a world to which an
existence was attributed which could be hardly conceived and was
certainly supported by no evidence, while that significance which it
really possessed in reference to natural processes was ignored, or even
denied. An idealism which had consisted in understanding and
discriminating values now became a superstition incapable of discerning
existences. It added a prodigious fictitious setting to the cosmos in
which man had to operate; it obscured his real interests and possible
happiness by seeking to transport him into that unreal environment, with
its fantastic and disproportionate economy; and, worst of all, it
robbed the ideal of its ideality by tearing it up from its roots in
natural will and in experienced earthly benefits. For an ideal is not
ideal if it is the ideal of nothing. In that case it is only a ghostly
existence, with no more moral significance or authority in relation to
the observer than has any happy creature which may happen to exist
somewhere in the unknown reaches of the universe.

[Sidenote: The Stoic revision.]

Meantime, a second reinterpretation of mythology was attempted by the
Stoics. Instead of moving forward, like Plato, toward the
supernaturalism that was for so many ages to dominate the world, the
Stoics, with greater loyalty to pagan principles, reverted to the
natural forces that had been the chief basis for the traditional
deities. The progress of philosophy had given the Stoics a notion of the
cosmos such as the early Aryan could not have possessed when he recorded
and took to heart his scattered observations in the form of divine
influences, as many and various as the observations themselves. To the
Stoics the world was evidently one dynamic system. The power that
animated it was therefore one God. Accordingly, after explaining away
the popular myths by turning them somewhat ruthlessly into moral
apologues, they proceeded to identify Zeus with the order of nature.
This identification was supported by many traditional tendencies and
philosophic hints. The resulting concept, though still mythical, was
perhaps as rationalistic as the state of science at the time could
allow. Zeus had been from the beginning a natural force, at once serene
and formidable, the thunderer no less than the spirit of the blue. He
was the ruler of gods and men; he was, under limitations, a sort of
general providence. Anaxagoras, too, in proclaiming the cosmic function
of reason, had prepare