LECTURE ON THE GREEK MYTHS OF STORM, GIVEN (PARTLY) IN UNIVERSITY
COLLEGE, LONDON, MARCH 9, 1869.


1. I will not ask your pardon for endeavoring to interest you in the
subject of Greek Mythology; but I must ask your permission to approach
it in a temper differing from that in which it is frequently treated.
We cannot justly interpret the religion of any people, unless we are
prepared to admit that we ourselves, as well as they, are liable to
error in matters of faith; and that the convictions of others, however
singular, may in some points have been well founded, while our own,
however reasonable, may be in some particulars mistaken. You must
forgive me, therefore, for not always distinctively calling the creeds
of the past "superstition," and the creeds of the present day "religion;"
as well as for assuming that a faith now confessed may sometimes be
superficial, and that a faith long forgotten may once have been sincere.
It is the task of the Divine to condemn the errors of antiquity, and of
the philologists to account for them; I will only pray you to read, with
patience, and human sympathy, the thoughts of men who lived without blame
in a darkness they could not dispel; and to remember that, whatever
charge of folly may justly attach to the saying, "There is no God," the
folly is prouder, deeper, and less pardonable, in saying, "There is no
God but for me."

2. A myth, in its simplest definition, is a story with a meaning attached
to it other than it seems to have at first; and the fact that it has such
a meaning is generally marked by some of its circumstances being
extraordinary, or, in the common use of the word, unnatural. Thus if I