The presupposition that myth is par excellence the literary material for young children doubtless grew out of a misinterpretation of the so-called mythopoeic age in the children, and some fundamental misconception of the nature of myth and its relation to other folk and traditionary material. There is no place in this little book even to suggest the problems that surround the nature and genesis of myth. But it does seem desirable to make in a simple way a few distinctions that may serve to set us on the right road.

First of all, myth is religion, and not art. It is not a thing of mere imagination. It is the explanation or interpretation of some physical fact, some historical occurrence, some social custom, some racial characteristic, some established ritual or worship. It is the religious or emotional response to some influence or activity in the world so impressive or so efficacious as to seem to call for explanation in terms of supernatural agencies.

This explanatory or interpretative stage or aspect of myth may be first historically, or it may not be. It is probably first in most myths in a simple and crude form, which in all developed myths has been enriched and modified by influences from the other stages and aspects. The second stage—or shall we call it merely another aspect—is the assigning of distinct personality and individuality to the agencies assumed to account for events and appearances. Then follows rapidly the interrelations and interactions of these persons, the surrounding of them with friends and subordinates, the building-up of a whole intricate society of divinities after the model of human society—all at first symbolistic and of religious significance. A third stage or aspect is that of the cult, the worship, the establishment of a priesthood delivering authoritative messages, mediating influences to the people, and adding constantly to the body of explanations and interpretations surrounding each divinity. The fourth stage or aspect is that in which it becomes, or becomes identified with, a body of moral doctrines or ethical principles; where the personal divinities, with their qualities, insignia, and associations, are taken as symbols of inner human forces, of moral and social achievement, as expressions of spiritual influences operant in human nature and life.

Let it be understood that in naming these stages or aspects there has been no attempt to place them either in chronological or in logical order, and no intention of saying that they stand apart from one another in an easily recognized distinctness. But, however interlinked and mutually modified they may be, we must in any discussion of myth, be aware of these four sides or steps.

Take, for example, the Greek myth of Apollo. As an explanation of physical phenomena he is light or fire, sometimes specialized as the spirit of the sun. But he is embodied and endowed with a personality; he has social conditions and subsidiary functions assigned to him. As a person he is the son of Zeus and Leto, twin brother of Artemis, leader of the nine Muses, guardian of pastured flocks and herds, as Artemis of the wild creatures who feed or frolic by night. As his worship spread and deepened, there gathered about him many other functions—he was the god of healing, of music, of law, of atonement; and many tributary and subordinate divinities were associated with him in all these activities. There gathered into his myth also an enormous and complex body of stories, romantic and mystical, explanatory and prophetic—stories of adventure, of contact with the other gods, of sojourns with men, of pilgrimages to unknown regions; some of them merely romantic, some of them symbolistic, many of them profoundly significant of his powers and offices.

And the myth of Apollo is remarkable for its ancient and elaborate worship. Already when the Homeric poems were made, the shrine of Apollo at Delphos was the scene of an old and complicated ritual. There was even then a temple rich with the accumulated treasure of the votive offerings of generations of worshipers. Priests and prophets, the mystic offices of the Pythia, poets and musicians, stately processions of kings and warriors seeking oracles, combined to maintain the dignity and sanctity of this most impressive worship.

From the very earliest times of which we have record of this myth, Apollo was known to be a spiritual and ethical force at work in man's soul. He was named when men tried to speak of those experiences which wrought expiation and purification. He stood for milder law, for beneficent and benevolent social order, for art, for the songs of the sacred bard, the dirge of grief, the paean of victory, the games—all the gentler things of social culture and personal experience.

In these and in many other ways did the myth of Apollo express the human soul and act upon it. It was a religion—as every developed myth is—to be handled reverently. We might have chosen other examples quite as elaborate and as full of mystic significance—the myth of Dionysus, or the more widespread and deeply devotional myth of Demeter.

Art, too, concerned as it is with everything that promotes or reflects man's spirit, has uses for the elements of myth, and has its own way of handling them. On two of the four steps of myth art, especially literature, finds acceptable material. On the stage named second—the stage in which the influence or power becomes personified, takes on relations to other personified influences, and calls into being other divine persons, his children, his helpers and subordinates, takes his place in a society of divinities, and exercises his more or less specialized function in this society, and also in human life and activity—have the poets and romancers found many opportunities. Adventures and romantic experiences of all sorts easily attached themselves to the person of some divinity, especially as the character of the personal divinities became more and more humanized by the accretion of such tales. And while we find echoes of myth in MÄrchen and romance, we quite as constantly find apotheosis of merely human romance and adventure in myth. Among the literary peoples, poets and dramatists found it often desirable to use the foundation of this group of divine personalities as the starting-point for a performance purely artistic; it gave them the immense advantage of starting without explanation and preparation, since their audiences could be counted upon to know the divine personages and circumstances; and the further advantage of adding dignity and size to their inventions by accrediting them to superhuman agents. These literary additions, these variations upon the religious meanings, invented for artistic purposes, often gradually incorporated themselves into the myth, and by modern students are not carefully distinguished from the other, the religious and devotional elements. A comic adventure told of Hermes may not have in it any more of myth than a similar story told of Autolycus.

Literature finds much use for material of the mythical kind on what we have called the fourth step. To express and render concrete, impulses, influences, and powers that sway and dignify human conduct, and that form and ennoble human character, the literary artist gladly employs the persons of the great myths. All human experience has elements and influences coming into it from an apparently mystic sphere, that must either be described in abstract terms or embodied in concrete persons and symbols. The latter is ever the method of art. So we find everywhere in literature the use of the great symbols already constituted in myth, or the invention of new symbols for the purpose. Homer would convey to us the sense of the presence that guided and guarded the wise and resourceful Odysseus; so the stately Athene, ages long the goddess "who giveth skill in fair works, and noble minds," comes and goes through the poem. Hauptmann would convey to us in The Sunken Bell, some impression of the magic and the charm of that beauty which lies in the free soul and wild nature, so he invents Rautendelein. But neither Homer nor Hauptmann is priest or devotee interpreting facts or conserving worship. They are artists picturing human life and introducing, each in its place, the various elements of human experience.

It is in regard to this literary use of myth that there exists much confusion, and that most mistakes are made as to the educational use of myth. Many persons who contend that "myths" can be given to children as literature call the Iliad and the Odyssey "myths;" indeed, they are likely to call all legendary stories in which the supernatural element is large "myths;" and they call all romantic stories that have become attached to any divinity "myths."

We should distinguish myth from saga, from legend, from merely fanciful symbolistic tales, from tales of human heroes. The Homeric poems make much of the religious side of human nature, and the poet chose in order to give to his action and issue a superhuman dignity to set that action in the presence of the gods themselves. Yea, in the climaxes of the Titanic struggle the Powers themselves take a hand, so deeply does the poet feel that everything noblest and most passionate in human nature is involved; and, despairing, as it were, of conveying to us in merely human terms the implications of the strife between the two kinds of ideals, he sets Aphrodite over against Athene, not merely Trojan against Greek. But the Iliad is, for all that, not myth nor a collection of myths, but the story of the wrath of Achilles—a very human hero, who loved his friend. The story of Baldur is myth—explaining and interpreting, personifying and glorifying, a superhuman influence and effect beyond the reach of human experience; the story of Siegfried is a saga, a human experience, under whatever enlarged and idealized conditions, yet still a type-experience of the human being. The garden of Eden is myth-interpretation and explanation of many, some the grimmest, facts of man's nature, and his relation to a supernatural power; the story of Abraham is a saga—a typical history of human experience, a typical picture of human culture. The whole artistic purpose and effect of the hero-tale and the saga are different from those of myth; the center of interest is a human being; the emphasis is upon human life; the meaning is upon the surface. In true myth the purpose is not artistic, but religious; the emphasis is upon superhuman activities; the meaning is buried beneath symbols—the more beautiful the myth, the more difficult and complex the symbol.

So one has almost to smile at the statement, commonly made that myth, implying all myth, is childlike, and should therefore be given to little children as literature, especially while they themselves are in the mythopoeic age—presumably from four to seven. There are so many fallacies in this statement that one pauses embarrassed at his many opportunities of attack.

First as to the childlikeness of myth. There are, of course, undeveloped races that have a naÏve and childish myth, but it is also so crude and unbeautiful that it would never commend itself to one seeking artistic material for children. The developed myths, those that have achieved the elaboration of beautiful episodes, are most unchildlike. They are far, far away from the crude guesses of the primitive mind. They have all been worked over, codified, filled with theological and symbolistic content by priests and poets. One can be very sure that no sensible teacher who has mastered the material, would attempt to teach the whole of any Hebrew or Greek or Scandinavian myth as myth within the elementary period. If he takes one of the especially romantic or beautiful episodes out of the myth, he is obliged to thin it out to the comprehension of the children, and to mutilate it so as to make of it a mere tale. When one reads Hawthorne's version of Pandora and Prometheus and realizes the mere babble, the flippant detail, under which he has covered up the grim Titanic story of the yearnings and strivings of the human soul for salvation here and hereafter, the very deepest problems of temptation and sin, of rebellion and expiation, he must see clearly what is most likely to happen when a complex and mature myth is converted into a child's tale. To make a real test, leave the alien Greek myth and try the same process with one that we have built into our own religious consciousness—the temptation and fall in the Garden of Eden; a story, which is, by the way, much more naÏve in conception and detail than that of Prometheus. We must conclude that such myths are not childlike, and that to make such a version of them as will appeal to the little child's attention and feeling gives but a shallow and distorted view of them.

There should undoubtedly be a place in education for the study of myth as religion and as an influence in human culture; should it not be somewhere well within the adolescent period, when the symbols of the great myths attract and do not baffle the child, when their religious content finds a congenial lodging-place and a sympathetic interpretation in his own experiences? It would seem only fair to reserve the beautiful and reverential myths of the Greeks, Romans, and Scandinavians for this period, rather than to use them in the age when there is little more to appeal to than the tendency, so short-lived and shallow-rooted in the modern child, to see personal agencies behind appearances. For this, confused with a degree of grammatical uncertainty of speech, is practically all that we can find under close analysis, of the mythopoeic faculty in little children brought up under modern conditions.

There are still those, one discovers, who contend that myth should be given to children as literature, because later in life—when they come to read the Aeneid in High School, or Paradise Lost in college, or Prometheus Unbound or even Macaulay's essays—they will come upon references to Zeus, to the fall of Troy, to the Titans, to Isis and Osiris, and they ought to be able to call up from what they had as literature in the elementary school such information as would enable them to understand these allusions and fill out these references. Luckily, the number of people who hold the fundamental theory of education adumbrated in this view is becoming so rapidly smaller that this chapter will, let us hope, be too late to reach them. The multiplication table is a tool; the mechanics of reading and writing are partially mere tools; but mythology, especially mythology substituted for literature, can in no sense be regarded or treated as a tool.

Occasionally one meets the statement that myth, and mythical episodes, are more imaginative than stories of human life, and should therefore be given to little children as literature. So far as the persons who hold this view can be pushed to definite terms, they mean either that the conditions of ordinary human life are completely abrogated in mythical stories, and that therefore they are more imaginative than stories of mere human experience could be; or that the details given by the imagination are arranged in some more unusual way—that there is less of judgment and order in the arrangement than in stories of men and their affairs.

Of course, we realize that the human mind cannot invent ultimate details independent of experience. It is in the number and arrangement of these details that originality inheres—that the varying quality or quantity of imagination lies. Now, it is true that in mythical stories the images, the details, are likely to be more numerous, and to be arranged in a less orderly manner than in an art story; this is of the nature of myth.

Ruskin, in The Queen of the Air, makes so clear a statement of this principle that I shall borrow it for this chapter:

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 tell you that Hercules killed a water serpent in the lake of Lerna, and if I mean, and you understand, nothing more than that fact, the story, whether true or false, is not a myth. But if, by telling you this, I mean that Hercules purified the stagnation of many streams from deadly miasmata, my story, however simple, is a true myth, only, as, if I left it in that simplicity, you would probably look for nothing beyond, it will be wise in me to surprise your attention by adding some singular circumstance; for instance, that the water-snake had several heads, which revived as fast as they were killed, and which poisoned even the foot that trod upon them as they slept. And in proportion to the fulness of intended meaning I shall probably multiply and refine upon these improbabilities; or, suppose if, instead of desiring only to tell you that Hercules purified a marsh, I wished you to understand [that he contended with envy and evil ambition], I might tell you that this serpent was formed by the goddess whose pride was in the trial of Hercules; that its place of abode was by a palm tree; that for every head of it that was cut off, ten rose up with renewed life; and that the hero found at last he could not kill the creature at all by cutting its heads off or crushing them, but only by burning them down; and that the midmost of them could not be killed even in that way, but had to be buried alive. Only in proportion as I mean more I shall appear more absurd in my statement.

Is it fair to conclude that, if there is any ground for the statement that myth is more imaginative than literature, it is either that it is extremely symbolistic, constantly substituting one thing for another, or that, not being art, it heaps up details profusely, unregulated by the ordering and constructive side of the imagination? In the one case, it would have small disciplinary value for the class; in the other, it would be hopelessly beyond their comprehension; and in either case it would not perform the characteristic service of literature.

There is much more to be said by those who feel that they find in the mythic stories a large and vague atmosphere, a sort of cosmic stage where things bulk large and sound simple, a great resounding room where the children feel unconsciously the movement of large things. But this is a religious mood. It is precisely the response we should like to have when we tell our children the Hebrew myth of the creation—an emotional reaction, vague but deep, to the dim and sublime images of the Days—a response that constitutes itself forevermore a part of his religious experience. If we are willing that he should have a similar reaction upon the story of Zeus and the Titans, if we are willing that he should lay this down, too, among the foundations of his religious life, by all means tell it. But we can not quite fairly tell one to awaken a religious response, and the other an artistic one.

This is all quite consistent with an utter repudiation of a hard and fast "faculty" education. There are, of course, borders where myth and literature inextricably intermingle, as there are certain effects of the teaching of mythical episodes which are not to be distinguished from those of the teaching of purely literary material. But the teacher should clear up his mind upon this point; telling a romantic adventure of a god is not teaching myth; telling a story of a hero in which the gods take a share is not teaching myth, any more than the telling of the story of the Holy Grail is teaching Christianity; symbolistic stories whose setting happens to be Greek or Roman or Scandinavian are not myth. It should not be difficult to handle for the children such stories as contain a large amount of religious element. To have them get out of the Odyssey the characteristic and desirable effect, it is necessary to give only a few words as to the offices of Athene and Poseidon in the action, and then put the emphasis where Homer puts it—upon Odysseus, his character and his experiences. It is no more necessary in reading the Odyssey to go into the myth of the divinities concerned, than it would be in teaching Hamlet to make an exhaustive excursus into the pneumatology of the Ghost.

Now, there are a great many folk-tales that out of convention have taken on as a sort of afterthought, as it were, an explanatory character. This can be noticed in the charming ZuÑi folk-tales collected by Cushing. Often the pourquoi idea is appended in the final paragraph, a belated bit of piety not at all inherent in the tale. Then there are, of course, a great many fanciful pourquoi tales, both folk and modern, whose purpose was never more than playful. These cannot be seriously regarded as myth, and must be estimated on their merits as stories.

It is hard to be so tolerant with the modern imitations of mythical tales designed to render palatable and pretty facts in the life of the world about us. One cannot believe much in the dew-fairies and frost-fairies and flower-angels, speaking plants and conversing worms, whose mission in life is really a gentle species of university-extension lectures. Such stories are not literature; neither are they good technical knowledge. Is it not true, as we shall elsewhere have occasion to show, that, with our modern facilities for teaching the facts of nature, we can make them attractive and impressive rather by showing them as they are, than by attributing to them merely fanciful and often petty personalities and genii?

Of course, in very advanced scientific theory we are driven again to myth-making. One cannot speak of radio-activity except in terms of personality, nor of the final processes of biology without using terms implying purpose and choice. So does the wheel come full circle and all our lives we are mythopoeists. But myth is not literature.

As has been intimated previously, it would seem that the time to teach myth as myth is much later—perhaps within the secondary period, when it can be examined as religion, or when the children have gained enough experience, and developed enough dramatic imagination, to take hold of it as a vital element in another culture. The place for the study of the great symbolistic stories, whose background happens to be another people's myth, such as King Midas, or Prometheus, or Apollo with Admetus, should be, in any event, as late as the seventh grade, by which time the children are able to look below the surface and begin to understand the types and symbols of art.