manifests itself, to his distress and disturbance, still
what has happened in his case happens in the case of some, and may
happen in the case of all, other members of the community. The
inconsistency then comes to exist not merely for the individual but
for the common consciousness.

It was the immorality of mythology which first drew the attention of
believers in polytheism to the inconsistency between the goodness,
which was felt to be of the essence of the divine nature, and the
vileness, which was imputed to them in some myths; but it is the
irrationality and absurdity of mythology that seems, to the modern
mind, to be its most uniform characteristic. So long as the only
mythology that was studied was the mythology of Indo-European peoples,
it was assumed, without question, that the myths could not really be,
or originally have been, irrational and absurd: they must conceal,
under their seeming absurdity and outwardly irrational appearance,
some truth. They must have had, originally, some esoteric meaning.
They must have conveyed--allegorically, indeed--some profound truths,
known or revealed to sages of old, which it was the business of modern
students to re-discover in mythology. And accordingly profound
truths--scientific, cosmographic, astronomical, geographical,
philosophic or religious--were discovered. There was no knowledge
which the early ancestors of the human race were not supposed to have
possessed, and their descendants to have forgotten.

But, when it came to be discovered, and accepted, that the ancestors
of the Indo-European peoples had once been savages, and that savages,
all the world over, possessed myths, it became impossible to maintain
that such savages possessed in their mythologies treasures of truth
either scientific or religious. Myths have no esoteric meaning.
Obviously we must take them to be what we find them to be amongst
present-day savages, that is, absurd and irrational stories, with no
secret meaning behind them. Yet it is difficult, indeed impossible, to
accept this as the last word on the subject. The stories are rejected
by us, because they are patently absurd and irrational. But the savage
does not reject them: he accepts them. And he could not accept and
believe them, if he, as well as we, found them irrational and absurd.
In a word, it is the same with the irrationality as it is with the
immorality of mythology: myths are the work and the product of the
common consciousnes