logical truth. It will not, save by a singular accident, represent their
proper internal being, as a forthright unselfish intellect would wish to
know it. It will translate into the language of a private passion the
smiles and frowns which that passion meets with in the world.

[Sidenote: Importance of the moral factor.]

There are accordingly two factors in mythology, a moral consciousness
and a corresponding poetic conception of things. Both factors are
variable, and variations in the first, if more hidden, are no less
important than variations in the second. Had fable started with a clear
perception of human values, it would have gained immensely in
significance, because its pictures, however wrong the external notions
they built upon, would have shown what, in the world so conceived, would
have been the ideals and prizes of life. Thus Dante's bad cosmography
and worse history do not detract from the spiritual penetration of his
thought, though they detract from its direct applicability. Had nature
and destiny been what Dante imagined, his conception of the values
involved would have been perfect, for the moral philosophy he brought
into play was Aristotelian and rational. So his poem contains a false
instance or imaginary rehearsal of true wisdom. It describes the Life of
Reason in a fantastic world. We need only change man's situation to that
in which he actually finds himself, and let the soul, fathomed and
chastened as Dante left it, ask questions and draw answers from this
steadier dream.

[Sidenote: Its submergence.]

Myth travels among the people, and in their hands its poetic factor
tends to predominate. It is easier to carry on the dialectic or drama
proper to a fable than to confront it again with the facts and give them
a fresh and more genial interpretation. The poet makes the fable; the
sophist carries it on. Therefore historians and theologians discuss
chiefly the various forms which mythical beings have received, and the
internal logical or moral implications of those hypostases. They would
do better to attend instead to the moral factor. However interesting a
fable may be in itself, its religious value lies wholly in its revealing
some function which nature has in human life. Not the beauty of the god
makes him adorable, but his dispensing benefits and graces. Side by side
with Apollo (a god having moral functions and consequently inspiring a
fervent cult and tending himself to assume a moral chara