The past systems of mythological interpretation have been briefly
sketched. It has been shown that the practical need for a
reconciliation between RELIGION and MORALITY on one side, and the
MYTHS about the gods on the other, produced the hypotheses of
Theagenes and Metrodorus, of Socrates and Euemerus, of Aristotle
and Plutarch. It has been shown that in each case the reconcilers
argued on the basis of their own ideas and of the philosophies of
their time. The early physicist thought that myth concealed a
physical philosophy; the early etymologist saw in it a confusion of
language; the early political speculator supposed that myth was an
invention of legislators; the literary Euhemerus found the secret
of myths in the course of an imaginary voyage to a fabled island.
Then came the moment of the Christian attacks, and Pagan
philosophers, touched with Oriental pantheism, recognised in myths
certain pantheistic symbols and a cryptic revelation of their own
Neo-platonism. When the gods were dead and their altars fallen,
then antiquaries brought their curiosity to the problem of
explaining myth. Christians recognised in it a depraved version of
the Jewish sacred writings, and found the ark on every mountain-top
of Greece. The critical nineteenth century brought in, with
Otfried Muller and Lobeck, a closer analysis; and finally, in the
sudden rise of comparative philology, it chanced that philologists
annexed the domain of myths. Each of these systems had its own
amount of truth, but each certainly failed to unravel the whole web
of tradition and of foolish faith.

Meantime a new science has come into existence, the science which
studies man in the sum of all his works and thoughts, as evolved
through the whole process of his development. This science,