary to believe that Venus arose from this sea-foam; in
like manner, to enjoy Christian art it is not required that we accept
the literal truth of its symbols. Indeed, it seems to me very doubtful
whether many educated people to-day take the minor characters of the
Christian pantheon very seriously. We would be more than surprised to
hear angelic messengers chanting in the heavens above us. Only because
they are bound up with a system of attitudes and values dear to men,
are these mystic beings given that half-belief which {29} prevents them
from falling into that limbo to which dragons and griffins and nymphs
have descended. That this will be their ultimate fate is certain. In
Protestant countries, in which moral values control religion and
sensuous elements exercise little attraction, these figures have
already retreated far into the background. Yet the average religious
mind likes to dally with the thought of them, much as the child, who no
longer believes in fairies, still wishes to indulge in make-believe
when the everyday world becomes too bare and well-ordered.

The age of myth, then, corresponds to a naive extension of human
characteristics to natur