There are domains of thought where the _ratio_ will only give rise to
disorder, and the philologist, who possesses nothing more, is lost
through it and is unable to see the truth · _e.g._ in the consideration
of Greek mythology. A merely fantastic person, of course, has no claim
either · one must possess Greek imagination and also a certain amount of
Greek piety. Even the poet does not require to be too consistent, and
consistency is the last thing Greeks would understand.


125

Almost all the Greek divinities are accumulations of divinities . we
find one layer over another, soon to be hidden and smoothed down by yet
a third, and so on. It scarcely seems to me to be possible to pick these
various divinities to pieces in a scientific manner, for no good method
of doing so can be recommended: even the poor conclusion by analogy is
in this instance a very good conclusion.


126

At what a distance must one be from the Greeks to ascribe to them such a
stupidly narrow autochthony as does Ottfried Muller![10] How Christian
it is to assume, with Welcker,[11] that the Greeks were originally
monotheistic! How philologists torment themselves by investigating the
question whether Homer actually wrote, without being able to grasp the
far higher tenet that Greek art long exhibited an inward enmity against
writing, and did not wish to be read at all.