cter) there may
be a Helios or a Phaethon, poetic figures expressing just as well the
sun's physical operation, and no less capable, if the theologian took
hold of them, of suggesting psychological problems. The moral factor,
however, was not found in these minor deities. Only a verbal and
sensuous poetry had been employed in defining them; the needs and hopes
of mankind had been ignored. Apollo, on the contrary, in personifying
the sun, had embodied also the sun's relations to human welfare. The
vitality, the healing, the enlightenment, the lyric joy flowing into
man's heart from that highest source of his physical being are all
beautifully represented in the god's figure and fable. The religion of
Apollo is therefore a true religion, as religions may be true: the
mythology which created the god rested on a deep, observant sense for
moral values, and drew a vivid, if partial, picture of the ideal,
attaching it significantly to its natural ground.

[Sidenote: Myth justifies magic.]

The first function of mythology is to justify magic. The weak hope on
which superstition hangs, the gambler's instinct which divines in
phenomena a magic solicitude for human fortunes, can scarcely be
articulated without seeking to cover and justify itself by some fable. A
magic function is most readily conceived and defined by attributing to
the object intentions hostile or favourable to men, together with human
habits of passion and discourse. For lack of resources and observations,
reason is seldom able to discredit magic altogether. Reasonable men are
forced, therefore, in order to find some satisfaction, to make magic as
intelligible as possible by assimilating it to such laws of human action
as may be already mastered and familiar. Magic is thus reduced to a sort
of system, regulated by principles of its own and naturalised, as it
were, in the commonwealth of science.

[Sidenote: Myths might be metaphysical.]

Such an avowed and defended magic usually takes one of two forms. When
the miracle is interpreted dramatically, by analogy to human life, we
have mythology; when it is interpreted rationalistically, by analogy to
current logic or natural science, we have metaphysics or theosophy. The
metaphysical sort of superstition has never taken deep root in the
western world. Pythagorean mysteries and hypnotisations, although
periodically fashionable, have soon shrivelled in our too salubrious and
biting air. Even such charming exotics a