natural sense, can hardly have been conceived by men in a pure and
rational early civilisation. Again, in the religions of even the
lowest races, such myths as these are in contradiction with the
ethical elements of the faith.

If we look at Greek religious tradition, we observe the coexistence
of the RATIONAL and the apparently IRRATIONAL elements. The
RATIONAL myths are those which represent the gods as beautiful and
wise beings. The Artemis of the Odyssey "taking her pastime in the
chase of boars and swift deer, while with her the wild wood-nymphs
disport them, and high over them all she rears her brow, and is
easily to be known where all are fair,"[1] is a perfectly RATIONAL
mythic representation of a divine being. We feel, even now, that
the conception of a "queen and goddess, chaste and fair," the
abbess, as Paul de Saint-Victor calls her, of the woodlands, is a
beautiful and natural fancy, which requires no explanation. On the
other hand, the Artemis of Arcadia, who is confused with the nymph
Callisto, who, again, is said to have become a she-bear, and later
a star; and the Brauronian Artemis, whose maiden ministers danced a
bear-dance,[2] are goddesses whose legend seems unnatural, and
needs to be made intelligible. Or, again, there is nothing not
explicable and natural in the conception of the Olympian Zeus as
represented by the great chryselephantine statue of Zeus at
Olympia, or in the Homeric conception of Zeus as a god who "turns
everywhere his shining eyes, and beholds all things, and protects
the righteous, and deals good or evil fortune to men. But the Zeus
whose grave was shown in Crete, or the Zeus who played Demeter an
obscene trick by the aid of a ram, or the Zeus who, in the shape of
a swan, became the father of Castor and Pollux, or the Zeus who
deceived Hera by means of a feigned marriage with an inanimate