Note 946 — Chapter XVI · GRECIAN MYTHES, AS UNDERSTOOD, FELT AND INTERPRETED BY THE GREEKS THEMSELVES.

Thucyd. i. 21-22.

The first two volumes of this history have been noticed in an able article of the Quarterly Review, for October, 1846; as well as in the Heidelberger Jahrbücher der Literatur (1846. No. 41. pp. 641-655), by Professor Kortüm.

While expressing, on several points, approbation of my work, by which I feel much flattered—both my English and my German critic take partial objection to the views respecting Grecian legend. While the Quarterly Reviewer contends that the mythopœic faculty of the human mind, though essentially loose and untrustworthy, is never creative, but requires some basis of fact to work upon—Kortüm thinks that I have not done justice to Thucydidês, as regards his way of dealing with legend; that I do not allow sufficient weight to the authority of an historian so circumspect and so cold-blooded (den kalt-blüthigsten und besonnensten Historiker des Alterthums, p. 653) as a satisfactory voucher for the early facts of Grecian history in his preface (Herr G. fehlt also, wenn er das anerkannt kritische Proœmium als Gewährsmann verschmäht, p. 654).

No man feels more powerfully than I do the merits of Thucydidês as an historian, or the value of the example which he set in multiplying critical inquiries respecting matters recent and verifiable. But the ablest judge or advocate, in investigating specific facts, can proceed no further than he finds witnesses having the means of knowledge, and willing more or less to tell truth. In reference to facts prior to 776 B. C., Thucydidês had nothing before him except the legendary poets, whose credibility is not at all enhanced by the circumstance that he accepted them as witnesses, applying himself only to cut down and modify their allegations. His credibility in regard to the specific facts of these early times depends altogether upon theirs. Now we in our day are in a better position for appreciating their credibility than he was in his, since the foundations of historical evidence are so much more fully understood, and good or bad materials for history are open to comparison in such large extent and variety. Instead of wondering that he shared the general faith in such delusive guides—we ought rather to give him credit for the reserve with which he qualified that faith, and for the sound idea of historical possibility to which he held fast as the limit of his confidence. But it is impossible to consider Thucydidês as a satisfactory guarantee (Gewährsmann) for matters of fact which he derives only from such sources.

Professor Kortüm considers that I am inconsistent with myself in refusing to discriminate particular matters of historical fact among the legends—and yet in accepting these legends (in my chap. xx.) as giving a faithful mirror of the general state of early Grecian society (p. 653). It appears to me that this is no inconsistency, but a real and important distinction. Whether Hêraklês, Agamemnôn, Odysseus, etc. were real persons, and performed all, or a part, of the possible actions ascribed to them—I profess myself unable to determine. But even assuming both the persons and their exploits to be fictions, these very fictions will have been conceived and put together in conformity to the general social phænomena among which the describer and his hearers lived—and will thus serve as illustrations of the manners then prevalent. In fact, the real value of the Preface of Thucydidês, upon which Professor Kortüm bestows such just praise, consists, not in the particular facts which he brings out by altering the legends, but in the rational general views which he sets forth respecting early Grecian society, and respecting the steps as well as the causes whereby it attained its actual position as he saw it.

Professor Kortüm also affirms that the mythes contain “real matter of fact along with mere conceptions:” which affirmation is the same as that of the Quarterly Reviewer, when he says that the mythopœic faculty is not creative. Taking the mythes in the mass, I doubt not that this is true, nor have I anywhere denied it. Taking them one by one, I neither affirm nor deny it. My position is, that, whether there be matter of fact or not, we have no test whereby it can be singled out, identified, and severed from the accompanying fiction. And it lies upon those, who proclaim the practicability of such severance, to exhibit some means of verification better than any which has been yet pointed out. If Thucydidês has failed in doing this, it is certain that none of the many authors who have made the same attempt after him have been more successful.

It cannot surely be denied that the mythopœic faculty is creative, when we have before us so many divine legends, not merely in Greece, but in other countries also. To suppose that these religious legends are mere exaggerations, etc. of some basis of actual fact—that the gods of polytheism were merely divinized men, with qualities distorted or feigned—would be to embrace in substance the theory of Euêmerus.