as Augustine and Minucius Felix into a formidable weapon of attack
on Paganism. It was then abandoned by all those who still bent the
knee to Athena or to Zeus, and a general return, aided by the
philosophic mystics of Alexandria, to the allegorising principle of
interpretation took place, as the only means of saving the deities
of Olympus from the Titan assaults of the new Galilean God. In
what vain defence, the statue of Mary set in the heart of the
Pantheon can best tell us.

Religions, however, may be absorbed, but they never are disproved,
and the stories of the Greek mythology, spiritualised by the
purifying influence of Christianity, reappear in many of the
southern parts of Europe in our own day. The old fable that the
Greek gods took service with the new religion under assumed names
has more truth in it than the many care to discover.

Having now traced the progress of historical criticism in the
special treatment of myth and legend, I shall proceed to
investigate the form in which the same spirit manifested itself as
regards what one may term secular history and secular historians.
The field traversed will be found to be in some respects the same,
but the mental attitude, the spirit, the motive of investigation
are all changed.

There were heroes before the son of Atreus and historians before
Herodotus, yet the latter is rightly hailed as the father of
history, for in him we discover not merely the empirical connection
of cause and effect, but that constant reference to Laws, which is
the characteristic of the historian proper.