t is for a rational feeling to establish itself in their regard.
Sometimes the most complete historical enlightenment will not suffice to
dispel the shadow which their moral externality casts over the mind. In
vain do we discard their fable and the thin proofs of their existence
when, in spite of ourselves, we still live in their presence.

[Sidenote: They perplex the conscience.]

This pathetic phenomenon is characteristic of religious minds that have
outgrown their traditional faith without being able to restate the
natural grounds and moral values of that somehow precious system in
which they no longer believe. The dead gods, in such cases, leave
ghosts behind them, because the moral forces which the gods once
expressed, and which, of course, remain, remain inarticulate; and
therefore, in their dumbness, these moral forces persistently suggest
their only known but now discredited symbols. To regain moral
freedom--without which knowledge cannot be put to its rational use in
the government of life--we must rediscover the origin of the gods,
reduce them analytically to their natural and moral constituents, and
then proceed to rearrange those materials, without any quantitative
loss, in forms appropriate to a maturer reflection.

Of the innumerable and rather monotonous mythologies that have
flourished in the world, only the Graeco-Roman and the Christian need
concern us here, since they are by far the best known to us and the best
defined in themselves, as well as the only two likely to have any
continued influence on the western mind. Both these systems pre-suppose
a long prior development. The gods of Greece and of Israel have a
full-blown character when we first meet them in literature. In both
cases, however, we are fortunate in being able to trace somewhat further
back the history of mythology, and do not depend merely on philosophic
analysis to reach the elements which we seek.

[Sidenote: Incipient myth in the Vedas.]

In the Vedic hymns there survives the record of a religion remarkably
like the Greek in spirit, but less dramatic and articulate in form. The
gods of the Vedas are unmistakably natural elements. Vulcan is there
nothing but fire, Jupiter nothing but the sky. This patriarchal people,
fresh from the highlands, had not yet been infected with the manias and
diseases of the jungle. It lived simply, rationally, piously, loving all
natural joys and delighted with all the instruments of a rude but pure