ads to
conclusions eventually discarded as false, demonstrably false to
anyone who compared them with the idea of the Godhead which he had in
his own soul. Mythology worked out the consequences of the assumption
that it is to the external world we must look for the divine
personality of whose presence in the common consciousness, the
community has at all times, been, even though dimly, aware. Doubts as
to the truth of myths were first aroused by the inconsistency between
the myths told and the justice and morality which had been from the
beginning the very essence of divine personality. The doubts arose in
the minds and hearts of individual thinkers; and, if those individuals
had been the only members of the community who conceived justice and
morality to be essential qualities of the divine personality, then it
would have been necessary for such thinkers first to convert the
community to that view. Now, one of the consequences of the prevalence
of mythology is that the community, amongst whom it flourishes, comes
to be, if not doubtful, then at times forgetful, of the fact that the
gods of the community are moral beings and the guardians of morality.
That fact had to be dismissed from attention, for the time being,
whenever certain myths were related. And, the more frequently a fact
is dismissed from attention, the less likely it is to reappear on the
surface of consciousness. Thus, the larger the part played by
mythology in the field of the common consciousness, the greater its
tendency to drive out from attention those moral qualities which were
of the essence of divine personality. But, however large the part
played by mythology, and however great its tendency to obliterate the
moral qualities of the gods, it rarely, if indeed ever, entirely
obliterates them from the field of the common consciousness.
Consequently, the individual thinkers, who become painfully aware of
the contrast and opposition between the morality, which is essential
to a divine personality, and the immorality ascribed to the gods in
some myths, have not to deal with a community which denies that the
gods have any morality whatever, but with a community which is ready
to admit the morality of the gods, whenever its attention is called
thereto. Thus, though it may be that it is in this or that individual
that the inconsistency between the moral qualities, which belong to
the gods, and the immoral actions which mythology ascribes to the
gods, first