Historico-Critical Introduction to the Philosophy of Mytholo

That's French for "the ancient system," as in the ancient system of feudal privileges and the exercise of autocratic power over the peasants. The ancien regime never goes away, like vampires and dinosaur bones they are always hidden in the earth, exercising a mysterious influence. It is not paranoia to believe that the elites scheme against the common man. Inform yourself about their schemes here.

Re: Historico-Critical Introduction to the Philosophy of Myt

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[161] Now, therefore, in regard to monotheism and the relationship to the true god, with whose glory the head of Abraham is surrounded not only in the Old Testament, but in the legends of the entire Orient (they unite in calling him the friend of God)—and a subsequent fiction could never have produced this correspondence between the traditions—I wish first and foremost to draw attention to the constancy with which Genesis says of Jehovah, but never, to my knowledge, of the Elohim, that he appeared102 to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; this in itself presupposes that he was not the immediate content of their consciousness, as those think who propose revelation as the one and only first principle of explanation. No less noteworthy is the way the patriarchs at significant moments call Jehovah by name,103 as one calls someone whom one wishes to detain, or who should show himself. If Jehovah is only called and only shows himself, then the immediate content of their consciousness can only be the god who in the Mosaic scriptures is called Elohim. Here is the place for us to provide an explanation of this name. A plural in grammatical form, the verb which follows it too is occasionally in the plural—not, as some believe, due to merely mechanical adaptation to the form; for a closer investigation of the passages shows that the plural form of the verb is written only in specific cases, and thus not randomly, for if it is, in the account of the Babylonian tower for instance, Jehovah who speaks, saying “Let us go down, and there confound their language,” then the reason is clear, for God must replicate himself in order to fragment humanity. Similarly in the creation story, where Elohim alone speaks, saying “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness,” for the absolutely One god as such is without image. When Abraham says that the godsCCXXXII have caused him to wander from his father‟s house, [162] to go, that is to say, into the desert, to choose the nomadic life,104 then, because the word “Elohim” is not coupled here, as it is elsewhere, with the article,105 actual gods can be understood (Abraham fled from the idolatry becoming increasingly influential in the house of his father), and the other passages, where Jehovah orders him to flee,106 would not be inconsistent with this, since the two can be in existence together. But when, in a passage like the one already quoted, the god explicitly named “Jehovah Elohim” says “Behold, Adam is become as one of us,” when this god, thus, himself distinguishes, and contrasts with the others, one god within himself, then certainly a plurality must be understood. Nor may the plural form of the name, or the construction with the plural of the verb, be explained as the remnant of an earlier polytheism, as many have thought. But certainly it may be explained from the fact that God as Jehovah is indeed always One, but as Elohim is that god who is still exposed to the solicitations of multiplicity, and in addition actually does become, for the consciousness otherwise clinging to the oneness, a multiplicity which is just always suppressed. It is not an older polytheism which intrudes here, but the later one, to the presentiments of which even Abraham, for instance, was not immune. But now, apart from this plural meaning which appears from time to time, there can no longer be any doubt that “Elohim” had, like many other plurals, a singular meaning, and is a plural not of multiplicity but of magnitude (pluralis magnitudinis, qui unam sed magnam rem indicat107 CCXXXIII), which is used whenever something has to be expressed which is large, powerful, or astonishing of its kind. But that universal god, the god beside whom, in his time, there was no other, indisputably had the first claim to a name so expressive of astonishment. Indeed the name itself expresses only astonishment, since it derives from a verb [163] which has precisely this meaning in Arabic (obstupuit, attonitus fuit CCXXXIV ). Thus in “Elohim” the original Semitic name of the primal god has indeed indubitably been preserved for us, which is consistent with the fact that here, in contrast to other cases, the singular (Eloah) is formed from the plural, as may be seen from the fact that this singular only appears in later books of the Old Testament, mostly just in the poetical ones. Since in Genesis, and to some extent in the following books still, the names “Elohim” and “Jehovah” alternate, attempts have been made to base on that the hypothesis that Genesis in particular might have been put together from sources of two kinds; one was called the “Elohim” source, and the other the “Jehovah.” But it is easy to satisfy oneself that in the narratives the names do not change randomly, but are used to draw an intentional distinction, and that the use of the one or the other has its reason in the subject matter, and is not determined by a merely external or chance circumstance. At times, specifically in the story of the Fall, both names are conjoined, but only when the narrator speaks, not the woman or the serpent; Adam too, had he been given a speaking part, would have said only “Elohim,” for the first man still knew nothing of Jehovah. The Elohim is the god whom the nations too, the heathens, still feared,108 and who also comes in a dream to Abimelech, the king of Gerar, and to Laban the Syrian.109 The dream seems to be the natural mode of operation of the god who is already beginning to succumb to the past. Abraham prays to the natural god, constantly present simply because natural, to Elohim, for the restoration to health of Abimelech the king of Gerar. Since here the literal word is used for “pray,” it is evident from that that the “calling Jehovah by name” does not amount to “praying.”110 In reference to Abraham himself it is the Elohim, and indeed quite specifically so, as is clearly seen when the passage is read in context, 111 [164] who ordains for him the circumcision which was a religious custom as old as time, common also among a section of the nations, and a tribute brought to the primal god. It is the Elohim, the universal god, by whom, and for whom, Abraham is tempted to slay his son as a burnt offering in the manner of the heathens, but Jehovah manifesting himself who restrains him from the execution. For because Jehovah can only become manifest, very frequently “the angel,” that is to say the manifestation of Jehovah, is written in place of “Jehovah,” even in later scriptures.112

The original human race had, in the relatively-One and eternal, in fact really understood the true, the essentially-One and eternal. Only the advent of the second god brings consciousness to the point where it distinguishes the essentially-eternal, which in the merely accidentally-eternal had been the true, the genuine god—where it distinguishes the essentially-eternal from that which was so only for one era. Here must be assumed that it was still open, even to those who took the path of polytheism, to turn to the essentially-eternal, which had been the true god within the other (the accidentallyeternal), to turn, thus, to the true god. Up to here the path of the human race is the same; only at this point does it divide. Without the second god—without the solicitation to polytheism, there would also have existed no advance to genuine monotheism. The same potence which becomes the immediate cause of multitheism in one part of humanity, elevates a chosen race to the true religion. Abraham, after the god whom even the primal era already worshipped, although unknowingly, in the relatively-One—after this god has appeared to him, that is to say has became revealed and distinguishable, turns to the god voluntarily and consciously. For him this god is not the original god, he is the god who has come to be for him, manifested himself, but he had no more invented this god than found him through thought; [165] all he does here is hold fast to the god who has been seen by him (been revealed to him); but as he holds fast to the god, the latter also leads him on, and enters into a special relationship with him, through which he is set wholly apart from the societies. Because there is no knowledge of the true god without distinguishing him, that is why the name is so important.CCXXXV The worshippers of the true god are those who know his name; the heathens, who do not know his name, theyCCXXXVI are not totally (not, that is, also in respect of substance) ignorant of the god, they simply do not know his name, that is to say they do not know him as distinct. Yet Abraham cannot, after he has seen the true god, as it were break loose from the precondition of that god. The immediate content of his consciousness remains for him the god of the primal era, who did not come to be for him, and thus also was not revealed, and who—we are obliged to put it this way—is his natural god. In order that the true god might become manifest to him, the basis must remain for the manifestation of the first god, in whom aloneCCXXXVII can that true god constantly come to be for him. The true god is mediated for him by the natural god not just transiently, but constantly, for him the true god is never the existing god, but constantly only the god coming to be, which in itself would suffice to explain the name “Jehovah,” in which that same concept of coming to be is pre-eminently expressed. Abraham‟s religion does not therefore consist in his abandoning that god of the primal time, and becoming untrue to him, in fact it is the heathens who do that; the true god himself was revealed to Abraham only in that god of the primal time, and is thus indivisible from him, indivisible from the god who always was, the El Olam, as he is called.

This expression is usually translated as “the eternal god”; but one would be wrong to take that as referring to metaphysical eternity. Quite literally the word olam designates the time before which humankind know of no time, the time in which they find themselves in the way that they find themselves, the time which did not come to be for them,CCXXXVIII and which in this sense is admittedly an eternity. The prophet calls the Chaldeans a nation me olam,113 a society which has existed since the time in which there existed no societies. Thus Luther [166] translates it correctly as “which has been the most ancient nation”; CCXXXIX olam is the time when there existed no societies. In the same sense the fragment mentioned earlier,CCXL about the heroes and mighty men of prehistory, says that they were renowned me olam, that is to say from the time which preceded the coming into existence of societies. Joshua says to the children of Isræl, “Your fathers lived beyond the Euphrates me olam,114 CCXLI from the time, that is to say, when there were not yet any societies, thus ever since societies existed. The first historical era, the first era which is known, finds them there. The El Olam is thus the god who existed not since, but already in, that time when societies did not yet exist, the god prior to whom there was none, of whose coming into existence thus no one knows, the absolutely primal god, the god from time immemorial.CCXLII Contrasted with the El Olam are the Elohim Chadaschim, the new gods “that came newly up,” who have only just come into existence.115 And so for Abraham too the true god is not eternal in the metaphysical sense, but as the god in whom no beginning is known.

Just as the true god is for him the same as the El Olam, similarly this true god is the same as the god of heaven and earth; for as such was once worshipped the god common to the whole human race. For Abraham, Jehovah is not a materially different god from this one, for him he is simply the true god of heaven and earth. When he has his eldest servant swear that he will take no wife for him from the children of the heathens,116 CCXLIII he says “Swear to me by Jehovah, the God of heaven and of the earth.”CCXLIV This god is for him thus still common to the whole ancient human race. A figure who belongs to this same race is that Melchizedek, the king of Salem and priest of El Elioun the highest god, who appears again under this name in the fragments of Sanchuniathon,CCXLV the god who, as it is said, possesses heaven and earth. Everything about this figure emerging from the obscurity of prehistory is remarkable, even the names, his own as much as the name of the land or locality of which [167] he is called king. The words sedek, saddik do indeed also mean “justice” and “just,” but the original meaning, as may still be seen from the Arabic, is steadfastness, immobility. Melchizedek is thus the immovable one, that is to say, he who remains immovably with the One.117 CCXLVI The same thing is contained in the name “Salem,” which is used elsewhere when it has to be said that a man is or walks wholly, that is to say undividedly, with Elohim.118 It is the same word from which “Islam” and “Moslem” are formed. “Islam” means nothing other than the complete, that is to say the whole, the undivided religion; “Moslem” is that which is wholly devoted to the One. Even that which is quite recent is understood only if one has understood what is most ancient. Those who deny the monotheism of Abraham, or consider his whole story to be a romance, have certainly never reflected on the consequences of Islam, consequences of such a frightful kind, issuing from a part of humanity which had remained thousands of years in evolution behind the part which it conquered and laid waste before it, that they are only explicable by way of the immense power of a past which, re-emerging in what has come to be and taken shape in the interval, intrudes destructively and devastatingly. CCXLVII Mohammed‟s doctrine of oneness could never have produced this catastrophic effect if it had not persisted since primæval times in these children of Hagar, who had been passed by without a trace by the whole period from their patriarch until Mohammed. But with Christianity there came into being a religion which no longer merely excluded polytheism as it had been excluded by Judaism. It was precisely there, at this stage in the evolution, where the rigid, onesided oneness had been entirely overcome, that the old primal religion had to come forth once again—blindly and fanatically, as it was bound to have appeared, set off against the much more advanced times. The reaction was not merely towards the idolatry embraced in Mohammed‟s time to some extent even among a section of the Arabs who had not abandoned the nomadic life, but far more towards the apparent [168] multitheism of Christianity, to which Mohammed opposed the rigid immobile god of the primal time. Everything here hangs together; Mohammed‟s law even forbade wine to his followers, just as the Rechabites rejected it.

So Abraham subordinates himself to this king of Salem and priest of the highest god, for Jehovah is himself only an appearance stemming from that highest, primal god. Abraham submits to him by giving him tithes of all. A younger but pious era always reveres the older one, as being closer to the source, so to speak. Melchizedek came from that race which depended simply, without doubt and without making any distinction, on the primal god, and unknowingly worshipped in him the true god, in contrast to which race Abraham is already in the situation of being to some extent less pure; for he has not remained free from the temptations which came in the wake of the societies, although he has withstood them and has saved from them the true god distinguished and known as such. In comparison, Melchizedek offers Abraham bread and wine, the symbols of the new era; for while Abraham did not become unfaithful to the old bond with the primal god, he would at least have had to distance himself from him, so as to distinguish the true god as such; in contradistinction to the most ancient race, he shares the distancing with the societies, who forsook that bond entirely and entered into another, whose offerings they consider bread and wine to be.

For Abraham, Jehovah is simply the primal god in his true enduring essence. To that extent this god is also for him the El Olam, god of the primal time, the god of heaven and earth,119 he is also, for him, the El Shaddai: this is his third attribute. The form in itself points to the highest antiquity; shaddai is an archaistic plural, another plural of magnitude. The basic concept of the word is strength, power, which is indeed no less the basic concept in the likewise very ancient word [169] el (distinguished from “Elohim” and “Eloah”). “El Shaddai” could be translated as “the strength of the strong,” but shaddai does also stand alone, and seems thus to be associated with el merely through apposition, so that the two together mean “the god who is the power and strength exalted above everything.” Now Jehovah says to Abraham “I am the El Shaddai.”120 Here “El Shaddai” has the function of the explanatory predicate, and in contrast to Jehovah the status of what was previously known, thus also of what went before. Now in the second book of Moses121 there is a famous passage of great historical importance, where on the contrary the Elohim says to Moses “I am Jehovah,” where Jehovah, thus, is presupposed as the god already better known, and “I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob—beel shaddai,” in the El Shaddai.CCXLVIII So here we have the explicit evidence that the El Shaddai, that is to say the god of the primal time, was the medium of revelation, or of manifestation, of the true god, Jehovah. Our own view of the first revelation could not have been expressed more clearly than it is here, set in the mouth of Jehovah himself. Jehovah did not appear to Abraham directly; as a consequence of the spirituality of his concept he cannot appear directly, he appeared to Abraham in the El Shaddai.122 But now in the second clause there appear the words “and in or under my name Jehovah was I not known to them (the fathers).” It is principally these words from which people wished to conclude that the name “Jehovah” was, in accordance with Moses‟ own submission, not ancient, but was first taught by him; if one regards the books of Moses from beginning to end as not having been written by him himself, then one could, indeed, take this name right down to the period of David and Solomon. But it is at least possible that the words mentioned are not intended to say [170] what people would like to find in them. The ground rule of the Hebraic style is known to be parallelism, where, that is, there are always two successive clauses which say the same thing in different words, but mostly in such a way that what is affirmed in the first section is expressed in the second through denial of the contrary, for example “I am the Lord, and there is none other beside me,” or “the honour is mine, and I shall allow it to none other.”CCXLIX Now if here the first clause says “I appeared to the fathers in the El Shaddai,” then the second, “and in my name Jehovah was I not known to them,” can only be repeating the same thing in a negative way; it can only be saying “Directly (this simply means: in my name Jehovah), without the mediation of the El Shaddai, they knew nothing of me.” The “bischmi” (in my name) is just another way of writing “in my own nature.” In the El Shaddai have they seen me, in my own nature have they not seen me. The second clause thus only confirms the first; and certainly a later and higher phase of consciousness, which knows Jehovah also independently of the El Shaddai—a consciousness such as we have to ascribe to Moses for other reasons too, is indicated by the words. But a proof of the alleged later origin of the name, through which the principal content of Genesis itself would be lost, is not to be found, not in the passage in question, at least.

Everything I have said up to this point shows what kind of monotheism Abraham‟s was, in fact that it was not an absolutely unmythological monotheism, for it had as its precondition the god who is just as much the precondition of polytheism, and for Abraham the manifestation of the true god is so closely bound up with this other god that Jehovah manifesting himself regards obedience to the inspirations of the other god as obedience to himself. 123 The monotheism of Abraham is not a totally unmythological one, I said just now: for it has as its precondition the relatively-One, which is itself only the first potence of polytheism. The reason it is the way in which the true god becomes manifest, is because the manifestation cannot break away from [171] its precondition—even this is a wholly mythological precondition,CCL that is to say one of a kind in which the polytheistic always intervenes. People have been inclined to judge as sinful the idea of treating all the accounts, especially that in Genesis, as myths, but they are at the very least evidently mythical; they are not, it is true, myths in the sense in which the word is usually understood, that is to say fables, on the contrary, it is actual facts which are recounted, although mythological facts: subject, that is to say, to the conditions of mythology.

This dependence on the relatively-One god is a limitation which must also be felt as such, and which consciousness strives to surmount. But it cannot eliminate it for the present, it will therefore overcome this limitation only to the extent that it recognizes the true god as the god indeed now merely appearing, but at the same time as the god who at some time shall be. Seen from this side, the religion of Abraham is pure authentic monotheism, but this is for him not the religion of the present—in the present his monotheism is subject to the restriction of mythology—certainly, though, it is for him the religion of the future; the true god is the one who shall be, that is his name. When Moses asks under which name he should proclaim the god who will lead the people out of Egypt, this god answers “I shall be the I shall be”;124 CCLI here, thus, where the god speaks in his own person, the name is translated from the third person into the first, and it would be quite inadmissible to find here too the expression of the metaphysical eternity or immutability of God. It is true that the correct pronunciation of the name “Jehovah” is unknown to us, but grammatically it cannot be other than an archaistic future of hawa, or in the later form hayah = exist; the current pronunciation could never be the correct one, because since very ancient times the vowels of a second word (“Adonai”), which means “Lord,” have been set below the name which in fact may not be uttered, which is also the reason why, already in the Greek translation and in all later ones, “the Lord” is written instead of [172] “Jehovah.” With the true vowels the name could be read “Yiveh” (likewise very ancient), or analogously with other forms of proper names (like “Jacob”CCLII ), “Yahvo,” the former consistent with the “Yevo” in the fragments of Sanchuniathon, the latter with the Yao (Ἰά ω ) in Diodorus of Sicily and in the well-known fragment in Macrobius.CCLIII

We earlier explained the name “Jehovah” as the name of the one who is coming to be—perhaps this was its initial meaning, but according to that explanation it is, in the case of Moses, the name of the future one, of the one who is now only coming to be, who will one day exist, and all his pledges too concern the future. Promises are all that Abraham is given. It is promised to him, who is now no nation, that he “shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him,” for in him lay the future of that monotheism through which one day all the societies presently scattered and separated are to be reunited.125 It may well be convenient, and in the interest of the spiritual laziness which is often promoted as rational enlightenment, to see in all these promises just fanciful notions born of the later Jewish national pride. But where, in the whole history of the Abrahamic race, is there a point of time in which such a promise, in the accepted sense of political greatness, could have been thought up? Just as Abraham has to believe in this promised greatness of his people, so also does he believe in the future religion, which will do away with the principle under which he is constrained, and this belief is even accounted to him as consummate religion. 126 In respect to this future religion Abraham is termed, right at the start, a prophet,127 for he still stands outside the law under which his descendants will be constrained even more firmly, and so sees beyond it, just as the later so-called prophets saw beyond it.128 CCLIV

[173] If in fact the religion of the patriarchs is not free from the precondition which allows the true god only to appear as such, not to exist, then the law given through Moses is even more closely tied to this precondition. The content of the Mosaic law is indeed the oneness of God, but is certainly just as much the fact that this god should be only a mediated god.

According to some passages which cannot really be understood in any other way, a direct relationship was vouchsafed to the lawgiver, who in that capacity stands to a certain extent apart from the people; with him the Lord speaks “face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend,”129 he saw the Lord “as he is,”130 CCLV and a “prophet like him, with whom the Lord spoke as with him, will arise no more”;131 CCLVI but on the people the law is imposed like a yoke. To the extent that, as mythology advances, relative monotheism is already contending with unambiguous polytheism, and the dispensation of Cronus now extends over the nations, then, even for the nation of the true god, the relative god, in whom it has to preserve for itself the basis of the absolute god, must become ever more strict, more exclusive, and more jealous of his oneness. This character of exclusiveness, of the strictest negative uniqueness, can only derive from the relatively- One; for the true, the absolute god is not, in this exclusive way, One, and, as that which excludes nothing, is also threatened by nothing. The Mosaic religious law is nothing other than relative monotheism, in the only form in which it could still have been preserved and asserted as real in one particular era in opposition [174] to the heathenism encroaching on all sides.132 That principle, moreover, had to be preserved not for its own sake, but in fact simply as a basis, and thus the Mosaic religious law too is pregnant with the future, towards which, mutely like an image, it points the way. The heathenish quality, by which it is evidently pervaded, has only a temporary significance, and will be eliminated simultaneously with heathenism itself. But while, obedient to necessity, it primarily only seeks to preserve the basis for the future, the true principle of the future is implanted in prophetism, the other, complementary aspect of Hebrew religious law, and just as essential to it and characteristic. But in the prophets the expectation of, and the hope for, the future liberating religion no longer breaks out merely in isolated utterances, it is the principal goal and content of their speeches, and no longer is this the religion merely of Isræl, but of all nations; the feeling of negation under which the prophets themselves suffer gives them an equivalent feeling for the whole of humanity, and even among heathendom they begin to see the future.

It has thus now been proved from the most ancient document, from the very scripture accepted as revealed, that humanity did not begin with pure or absolute monotheism, but with relative. I shall now add a few general remarks about this most ancient condition of the human race, a condition which is significant for us not merely as a religious one, but also in the general context.

_______________

Notes:

79 vv. 25, 26.
 
80 For the linguistic usage refer to Isa. 43:1; it is not קִרָאתִ ף֨ בְשִמִף but only .קִרָאתִ בְשִמִף
 
81 Deu. 31:19-21.
 
82 1. Chr. 28:9. In other ways too the books of the Chronicle prefer to return to the most  ancient phraseology where religious matters are concerned.
 
83 ibid. 29:18.
 
84 In his commentary on Ge. 6:2, J. D. Michælis says: “Hitherto the human race had been  divided into two major parts: the better part, who believed in one god, named themselves „sons of  God,‟ after the true god; the rest, who were languishing not in superstition, since we find no trace  of that before the Flood, but in entire unbelief, Moses calls „sons of men.‟” However the missing  clue was, as shown, already to be found in Ge. 4:26, where the Chaldaic translator and the  oldest Jewish commentators, who after all had no interest in having multitheism begin so early,  had also found it, albeit by way of an incorrect interpretation.
 
85 This last is expressly stated in Ge. 7:1.
 
86 Ge. 8:21, cf. 6:5.
 
87 The references may be found together in a summarized form in Rosenmüller‟s Old and New  East, part I, p. 23. (Also in Stolberg‟s History of the Religion of Jesus Christ, part I, p. 394).
 
88 Compare Eichhorn in the Repertory of Biblical and Eastern Literature, V, p. 216.
 
89 Ge. 9:20.
 
90 Jer. 35.
 
91 Ge. 14:1. There is no reason to take Goyim itself as the name of a nation, the Goyites, of  whom otherwise nothing at all is known, and every other contrived explanation would be equally  uncalled-for; the appellative interpretation is fully supported by the viewpoint above.
 
92 See Gesenius, History of the Hebrew Language and Script, p. 11.
 
93 Ge. 12:6, where it is used of Abraham himself; 37:28, then 2 Ki . 4:8, 9 etc.
 
94 Ge. 17:8, 35:27, 37:1. The promises of Jehovah to give him and his seed after him, for an  everlasting possession, the land wherein he is a stranger, achieve thereby a more definite  meaning.
 
95 Compare Ge. 47:9.—The only one of the explanations of the name “He brew” state d above  which might be given preference would be that of choice, which, based on the fact that עֲרָבָה , for  which a plural, עֲרָבוׂת (Jer. 5:6, 2 Ki . 25:5), also appears, means desert, gives rise to the fertile  suggestion that Ibrim (Hebrew), Arabim (Arab), and Aramim (Aramæan) are mere variations,  indeed intelligible in an analogous way, of the same name. Nothing in the subject under  discussion, what is more, would be changed.
 
96 Ge. 25:27.
 
97 1 Sa. 8:5.
 
98 ibid. v. 8.
 
99 See Gibbon’s History c. X.
 
100 J. Grimm sees it as an intensifying prefix. Götting. Gelehrte Anzeigen 1835, p. 1105.
 
101 Ammian. Marcell. L. XVI, c. 2.

102 Ge. 12:7, 17:1, 18:1, 26:2, 28:12. But Chapter 35? Here Elohim appears, but only in order  to summon up the memory of the god who “appeared” (v. 1) and to confirm the blessing of the  latter (v. 11).
 
103 Ge. 12: 8, 13: 4, 21: 33, 26: 25.
 
104 Ge. 20:13.
 
105 cf. e.g. 35:7.
 
106 Ge. 12:1, 24:7.
 
107 cf. Storrii Obss. p. 97. Examples: jamim means the great sea (p. 46, 3), thanim = draco sed  grandis, schamaim = altitudo, sed grandis.
 
108 Ge. 20:11.
 
109 Ge. 20:6, 31:24.
 
110 Ge. 20:17.
 
111 Ge. 17:9; from 1-8 Jehovah was speaking. That this is no accident is evident from 21:4,  where the commandment is simply mentioned again, and ye t it re ads “as Elohim had  commanded him.”
 
112 The principal passage naturally Ge. 22:11. The angel of Jehovah not distinguished from  Jehovah himself Judg. 6:12, cf. 14, 16, 22. Where Jehovah and the angel of Jehovah are, there,  naturally, is also the Elohim, ibid. 13:21 cf. with 22.
 
113 Jer. 5:15.
 
114 Jos. 24:2.
 
115 Deu. 32:17.
 
116 Ge. 24:3.
 
117 Clearly saddik in Ge. 6:9 is also to be understood in this sense.
 
118 Ge. 5:22, 6:9.
 
119 Abraham alone, incidentally, and not Melchizedek, calls the god of heaven and earth  “Jehovah.” Ge . 14:22, cf. 19, 20.
 
120 Ge. 17:1.
 
121 Ex. 6:2 f.
 
122 If, which in any case there is no reason to do, one wished to explain the ב in בְאֵל as the  familiar ב prædicati (see Storrii Obss. p. 454), although it could be construed in this way with  difficulty, then it would amount to the same thing, it would be like saying “I appeared to them as  El Shaddai .”
 
123 Cf. Ge. 22:1 with 22:12 and 15-16.
 
124 Ex. 3:14.
 
125 Ge. 18:18, 19, 26:4.
 
126 Ge . 15:6. Abraham “believed in the Lord; and he counted it to him for righteousness.”
 
127 Ge. 20:7.
 
128 All the thoughts in the Old Testament are directed towards the future in this way, so that  the pious narrator in Ge. 4:1 already sets a prophecy in the mouth of Eve (what is more by way  of a far-fetched explanation of the name “Cain,” which according to the same etymology permits  of a much more likely one): “I have gotten the man the Jehovah.” With the continuance of the  human race, which is guaranteed by the first male birth, the true god too, whom they do not yet  possess, is assured to humanity.—I would quarrel with no one who was inclined to see actual  words of Eve in the speech; as long as he then also admitted it to be historically proved that the  true god was for the first men only a future god.
 
129 Ex. 33:11.
 
130 Nu. 12:8.
 
131 Deu. 34:10.
 
132 To think it possible that superstitious customs such as are prescribed by the Mosaic  ceremonial law could still perhaps have come into being in times such as those of David or his  successors, presupposes a lack of knowledge of the general course of religious evolution which  forty years ago could have been excused; for in those days it was still pardonable to hold the view  that a phenomenon like the Mosaic law could be evaluated outside the grand and universal  context. Today, though, it is not an unreasonable requirement that everyone should first take  steps to acquire a higher education, before venturing to speak out about topics of such high  antiquity.
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Re: Historico-Critical Introduction to the Philosophy of Myt

Postby admin » Sun Mar 18, 2018 11:29 pm

LECTURE EIGHT

OVER the era of the still united and undivided human race there reigned, thus—we may now state it as a fact, and revelation too has confirmed it—a spiritual power, the god who held off the free disintegration, and kept the evolution of the human race at the first stage, the stage where its existence contained mere natural or tribal differences, and was otherwise completely homogeneous, CCLVII a condition which would indeed also be the only one justly to be called the state of Nature. And assuredly, this same era was also the celebrated Golden Age, the recollection of which has remained with the human race, even with that part long since separated into societies and at the furthest remove from it, the age when, that is, as the Platonic account stemming from the same memory says, God himself was their protector and guardian, and when, because he nurtured them, there were no forms of civil government.133 CCLVIII For just as the shepherd does not allow his flock to stray, in the same way did God, acting as a mighty attractive force, hold humanity, with gentle but irresistible strength, enclosed in the sphere in which it was meet for him to keep them. Note well the Platonic expression, that God himself was their guardian. At that time, therefore, God had as yet been imparted to man through no doctrine, nor any science; the relationship was a real one, and hence could [176] only have been a relationship to God in his actuality, not to God in his essence, and thus not to the true god either; for the actual god is not at once the true god as well, just as we do indeed still grant, even to someone whom we regard in other respects as a godless person, a relationship to God in his actuality, but not to God in his truth, from whom he is, on the contrary, completely estranged. The god of the primæval time is an actual real god, and a god in whom, also, the true god exists, but is not known as such. So humanity worshipped that which it did not know, to which it had no ideal (free) relationship, but only a real one. Christ says to the Samaritans (as is known, these were regarded by the Jews as heathens, so actually he is saying it about the heathens) “Ye worship ye know not what: we”— the Jews, as monotheists, who have a relationship to the true god as such—“we know what we worship”CCLIX (know at least as something of the future). The true god, the god as such, can only exist in the act of knowing, and in direct contradiction to a well-known and little considered saying,CCLX but in agreement with the words of Christ, we are obliged to say that the god who was not known would be no god. Monotheism has always existed only as doctrine and science, and not even just as doctrine in general, but drawn up in written form and preserved in holy books, and even those who make knowledge of the true god a precondition of mythology are required to think of this monotheism as a doctrine, indeed as a system. Those who worship the true god, thus God in his truth, can only worship him, as Christ says, in spirit at the same time, and this relationship can only be a free one, just as on the other hand the relationship to God apart from his truth, of the kind that is espoused in polytheism and in mythology, can only be an unfree one.

Once man had fallen from the essential relationship to God, 134 which could only have been, what is more, a relationship to God in his essential being, that is to say [177] in his truth, then the path which humanity travelled in mythology was no accidental one, but necessary if humanity was destined to reach the goal by that path alone. But the goal is the one willed by providence. Seen from this standpoint, it was divine providence itself which gave the human race that relatively-One as first lord and protector; humanity was directed towards the latter and as it were taken in hand by him. The god of the primæval time himself is for the chosen people only the bridle or rein, to which they are held by the true god. Their knowledge of the true god is no natural one, nor for that very reason a stationary one, but always just knowledge which is coming to be, because the true god himself is for consciousness not the existing god, but always just the god who is coming to be, who precisely as such is also called the living god, forever just the god who appears, who must always be called to and captured as an appearance is captured. The knowledge of the true god remains, thus, always a demand, a commandment,CCLXI and even the later nation of Isræl must always be entreated and exhorted to love their god Jehovah, that is to say to hold fast to him with whole heart, with whole soul, and with all their might,CCLXII because the true god is not the one natural to their consciousness, but must be held fast by a continual explicit act. Because God never becomes an existing god for them, the most ancient condition is the condition of a trusting humility and anticipation, and it is with reason that Abraham is called, not just by the Jews, but also by other Orientals, “the father of all believers,” for he believes in the god who does not exist, but will exist. They all anticipate a future salvation. The patriarch Jacob interrupts the benediction with which he is blessing his children, with the words: “Jehovah, I await your salvation.”CCLXIII To understand this correctly, we must go back to the meaning of the corresponding verb, which is “to lead from confinement into the open,” thus, taken in a passive sense, “to escape from confinement,” hence “to be saved.” Accordingly, they all anticipate that they will be led out of this confinement in which they have been kept until now, and become free from the precondition (of the [178] one-sided monotheism), which God himself cannot now remove, which is imposed upon them, in common with the whole human race, like the law, the necessity, until the day of atonement, when the true god ceases to be the god who merely appears, the god merely revealing himself, and thus revelation itself ceases, as happened in Christ, for Christ is the end of revelation.

We have no fears of having devoted too much time to the great fact that even the god of the earliest human race was already no longer the absolutely-One, but only the relatively-One, even if not yet explained and recognized as such, and that thus the human race began from relative monotheism. To establish this fact from all sides appeared necessarily of the greatest importance for us, not merely in opposition to those who think they can understand mythology and polytheism only by way of a corrupted revelation, but also in opposition to so-called “philosophers of history,” who let all religious evolution in humanity stem not from oneness, but from the multiplicity of thoroughly partial, indeed even initially local, ideas, from so-called fetishism or shamanism, or from a deification of Nature which deifies not even concepts or genera, but individual natural objects, for example this particular tree or this particular river. No, humanity did not rise from such squalor, the majestic course of history had quite another beginning, the keynote in the consciousness of humanity always remained that great One, who still did not know his like, who actually filled heaven and earth, that is to say, everything. Of course, those who make the deification of Nature, which they have found among wretched hordes, degenerate tribes, never among nations, into the first thing in the human raceCCLXIV—compared with those, the others who allow monotheism, in whatever sense, were it even that of a revealed monotheism, to precede mythology, are on an incalculably higher level. In the meantime the relationship between mythology and revelation has proved to be historically quite different. We have been obliged to see for ourselves that revelation, that the monotheism which is historically demonstrable in some section of [179] humanity, was brought about by precisely that which also brought about polytheism, that thus, far from it being possible to make the one a precondition of the other, the precondition is common to both. And it seems to me that even the adherents of the hypothesis of revelation can in the end only rejoice at this result.

Any revelation could only have been directed, after all, towards an actual consciousness; but in the first actual consciousness we find already the relatively-One, which, as we have seen, is the first potence of a successive polytheism, thus already the first potence of mythology itself. This potence, though, could not itself have been established by revelation; hence revelation must find it as a precondition independent of itself; and did it not even have need of such a precondition in order to be revelation? Revelation exists only where something which obfuscates is broken through, it thus presupposes an obfuscation, something which has come between consciousness and the god who is to reveal himself.

The postulated corruption, too, of the original content of a revelation would be conceivable only over the course of time and history; but the precondition of mythology, the beginning of polytheism, is in existence, just as humanity is in existence, so early, that it is not explicable by any corruption.

If men like Gerhard Voss, mentioned earlier, explained individual myths as corrupted incidents from the Old Testament, then it may certainly be presumed that there they were concerned, in fact, simply with the explanation of these individual myths, and that they were far from considering themselves to have thereby also discovered the foundation of heathenism itself.

The use of the concept of revelation for every explanation which encounters difficulties with other approaches, is on the one hand a poor proof of particular reverence for this concept, which lies too deep for us to be able to get to grips with it, to make use of it, as directly as many imagine; on the other hand it amounts to giving up any attempt to understand, if one tries to explain something not understood, by way of something else no better, or even less well, understood. For as familiar as the word is to many among us, is there, however, anyone who, when he utters it, actually [180] has something in his mind. Explain, one might say, anything you like by way of a revelation, but first explain to us what this itself is, make intelligible for us the specific process, the fact, the event, which you must surely think of in the concept.

The genuine advocates of a revelation have always restricted it to one particular era, thus they have explained the state of consciousness, which makes it accessible to a revelation (obnoxium reddit),CCLXV as a transient one, just as the apostles of the last and most complete revelation proclaimed that one of its effects was also the elimination of all exceptional phenomena and states, and without these an actual revelation is unthinkable.

For Christian theologians it should have been of prime importance to have preserved revelation in this independence of any particular state which would have to be a precondition for it, so that for them it did not become dissolved, as has long ago occurred, into a merely general and rational relationship, and was retained, rather, in its strict historicity. Revelation, if such a thing is postulated, presupposes a specific exceptional state of consciousness. Every theory which deals with revelation would have to establish the existence of such a state, independent of it. But there may, now, be no fact which sheds light on such an exceptional state except mythology itself, and hence it is far more likely that mythology would be the precondition of a scientific understanding of revelation, rather than the reverse, that mythology could be derived from a revelation.

From the scientific standpoint we cannot set the hypothesis of revelation higher than any other hypothesis which makes mythology dependent on a merely fortuitous fact. For a revelation postulated without concept, and it cannot be postulated otherwise with the insights and scientific means available until now, should be considered to be nothing but a purely fortuitous fact.

It could be objected that relative monotheism, from which [181] we consider all mythology to stem, might also be a fact hitherto not understood. But the difference is, that the hypothesis of revelation is put forward as a final one, which cuts off any further regress, while we have no intention of concluding with that fact, but now at once regard it, being historically established and secured, from this side, as we may assume, against any challenge, as the point of departure for a new analysis.

Accordingly, first of all the following reflection will serve as the transition to a further analysis. That One, who does not yet know his like, and who is, for primal humanity, the absolutely-One, behaves, nonetheless, as the merely relatively-One who does not yet have, but still can have, another apart from himself, and can have, in fact, such another as will relieve him of his exclusive existence. So with him then the foundation for successive polytheism is in fact already laid; he is, even if not yet known as such, yet in accordance with his nature, the first member of a future succession of gods, of a genuine multitheism. From this—and this is now the next necessary conclusion—follows the consequence that we know absolutely no historical beginning for polytheism, even taking historical time in the widest sense. In the strict sense, historical time begins with the completed separation of societies. But the completed separation is preceded by the era of the crisis of societies; this, as transition to the historical era, is to that extent genuinely prehistoric, but to the extent that even in it something does after all go on and come to pass, it is only prehistoric in respect to historical time in the strictest sense of the words—but in itself also historical, in fact— thus it is the prehistoric era or the historical only in a relative way. Against that, the era of the calm, still unshattered unity of the human race—this will be the absolutely prehistoric era. Now consciousness in this era, however, is already wholly filled by that unqualified-One, who will in the sequel become the first god of successive polytheism. To that extent we know of no historical beginning for polytheism. One might, it is true, perhaps think that it would not be necessary for the whole [182] prehistoric era to have been filled by that god, that indeed even in this era there might be contemplated an even earlier time, when man still communed directly with the true god, and a later time, when heCCLXVI first came under the influence of the relatively-One. If one wished to raise this objection, it would be advisable to note the following. With the mere concept of absolutely prehistoric time, any before and after which one might think of within it itself, is eliminated. For if it were still possible, even in it, for something to occur—and the assumed transition from the true god to the relatively-One would in fact be an occurrence—then it would simply not be the absolutely prehistoric time, but would itself belong to historical time. If there were not one principle in it, but a succession of principles, then it would be a succession of actually distinct times, and thus it itself would be a part or section of historical time. Absolutely prehistoric time is the time indivisible of its own nature, absolutely identical, and hence, whatever duration might be ascribed to it, it is still only to be regarded as a moment, that is to say as a time in which the end is like the beginning and the beginning like the end, a kind of eternity, because it itself is not a succession of times, but just one time, which is not in itself an actual time, that is to say a succession of times, but becomes time (namely the past) only relatively to the time following it. Now if that is how it is, and the absolutely prehistoric time allows no further distinction of times within itself, then that consciousness in humanity, a consciousness for which the relatively-One god is still the absolutely-One, is the first actual consciousness in humanity, the consciousness before which they themselves know of no other consciousness in which they exist in the way that they exist,CCLXVII the consciousness to which in respect of time no other may be supposed prior; and it follows, therefore, that we know no historical beginning to polytheism, for in the first actual consciousness it is indeed not yet present actually (for no initial term suffices, in itself, to form an actual succession), but all the same present potentia.

What might seem remarkable here, in what is otherwise such a wholly divergent approach, is the agreement with David Hume, who first declared, “As far back as we go in history, [183] we find multitheism.”CCLXVIII In that, then, we fully concur with him, even if the imprecision and even the inaccuracies of his exposition135 CCLXIX lead us to regret that the preconceived opinions of the philosopher here allowed the industriousness and accuracy of the historical researcher to appear dispensable. Hume starts out from the completely abstract concept of polytheism, without thinking it worth the trouble to go into its real nature and its various types, and now investigates, in accordance with this abstract concept, how polytheism can have come into existence. Here Hume has supplied the first example of that unspeakable kind of rationalism which was later (only without Hume‟s wit, spirit, and philosophical acumen) so often applied to historical problems, where, that is, without having regard for what is still actually ascertainable historically, people try to imagine how the thing [184] could have taken place, and then boldly assert that it actually did take place in that way.

Especially typical of his era is the way that Hume completely sets aside the Old Testament, just as if, simply because it is regarded by Jews and Christians as holy scripture, it would lose all historical value, or as if these scriptures ceased, because they are principally used only by theologians and for dogmatic ends, to be a source for the knowledge of the most ancient religious ideas, a source with which, for purity as for age, none is comparable, and whose preservation is itself, so to speak, a miracle. The Old Testament in particular has served to show us in what sense multitheism is as old as history. Not in the sense of a Humean polytheism, but in the sense that with the first actual consciousness the first elements of a successive polytheism were also already introduced. But this, now, still no more than the fact, which may not remain unexplained. That it must be explained, means: even this consciousness which is already mythological potentia can only be one which has come to be, but as we have just seen, not one which has come to be historically. The process through which that consciousness, which we find already in the absolutely prehistoric time, came to be, can thus only be a suprahistoricalCCLXX process. Just as earlier we advanced from the historical into the relatively-prehistoric, then into the absolutelyprehistoric, so here do we see ourselves obliged to go on from that last into the suprahistorical, and just as earlier from the individual to the society, and from the society to humanity, so now from humanity to the original man himself, for in the suprahistorical only he may still be contemplated. But we find ourselves obliged also by another necessary consideration to go on at once into the suprahistorical, by a question which until now had been held back only because the time for its discussion had not yet come.

We have seen humanity, in its own estimation, as old as time in its relationship to the relatively-One. But now, apart from both true monotheism and the merely relative kind, which is monotheism [185] only because it still harbours its opposite—apart from both of these there is a third possibility: consciousness could have had no relationship of any kind to God, not to the true god, nor to the god who has to exclude another. So for the fact, then, that it has a relationship to God at all: for that fact the basis can lie no longer in the first actual consciousness, it can only lie beyond that. But beyond the first actual consciousness nothing more is conceivable but man, or consciousness in its pure substance prior to all actual consciousness, where man is not consciousness of himself (for this, without a process of becoming conscious, that is to say without an actus, would be inconceivable), and thus, since he must, after all, be consciousness of something, can only be consciousness of God, not a consciousness associated with an actus, thus with an act of knowing or willing, for example, and thus can only be purely substantial consciousness of God. Original man is that which establishes God not actu, but natura sua,CCLXXI and indeed—since God considered merely in general is only an abstract term, but just the relatively-One already belongs to the actual consciousness— there remains for the primal consciousness nothing but that it is that which establishes God in his truth and absolute unity. And so admittedly then, if it is permissible at all to apply to such an essential establishing of God an expression which properly designates a scientific concept, or if we wish to understand in monotheism no more than just the establishing of the true god in general, the final precondition of mythology would be—monotheism; but, as you certainly now see, firstly a suprahistorical monotheism, and secondly not a monotheism of the human understanding, but of human nature, because man in his original essence has no other meaning than to be god-establishing Nature, because in origin he exists only in order to be this god-establishing essence, thus not Nature existing for itself, but Nature turned towards God, enraptured, as it were, in God; for I like in every case to use the most appropriate and characteristic expressions, and I have no fear that here it will be said, for instance, that that is an extravagant doctrine; for it is indeed not a question of what [186] man is now, nor even only of what he can be, now that there lies, between his original existence and his present existence, the whole great eventful course of history. Certainly the doctrine which might maintain that man exists now only in order to be that which establishes God would be extravagant; this doctrine of the direct establishing of God by man would be extravagant if one wished to make this, now that man has taken the great step forward into actuality, the exclusive rule of his present life, as has happened with the contemplatives, the yogis of India or the Persian Sufis, who, inwardly torn by the contradictions of their religion, or tired altogether of existence and of imagination, both subject to becoming, wish to make their way, practically, back to that immersion in God, thus like the mystics of all times to find only the way backwards, but not forwards into free knowledge.

It is a question which must be raised not merely in an investigation of mythology, but in any history of humanity, how human consciousness could from the beginning, indeed before all else, have been occupied with ideas of a religious nature, could have been, indeed, entirely taken up by such. But what happens in so many cases like this, that by putting the question wrongly the answer itself is made impossible, has happened here too.CCLXXII The question was: “How does consciousness arrive at God?” But consciousness does not arrive at God; its first movement leads away, as we have seen, from the true god; in the first actual consciousness there only remains one phase of him (for thus can we already regard the relatively-One, even provisionally), no longer he himself; so since consciousness, as soon as it leaves its original state, as soon as it moves, departs from God, all that remains is that this state was designed into it originally, or that consciousness had God in itself, in itself in the sense that one says of a man that he has a virtue in him, or more often a vice, by which one means to say precisely that it is not objective for him himself, not something that he would want, indeed not even something about which he would know. [187] Man (meaning still the original essential man) is, in himself and as it were before himself, that is to say before he is in possession of himself, before, therefore, he has become something else—for he is already something else if, returning to himself, he has become an object for himself—man, as soon as he simply exists and has as yet become nothing, he is consciousness of God;CCLXXIII he does not possess this consciousness, he is it, and in fact just in the absence of act, in the absence of movement, is he that which establishes the true god.CCLXXIV

We have spoken of a monotheism of the primal consciousness, of which was observed that it 1) would be no accidental monotheism, having somehow come to be for consciousness, because it was inherent in the substance of consciousness, that it 2) is for that very reason not a monotheism to be regarded as a historical precondition, which was imparted to man or the human race and which he later lost. Since it is a monotheism established with the nature of man, it did not come to be in man only over a period of time, it exists for him eternally,CCLXXV because it came to be with his nature; 3) and we shall also have to admit that this monotheism of the primal consciousness is not one which knows itself, that it is only a natural, blind monotheism, which has yet to become known. If, now, in consequence of this definition, someone were to go on to argue that in a blind monotheism there could be no question of a differentiation, no question of consciousness (that is to say of formal consciousness) as such of the true god,CCLXXVI then we can fully concede this; and furthermore if it is said that resting as it does on an absorption of the human essence in the divine, it would suffice to designate that consciousness as a natural or essential theism, then we shall not quarrel with that either, especially since it is necessary, in the proper separation of the concepts and their designations, to introduce theism as that which is common to, and that which precedes in common, (genuine) monotheism and polytheism, their indifference, their equal possibility, and our intention can indeed be no other but to allow polytheism just as much as monotheism to issue from the primal consciousness. To the question of which came first, polytheism or monotheism, we shall in a certain sense reply: neither [188] of them. Not polytheism; of that it goes without saying that it is nothing original, everyone admits this, for everyone tries to explain it. Nor, though, as we have already stated, may a polytheism, which actually is this, be explained by way of an original atheism in consciousness. So surely then monotheism would be what was original? But not this either, not, that is, according to the concepts which the advocates of its priority associate with the word, in that they either mean thereby abstract monotheism, which only excludes its opposite, from which thus polytheism could never have come into existence, or formal monotheism, based, that is to say, on actual knowledge and differentiation. So if we are to retain the word, then it is in fact only possible by replying along these lines: monotheism certainly, but a monotheism which both is and is not this; is, at this point, that is, and as long as consciousness does not stir; is not, is not such, that is, that it could not have become polytheism. Or still more precisely, so as to guard against misunderstanding: monotheism certainly, but monotheism which still knows nothing of its opposite, which thus also does not know itself as monotheism, and which neither has, by excluding its opposite, already turned itself into abstract monotheism, nor is, by having overcome it and containing it within itself as defeated, already actual monotheism, knowing itself and in possession of itself. But now we certainly see that the monotheism which, towards polytheism, just as much as towards the future formal monotheism, based on actual knowledge, behaves only as the common possibility or material, is itself merely material monotheism, and this cannot be distinguished from simple theism, if that theism is understood not in the abstract contemporary sense, but in the one established by us, where it is precisely the equal possibility of both.

This then should suffice to explain the sense in which we assume, as prior to mythology, either monotheism or theism: 1) not a formal sense, in which the true god as such is distinguished; 2) not an abstract sense, which simply excludes polytheism; for on the contrary it still in fact contains polytheism within itself. But from here on, now, [189] our whole investigation has to take another turn. So let me in conclusion once again summarize, from a general point of view, what has just been said.

Our examination, as it gained a wider perspective, led us finally to the first actual consciousness of humanity, but in this already, in the consciousness beyond which they know nothing, there is God with a qualification; we find as the content of this consciousness, at least as immediate content, no longer the pure godlike self, but God in a particular form of existence, we find him as god of power, of strength, as El Shaddai, which the Hebrews called him, as the god of heaven and earth. Nonetheless the content of this consciousness is God in general, and indeed is (indisputably) of necessity: God. This necessity must derive from an earlier phase; but further back beyond the first actual consciousness nothing more can be contemplated but consciousness in its pure substance; this is that which establishes God, not with knowledge and will, but according to its nature, essentially, and such that it is nothing else, nothing beyond that—and as itself merely essential, it can also only have a relationship to God in his essence, that is to say in his pure self. But now it may immediately be understood, additionally, that this essential relationship should be thought of as no more than a moment, that man cannot tarry in this existence apart from himself, that he must strive to leave that state of immersion in God, so as to transform it into a knowledge of God, and thereby into a free relationship.CCLXXVII But he can only achieve such a relationship by stages. If his original relationship is destroyed, his relationship to God is not thereby altogether destroyed, for it is an eternal and indestructible one. Himself become actual, man succumbs to God in his actuality. Now if we assume—in consequence of that which is admittedly not yet understood philosophically, but has been factually demonstrated by our explanation of successive polytheism—if we assume that God in accordance with his forms of existence is just as much Several, as is he in accordance with his godlike self or essence One, then it may be understood on what the successive element in polytheism is based, and [190] at what it is directed. None of these forms is in itself equivalent to God, but if, in consciousness, they become a unity, then this unity which has come to be is also, in that it has come to be, a monotheism known, attained with consciousness.

True monotheism, associated with the act of knowing, is found even historically only as result. Directly, however, consciousness will not succumb to the plurality of forms succeeding each other, alternating in consciousness, thus it will not succumb directly to unambiguous polytheism. With the first form the succeeding ones, and thus polytheism, will be given as yet merely potentia; this is that phase recognized by us historically, when consciousness wholly and undividedly belongs to the relatively-One, which is not yet in contradiction with the absolutely-One, but for consciousness is equivalent to it. In that phase, we said, humanity still worshipped, although unknowingly, the One. The unambiguous polytheism now succeeding is only the path towards the liberation from the onesided strength of that One, only the transition to the relationship which has to be regained. In polytheism nothing is brought about through the agency of an act of knowing; on the other hand monotheism, which, if it is knowledge of the true god as such and distinguished from others, can only be result, not what is original— monotheism expresses the relationship to God which man can have only in the act of knowing, only as a free relationship. When Christ has liberationCCLXXVIII (σωτηρία) coming from the Jews, in the same context where he proclaims the worship of God in spirit and in truth as the future universal worship, 136 the context shows that this liberation is, in Christ‟s sense, the liberation or redemption from precisely that which humanity worshipped without knowing it, and elevation to that which is known, and which may only be known. God in his truth can only be known; to God in his bare actuality a blind relationship is possible as well.

The meaning of this last argument is that only in this way can mythology [191] be understood. For that reason, though, it is not yet actually understood. In the meantime we have also been freed from the final accidental precondition—of a monotheism which historically preceded mythology, a monotheism which, because it could not have been, for humanity, one it invented itself, could only have been a revealed one; and because this precondition was, as well, the last of all which remained earlier, we are only now free of all accidental preconditions, and with that from all explanations which deserve to be called merely hypotheses. But where hypotheses and accidental preconditions cease, there begins science. Those accidental preconditions could only have been, in the nature of the subject, of a historical kind, but instead they have shown themselves, through our analysis, to be unhistorical ones; and apart from consciousness in its substance, and the initial movement indisputably to be regarded as natural, through which consciousness sustains that qualificationCCLXXIX by means of which it becomes subject to the mythological succession, no precondition is required. But these preconditions are no longer of a historical nature. The limit of the possible historical explanations was reached with the prehistoric consciousness of humanity, and all that was left was the path into the suprahistorical. The blind theism of the primal consciousness, from which we start out, may only be characterized as a suprahistorical theism, since it is established with the essence of man before any movement, thus also before any happening, and in the same way, that movement through which man, removed from the relationship with the divine self, succumbs to the actual god, may be thought of only as a suprahistorical event.

But now, with preconditions like this, the whole method of explaining mythology changes too; for we shall understandably not yet be able to go on to the explanation itself; but that method of explanation which is, after the preconditions just described, the only one possible, may already be perceived, even if only in a preliminary way.

First of all, then, it will become clear through the following observations how, with these preconditions, every merely accidental way of coming into being would be eliminated of its own accord.

[192] The foundation of mythology is already laid in the first actual consciousness, and polytheism, thus, already came into existence in essence with the transition to this. From this it follows that the act through which the foundation for polytheism is laid is not itself within the actual consciousness, but lies outside this. The first actual consciousness is found already with this affection, through which it is separated from its eternal and essential existence. It can no longer go back to that, and it can as little go beyond this qualification as beyond itself. Hence this qualification has something incomprehensible for consciousness, it is the unwanted and unforeseen consequence of a movement which consciousness cannot reverse. The origin of the qualification lies in a region to which consciousness no longer has access, once it has been separated from it. That which has intruded, that which is accidental, is transformed into something necessary and immediately assumes the form of something which can now never be eliminated.

The alteration of consciousness consists in the absolutely-One god no longer dwelling in it, only the relatively-One. But this relative god is succeeded by the second not by chance, but in accordance with an objective necessity which we do indeed not yet understand, but are no less for that reason obliged to recognize as such (as objective) in advance. With that first qualification, thus, consciousness at the same time becomes subject to the necessary succession of representations by way of which genuine polytheism comes into existence. Once the first affection has been established, the movement of consciousness through these successive forms is one of a kind in which thought and will, reason and freedom, no longer play a part. Consciousness became caught up in this movement unawares, in a manner now no longer comprehensible to it itself. The movement behaves in respect to consciousness like its fate, like its doom, in the face of which it can do nothing. It is, for consciousness, a real force, that is to say a force now no longer under its control, which has taken it over. Prior to all thought, consciousness has already been captured by that principle, whose purely natural consequence is multitheism and mythology.

Therefore—admittedly not in the sense of a philosophy which [193] has man beginning from animal obtuseness and meaninglessness, but certainly in the sense which the Greeks suggested in various very characteristic expressions like θεόπλεκτος, θεοβλαβὴςCCLXXX and so on, in the sense, thus, that consciousness is afflicted by the onesided-One and as it were struck down—anyway, the most ancient man is found in a condition of bondage (of which we living under the law of an entirely different era can form for ourselves no direct concept), struck down by a kind of stupor (stupefacta quasi et attonitaCCLXXXI) and seized by an alien power, rendered beside himself, that is to say out of his own control.

The ideas through whose succession not only does formal polytheism arise directly, but also, indirectly, material (simultaneous) polytheism, are generated for consciousness without its participation, indeed against its will, and—to state it in a definitive way, putting an end to all earlier explanations which assume invention is somehow involved in mythology, and in a way which is the first which really gives us that which is independent of all invention, indeed opposed to all invention, and which we already had occasion to call for earlier—mythology comes into existence through one NECESSARY (as seen by consciousness) PROCESS, whose origin is lost in the suprahistorical and hidden from its own self, a process which consciousness, at odd moments, can perhaps resist, but which as a whole it cannot arrest, still less reverse.

With this, accordingly, there would be put forward, as the general concept of the way it comes into existence, the concept of the process, which takes mythology, and with it our investigation, right out of the sphere within which all of the explanations hitherto have remained. With this concept is resolved the question of how the mythological ideas were intended to be understood as they came into existence. The question about how the mythological ideas were intended to be understood, points to the difficulty or impossibility, in which we find ourselves, of accepting that they were intended to be understood as truth. Therefore what is then first attempted is to interpret them extrinsically, that is to say, to assume a truth in them, but a truth different from that which they directly [194] express—what is attempted secondly is to see an original truth in them, but one which has been corrupted. But according to the result now reached the question can be raised, rather, of whether the mythological ideas were intended to be understood at all, whether, that is, they were the object of an expression of what is understood, the object, that is to say, of a free act of holding something to be true.CCLXXXII Here too, therefore, the question was put wrongly, it was put subject to a presupposition which was itself incorrect. The mythological ideas are neither invented nor freely assumed.— Products of a process independent of thought and will, they possessed, for the consciousness subject to that process, unambiguous and irrefutable reality. Societies, like individuals, are only instruments of this process, of which they have no overall view, which they serve without understanding it. It is not in the power of societies to escape these ideas, to accept them or not to accept them; for they do not come to societies from outside, they exist in societies, without the societies being conscious of how; for they come from the inner nature of consciousness itself, to which they display themselves with a necessity which permits no doubt about their truth.

Once the idea of its coming into existence in such a way has been arrived at, then it is entirely understandable that mythology regarded in a merely material way seemed so enigmatic, while it is a known fact that other things too which are based on a spiritual process, on a characteristic inner experience, seem strange and incomprehensible to him who lacks this experience, whereas for him from whom the inner process is not concealed they have a wholly understandable and rational meaning. The main question in respect to mythology is the question of its meaning. But the meaning of mythology can only be the meaning of the process through which it comes into existence.

Were the personalities and events, which form the content of mythology, of such a kind that we could take them to be, in accordance with accepted concepts, possible objects of an immediate experience, were gods beings who could become manifest, then no one would ever have considered taking them in any sense other than the literal one. [195] The belief in the truth and objectivity of these representations, a belief which we would certainly have to ascribe to heathenism, lest it became itself a fable for us, would have been explained quite simply by an actual experience of that earlier humanity; it would have simply been assumed that these personalities, these events, had for it indeed existed and appeared in that way, thus had also been true for that humanity when understood entirely literally, in just the same way as the analogous appearances and encounters which are related of the Isrælites, and which for us in the circumstances of today are equally impossible, were true for them. But now, precisely this, which was earlier unthinkable, has been made possible by the explanation now established; this explanation is the first which has an answer to the question of how it was possible for the societies of antiquity not only to give credence to those religious ideas, which seem to us thoroughly absurd and irrational, but also to offer up to them the most solemn, and in some cases cruel, sacrifices.

Because mythology is something which did not come into existence artificially, but naturally, indeed, subject to the precondition stated, with necessity, then in it content and form, substance and expression, may not be distinguished from each other. The ideas are not first present in another form, but come into being only in and thus also at the same time as this form. Such an organic development was called for by us earlier in these lectures,CCLXXXIII but the principle of the only process by which it could be explained had not been found.

Because consciousness chooses or invents neither the ideas themselves nor their expression, mythology, then, comes into being at once as such, and in no other sense but the one in which it is expressed. In consequence of the necessity with which the content of the ideas is generated, mythology has, right from the beginning, real and thus also doctrinal meaning; in consequence of the necessity with which the form, too, comes into existence, mythology is wholly literal, that is to say everything in it should be understood just as it is stated, not as if one thing were thought, and another said. Mythology is not [196] allegorical, it is tautegorical.137 CCLXXXIV The gods, for it, are beings actually existing, who do not exist as one thing, and mean another, but mean only that which they are. Earlier, literality and doctrinal meaning were set up in opposition to each other. But the two (literality and doctrinal meaning) may not, according to our explanation, be separated, and instead of relinquishing the literality for the sake of some doctrinal sense, or, like the poetical viewpoint, saving the literality, but at the cost of the doctrinal meaning, we are, on the contrary, in fact obliged by our explanation to maintain the all-encompassing unity and indivisibility of the meaning.

In order to demonstrate the principle of unqualified literality at once in practice, let us recall that in mythology two phases were distinguished: 1) the polytheistic; in respect to [197] this we shall therefore maintain, after discarding every extrinsic meaning, that it is actually about gods; what this means needs no further discussion after the earlier explanations. All that has been added since then is the ascertainment that the process giving rise to mythology already has its basis and its beginning in the first actual consciousness of humanity. From this it follows that the representations of gods could at no possible or presumed time have been left to that accidental emergence which is assumed in the usual hypotheses, and that in particular, for a presumed pre-mythological polytheism, as is presupposed, in part, by those explanations, there is just as little a time left over, as is there for the reflections on natural phenomena, out of which, for Heyne, Hermann, or Hume, mythology is supposed to have emerged, since the first actual consciousness was already in the nature of the thing a mythological one. That polytheism, a polytheism in name only, is supposed to be based on fortuitous representations of invisible all-powerful beings; but there was never, originally, a part of the human race which was in the position to arrive at representations of gods in such a way. This polytheism prior to mythology is thus a mere scholastic figment; it is, dare we say, historically proven that before the mythological polytheism there could have been no other, that there never was a polytheism other than a mythological one, that is to say one which is established by the process demonstrated by us, none, therefore, in which there were not actual gods, none, that is to say, in which the final content would not have been God. But mythology is not merely polytheism in general, but 2) historical polytheism, to such an extent that a polytheism not (potentiâ or actu) historical, could also not be called mythological. But with respect to this phase, too, we should keep a firm hold on the unqualified literality; the succession should be understood as an actual one. It is a movement to which consciousness is in fact subject, one which truly takes place. Even in the specific details of the succession, that this god, and no other, precedes or follows that god, there is not arbitrariness, but necessity, and even in respect of the particular circumstances of those events which are found in the [198] history of the gods, as strange as they may seem to us, there will always be shown to exist in consciousness the conditions out of which the representation of those circumstances naturally emerged. The castration of Uranus, the dethronement of Cronus, and the numerous other deeds and events in the history of the gods, need not be taken other than literally in order to acquire an intelligible and comprehensible meaning.

Nor would it be possible, as was attempted, certainly, with revelation, to distinguish, for instance, between doctrine and history, to regard the latter as a mere form of expression for the former. Doctrine does not exist apart from history, but in fact history itself is also doctrine, CCLXXXV and conversely, the doctrinal element in mythology is contained precisely in its historical quality.

Regarded objectively, mythology is that which it gives itself out to be, actual theogony, history of gods; since, however, actual gods are only those at the basis of which God lies, the final content of the history of the gods is the generation, an actual evolution, of God in consciousness, for which the gods act only as the individual generating phases.

Subjectively, or under the aspect of the way it comes into existence, mythology is a theogonic process. It is 1) a process in general, which consciousness actually goes through, in such a way, that is, that it is obliged to linger in the individual phases, and always retains, in the following, the preceding ones, thus lives through the movement in the literal sense. It is 2) an actually theogonic process, deriving, that is to say, from an essential relationship of human consciousness to God, a relationship which consciousness possesses in respect of its substance, and by way of which alone it is thus that which naturally (natura sua) establishes God. Because the original relationship is a natural one, consciousness cannot withdraw from it, without being led back into it by a process. In this it has, then, (I ask you to note this well) no choice but to appear as that which, only indirectly now, reestablishes God—precisely by way of a process, that is—that is to say it has no choice but to appear precisely as the consciousness which generates God, and accordingly as theogonic consciousness.

_______________

Notes:

133 Θεὸς εὔεμεν αὐτοὺς ἐπιστατῶν· νέμοντος δὲ ἐκείνου πολιτεῖαί τε οὐκ ἦσαν. Polit. p. 271. E.
 
134 See p. 141.
 
135 For comparison some passages from his work might be quoted here . “’Tis a matter of fact  uncontestable, that about 1700 years ago all mankind were idolaters. The doubtful and sceptical  principles of a few philosophers, or the theism, and that too not entirely pure, of one or two nations,  form no objection worth regarding.” (With that Hume seems to wish to set aside the fact of the Old  Testament religion or specifically only of Mosaic religion, instead of using this itself as proof of  the priority of polytheism.) “Behold then the clear testimony of history. The farther we mount up  into antiquity, the more do we find mankind plunged into idolatry.” (Now this, at any rate, even  disregarding the word idolatry, which in no way has the same meaning as polytheism, is saying  too much, and does not accord with history.) “No marks, no symptoms” (?) “of any more perfect  religion. The most antient records of human race still present us with polytheism as the popular  and established system. The north, the south, the east, the west, give their unanimous testimony to  the same fact. What can be opposed to so full an evidence?
 
As far as writing or history reaches, mankind, in antient times, appear universally to have been  polytheists. Shall we assert, that, in more antient times, before the knowledge of letters, or the  discovery of any art or science, men entertained the principles of pure theism? That is, while they  were ignorant and barbarous, they discovered truth: But fell into error, as soon as they acquired  learning and politeness.”—Natural History of Religion. p. 26.
 
136 Jn. 4:23-4.
 
137 I borrow this expression from the renowned Coleridge, the first of his countrymen who has  understood, and used in a meaningful way, German poetry, science, and especially philosophy.  The expression is found in an essay, a curious one incidentally, in the Transactions of the R.  Society of Literature. I was particularly pleased with this essay because it showed me how the  meaning of one of my earlier works, whose philosophical content and significance have, in  Germany, been so little understood or in fact not at all—the piece about the deities of  Samothrace—had been understood by the highly-talented Briton. In exchange for the striking  expression referred to, I willingly allow him the borrowings, in which my name is not mentioned,  from my writings—borrowings sharply censured, indeed too sharply, by his compatriots.  Something like that should not be held against a really brilliant man. Yet the severity of such  criticisms in England shows the value placed there on scientific proprietorship and how strictly  the suum cuique in science is observed. Incidentally Coleridge uses the word “tautegorical”  synonymously with the Latin “philosophem,” which would admittedly not accord with my  meaning, but he only wishes to say, perhaps, that mythology must be taken just as literally as a  philosopheme is usually taken, and he gathered this quite correctly from the above -mentioned  dissertation. I called the article “curious” be cause of the language; for while we are taking pains  to do away with some of our earlier contrived expressions, or would like to do away with them if the subject permitted, he blithely serves up for his unhabituated compatriots, albeit with a  certain irony, expressions such as subject-object and the like.
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Re: Historico-Critical Introduction to the Philosophy of Myt

Postby admin » Mon Mar 19, 2018 1:31 am

Part 1 of 2

LECTURE NINE

IF, from the standpoint gained, we cast a final glance back at the merely external preconditions, with the help of which, in the earlier hypotheses, it was thought mythology could be understood (even revelation, indeed, was one of those), then it was undeniably an essential step in the direction of a philosophical attitude towards mythology in general, when its emergence was shifted into the inner nature of primordial mankind, when poets or cosmogonic philosophers or adherents of a historically prior religious doctrine were no longer taken to be the originators, but human consciousness itself was acknowledged to be the true seat and the real productive principle of the mythological representations.

In the whole analysis up to now I have endeavoured to give proper recognition to, and to describe, in its rightful place, every advance which the investigation owed to earlier researchers, and even to extract, from those viewpoints which could have appeared wholly fortuitous, an aspect from which they nevertheless showed themselves to be necessary. Also, it was guaranteed by the method that no idea about mythology in any way worthy of mention was passed over. Yet we are prompted to give special consideration to one more work simply by its title, which would seem to indicate something similar to the intention and the content of the present lectures; we refer to the work of the prematurely deceased K. Ottfried Müller:CCLXXXVI Prolegomena to a Scientific Mythology 1825. There I found the following statements, which could have appeared to be in agreement with some of my own, expressed in lectures given four years earlier. [200] “Mythology arose, from the beginning, through the union and interpenetration of the ideal and real,” 138 where by the “ideal” is understood that which is thought, and by the “real” that which has occurred. What is more, by “that which has occurred” he understands, as we shall see, not the form of what happens in mythology, but something which has actually happened outside mythology. This same man will not entertain the idea of invention in connection with the emergence of the myths, but invention in what sense? As he himself explains, in the sense in which it “would be a free and intentional activity, by which something recognized, by him who is acting, to be untrue, would be varnished over with the appearance of truth.”139 Invention in this sense we have neither accepted nor rejected. Yet Müller does admit invention to the extent that it is communal invention. This is clear from his assumption “that in the association of ideal and real in the myth a clear necessity prevailed, that the shapers” (that means inventors, presumably?) “of the myth were led to it” (to the myth, presumably?) “by impulses which affected all in common, and that in the myth those distinct elements (the ideal and the real) merged, without 140 those, through whose agency it took place, having themselves recognized the distinction between them, or having become conscious of it.” This would thus come back to that communal constructive urge (probably of a myth-engendering society), which we too pointed out earlier141 as a possibility which, however, was there rejected as well. It seems that this interpenetration of the ideal and real in their application to mythology (for the learned gentleman probably had the general idea, at any rate, from a philosophical school) appeared obscure and mystical to many antiquarians. O. Müller tries, [201] therefore, to explain it with the help of examples, and it is there that we shall obtain a clear view of his meaning. The first of these examples is drawn from the pestilence in the first book of the Iliad, where, as is known, Agamemnon offends against the priest of Apollo, and the priest then implores the god to revenge him, the god who thereupon brings down the pestilence, and where, assuming the facts—that is to say, then, that the daughter of a priest of Apollo was demanded back in vain by her father, the father was turned away with scorn, whereupon the pestilence broke out—where, assuming these facts to be correct, “all those who were filled with the belief in Apollo’s vengeful and punitive power” at once, each independently and with one accord, formed the association that Apollo had sent the pestilence at the request of his priest, wronged by the refusal to return the daughter, and each person gave utterance to this association with the same conviction as the facts (here one can see how much what had happened meant for him) which he had seen for himself.CCLXXXVII It seems possible to conclude from this that the explanation put forward is, in its author‟s own view, not at all considered to extend to the only enigmatic aspect, namely how men came to be convinced of the existence of an Apollo and his vengeful and punitive power, not to extend, thus, to the true content of mythology itself; for that story in the first book of the Iliad belongs as little to mythology itself as does the story of the legio fulminatrix,CCLXXXVIII or the like, belong to the Christian doctrine itself. After I had found this, I perceived that O. Müller‟s prolegomena have nothing in common with the philosophy of mythology. This philosophy relates to what is original, to the history of gods itself, not to the myths which arise after a historical fact is associated with a deity,CCLXXXIX and for this reason it was also not possible to discuss O. Müller‟s among the earlier viewpoints concerning mythology, because it simply does not relate to true mythology. For with the question of how these stories derived from mythology arose, the philosophy of mythology does not concern itself. That would be just as if, where the meaning of Christianity is being discussed, someone were to speak of legends [202] and wish to explain how these arose. Naturally, out of the abundance of the heart the mouth runneth over. Once filled with ideas of gods, they will have mingled these into all their affairs, thus into all their stories too, and so admittedly, without prior agreement, without intention, and with a kind of necessity, myths in O. Müller‟s sense will come into being.

Now if, in this whole analysis, I have gone out of my way to be historically faithful to my predecessors and have tried to render to each of them what is his own, it will not be possible to take me amiss if I apply this fairness to myself too, and vindicate that first step without which I would certainly never have been induced to give lectures relating to mythology—of seeking the idea, the seat, the subjectum agens CCXC of mythology in human consciousness CCXCI itself. This idea of putting human consciousness itself in the place of inventors, poets, or individuals in general, later found a counterpart in the attempt to make, for the doctrine of revelation, the Christian consciousness the bearer and the support of all Christian ideas, although in this case, it seems, it was more that the means was sought to be rid of all objective questions, while in the case of mythology it was, rather, a matter of winning objectivity for the mythological representations.

Goethe expressed the view—for the moment I do not know on what occasion—that “Anyone who wishes to get some work done and not to be disturbed, would do well to keep what he is doing as far as possible secret. The least of the disadvantages which he might otherwise expect, if by chance he is thought to know where a treasure is to be unearthed, is that he should be prepared for many people to aspire to find the treasure in great haste before him, or if they are really polite and selfless, for them at least to want to be of assistance to him in its unearthing.” So clearly, then, the public lecturer who does not merely repeat what has long been known is in the worse case in that respect, since there are soon thousands who know the same as he does, and what is once delivered from the lectern in Germany [203] is disseminated as circumstances dictate by all kinds of routes and secret paths, particularly by way of transcribed notebooks, into the most far-flung domain. It has often been misinterpreted, and censured one moment as a confession of poverty of ideas, the next as ignoble resentment, if academic teachers do not react with complete indifference to the unauthorized appropriation of ideas communicated by them purely orally. Now the first could be tolerated, for no one is under an obligation to be richly endowed with ideas; poverty through no fault of one‟s own is no disgrace. In the case of the other reproach, though, one should in all fairness consider that anyone who has never for example had the good fortune to engage in the armed defence of his native land, has never taken part in the public concerns of administration or legislation, and can answer the dic cur hicCCXCII in general only with his poetical productions or a few scientific ideas, does certainly have some right to preserve purely for himself the entitlement to those, an entitlement which he thinks he can justify to his contemporaries or posterity, and in fact the noblest spirits have not been insensible to that right. The great poet just named mentions it in his autobiography, when a friend of his youth appropriates a mere motifCCXCIII from him, not even, it seems to me, one particularly worth begrudging. If it is said that it well befits the rich man to give something of his abundance to the poor, then indeed there is no lack of opportunity for anyone who has his own thoughts about scientific subjects or subjects arising out of everyday life, and is accustomed to confiding them to others, quietly to exercise this Christian virtue. Yet even this generosity has its limits, for with no other form of generosity are so many ungrateful people brought to light. I am not talking about the usual kind of ingratitude, about which many teachers complain: perhaps this takes place as naturally as when one magnetic pole induces the opposite pole at the point of contact. But he who has once brought to market as his own the ideas of another which happened to become known to him, naturally becomes the implacable enemy of that other. It is strange to hear, from those very men who believe they cannot come out emphatically enough against reprinting,CCXCIV and [204] confer the most abusive names on those who perform this odious handiwork, the recommendation of leniency towards prior publishing, which, though, should it succeed in its aim, would be a far worse case of theft than the first. The many errors introduced, too, are held against the reprint; but no attention is paid to the form in which misappropriated ideas are presented to the world, mostly so battered and adulterated that they could become offensive to the author himself. To use notebooks containing the transcribed words of a public lecturer who communicates not what is already known, but new and distinctive ideas, means wanting to learn from him, without acknowledging oneself to be his pupil, and means at the same time trying to gain an advantage over fellow-students who either lack the opportunity for such employment or who scorn it; for he, too, who takes care to avoid using them for material ends, has at least gained an advantage in respect of the method, the treatment, and the mode of expression, if these are new and distinctive. Incidentally, if there is less fuss made about all this now, then the reason is that in the end due recognition is always given to the true author, and instead of sic vos non vobis the other saying is borne out: sic redit ad dominum, quod fuit ante suum.CCXCV

Our last result was that mythology in general comes into existence by way of a process, specifically by way of a theogonic process, in which human consciousness is held fast by its essential being. Once this concept has been gained, then in accordance with the course followed in this whole investigation, this same concept immediately becomes in turn the point of departure for a new analysis, indeed that very process will be the sole subject of the science to which the lectures up to now have served as an introduction. It will not have escaped you that for the moment we have only used that result to bring out the subjective meaning of the process, the meaning which it had for the humanity involved in it. This had to be taken care of before all else, too; for this whole investigation began with the question of what mythology means originally, to those, that is to say, for whom it came into being. So as far as this question [205] is concerned, a completely satisfactory resolution has been reached, and this investigation may be regarded as concluded. But for that very reason we are spurred on to the higher question of what the process means, not in respect to the consciousness subject to it, but what it means in itself, what it means objectively.

Now we have seen that the ideas which are generated in that process have a subjective necessity for the humanity caught up in it, and in the same way a subjective truth too. In fact this, as you will certainly understand, would not prevent the same ideas, regarded objectively, from being, nonetheless, false and fortuitous, and also in this sense explanations are conceivable which, because they only become possible from the present standpoint of subjective necessity, could not have been discussed earlier. All the earlier explanations remained, together with their preconditions, within historical time; we have now put forward an explanation which goes back to a suprahistorical process, and here we do in fact find predecessors who could not have been considered earlier. It is a very old view which derives heathenism, like all corruption in mankind, solely from the Fall. This derivation can take on now a merely moral colouring, now a pietistic or mystical one. But in every form it deserves recognition for the sake of the insight that mythology is incapable of being explained without a real dislodgement of man from his original standpoint. Here it agrees with our explanation; but against that, now the course of the explanation will be different, particularly in so far as it finds it necessary to bring in Nature and to explain polytheism by way of deification of Nature. In the way it has mankind descending to deification of Nature, the theological viewpoint is distinguished from the famous analogous explanations; but with the deification of Nature it returns to a category of interpretations which was current earlier. Man, come through sin into Nature‟s sphere of attraction, and sinking ever more deeply in this direction, confuses creation with the creator, who thereby ceases to be One for him, and becomes Many. This, in summary, may be the content of this explanation—in its simplest [206] form. In mystical terms, it could possibly be stated in more detail in the following way. Certainly we must begin not from an original knowledge, be it ever so splendid, but from an existence of man within the divine oneness. Man was created in the centre of the godhead, and to be in the centre is essential for him, for only there is he in his true place. Now as long as he is situated in this centre, he sees the things as they are in God, not in the superficiality, lacking spirit and oneness, of common vision, but as they are absorbed in each other stage by stage, thereby in man as their chief, and through him in God. But as soon as man has shifted out of the midpoint and has given way, the periphery becomes confused for him and that divine oneness is disturbed, for he himself is no longer above the things in a godlike way, but has even sunk to the same level as them. But because, while already in a different place, he wants to preserve his central position and the vision associated with it, there then, out of the striving and wrestling to retain, within what has already been disturbed and disintegrated, the original divine oneness—there then comes into being that intermediate world which we call a world of the gods, and which is as it were the dream of a higher state of being, which man went on dreaming for a little while, after he had fallen away from it; and this world of the gods comes into being for him in an involuntary way in fact, as the consequence of a necessity imposed on him by his original relationship itself, whose effect continues until the final awakening, when, arrived at self-knowledge, he surrenders himself to this extra-divine world, glad to have escaped from the direct relationship which he cannot sustain, and all the more constrained to set in its place one which is indirect but at the same time leaves him himself free.

In this explanation too a return is made to the original being of man: mythology is no less the consequence of an involuntaryCCXCVI process to which man falls victim through his moving away from his original position. But according to this explanation, as you yourselves will see, mythology would in fact only be something false [207] and also something merely subjective, consisting, that is, in ideas of a kind to which would correspond nothing actual outside them, for deified natural objects are no longer actual ones. But the main point to emphasize would be the fortuitousness which is still introduced to the explanation by bringing in the things, while the way in which we arrived at the concept of the process is in itself enough to ensure that nothing other than consciousness is required for it, nothing other than the principles establishing and constituting consciousness itself.CCXCVII It is not the things at all with which man is associating in the mythological process, it is forces arising in the inner nature of consciousness itself, by which it (consciousness) is motivated. The theogonic process through which mythology comes into existence is a subjective one to the extent that it goes on in consciousness and becomes evident through the generation of ideas: but the causes and thusCCXCVIII also the objects of these ideas are the actually and in themselves theogonic forces, the very same as those by way of which consciousness is originally the consciousness which establishes God. The content of the process is not potences which are merely imagined,CCXCIX but the potences themselves—which create consciousness, and which, since consciousness is only the end of Nature, create Nature, and are therefore also actual forces. The mythological process does not have to do with objects of Nature, but with the pure potences which create, and of which the original product is consciousness itself. Here, then, is the point where our explanation breaks through into the objective completely, becomes, that is, wholly objective. There was a point earlier where we lumped together under the name of “irreligious” all the explanations dealt with up to then, so as to contrast to them the religious explanation in general as the only one still possible; now there is need of a still more general head under which even the religious explanations disproved up to this point can be added to those eliminated. We shall now call all those which have arisen so far, even the religious ones which in addition ascribe a merely accidental or subjective meaning to the mythological ideas, the subjective ones, above which the objective explanation stands out as the sole successful one in the end.

[208] The mythological process, whose causes are the potences in themselves theogonic, does not merely have religious meaning in general, but has objectively-religious meaning; for it is the potences in themselves god-establishing which operate in the mythological process. But even with that the final definition has not yet been reached, for we heard earlier of a monotheism which is said to have disintegrated and to have split up into polytheism. So the theogonic potences could indeed themselves be in the process, but as potences which disintegrate in it and bring it about through disintegration. In this way, then, mythology would after all be just the primal consciousness in a corrupted, mutilated, and ruined form. Earlier, in the monotheism which was thought to have decayed into multitheism, certainly a historical monotheism was contemplated, which was thought to have been present during a certain era of the human race. Admittedly we have had to give up a monotheism like that. But in the meantime we have accepted an essential, that is to say potential monotheism in the primal consciousness. It is therefore at least possible that it was this which destroyed itself in the theogonic process, and now it could be said that the same potences which, in their combined effect and in their unity, make consciousness into that which establishes God, become in their disintegration the causes of the process by which the gods in the plural are established, and thus mythology comes into being.

But now, first of all, how is the true oneness thought to have destroyed itself in the postulated process, since on the contrary it was specifically established that that process was a destruction of the false uniqueness as such, and that this destruction itself was in turn only a means, only a transition, which could have had no other aim but the restoration of the true oneness, the reconstruction and, in the final objective, the actualization in consciousness of the same monotheism which in the beginning was merely essential or potential?

One could, though, raise the following objection. Mythology is essentially successive polytheism, and this can only come into being through an actual succession of potences, in which each that goes before [209] requires the one which follows, the one which follows is reinforced by the one that went before, and so in the end the true oneness is re-established; but just this successive manifestation of the phases which assemble and reconstruct the oneness would in fact be a disintegration of that oneness, or would at least presuppose it to have disintegrated.

This last could be conceded, but with the rider that this disintegration would not happen in the process itself which generates mythology, for in this process the potences make their appearance successively only in order to re-establish and regenerate the oneness. Hence the meaning of the process is not a disintegration, but rather a coming together, of the phases which establish the oneness, and the process itself does not consist in the separation of these phases, but in their reunification. The instigation for this process is provided in all probability by a potence which has possessed itself of consciousness—without the latter having any suspicion of it—exclusively, thus to the exclusion of others; but this same potence, supplanting to that extent the true oneness, transforms itself (relieved in turn of the exclusiveness and overcome by the process) into the potence which establishes the oneness no longer tacitly now, but actually, or, as I usually express it, cum ictu et actu,CCC so that the monotheism established hereby is also now more actual, has come more fully into existence, and is accordingly at the same time better understood, more objective for consciousness itself.CCCI That which is false, by which the tension is introduced, and the process instigated, lies, therefore, prior to the process; in the process as such (and this is what matters) there is thus nothing false, but truth; it is the process of the truth re-establishing and thereby actualizing itself; thus admittedly there is no truth in the individual phase, for otherwise there would have been no need for an advance to a following phase, no need for a process; but in this process itself there is generated, and hence in it there exists, the truth (as truth being generated), truth which is the end of the process, and which therefore the process itself as a whole contains as fully evolved.

When it was found quite impossible to find truth in mythology as it stands, and when, therefore, it was resolved to acknowledge at best a [210] distorted truth in it, then the impossibility stemmed precisely from the fact that people took just the individual ideas as such, not in their sequence, but in their abstraction, that is to say it was because they did not raise themselves to the concept of the process. It can be conceded that what is individual in mythology may be false, but for that reason it is not the whole in its final understanding, thus as seen in the process. Successive polytheism is only the way of regenerating the true oneness, multitheism as such is merely the accidental aspect which is cancelled out again in the whole (if one has regard to this), it is not the intention of the process. Accordingly it could certainly be said that what is false in mythology is only present through misunderstanding of the process, or that it exists only in those aspects of the process which are separated out, are seen individually; but this is then an error of the observer, who sees mythology merely superficially, not in its essential being (in the process); it explains his false view of mythology, but not this itself.

In order to make this clear to someone, the phases in mythology could be compared with the individual propositions in philosophy. Each proposition in a true system is true in its place, in its time, that is to say when understood within the advancing movement, and each is false when regarded in itself or when removed from the relentless advance. Thus there is inevitably a point where it must be said that God is also the direct principle of Nature; for what can exist which God would not be, from which God would have to be excluded? For people of limited understanding this in itself amounts to pantheism, and they take “all,” which God is,CCCII to mean “all things”; but above the things there are the pure causes, from which those things are only derived, and for the very reason that God is all, he is also the opposite of that immediate principle, and the proposition, therefore, is true or false according to how it is regarded;CCCIII true, in the sense that God is the principle of Nature, not, though, in order to be that principle, but in order, as that principle, to supplant himself again, to negate himself and establish himself as spirit (here we already have three phases);CCCIV it would be false in the sense that God is that [211] principle in particular, in a stationary or exclusive way. In passing it can be pointed out here how easy it becomes for the most shallow and, what is more, most incompetent minds, using a thoroughly simple device, to transform the most profoundly conceived proposition into a false one, when, in spite of the explicit declaration that it should not be taken in that way, they stress it alone, and, about what follows from it, say nothing, be this deliberately or not, which latter certainly happens much more often, because they are entirely incapable of grasping a totality of any kind.CCCV

“According to this, then, polytheism would not be false religion, indeed there would, in the end, be no false religion at all?” As far as the first point is concerned, then according to our viewpoint mythology is only not false in itself: subject to the precondition which it has, it is true, just as indeed Nature too is only true subject to a precondition. As far as the other point is concerned, then it has already been explained that each phase of mythology, understood not as such (as a phase) and accordingly understood apart from its relationship to the others, would be false. Now according to what was pointed out earlier, the various mythologies of societies should in fact be seen only as phases, as phases of a process passing through the whole of humanity; to that extent every polytheistic religion which has become fixed within one society and become stationary, is as such, thus as the phase now exclusively continuing to exist there, admittedly a false religion. But we simply do not regard mythology in these isolated phases; we regard it as a whole, in the uninterrupted interconnection of its movement advancing through all the phases. To the extent that humanity, and therefore also to the extent that every part thereof, is still immersed in the mythological movement and as long as it is, as I might say, borne along by this stream, that part is on the way to truth; only when a society secedes from the movement and hands over the continuation of the process to another society does it begin to be in error and in false religion.

No single phase of mythology, only the process as a whole, is truth. Now the different mythologies themselves are just different phases of the mythological process. To that extent, [212] every individual polytheistic religion is admittedly a false one (for example relative monotheism would be false)—but polytheism regarded as the totality of its successive phases is the path to truth and to that extent itself truth. From this it may be concluded that in this way the final mythology, uniting all phases, would have to be true religion. That is how it is, too, in a certain sense, namely as far as in taking the path of the postulated process, which always has as its precondition the alienation of the divine self, truth is attainable at all; thus the divine self admittedly does not exist within the mythological consciousness, but its identical image does. The image is not the object itself, and yet it wholly resembles the object itself: in this sense the image contains truth; but since it is not, after all, the object itself, to that extent it is also not what is true. In the same way, in the final mythological consciousness, the image of the true god is produced, without thereby the relationship to the divine self, that is to say to the true god himself, being granted, to which relationship access is given only by Christianity. The monotheism to which the mythological process attains is not false monotheism (for there can be no false monotheism), but in comparison to the true, the esoteric monotheism, it is as yet only the exoteric.CCCVI Taken individually, the polytheistic religions are the false ones, but false in the sense that every natural thing, in isolation from the movement passing through everything, or to the extent that it has been ejected from the process and has remained behind as lifeless residue, has no truth, does not, that is, have the truth, which it has in the whole and as a phase thereof. It is not only those pagan societies whose existence has continued into our own time, the Hindus for example, who are found in a wholly undiscerning relationship towards the objects of their superstitious reverence; the common Greek too had at bottom no other relationship to the gods of his religion, once it was present and had become stationary. False religion as such is always just a lifeless remnant, become meaningless for that reason, of a process which in its entirety is truth. Every practice which is based on a [213] relationship now no longer known, or on a process no longer understood,CCCVII is a superstition. People have always wondered about the etymology, that is to say the original meaning, of this Latin word. Some thought that the word was at first only used of the superstition of those who survived in respect of the manes of the departed; there the subjects of the superstition were indicated, but the important thing (the superstition itself) was not expressed. It would be even better to say that every false religion was only a superstes quid, that which remains of something no longer understood. But certain gods, probably part of a mystery religion, were called dii præstites by the Romans;142 CCCVIII it may thus probably be assumed that the same gods in an earlier form were also called superstites with the same meaning (presiding gods).CCCIX

It could thus probably be said, in accordance with what has just been discussed, that the polytheistic religions were like a whole which has become meaningless, and that they function like the rubble of a system overthrown, but it is not possible by way of such an analogy to explain how they came into existence. The oneness should not be sought in an original system which had earlier been understood, it should be sought in the process which is no longer understood, which possesses not merely subjective truth (for humanity caught up in it), but truth in itself, objective truth; and that alone which up to now had been held not to be possible, or rather, had not even been thought of, emerges [214] as the necessary consequence of the method of explanation we have proposed, namely that in mythology precisely as such—that is to say, in so far it is a process, successive polytheism—there is truth.
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Re: Historico-Critical Introduction to the Philosophy of Myt

Postby admin » Mon Mar 19, 2018 1:31 am

Part 2 of 2

I am sure it will not be unwelcome if I use this last result to acquaint you with a scheme which affords a short synopsis of the different viewpoints, as they appear if one takes the objective truth as the main aspect. I would remark only that it is natural if, in this classification, the viewpoints are assigned a position to some extent different from that which they had in the earlier analysis, which started out from the question of how the mythological ideas were intended to be understood, and where therefore only their possible subjective truth could be discussed.

A. There is no truth at all in mythology; it is:

1) either intended to be understood merely poetically, and the truth found in it is merely accidental;

2) or it consists of meaningless representations generated by ignorance, later given form and connected together into a poetical whole by literary art (J. H. Voss).

B. There is truth in mythology, but not in mythology as such. The mythological is:

1) either cloaking, concealment

a) of a historical truth (Euhemerus),

b) of a physical truth (Heyne);

2) or misunderstanding, corruption

a) of a purely scientific (essentially irreligious) truth (G. Hermann),

b) of a religious truth (W. Jones), (Fr. Creuzer).

C. There is truth in mythology as such.

[215] You will see for yourselves the progression from A through B to C; but the third viewpoint is actually at the same time the union of the other two, to the extent that the first holds fast to the literal meaning, but with the exclusion of any doctrinal meaning, the second allows a doctrinal meaning, or allows that truth was intended to be understood, but a truth only present in mythology as a concealed or as a corrupted truth, while the third sees, in mythology understood literally, its truth at the same time. But this viewpoint has now, as you will recognize, only become possible by way of the explanation; for only because we were obliged to accept that in mythology the way it came into existence was necessary, were we also obliged to recognize in it necessary content, that is to say truth.

The truth in mythology is primarily and specifically a religious truth, for the process through which it comes into being is the theogonic one, and subjectively, that is to say for the humanity caught up in it, it indisputably has only this, namely religious, meaning. But does mythology—and does therefore the process through which it comes into existence, regarded absolutely as well, have only this particular meaning, not a universal one?

Consider the following. Those real (actual) forces by which consciousness is moved in the mythological process, and whose succession is precisely the process, are defined as the same forces through which consciousness is originally and essentially the consciousness which establishes God. These forces, creating consciousness, coming into play, as it were—can these be other than the forces by which Nature too is established and created? Human consciousness is indeed, no less than Nature, something which has come to be, and nothing outside creation, but the end of it; the potences which previously, when distanced from one another and in a state of tension with regard to one another, act so as to produce Nature, CCCX must therefore in combination act towards the production of human consciousness as a goal. The forces which, as we expressed it earlier, are resurrecting themselves in the inner nature of consciousness and proving themselves to be theogonic, can therefore be none other than the world-generating forces themselves, and precisely because they come to the fore again, they change from subjective forces, subordinated to consciousness as their unity, back to [216] objective ones, which assume once again, for consciousness, the character of external, cosmic forces, a character which, in their unity, thus when they established consciousness, they had lost. The mythological process, as we have said, can only be the restoration of the destroyed oneness; but this can be restored in no way other than the one in which it was originally established, that is to say when the potences pass through all the attitudes and relationships to one another which they had in the process of Nature. Not that mythology could have come into existence under an influence of Nature, from which influence the inner nature of man was, on the contrary, removed by this process; it is rather that the mythological process following the same law passes through the same stages through which, originally, Nature passed.

It is in itself inconceivable that the principles of a process which turns out to be theogonic could be other than the principles of all existence and of all becoming. The mythological process has, thus, not merely religious significance, it has universal significance, for it is the universal process which is repeated in the mythological; accordingly the truth too, which mythology possesses in the process, is a truth which excludes nothing, a universal truth. The historical truth of mythology cannot, as commonly happens, be denied, for the process through which it comes into existence is itself a true history, an actual series of events. Just as little may physical truth be excluded from it, for Nature is just as necessary a transit point for the mythological process as for the universal one. The content of mythology is no abstractly-religious content like that of the ordinary theistic doctrinal concepts. In the middle, between consciousness in its mere essentiality and consciousness in its actualization, between the oneness established in it merely in essence and the oneness actualized in it, which is the goal of the process, there lies the world. So the phases of the theogonic movement do not have meaning exclusively for that movement, they possess universal significance.

Mythology is understood in its truth, and hence only truly understood, if it is understood in the process. But the process, which [217] is repeated in it simply in a particular way, is the universal, the absolute process, and the true science of mythology is accordingly the one which demonstrates the absolute process in it. But to demonstrate this is the business of philosophy; hence the true science of mythology is the philosophy of mythology.

The statement should not be twisted, as has happened earlier with similar ones. The idea of the process should not be displayed in some mythology which has been thought up, but in fact in actual mythology; yet it is not enough to recognize merely a general outline, what is necessary is to recognize the phases in the fortuitous form which they have unavoidably taken on in actuality; but how would these forms have become known except through the route of historical inquiry, which is thus not misprized by the philosophy of mythology, but assumed as its precondition? Establishing the mythological facts is in the first instance the business of the antiquarian. But the philosopher must be at liberty to check whether the facts were established correctly and in full.

What is more, in the statement that “the true science of mythology is the philosophy of mythology” it is only said that the other ways of looking at it do not recognize the truth in mythology; but they say this themselves when they deny truth to mythology, either in general or in fact in the form in which it actually exists.

At the very beginning when the concept “philosophy of mythology” was first introduced, we were obliged to acknowledge that it was a problematical one, that is to say one which itself first required justification. For everyone is indeed at liberty to bring the word “philosophy,” with the aid of a subsequent genitive, into association with any subject. In many a land a “philosophy of cookery,” perhaps, would elicit no surprise, just as we ourselves in Germany were presented in earlier times, by an official of the Principality of Thurn and Taxis, with a “philosophy of the postal entity,” CCCXI which treated of the latter in terms of the Kantian categories. A work very serviceable in its day, by the renowned Fourcroy, bore the title “Philosophy of Chemistry,”CCCXII without being distinguished by any philosophical quality if one has no wish to accept as such simply the elegance of the argument and the logical [218] coherence. But we Germans, to whom a model for the meaning of this combination has been provided by the concepts of philosophy of Nature, philosophy of history, and philosophy of art, shall certainly take care not to apply it where it could express only something like the idea that there is clarity and method in the investigation, or that the desire is to give expression simply to philosophical thoughts in general about the subject named; for clarity and method are requirements which are imposed upon every investigation, and is there in the world any subject about which someone in other respects capable of it could not have philosophical thoughts!

The objective way, independent of human judgement, thought, and will, that it comes into existence gives mythology an objective content too, and with the objective content, at the same time objective truth. But this viewpoint, which decides the question of whether philosophy of mythology is a scientifically possible expression or a merely improper association of words, could not have been assumed in advance. Once we had established it we found that we ourselves were still outside the field of the science I have announced, and looking at it from the standpoint of a mere preliminary investigation, which admittedly—as might be thought in retrospect—could also have reached its goal by a shorter route, if, starting out at once from mythology as a universal phenomenon, the necessary universality of the causes had been deduced; but this deduction would not have led at the same time to the specific nature of these causes, which is likewise now known to us; besides, this was countered by the explanations according to which the presupposed universality would be no more than an illusory one, CCCXIII while the relatedness of the content of the various mythologies would be one transmitted merely externally by tradition from society to society; and this method of explanation was not proposed by the first person who came along, but by men with a mind of their own, who have occupied themselves with this subject professionally and in the most thorough way, and whose acuity in other investigations is acknowledged. It was particularly important to overcome the distaste which many people feel in advance for any interference by philosophy, [219] people who, if one wished to describe their viewpoints and explanations as unphilosophical, would simply have replied, “Our viewpoints are not intended to be philosophical, we make no claim to that”; just as the Belgians answered the envoy of Joseph II, “Nous ne voulons pas être libres.”CCCXIV These people, therefore, had to be persuaded in some other way of the untenability of their supposed explanations. And indeed this undertaking itself was not one which could be called wholly unphilosophical. For if, as Plato and Aristotle say, the philosopher pre-eminently loves that which is deserving of wonder,CCCXV then he is certainly in the right calling if he pursues this quality everywhere, and particularly if, where it has been corrupted by false explanations and concealed, he tries to free it once again from these integuments and bring it out in its true configuration. And formally too, since a mere enumeration did not suffice, the undertaking was a philosophical one, in that the method was applied which tries, through successive negation of that which is merely relatively true, but for that very reason is at the same time relatively false, to reach that which is true. The explanation only became the philosophy of mythology for us at the point where no other presupposition remained possible but that of a necessary and eternal relationship within human nature, a relationship which, as it progresses, is transformed, for this (human nature), into a law. And so we have not put forward our concept from a superior standpoint, dictatorially as it were, but, in the only way which is generally convincing, substantiated it from the ground up. In this the other viewpoints have even been obliged to serve as an introduction to the true one, since there can after all be none among them which had not grasped an aspect of the subject, some single phase which must be part of what is understood and weighed up in the fully developed theory.

Although the standpoint of this first part of our investigation was pre-eminently the historico-critical or dialectic one, no one, however, who knows the value it has for all science if even one single subject is once and for all investigated from first principles and with the exhaustion of all possibilities will judge the time devoted to it to have been ill spent.

The concept “philosophy of mythology” is subsumed under the [220] general concept of a theory of mythology. One and the same field can be the subject of a merely external knowledge, where there is question merely of its existence, but not of its essence; if the knowledge raises itself to the latter, then it becomes theory. From that it is easy to see that a theory is possible only of that in which there is a true essence; but the concept of essence is “principle, source of existence or of movement.” A mechanical contrivance is not something which acts of its own nature, and yet the word “theory” is also applied to a merely mechanical generation of movement, while no one speaks of theory where there is not even the appearance of an inner source of movement, of an inwardly actuating essence.

Such an essence and inner principle is lacking from mythology according to the earlier explanations, which could therefore only very improperly be called theories. But a philosophy of mythology entails of its own accord that the explanation is a theory in the true sense of the word. The theory of every natural or historical subject is itself nothing other than a philosophical examination of it, an examination in which it is simply a matter of discovering the living germ which actuates its evolution, or of discovering in general the true and inherent nature within it.

At first sight no two things seem more disparate than truth and mythology, as is also expressed in the term “fable-doctrine,”143 CCCXVI which has long been current; and no two things, for that same reason, more antithetic than philosophy and mythology. But just in the antithesis itself is found the specific challenge and the task of discovering reason precisely in this apparent unreason, and meaning in that which seems meaningless, and not indeed in the only way this has been attempted hitherto, using an arbitrary distinction, namely in such a way that anything which one might venture to assert to be rational or meaningful is declared to be the essential aspect, but everything else merely accidental, and put down to the form of words [221] or to corruption. Instead, the intention must be that the form too should appear to be necessary and to that extent rational.

Anyone who sees in mythology only that which conflicts with our familiar concepts, to the extent that it seems to him as it were beneath his notice, and particularly his philosophical notice, should consider, however, that Nature admittedly scarcely excites astonishment any longer in the thoughtless man, dulled by the familiarity of the everyday scene, but that we can very easily imagine a spiritual and moral state of mind to which Nature would have to appear in quite the same way as mythology, and no less incredible, curious, and strange. Anyone accustomed to live in a state of high spiritual or moral ecstasy could easily ask, were he to turn his regard back towards Nature, “Wherefore this substance unprofitably squandered in the fantastic forms of mountains and cliffs? Could a god or any moral being take pleasure in such production? Wherefore these conformations of the animals, which impress us as fabulous and monstrous by turns, and in whose existence, in which for the most part there is no visible purpose, we would not believe did we not see them before our eyes? Wherefore all that is so offensive in the activities of animals? Wherefore this great physical world in general? Why is there not a simple, pure, world of spirit, which would seem completely understandable for us?” Nonetheless we cannot give up the search, in the Nature which has become incomprehensible for us, for the original sense, the meaning of its initial emergence. Assuredly many who see in mythology only a meaningless and essentially otiose fable-doctrine cannot think worse of it than many philosophers antagonistic towards Nature-philosophy, who are capable of applying to Nature predicates such as: the meaningless, the irrational, the ungodly, and the like. How many more must there naturally be who judge mythology in this way. Hence it would not be surprising if the philosophy of mythology fared at the beginning in much the same way as Nature-philosophy, which has subsequently come to be generally acknowledged as a necessary element in general philosophy.

There are subjects which philosophy has to regard as wholly foreign [222] to it. Among those, belongs everything which contains no essential reality, which amounts to something only in the arbitrary opinion of men. The mythological process, though, is something which has taken place in humanity independently of what they willed and opined. With everything merely constructed it is the same. But mythology is a natural, a necessary growth; we have admitted that it could be treated poetically and even extended, but in this it behaves like language, which can be used with the greatest freedom, extended, enriched more and more, within certain limits, with new inventions, but whose foundation is something to which human invention and volition hasCCCXVII not extended, which was not made by men.

Nor does philosophy deal with anything corrupt or distorted; for it, only what is original has meaning. Although, as in everything which has been put to use by mankind, individual parts which have gone awry may indeed be found in various theologies, mythology itself did not come into existence through corruption, but through the original production of the consciousness striving to re-establish itself.

A third element in which philosophy cannot exist and be perceived, is that which is limitless, unended. But mythology is a true totality, something self-contained and held within certain limits, a world in itself; the mythological process a phenomenon which runs just as complete a course as does, for instance, in the physical world, an illness running its course in a ordered and natural way, eliminating itself, that is to say, by way of a necessary effort and restoring the patient to health; a movement which, passing from a specific beginning through specific intermediate stages into a specific end, is rounded off and completed.

Finally there opposes philosophy that which is lifeless, stationary. But mythology is something essentially mobile, and indeed, in accordance with an inherent law, something which moves of itself, and it is the highest human consciousness which animates it and (through the very contradiction in which that consciousness is enmeshed, in that the consciousness overcomes the contradiction) shows itself to be real, to be true, to be necessary.

[223] You will see that the expression “philosophy of mythology” is understood quite literally, and in the same way as the similar expressions “philosophy of language” and “philosophy of Nature.”

The expression has something awkward about it to the extent that many people already understand “mythology” itself to mean the science of myths. This could have been avoided had I decided to say “philosophy of the mythical world” or something like that. Anyway no informed person is unfamiliar with the fact that the word “mythology” is used as well in the objective sense for the totality of the mythological representations themselves.

As long as the idea remained possible of regarding mythology as a totality which had strayed from its context, a totality at the basis of which there had been a primordial philosophy, then “philosophy of mythology” could have been understood to mean that philosophy which had declined within it, and which one would have proposed to bring to light or to reconstruct from its fragments. This misunderstanding is now no longer possible.

If it was only a question of claiming for philosophy a certain influence in the treatment of mythology, then there would have been no need for the detailed substantiation. The influence has long been accepted; it is, however, an arbitrary and superficial philosophy, not a scientific and deep one, whose voice is heard on the question of mythology, at least in reference to the circumstances of the human race to be supposed as prior to it. Philosophy gained a relationship to the inner nature of mythology only with its own inwardly-historical formation, only since the time when it itself began to advance by way of phases and was explained as history, at least of self-consciousness,144 CCCXVIII a method which was later extended and has continued to be effective until now; the relevance to mythology became more real as Nature was incorporated into philosophy as a necessary phase of the development.

Mythology indisputably has a very close kinship with Nature, with which it has in common, apart from its universality, this too: that it is a self-contained world, and, from our point of reference, a past. [224] From the start, a certain identity of content is unmistakable. It could have been regarded as an acceptable idea to see mythology as a Nature raised to the spiritual by way of intensifying refraction. All that was lacking was the means of making this raising comprehensible; earlier explanations along these lines would indubitably have turned out to be more significant, had there not been such a great lack of ideas genuinely belonging to Nature-philosophy. Unavoidably, though, through a philosophy in which, in a way not anticipated, the natural assumed at the same time the significance of something godlike, mythological research too was obliged to take on a different meaning.

Among the more recent treatments of mythology it is probably possible to distinguish those which received already their first impulse from the philosophy which, because it was the first to take up the element of Nature again, was also in general or indiscriminately (although improperly) called “Nature-philosophy.” This relationship, however, worked to the detriment of the initial endeavours in two ways; firstly because, emanating from a philosophy itself still in the process of coming to be, guided more by the ferment universally stirred up by this than by scientific concepts, they were themselves to some extent carried away into uncharted waters and towards wild unmethodical combinations, and then because they attracted their share of the fanatical hate which that philosophy kindled among a section of those who were earlier presumed to be the leading lights of science and philosophy.

I would have liked to mention earlier a man who will always be counted among the curiosities of a certain transitional period in our literature, the well-known Johann Arnold Kanne,CCCXIX whom I knew as an individual of considerable wit, capable too of the highest ideas, but on whom at the same time, by a strange whim of fortune, the lot had fallen of labouring under the burden of a philological erudition extensive but for the most part over-subtle and selecting from the abundance of great facts only what was actually insignificant. Of course what one understood least was how he thought he could serve with erudition like that the Christianity which is assuredly not furthered in our time by such means if it [225] is not to be portrayed in simple broad strokes as truth victorious over all. In a later mood, himself, it seemed, affected by the feeling of the vanity of such endeavours, he irritably tried to rid himself of all this flotsam of erudition; but in vain, for in his final works he returned to the same far-fetched analogies (which, should they be true to the same degree as they are for the most part only bizarre, would still in the end prove nothing) and learned compilations. Among his writings, which from the present standpoint one cannot view without a kind of melancholy, and is almost tempted to compare with the riches of a beggar, consisting in the final analysis, despite their great weight, mostly of halfpennies and brass farthings, the Pantheon of the Earliest Nature-Philosophy 145 may be his most significant work dealing with mythology; one which is still purely philological, but valuable because of its many learned observations, is the Mythology of the Greeks,146 begun earlier but never completed.

It would be welcome if one of those who were close to him attempted to bring out his fundamental view of mythology in a comprehensible way. For me this was impossible, given the known nature of his works; therefore it was not possible to mention his name in connection with any of the viewpoints which were discussed earlier, not even the one which I called the mystical. The only thing which I believe I am justified in taking from the whole context of his earlier mode of thought, in which mode his mythological works were still written, is that he founded mythology on a more profound monotheism, or rather pantheism, than a merely historical one. Now for this, in any case, he should not be forgotten, even if no one could have derived any benefit from his portrayal or had the feeling of really having been brought any further forward.

But a particular stroke of good fortune occurred for mythology when, after [226] some ephemeral publications which remained without influence, a spirit like Fr. Creuzer directed his endeavours towards it, a spirit who, through a classically elegant presentation, and through a real and splendid erudition, which was supported by a profound, central insight, disseminated and consolidated, in the most far-flung circles, the conviction of the necessity of a higher viewpoint and treatment of mythology.

It was inevitable that the uninspired, homespun viewpoint which had still survived in certain scholarly quarters should have risen up in opposition; while it had no hope of still winning converts in our own era, despite all the racket and hullabaloo which Voss in particular knew how to stir up, it could at least, by way of certain time-honoured slanders, have counted on casting suspicion in advance, among the less educated and thoughtful section of the public, on all attempts to look at mythology from higher points of view or to bring it into association with investigations of a general kind.147 CCCXX

But such a commotion had, rather, the consequence that now this area of scientific research too, which had until then been kept in dignified seclusion, and for the most part in cliquish isolation, was drawn into the general movement, into the great scientific battle of the day; it was felt that there was more to this question than simply mythology.

The dispute about the origin, meaning, and treatment of mythology showed a too evident analogy with that which was being conducted simultaneously in other disciplines about questions of the highest and most universal import, for the interest which this last excited not to have necessarily spread of its own accord to the former too. If every science may congratulate itself when it begins to be accepted into the circle of higher literature, then pre-eminently after Creuzer‟s endeavours mythology can rejoice in the advantage of belonging among the subjects towards the investigation of which it is as it were permitted to no one [227] to remain indifferent who is capable of and accustomed to the contemplation of the great questions decisive for humanity.

But now, while it has been brought out in the clearest possible way, precisely by previous experience, that with merely empirical or accidental assumptions a satisfying, universally convincing conclusion to this investigation is not to be reached, and that a result independent of any individual mode of thought may only be anticipated if mythology is successfully taken back to preconditions of a general nature and derived from such as the necessary consequence: then with that the idea of a philosophy of mythology appears at the same time to be one also justified and called for externally, by the times and by earlier endeavours.

But an advance in one direction is never possible without its being felt to a greater or lesser degree in another. A philosophy of mythology cannot come into existence without affecting other sciences in a way tending to extend them. Of these, the prime examples are the philosophy of history and the philosophy of religion. The influence exerted on these sciences even by the result provisionally gained must therefore be the subject of the following lecture.

_______________

Notes:

138 p. 100.
 
139 p. 111.
 
140 This “without” is inserted here because it seems necessary to the sense ; it is wanting in the  original.
 
141 Lecture 3.
 
142 The Lares, according to Ovid and Plutarch. The passage in Plutarch (Quæstiones Romanæ  ed. Reiske p. 119) reads: Διὰ τί τῶν Λαρητῶν , οὓς ἰδίως, πραιστίτας καλοῠσι , τούτοις κύων παρέστηκεν ,  αὐτοὶ δὲ κυνῶν διφθέραις ἀμπέχονται ; ἢ πραιστίτης μὲν οἱ προεστῶτές εἰσι , τοὺς δὲ προεστῶτας οἴκου  φυλακτικοὺς εἶναι προσήκει , καὶ φοβεροὺς μὲν τοῐς ἀλλοτρίοις (ὥσπερ ὁ κύων ἐστὶν ), ἠπίους δὲ καὶ πράους  τοῐς συνοικοῠσιν ; ἢ μᾶλλον , ὃ λέγουσιν ἔνιι Ῥωμαίων , ἀληθές ἐστι; καὶ , καθάπερ οἱ περὶ Χρύσιππον οἴονται  φιλόσοφοι , φαῠλα δαιμόνια περινοστεῖν, οἷς οἱ θεοὶ δημίοις χρῶνται κολασταῖς ἐπὶ τοὺς ἀνοσίους καὶ  ἀδίκους ἀνθρώπους: οὕτως οἱ Λάρητες ἐριννυώδεις τινές εἰσι καὶ ποίνιμοι δαίμονες, ἐπίσκοποι βίων καὶ  οἴκων : διὸ καὶ νῠν δέρμασιν ἀμπέχονται, καὶ κύων πάρεδρός ἐστιν , ὡς δεινοῖς οὖσιν ἐξιχνεῠσαι, καὶ  μετελθεῖν τοὺς πονηρούς. In Gruter, Inscript. p. 22, n. 1; p. 1065, n. 2. Jovi præstiti.
 
143 The Greek word “mythos,” as is well known, does not necessarily contain the secondary  concept with which, for us, the word “fable ” is associated.
 
144 System of Transcendental Idealism. Tübingen 1800.
 
145 Stuttgart and Tübingen 1807.
 
146 Part One. Leipzig 1803.
 
147 A short piece by W. Menzel is historically worthy of note, to the extent that in it Voss found  his master, and was reduced by it to complete silence.
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Re: Historico-Critical Introduction to the Philosophy of Myt

Postby admin » Mon Mar 19, 2018 1:39 am

LECTURE TEN

WHEN a new science joins the ranks of those which are known and valid, in these themselves it will find that there are points where it connects up and at which it is as it were anticipated. The order in which, out of the totality of those which are possible, individual sciences become prominent before others and are pursued, will not altogether be that of their inner dependence on one another, and a science which is more relevant to immediate needs can be industriously pursued for a considerable time, and can even be elaborated to a great extent in many directions, before, in the face of requirements gradually becoming more rigorous, it makes the discovery that its premises lie in another science until now not in existence, the discovery that another, to which until now no thought has been given, should really have preceded it. On the other hand, no new science can come into existence without extending the area of human knowledge in general, and filling in shortcomings and gaps in the sciences already in existence. Hence it is fitting that for every science, once it has been established as a possible one, its status and its sphere of application within the totality of the sciences, and thus its relationship to these generally, should at the same time be made clear. So it will also be appropriate, then, for us to point out in the philosophy of mythology the side from which it is related to other sciences which have already been researched for some time or which are currently being pursued, the side from which it is even capable of influencing them in such a way that they are extended.

First of all, through the substantiation which the philosophy of mythology has received, at least one great [229] fact has now been gained for human knowledge: the existence of a theogonic process in the consciousness of primordial mankind. This fact opens up a new world, and cannot fail to extend human thought and knowledge in more than one sense. For even at first sight everyone must feel that for history in particular there is no certain beginning as long as the obscurity which surrounds the primal events is not dispelled, as long as the points are not found to which the great enigmatic fabric which we call history was first attached. The philosophy of mythology is, then, relevant in the first instance to history; and this in itself is not to be undervalued: that we have been placed by that philosophy in the position of being able to fill a space until now, for science, completely empty, the primal era, in which nothing could be made out, and to which a content could be assigned at best through empty inventions, impulsive ideas, or arbitrary assumptions—to fill it with a succession of real events, with a movement full of life, a true history, which in its way, no less than the history commonly thus named, is rich in fluctuating events, in scenes of war and peace, in battles and undoings. In particular the fact cannot remain without effect 1) on the philosophy of history, 2) on all those sections of historical research which are concerned in some way with the origins of human things.

The initial idea of a philosophy of history, and the name itself, came, like so much else, from the French, but Herder‟s renowned workCCCXXI already expanded the concept beyond its initial meaning; and Nature-philosophy was from the very beginning contrasted to the philosophy of history, as the other principal division of philosophy, or of applied philosophy as it was termed at that time.148 CCCXXII Nor was there a lack of formal discussions of the concept during the period immediately thereafter. The idea of a philosophy of history has continued to enjoy great favour: in fact there has been no lack of expositions; [230] nevertheless I do not find that so much as the concept has been properly clarified.

Before all else I would draw your attention to the fact that simply that combination in itself—philosophy of history—already asserts that history is a whole. That something uncontained, limitless in all directions, would, as such, have no relevance to philosophy, was first stated in the previous lecture. We could ask now, first of all, which of the viewpoints hitherto mentioned would see history as something rounded off and concluded. Does not the future too belong to history regarded as a whole? Does there exist, though, somewhere in that which until now has professed to be philosophy of history, an idea through which a real ending—I will not say a satisfactory one—would be given to history? For the realization of a complete body of law for example, the complete evolution of the concept of freedom, and everything of that kind, is at the same time too insubstantial in its exiguity for the spirit to be able to find a point of repose therein. I would ask whether there ever has been any question of an ending at all, and whether it does not all come down, rather, to the fact that history overallCCCXXIII has no true future, but that everything goes on into the infinite like that because progress without limit—but progress for that very reason at the same time meaningless—a never-ending progression, without any pause when something truly new and different might begin, belongs among the articles of faith of contemporary wisdom. Since it is, however, selfevident that that which has not found its beginning is also unable to find its end, we intend to confine ourselves purely to the past and to ask whether from this side history is for us something whole and self-contained, or whether instead, according to all the viewpoints until now implicitly or explicitly asserted, the past just as much as the future might not be a time stretching steadily back into the infinite, distinguished and delimited by nothing within itself.

It is true that within the past we distinguish in general between historical and prehistoric time, and in this way we do seem to introduce a distinction. But the question is, whether this distinction is more [231] than a merely accidental one, whether the two eras are essentially different, and are not in fact, at bottom, just one and the same era, in which case, therefore, the prehistoric era cannot serve as a real delimitation for the historical, for this it could only do were it an era inwardly other than and different from the latter. But is there really, in terms of the customary concepts, something in the prehistoric era different from what is in the historical? On no account; the whole distinction is merely the external and accidental one that we know something of the historical era, and nothing of the prehistoric; this last is not truly the pre-historic era, but merely the pre-chronological.CCCXXIV But can there be anything more fortuitous than the lack of, or the availability of, written, and other, memorials which inform us of the facts about an era in a credible and dependable way? There are, are there not, even within the era called “historical,” whole stretches for which we lack properly authenticated reports. And even on the question of which of the available memorials might be assigned historical value there is no consensus of opinion. Some refuse to accept the Mosaic books as authentic historical documents, while they grant historical standing to the oldest chroniclers of the Greeks, for example to Herodotus, and others consider these too not to be completely authenticated, but say with D. Hume that the first page of ThucydidesCCCXXV is the first page of true history. The prehistoric era would be an essentially, an inwardly different one, if it had a content other than that of the historical. But what difference could be established between the two in this respect? In terms of the concepts customary until now I would know of none, except perhaps that the facts about the prehistoric era would be insignificant, but those about the historical significant. This would most likely also be because in terms of a popular analogy, the invention of which admittedly does not amount to a great deal, the first period of the human race is seen as its childhood. Certainly the slight encounters of the childhood of a historical individual are also assigned to oblivion. The historical era would accordingly begin with the significant facts. But what does “significant” mean here, and what [232] “insignificant”? It must surely occur to us that that unknown land, that region of time inaccessible to chronology, in which the ultimate origins of all history are lost, conceals from us the very events which are most significant, because they are decisive and determinative for the whole future succession.

Because there is no true—inner, that is—difference between historical and prehistoric time, it is also impossible to draw a well-defined line between them. No one can say where historical time begins and the other leaves off, and workers in the field of general history are visibly embarrassed about the point where it should begin. Naturally; for historical time has, for them, really no beginning, but goes back fundamentally, and in accordance with the nature of the subject, into what is wholly indeterminate, and there is everywhere only one kind of time, nowhere delimited nor anywhere susceptible of being delimited.

Certainly reason cannot be discerned in something so uncontained and inconclusive; accordingly there is nothing from which, until now, we have been further removed than from a true philosophy of history. The best part is lacking, namely the beginning. With the empty and shoddy formulas of Orientalism and Occidentalism and the like: in the first period of history, for example, the infinite is said to have dominated, in the second the finite, in the third the unity of the two; or in general with the mere application to history of a schema taken from somewhere else—a method to which that same philosophical writer CCCXXVI who had most loudly denounced it descended in the grossest way as soon as he himself came to the real and was left to his own powers of invention—with everything of that kind nothing can be achieved.

Through the preceding investigations however, directed towards an entirely different subject, the era of the past too has taken on for us a different guise, or rather only now taken shape at all. It is a limitless time no longer, into which the past fades back; it is times actually and inwardly distinct from one another, into which history is marked out and subdivided for us. How?—the following remarks may bring it out in greater detail.

When the historical era is defined as the time of the [233] completed separation of societies (which begins for every individual society with the moment when it asserts itself as such and has chosen), then—even regarded merely from outside—the content of the prehistoric era is different from that of the historical. The former is the time of the division of societies or crisis, of the transition to separation. But this crisis is itself in turn only the external manifestation or consequence of an inner process. The true content of the prehistoric era is the emergence of the formally and materially distinct theologies, thus of mythology in general, which in the historical era is already something completed, present, and thus, historically, in the past. Its coming to be, that is to say its own historical existence, filled prehistoric time. An inverted euhemerism is the correct viewpoint. Mythology does not, as Euhemerus taught, contain the events of the earliest history, but conversely, mythology in its coming into existence, thus, more correctly, the process through which it comes into existence—this is the true and sole content of that earliest history; and if the question is raised of what filled that era, seeming so mute in contrast to the tumult of the later time, and so impoverished and empty of events, then the reply must be: this era was filled by those inner processes and movements of consciousness, which accompanied or had as a consequence the emergence of the mythological systems, the theologies of the societies, and whose end result was the separation of humanity into societies.

Accordingly the historical and the prehistoric eras are no longer merely relative distinctions within one and the same era, they are two eras essentially different, and contrasted with each other, mutually excluding but for that very reason also delimiting each other. For between them there is the essential distinction that in the prehistoric era the consciousness of mankind was subject to an inner necessity, to a process which transported it, as it were, out of the external actual world, while every society which has become a society through inner choice has also, through the same crisis, been set outside the process as such and, free from that, is now left to that succession of [234] deeds and activities whose more external, worldly, and profane character makes them historical ones.

The historical era does not, therefore, continue back into the prehistoric, but is, rather, cut short and demarcated by the latter as a wholly different era. We call it wholly different, not that in the widest sense it too would not be historical as well, for within it too great things happen, and it is full of events, but simply events of an entirely different kind, which are subject to an entirely different law. In this sense we have called it the relatively prehistoric era.

But this era by which historical time is rounded off and delimited, is itself also in turn a specific era, and is thus also for its part delimited by another. This other, or rather third era cannot again be one which is in some way historical, and so can only be absolutely prehistoric time, the era of complete historical immobility. It is the era when humanity was still intact and united, the era which— because it acts in relation to the following only as a moment, as a pure point of departure, to the extent, that is, that in it itself there is no true succession of events, no sequence of times, as in the other two—does not itself in turn require delimitation. There is in it, I said, no true succession of times: that is not intended to mean that nothing at all goes on within it, as one well-intentioned gentleman has understood it. For certainly even in that absolutely prehistoric era the sun rose and fell, men went to bed and got up again, wooed and allowed themselves to be wooed, were born and died. But in that there is no progress and thus no history, just as the individual in whose life yesterday is like today, and today like yesterday, whose existence is an ever-recurring round of unvarying diversion, has no history. A true sequence is not shaped by events which disappear without trace and leave behind the whole in the condition in which it was before. So for this reason, because in the absolutely prehistoric era the whole at the end is as it was at the beginning, because, therefore, [235] there is in this time itself no longer any sequence of times, because in this sense it is, also, only one, namely the absolutely identical, as we term it, thus basically timeless time (perhaps this inconsequentiality of the passing time is preserved in the memory by the incredibly long life span of the earliest generations); for this reason, I say, it itself does not in turn need delimitation by another, its duration is immaterial, whether shorter or longer it amounts to the same; hence with it there is delimited not merely a time, but time in general, and it itself is as far as it is possible to go back within time. Beyond it there is no further step back except into the suprahistorical, it is a time, but a time which is already no longer a time in itself, but is a time only in relation to what follows; in itself it is no time because in it there is no true before and after, because it is a kind of eternity, as is also indicated by the Hebrew expression (olam) used for it in Genesis.

It is thus a wild, inorganic, limitless time no longer, in which history runs its course for us; it is an organism, it is a system of times, in which for us the history of our race is incorporated; each division of this whole is an independent self-sufficient era, which is delimited not just by a era which went before, but by an era set apart from it and essentially different, as far back as the first era,CCCXXVII which no longer needs delimitation, because within it there is no longer any time (no succession of times, that is), because it is a relative eternity. These divisions are:

absolutely prehistoric,
relatively prehistoric,
historical time.


It is possible to draw a distinction between “history” and “chronology”; the former is the succession of events and facts themselves, and the latter the record of them. From this it follows that the concept of history is wider than the concept of chronology. To that extent, instead of “absolutely prehistoric” time, we may simply say “prehistoric,” and instead of “relatively prehistoric,” “prechronological,” and the sequence would then be this: [236]

a) prehistoric,
b) prechronological,
c) chronological time.


We must only take care not to think that between the first twoCCCXXVIII there is only the accidental distinction which lies in the word, the distinction that the latter is recorded and the former not.

With a historical time continuing without limit the door is wide open to all kinds of arbitrariness, with no distinction at all between what is true and what is false, between insight and any assumption or fancy one likes. Plenty of examples of that may be pointed out in the very investigation which we have just concluded. Hermann, for example, denies that mythology could have been preceded by a theism invented by men themselves, and he sets great store by the notion that this could not have been so. But he has no objection to, and in fact himself accepts, the idea that such a theism was indeed invented several millennia later, thus in his view it was just that the time was lacking for such an invention prior to mythology. Now at the same time, though, the very same man expresses the hope that, as already happened in the field of the history of the Earth as a consequence of geological researches (which he got to know, however, more probably from Pastor Ballenstädt‟s “Primæval World”CCCXXIX than from CuvierCCCXXX), he will see in the same way the history of man further enriched, through archæological research, with a substantial bonus of an indefinite number of earlier æons.149 But he who has such a splendid era at his disposal as Hermann has reserved for himself with the explanation just mentioned, cannot lack the time for any possible invention which he might otherwise be inclined to ascribe to the primæval world. Hermann is thus in no position to refute anyone who might assume the existence of a system of wisdom in the primæval world, a system of which, for the few survivors of an earlier race of men (a race overtaken by one of those catastrophes which in Hermann‟s view recur from time to time in the history of the Earth—and of which the like awaits us too in the future150 CCCXXXI—a race which for the most part would have been buried together with [237] its knowledge), only ruins and meaningless fragments would have been left, which would now constitute mythology. While it is right and proper for true science to confine everything as far as possible within definite limits and to include it within the bounds of comprehensibility, on the other hand in the case of a time assumed to be limitless no kind of arbitrary assumption may be excluded; if it is only barbaric societies who content themselves with heaping millennia on millennia, and if likewise it can only be a barbaric philosophy which strives to preserve for history a perpetuation into the infinite, then it can only be welcomed, by him who loves true science, when he sees established such a definite terminus a quo, such a concept to cut off every further regress, as is that of our absolutely prehistoric time.

Taking history in the widest sense, the philosophy of mythology itself is the first, and thus most necessary and least dispensable part of a philosophy of history. It is no use saying that the myths contain no history; they once actually existed and came into being, and as such they are themselves the subject matter of the earliest history, and, if one wishes to limit the philosophy of history too to the historical era, it must still be clearly impossible to find a beginning for it or to make any certain progress within it, if that which this (the historical era) posits as its own past remains completely barred to us. A philosophy of history which knows no beginning to history can only be something wholly baseless, and does not merit the name “philosophy.” And what applies to history as a whole must just as much hold true for each particular historical investigation.

Whatever may be the motive for our researches to go back as far as the primæval times of our race, be it to inquire into its beginnings in general, or into the origins of religion and secular [238] society, or of the sciences and the arts, we always in the end come up against that obscure space, that χρόνος ἄδηλος,CCCXXXII which is occupied no longer by anything but mythology. Hence for a long time it has necessarily been the most urgent requirement, in all sciences touching on those questions, that this obscurity be overcome, and that space made clear and plainly discernible. In the interval, and since philosophy cannot after all be dispensed with in those questions concerning the origin of the human race, a shallow and bad philosophy of history has tacitly exerted on all investigations of this kind an all the more manifest influence. This influence may be perceived in certain axioms which are presupposed everywhere, constantly, quite without a second thought, and as if nothing else were even conceivable. One of these axioms is that all human science, art, and culture must have emerged from the most squalid beginnings. In conformity with this, a well-known historian, now no longer living, makes, apropos of the subterranean temples of Ellora and MahābalipuramCCCXXXIII in India, the edifying observation “Even the naked Hottentots make drawings on the walls of their caves; from there to the richly embellished Indian temples, what spans! and yet,” adds the learned historian, “these too art must have traversed.”151 CCCXXXIV But according to this view, an Egyptian, an Indian, and a Greek art would, on the contrary, never have been possible, never at any time.CCCXXXV Whatever regions of time one might think up, and were one to reserve the right to append at will further millennia to those thought up: it is in the nature of the thing impossible that art could ever, and in any conjectured time, have achieved such heights from such wholly nugatory beginnings; and certainly even the above-mentioned historian would not have gone as far as to specify the period of time over which art could have travelled such a route. He could as well have stated how much time might be required for something to come into existence out of nothing.

[239] Admittedly it will be objected to us that that axiom cannot be attacked without encroaching upon the great and as it were sacrosanct fundamental principle of the continual advance of the human race. Where there is an advance, though, there is a starting point, a from-where and a whither. But that advance does not lead, as is thought, from the small to the great, but rather the reverse: it makes everywhere what is great and gigantic the beginning, and what is apprehended organically, what is pinned down, follows only later. Homer possesses such greatness that no later era was capable of bringing forth his like; on the other hand even a Sophoclean tragedy would have been an impossibility in the Homeric age. The eras are distinguished from each other not merely by having more, or less, so-called culture; the distinctions between them are internal, they are distinctions of essentially or qualitatively different principles, which succeed each other, and of which each in its own time can achieve the highest level of cultivation. This whole system,CCCXXXVI which history itself contradicts in the clearest way, which even its supporters in fact really contemplate only in the mind, and which none of them has as yet been capable of putting into practice or has even tried to put into practice, rests ultimately on the view, deriving not from facts but from an incomplete investigation and establishment of them, that man and humanity were, from the beginning, left solely to their own devices, that they sought their way blindly, sine numine,CCCXXXVII and at the mercy of the most malign accident, as it were gropingly. This is, one can say, the general view; since those who believe in revelation, those who look for that directing entity, that numen, in divine revelation, on the one hand find themselves in a distinct minority, and, on the other, can point out that directing entity only in the case of a very small section of the human race; and it still remains curious that the people of the true god had to seek out the architects of their temples among the Phoenicians. But how were these other societies nurtured, how saved from losing themselves in the wholly meaningless, how raised to the greatness which we cannot deny in their conceptions? If it was not mere chance which led the Babylonians, Phoenicians, and Egyptians to find the way to their constructions, so rich in art, [240] and meriting, some of them, amazement, then here something else must have intervened, something else, but still something analogous to revelation. The counterpart of revealed religion in paganism is not a mere negation, but something positive of a different kind. This different and yet analogous entity was simply the mythological process. The forces which prevail in this are positive and real. This process too is a source of inspiration, and only from such inspirations may the productions of that era, some of them monstrous, be understood. Works like the Indian and Egyptian monuments do not come into being like stalactitic caves through the mere passage of time; the same power which, internally, created the representations, some of them colossal, of mythology, applied externally gave rise to the bold undertakings in art, surpassing all yardsticks of later times. The power which, in the mythological ideas, elevated human consciousness beyond the bounds of reality, was also the first mistress of what was great and meaningful in art, also the force which, like a divine hand, raised humanity above the subordinate stages, logically at all events to be considered prior, and which still inspired the later productions of antiquity with a greatness which has remained until now unattainable for later times. For, at least as long as a heightened and expanded consciousness has not regained a relationship to the great powers and forces, a relationship which antiquity possessed of its own nature, it will always be advisable to keep to that which feeling and a refined sensibility are capable of creating out of immediate reality. It is true that just as we speak of Christian philosophy, we also speak of Christian art. But art is art everywhere and as such, in accordance with its nature and originally, is worldly and pagan, and hence it has to seek out in Christianity too not what is peculiar to it, but that universal element, that is to say that in it which constitutes its relationship to paganism. For the time being it may be regarded as a change for the better when art chooses, among the subjects offered it by revelation, those of a kind which go beyond the limited Christian aspect: occurrences like the confusion of languages, the [241] emergence of societies, the destruction of Jerusalem, and others, in which the grand universal context does not first have to be brought out by the artist.

Although I cannot really remain with this topic now, I nonetheless wish to remark that the philosophy of mythology, just as it has a necessary implication for the philosophy of history, also forms an indispensable basis for the philosophy of art. For it will be imperative for this latter, it will even be one of its first tasks, to deal with the subjects of the artistic and literary depictions. Here it will be unavoidable that a poetry originally preceding all art and literature, namely inventing and generating the material too, be as it were called for. But only in mythology is there anything to be found which may be regarded as such an original generation of ideas, anticipating all conscious and formal poetry. While it is inadmissible to have mythology itself coming into existence out of literary art, it is for that reason no less evident that for all subsequent free productions it acts as an original poetry of that kind. Hence in every comprehensive philosophy of art one chapter will have to discuss the nature and meaning of mythology, and to that extent also the way it came into existence, just as, in my lectures on the philosophy of art given fifty years ago,CCCXXXVIII I included such a chapter, whose ideas were frequently reproduced in later investigations concerning mythology. Foremost among the factors by which Greek art was so extraordinarily favoured, is indubitably the nature of the subjects characteristic of it, thus especially the nature of those provided by its mythology, subjects which on the one hand belonged to a history higher than and an order of things different from this merely accidental and transitory oneCCCXXXIX from which the later poet has to take his forms, and on the other hand possessed an essential and abiding inner relationship to Nature. That which has always been felt from the standpoint of [242] art, the necessity of actual entities,CCCXL which at the same time—not merely signify, but are, principles, universal and eternal concepts; of that, philosophy has yet to show the possibility. Paganism is inwardly foreign to us, but with uncomprehended Christianity too it is not possible to reach the intimated artistic heights. It was premature to speak of a Christian art, at least among the inspirations of the one-sided Romantic atmosphere. But how much else there is which depends precisely on that, on Christianity comprehended, and in the confusion of today does not everything consciously or unconsciously press forward towards it?

Every work of art gains a higher stature, the more it arouses at the same time the impression of a certain necessity in its existence, but only eternal and necessary content eliminates even partially the fortuitousness of the work of art. The more the subjects in themselves poetical dwindle, the more fortuitous does poetry itself also become; conscious of no necessity, it must endeavour all the more to conceal its fortuitousness through endless production, to give itself the appearance of necessity. The impression of fortuitousness is what we cannot overcome even in the most ambitious works of our time, while in the works of Greek antiquity there is expressed not merely the necessity, truth, and reality of the subject, but equally the necessity, and therefore the truth and reality, of the production.CCCXLI With these it cannot be asked, as in the case of so many works of a later art, “Why, wherefore does it exist?” The mere reiteration of the production cannot elevate a mere illusory life to real life. Nor, in such a time, is it even any longer particularly necessary to promote artistic productiveness, for that which is fortuitous is of its own nature, as I said, predisposed to appear as something necessary, and therefore tends to proliferate into the unmeasured and boundless, and in fact nowadays we do see such a truly endless and aimless output in poetry patronized by no one.152 CCCXLII [243] Byron looks for that higher world, poetical in itself, he attempts, up to a point, forcibly to enter it, but the scepticism of an era of despair, which ravaged his heart too, does not allow him to arrive at any belief in its manifestations.CCCXLIII

Writers of spirit and erudition have long emphasized the distinction between antiquity and recent times, but more in order to legitimize the so-called Romantic poetry than to penetrate into the true profundity of ancient times. But if it is not a mere figure of speech to speak of antiquity as a world in itself, then one will have to allow it a principle of its own as well, one will have to stretch one‟s concepts to the point of acknowledging the fact that mysterious antiquity, and indeed the further we go back into it the more clearly is this so, was subject to a different law and to different forces from those by which the present era is governed. A psychology which is drawn merely from the circumstances of the present, and which perhaps even from these has been capable of extracting only superficial observations, is as little suited for explaining phenomena and events in the primæval time as are the mechanical laws which apply in the Nature which has already come to be and is frozen, for being transferred to the time of the original coming to be and the first living emergence. Naturally the easiest solution would be to banish these phenomena as mere myths once and for all into the realm of the unreal; to bypass, with the aid of shallow hypotheses, the most well-founded facts, especially those concerning the religious life of the ancients.

The theogonic process, in which humanity was enmeshed with the first actual consciousness, is essentially a religious process. While the fact ascertained is, from this side, important principally for the history of religion, it cannot remain without a potent influence on the philosophy of religion as well.

It is an admirable characteristic of the Germans that they [244] have applied themselves so avidly and persistently to this science; if it is for that reason no more certain, perhaps even less so, of its concept, scope, and content, than many others, then this (ignoring the fact that in the nature of the matter there are in no science as many dilettantes, and that thus in none, too, is it so easy to go astray, as in the science of religion) may partly be because it has always depended too much on the course of general philosophy, whose movements it compliantly reproduced within itself, while it would certainly have been possible for it to have acquired a content independent of philosophy and so itself to have exerted a reciprocal influence on the latter, in such a way as to extend it.

Such a possibility may now actually have been given the science of religion through the result of our investigation of mythology, in which the existence of a religion independent of philosophy and reason, as well as of revelation, was demonstrated. For assuming the correctness of a pronouncement of G. Hermann, whom, as a man who expresses himself clearly and incisively, we like repeatedly to cite; assuming that there were no religion other than either a religion deriving from a claimed revelation, or the so-called natural religion, which last, however, would only be philosophical religion—a pronouncement whose intent is that there is only philosophical religion: then we would in fact not know how the philosophy of religion could be distinguished and asserted as a particular science (which it should be, though); since the merely philosophical religion would indubitably already have been dealt with by general philosophy, and therefore for the philosophy of religion, if it did not renounce all objective content, nothing would remain but to reiterate in itself a part or a chapter of general philosophy.

Against that pronouncement we have now shown, and indeed without even starting in any way from a philosophy, but as the outcome of purely historically based deductions, that, apart from the two religions alone contrasted with each other there, there is one which is independent of both, the mythological religion. We have shown additionally and in particular that in respect of time it itself precedes any revelation (if such a thing is postulated), indeed it is even the necessary cause of the latter, and is accordingly [245] undeniably the first form in which religion in general exists; it is for a certain era the universal religion, the religion of the human race, in contrast to which revelation, even though it does appear so early, is nevertheless only a partial phenomenon, confined to a particular race, and remaining for millennia comparable to a weakly glowing light, incapable of penetrating the obscuration opposing it. We have then shown further, that mythology, as the religion of the human race from time immemorial and to that extent also anticipating all thought, is only comprehensible through the aspect of consciousness which establishes God naturally, and that consciousness cannot withdraw from this relationship without succumbing to a necessary process by which it is brought back to the original position. In that it came into being out of such a relationship, mythology can only be the naturally self-generating religion, and should alone, therefore, also be called the natural religion, whereas the rational or philosophical religion should not be given this name (“natural”), as has happened until now because everything in which revelation plays no part is called “natural,” and because reason was all that could be set up in opposition to revelation.

This definition of the mythological religion as the natural one has here a deeper meaning than in what is nowadays so commonly said: that mythology is the “natural religion,” by which most people only mean to say that it is the religion of the manCCCXLIV who could not raise himself beyond creation to the creator, or who has deified Nature (explanations whose inadequacy has been adequately shown); but some people even understand by “natural religion” just the first stage of the mythological one, namely the stage which (where, as they say, the concept of religion, and thus God as the object of this concept, is still wholly shrouded by Nature) is immersed in Nature. As far as this explanation is concerned, then we have shown with reference to the notitia insita that mythology could not have come into existence out of the mere actualization, even if perhaps represented as necessary, of a concept, since it must rather be based on an actual, real relationship of the human essence to God, out of which relationship aloneCCCXLV can a process independent of human thought [246] emerge, a process which in consequence of this origin may be called natural to humanity. So in this sense the mythological religion is, for us, the natural one.

We could just as easily call it the religion which grows wild (in the way that the great apostle to the heathensCCCXLVI calls heathenism the wild olive tree,153 and Judaism, as founded on revelation, the domesticated one), or simply the wild religion, in the sense in which in German the natural fire in the sky is called “wildfire,” and naturally warm spas “Wildbäder.”CCCXLVII

But no fact is isolated; every newly discovered fact means that others already familiar, but perhaps not understood,CCCXLVIII appear in a new light. No true beginning is without consequence and continuation, and natural religion brings in its wake, of its own accord and simply due to the antithesis, revealed religion. Earlier, too, we already found this to be so. The religion which comes into existence blindly can be without precondition, but the revealed religion, in which there is a will, an intention, requires a foundation, and can therefore only come second. We have been obliged to acknowledge the mythological religion to be one independent of all reason, and we will be the less able to avoid doing the same in respect of revealed religion, as with this its acceptance is in any case already mediated; the recognition of the reality of the one results in the reality of the other, or at least makes it comprehensible. If revealed religion is declared to be the supernatural one, then through the relationship to natural religion it does itself become natural to some extent, although admittedly the supernaturalism which is entirely direct cannot but appear unnatural.

With natural religion as a precondition, then, the whole status of revealed religion is changed; it is no longer the sole religion independent of reason and philosophy, and if the mode of thought which understands no relationship of consciousness to God other than a rational one is called “rationalism,” then the primary antithesis to that is not revealed religion, but natural.

[247] Even in general, no single concept in a system of related concepts can be correctly specified, as long as another is missing or is not correctly specified.CCCXLIX Revealed religion is, in the historical sequence, only the second and thus already indirect form of real religion (where “real” means “independent of reason”). It shares this independence with natural religion, hence the difference between it and philosophical religion is only generic, not a specific difference as has been hitherto assumed; but no concept can be completely specified merely in terms of its generic difference. Revealed and natural religion have in common that they came into existence not through science, but by way of a real process; the specific difference between them is the natural element in the way it happened, in the one, and the supernatural element in the other. But this supernatural element becomes comprehensible through its reference to the natural. The main thing is that it should not consist in mere representation. Now Christianity is devoted to liberation from the blind force of paganism, and the reality of a liberation is measured in terms of the actuality and the force of that from which it liberates. Had paganism not been something actual, then Christianity could not have been anything actual either. Conversely, if the process to which man is subject as a consequence of his withdrawal from the original relationship—if the mythological process is not something merely represented, but something which actually takes place, it cannot, then, be supplanted, either, by something which exists merely in the power of representation, by a doctrine, but only by an actual process, by a deed independent of, and indeed surpassing, human representation; for all that can oppose the process is deed; and this deed will be the content of Christianity.

Their whole science, for the Christian theologians, has almost evaporated into so-called apologetics, which has, however, never got them anywhere, and which they keep on starting again from the beginning; this goes to show that they have not found the point to which, in our time, the lever might be applied with success. This point can only lie in the precondition of all revelation, the religion which came blindly into existence. But even if [248] they wholly refrain from leaving the timid defensive attitude onto which they have been forced back, and returning to aggressive resistance, their resistance will meet difficulties more easily overcome in the detail if they take note that revelation too has its material preconditions in natural religion. Revelation does not create the substance within which it takes effect, it finds it there independent of itself. Its formal meaning has to be an overcoming of the merely natural, unfree religion; but for that very reason it contains the latter in itself, just as that which transcends contains what is transcended within itself. The assertion of this material identity cannot be esteemed impious or unchristian, if one knows how staunchly the very same thing was at one time in fact upheld by the orthodox viewpoint. If it was permissible to see in paganism corruptions of revealed truths, then there is no possibility of denying the contrary, that in Christianity may be seen a corrected paganism. But apart from that, who would not be aware of how a good deal that is in Christianity appeared, to those who would hear only of a religion of reason, as a pagan element which in their view should have been eradicated from pure, that is to say rational, Christianity? The kinship between the two became apparent, though, simply in their common external fate, in the fact that an attempt was made to rationalize both (mythology and revelation), that is to say to bring them back to a rational sense or one which seemed rational to most people, by way of a wholly equivalent distinction between form and content, between what was essential and the formulation merely appropriate to the times. But precisely with the banished pagan element, all reality, too, would be removed from Christianity. What remains, certainly, is the relationship to the Father and worship of him in spirit and in truth, and in this result everything pagan disappears, that is to say everything which is not in the relationship to God in his truth; but this result, without its preconditions, has itself no empirical truth. “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father,” says Christ, but he adds: “I am the way,” and “No man cometh unto the Father, but by me.”CCCL

Finally, let us come to a decision about one further fundamental principle. [249] This is, that one actual religion cannot be distinguished from another. Now if natural and revealed religion are both actual religion, then in respect to the final content there cannot be a distinction between the two; both of them must contain the same elements, only their significance will be one in this, and another in that, and since the difference between the two is only that one of them is the naturally established religion, the other the divinely established one, the same principles, then, which are, in the former, merely natural, will in the latter acquire the significance of divine principles. Without pre-existence Christ is not Christ. He existed as natural potence, before he appeared as a divine personality. In this respect too we can say of him that he was in the world (ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ ἦν ). He was cosmic potence, even though in himself not without God in the way that the apostle says to former heathens: “ye were without God” (you had no direct relationship to God), “ye were in the world” (in that which is not God, in the realm of the cosmic forces).154 For the same potences in whose unity God exists and reveals himself—precisely these in their disjunction and within the process are extradivine, purely natural forces, in which there is not, indeed, no trace of God at all, but in which, however, he does not exist in accordance with his divinity, thus not in accordance with his truth. For in his divine self he is One and can neither be Several nor enter into a process. “The hour cometh,” says Christ in the passage already quoted, CCCLI “and now,” namely subsequently to the beginning, “is when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth”; thus until this time even the Jews do not worship the Father in spirit, access to him in his truth was given to both, to them which were afar off and to them which were nigh; 155 to those who were subject to the law of revelation just as much as to those subject to the merely natural law; from which it is then evident that in revelation too there was something by which the consciousness of God in the [250] spirit was held back, and that Christ in his advent is for that very reason the end of revelation, because he removes this God-alienating element.

So much, then, for the relationship of revealed religion to the natural variety. But now, if what has been argued up to this point has been argued consistently, you will understand of your own accord that the first position available for philosophical religion in this historical sequence is the third. What would this philosophical religion have to be? If we apply to it too the fundamental principle already stated, if, essentially and in respect of content, one actual religion cannot be distinguished from another actual religion, then the philosophical religion could only actually be religion if it contained the factors of actual religion, as they exist in natural and revealed religion, contained them in itself no less than do these: only in the way in which it contained these factors could its distinction from natural and revealed religion lie, and this distinction, further, could be none other than that the principles which operate in those religions without being understood, were present as grasped and understoodCCCLII in philosophical religion. Philosophical religion, far from being justified, by its position, in taking the place of the religions which went before, would thus, by reason of this very position, have the task, and, by reason of its content, the means, of comprehending those religions which are independent of reason, and indeed of comprehending them as such, accordingly in their whole truth and intrinsicalness.

And now you will surely see that just such a philosophical religion would be necessary for us, in order to understand also as possible, and accordingly in a philosophical way, that which we find ourselves obliged to recognize as actual in mythology, and so to arrive at a philosophy of mythology. But this philosophical religion does not exist, and if, as certainly no one will dispute, it could only be the final product and the highest expression of a fully developed philosophy itself, then we may indeed ask where the philosophy might be found which would be in the position to render comprehensible, that is to say to demonstrate as possible, that which we recognized in mythology, and indirectly also in revelation— a real relationship of the human consciousness to God, while philosophy knows only of rational religionCCCLIII and only of [251] a rational relationship to God, and sees all religious evolution only as an evolution in the idea, which is where Hermann‟s pronouncement (that there is only philosophical religion) also belongs. We agree with this observation in respect of the relationship of our viewpoint to the currently prevailing philosophy, but we cannot see in thisCCCLIV any conclusive argument against the correctness of our earlier analysis or the truth of its result. For in this whole investigation we did not start with any preconceived viewpoint, least of all from a philosophy, and the result, therefore, is one which was found, and which holds good, independently of any philosophy. We took up mythology at no other point than that where everyone comes to grips with it. For us, philosophy was not the standard by which we rejected or accepted the viewpoints which presented themselves. We welcomed every method of explanation, even the one most remote from any philosophy, as long as it did actually explain. Only step by step, as a consequence of a purely historical analysis, plain for all to see, did we reach our result, always presupposing that what Bacon pointed out in respect to philosophyCCCLV would apply also to this subject: through the successive exclusion of that which is demonstrably in error, and the removal, from what is fundamentally true, of anything false adhering to it, that which is true will finally be confined to such a restricted space that one will, in a way, be obliged to recognize it and express it. Not so much, then, eclectically, as by the route of an advancing critical analysis, gradually eliminating everything historically inconceivable, did we reach the point where only this viewpoint of mythology was left, which it will only now be our task to understand philosophically.

But admittedly—considering the dependence of most people on their philosophical concepts and on their power of understanding in general, it is to be expected that many will find, in the philosophy familiar to them, grounds for dissatisfaction with the viewpoint stated. This does not entitle them to contradict it directly, for indeed this viewpoint is itself a mere result; if they want to contradict it, then they will have to find something in the earlier arguments which provides a justification for a contradiction, [252] and this, also, would have to be no mere incidental matter, not some detail (for how easy it is, where so much, and so much that is diverse, has to be touched upon, to fall short in something like that), it would have to be something which could not be taken away without destroying the whole fabric of our arguments.

Nor, inasmuch as our viewpoint of mythology is independent of any philosophy, is it possible to contradict it, because it is not compatible with any philosophical viewpoint (were it even the one which obtains almost universally), and if no available philosophy measures up to the phenomenon, then it is not the phenomenon, now it is in existence and irrefutably acknowledged, which must be tailored to fit some predefined philosophy, but on the contrary it is the viewpoint based on fact, whose inevitable influence on individual philosophical sciences we have shown, which should take it upon itself also to extend, or to induce an extension in, philosophy and even the philosophical consciousness itself, beyond their present limits.

_______________

Notes:

148 Compare what is said in the first preface to the Outlines of a Philosophy of Nature.
 
149 Correspondence Relating to Homer and Hesiod, p. 67.
 
150 Dissert. de Mythol. Græc. p. x. wi th re ference to the te rrestrial globe : “in quo, senescente  jam, nos medii inter duas ruinas æternitatem, serius ocius novis fluctibus perituram, inani labore  consectamur.”
 
151 Heeren‟s Outlines of the Politics and Trade of the Ancient Societies, pt. I, sect. II, p. 311 n.
 
152 Arbiters of fine art belittled Platen because of what they called his meagre output. They did  not know and will never know what was in him, in him whose life was cut short so early, and to  whose memory I, not knowing whether I myself will be granted time for anything more extensive,  would like in the meantime to dedicate at least these lines.
 
153 Ro. 11.
 
154 Eph. 2:12. If ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ means nothing in itself, then it is a wholly empty addition, since  in the sense which it has then, the Christians too are in the world.
 
155 Eph. 2:17, 18.
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Re: Historico-Critical Introduction to the Philosophy of Myt

Postby admin » Mon Mar 19, 2018 1:42 am

SUMMARY OF CONTENTS

This summary of contents is translated from division two, volume one, of the collected works, published in 1856. It was probably prepared by the editors of that edition, and not by Schelling himself, because by no means every turn of the argument is reflected in the summary, and because they did the same for other works (for example the System of Transcendental Idealism). For that reason I have put it after Schelling‟s text. The page numbers here refer to the 1856 edition. There are five errors in the page numbers given in the original German summary: it has pages 1 instead of 5, 68 instead of 78, 118 instead of 119, 136 instead of 137, and 242 instead of 241.

LECTURE ONE. Title and subject of these lectures [5]. Course of the argument [5]. First method of explaining mythology, as poetry (mythology contains no truth). Development and critical analysis of this viewpoint [10]. Discussion of the passage from Herodotus II, 53: which yields the relationship of Hellenic mythology to poetry [15]. Relationship of the other mythologies, specifically the Indian, to poetry [21].

LECTURE TWO. The allegorical interpretation of mythology (there is truth in mythology, but not in mythology as such): the various sub-types of this interpretation, the euhemeristic, moral, physical [26]; the cosmogonic or philosophical (after Heyne) [30]; the philosophico-philological (after Hermann) [34].

LECTURE THREE. Attempted synthesis of the poetical and philosophical viewpoints (parallels between the co-operation of poetry and philosophy in the emergence of mythology and that in the formation of languages). Result: mythology is at any rate an organic product [47].—That which might explain resides in a third element, above poetry and philosophy [54]. Transition to the discussion of the historical preconditions of mythology [55]. Critical analysis of these preconditions in the case of the types of explanation mentioned up to now: 1) that mythology was invented by individuals [56]; 2) by the society itself [59]. Principal instance in opposition to the latter—apart from the kinship between the different mythologies—the fact that a society only comes into being together with its theogony [61]. Result: mythology not an invention.

LECTURE FOUR. The religious explanations of mythology (there is truth in mythology as such) [67]. Various sub-types of these, sub-types which still cannot be accepted as really religious (D. Hume’s assumption. J. H. Voss) [68]. Explanation which starts out from the religious instinct, where either Nature is brought in (deification of Nature) or polytheism is derived from the notitia insita alone [76]. Assumption of a prior formal doctrine of God, opposed by Hume [78]. Explanation from the corruption of revealed truth, the corruption of a monotheism (Lessing, Cudworth. Euhemeristic use of the Old Testament by G. Voss. Assumption of a primal revelation. William Jones) [83]. Fr. Creuzer’s theory [89]. Transition to the question of the causal relationship between the separation (= emergence) of societies and polytheism.

LECTURE FIVE. The physical hypotheses relating to the emergence of societies [94]. Relationship of this problem to the question of racial differences [97]. Cause of the separation of societies found in a spiritual crisis, proved by the connection between the separation of societies and the emergence of languages (Ge. 11) [100]. Explanation of that crisis and the positive cause of the emergence of societies [103]. Means of countering the dissolution into societies, of preserving the consciousness of unity (prehistoric monuments, tower of Babel) [115].

LECTURE SIX. The principle of original unity: a universal God, common to all mankind [119]. Closer investigation of this, together with comment on the difference between simultaneous and successive polytheism [123]. Resolution of the principal question, of who that shared God was. Concept of relative monotheism and, from this, explanation of mythology as a process, in which at the same time there come into existence, jointly with theology, societies and languages, in an orderly sequence [126]. Comparison of this result with the assumption of a prior pure monotheism [137]. Relationship of relative monotheism to revelation [140].

LECTURE SEVEN. Confirmation in the Mosaic scriptures of what has been said up to now [144]. Significance of the Flood [149]. The monotheism of Abraham not an absolutely unmythological monotheism [161].

LECTURE EIGHT. Further details about the God of the primæval era in his relationship to the true God [175]. Application to the concept of revelation [179]. Analysis of the relationship of prehistoric time to historical time, whence the conclusion, that polytheism has no historical beginning, which accords with David Hume's assertion [181]. Suprahistorical process, by way of which relative monotheism came into existence, and the final precondition of mythology in the human consciousness, whose nature it is to establish God [184]. Result: mythology is, regarded subjectively, a necessary theogonic process (going on in consciousness) [193].

LECTURE NINE. On Ottfried Müller's ostensibly analogous view of mythology [199]. What would remain specific to the philosophy of mythology [202]. At this point, interpolation about the author's proprietary right in respect of his thoughts. Continuation to the question of the objective significance of the theogonic process [204].

LECTURE TEN. Relationship of the philosophy of mythology to other sciences and its importance for them: 1) for the philosophy of history [228]. 2) for the philosophy of art [241]. 3) for the philosophy of religion [244].
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Re: Historico-Critical Introduction to the Philosophy of Myt

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OTHER TRANSLATIONS of SCHELLING

The Philosophy of Art; an oration on the relation between the plastic arts and nature (Ueber das Verhältnis der bildenden Künste zu der Natur, 1807). Tr. A. Johnson, London: J. Chapman, 1845.

Dante’s Divina Commedia (Ueber Dante in philosophischer Beziehung, 1803). Tr. H. W. Longfellow, in Graham’s Magazine, June 1850, vol. 36.

On the Relation of the Plastic Arts to Nature. (Ueber das Verhältnis der bildenden Künste zu der Natur, 1807, second translation). Tr. J. Elliot Cabot, in The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. 5, New York, 1913.

Of Human Freedom (Philosophische Untersuchungen über das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit, 1809). Tr. James Gutman, Chicago: Open Court, 1936.

The Ages of the World (Die Weltalter, 1811-32). Tr. Frederick de Wolfe Bolman, Jr., New York: Columbia University Press, 1942.

Concerning the Relationship of the Plastic Arts to Nature (Ueber das Verhältnis der bildenden Künste zu der Natur, 1807, third translation). Tr. Michæl Bullock, as an appendix to The True Voice of Feeling: Studies in English Romantic Poetry, edited by Herbert Read, London: Faber and Faber, 1953.

On University Studies (Vorlesungen über die Methode des akademischen Studiums, 1803). Tr. E. S. Morgan, Athens USA: Ohio University Press, 1966.

The Deities of Samothrace (Ueber die Gottheiten von Samothrake, 1815). Tr. Robert F. Brown, Missoula MT: Scholars Press, 1977.

System of Transcendental Idealism (System des transzendentalen Idealismus, 1800). Tr. Peter Heath, Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1978.

On the Possibility of a Form of All Philosophy (Ueber die Möglichkeit einer Form der Philosophie, 1794)

Of the I as Principle of Philosophy, or On the Unconditional in Human Knowledge (Vom Ich als Prinzip der Philosophie, 1795)

Philosophical Letters on Dogmatism and Criticism (Philosophische Briefe über Dogmatismus und Kritizismus, 1795)

New Deduction of Natural Right (Neue Deduktion des Naturrechts, 1796). All four translated by Fritz Marti, and published together under the title The Unconditional in Human Knowledge, Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1980.

Bruno, or on the Natural and the Divine Principle of Things (Bruno. Ein Gespräch, 1802). Tr. Michæl G. Vater, Albany: SUNY Press, 1984.

On the Essence of Philosophical Criticism Generally, and its Relationship to the Present State of Philosophy (Ueber das Wesen der philosophischen Kritik überhaupt, und ihr Verhältnis zum gegenwärtigen Zustand der Philosophie insbesondere, 1802, possibly partly written by Hegel). Tr. H. S. Harris.

On the Relationship of the Philosophy of Nature to Philosophy in General (Ueber das Verhältnis der Naturphilosophie zur Philosophie überhaupt, 1802. Definitely not by Hegel although he foolishly tried to claim it was!) Tr. George di Giovanni and H. S. Harris. The two works published together in Between Kant and Hegel, New York: State University of New York Press, 1985.

Ideas for a philosophy of Nature as Introduction to the Study of this Science (Ideen zu einer Philosophie der Natur, 1797). Tr. Errol E. Harris and Peter Heath, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.

The Philosophy of Art (Philosophie der Kunst, 1804). Tr. Douglas W. Stott, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989.

There are also two other translations of the present work: an abridged Danish one by A. B. Thorson, Copenhagen 1862, and the following in French: Introduction à la philosophie de la mythologie. Tr. S. Jankélévitch, Paris: Editions Montaigne, 1946 (2 vols).
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Re: Historico-Critical Introduction to the Philosophy of Myt

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INDEX

A

Abel 147
Abimelech 163
Abraham 116n, 153, 156-7, 161-72, 177
Absolute monotheism 128
Absolutely prehistoric era/time 137, 181-4, 234-37
Absolutely-One 126, 144, 147, 178, 181-2, 190, 192
Abydenos, fragments 102
Accident—see Chance
Accidentally-Eternal 164
Actus 75, 81, 137, 141, 187, 209
Actual religions, impossibility of distinguishing between 249
Actuality 5, 18, 26-7, 31-2, 42, 52, 68, 76-7, 102, 104, 114, 117-125, 127-30,
135, 137, 141, 149-50, 162, 171, 172n, 176, 179, 182-6, 188-92, 195-8, 200,
207-9, 215-17, 232-3, 237, 242, 244-5, 247-51
Adam 145-9, 162-3
Adonai 171
Adonis (Syrian God) 86
Æschylus
his description of the flight of Io 59
his Prometheus 44n
Æsculapius 33
Æther 38, 44-5
Agamemnon 201
Ahriman 109n
Alchemy 29
Alemanni 159
Alkaios 19
Allegorical interpretations 26, 29-31, 33-4, 196
America, diseases from 96
American native 30n
Ammianus Marcellinus 159n
Angel of Jehovah 164
Animals 60, 63, 68-71, 76, 112-3, 117, 193, 221
Anteriority of revelation, claimed 140-3
Anticipation 177
Antiquity, as a world in itself 243
Aphrodite 29
Apollo (in the Iliad) 201
Apologetics (so-called) 247
Arabic language 50, 106-7, 110-11, 149, 163, 167
Arabs 94-5, 154, 158n, 167
Arbitrariness (see also Chance) 9, 29, 39, 59-60, 91, 197, 220-3, 229, 236-7
Argus, the herdsman 58
Aristophanes 44-5
Aristotle 49, 219
Art 24, 238-43
subject of 240-2
Artistic production 242
Asia 57, 88
Asiatic Religions 88
Atheism 14, 39-40, 74, 81, 141, 188
Athene 28
Atonement, day of 178
Azara, Félix de 40, 63, 72-3, 114-15

B

Babel, Babylon, and Babylonians 25, 105-6, 109n, 117, 153, 161, 239
Bacon, Francis 14, 28, 251
Bailly, Jean-Sylvain 87
Ballenstädt, Johann Georg Justus 236
Barbarian, derivation of the word 106
Barbarians and Greeks 110
Barbarism, impossibility of reversion to 112-13
Beauty 23n, 91
Belgians 219
Blind monotheism 137, 187, 190-1, 246, 247
Bochart, Samuel 86
Brahmins 99
Bread 168
Bushmen 40
Byron, George Gordon, Baron 243

C

Caciques 63n
Cadmus 86
Cain 147, 172n
Calderón de la Barca, Pedro 28
Canaan 157
Caracalla (Aurelius Antoninus) 158
Caste system in India 99
Castor and Pollux 33
Catathars 154
Categories 120, 217
Catholic Clergy 40
Causes 11, 17, 21, 31, 59, 68, 82, 92, 95, 99, 101-3, 105, 107, 108, 119, 121,
124, 129, 131, 138, 148, 164, 207-8, 210, 218, 244
emanative 121
immediate 103, 105, 164
inner 95
positive 119, 139
pure 210
Central position 49, 91, 129-30, 206
Chaldeans 165
Chance/accident/fortuitousness 9, 15, 22, 27, 48, 53-4, 57-60, 62, 67, 77, 91,
99, 111, 126, 129, 133-4, 163-4, 177, 180, 187, 191-2, 197, 199, 205, 207,
210, 214, 217, 220, 227, 231, 236, 239, 241-2
Chaos 14, 17, 18, 37, 45-6
Charites 46
Charruas 63n
Chemical Action 29
Childhood 231
Chinese 97
language 134-6
Christ 152n, 176-8, 190, 248-50
Christianity and Christians 28, 33, 81, 83, 108, 156, 167-8, 180, 184, 201-3,
212, 224, 240, 242, 247-9
Christian
art 240-2
consciousness 202
doctrine 201
philosophy 240
theologians 180, 184, 247-8
Chronos 39
Chus (Ethiopia) 157
Cicero, Marcus Tullius 27n, 32-3, 72, 106n
Circumcision 164
Clairvoyance 55, 82
Clericus, Johannes 27
Coeus 39
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 196n
Comets 138
Commandment 177
Communal constructive urge 60-64, 200
Concepts 6, 35-6, 45, 50, 51, 75, 83, 84, 109, 132, 138, 141, 156, 157, 165,
168, 169, 178, 182, 187, 188, 193, 194, 204, 216, 217, 219, 220n, 229-31,
237, 242, 244, 245, 247, 251
abstract 31, 44, 50, 51, 183
actualization of 245
deification of 178
inborn 78
issuing from another 35
moral 28
of chronology 235
of essence 220
of existence 68
of freedom 230
of gods 68, 73
of history 235
of the Kantian school 53
of Nature 59
of polytheism 183, 187
of religion 245
of revelation 141-2, 179-80
of the theogonic process 193, 204, 207, 210
philosophical 45, 48, 51, 251
physical 44
primal 45
scientific 40, 50, 185, 224
secondary 148-9, 156, 220n
speculative 45
spiritual 52, 169
system of 50, 247
universal and eternal 242
Confusion of Language 103, 107-10, 114-16, 132-3, 149, 240
Consciousness
actual 179, 185, 189, 192, 197, 243
Christian 202
formal 187
primal 187
community of 62, 65, 117
inner nature of 207, 215
in its pure substance 189, 191
its liberation 138
mythological 20, 108, 212
of God 75, 119, 141, 185, 187, 249
of self 223
of unity 115, 117
Pelasgian 18
philosophical or scientific 43, 52, 252
religious 107, 142
universal 114
Constantly coming to be 165
Content 10, 14, 18, 27, 30-1, 34, 42, 47-8, 53, 77, 79, 81, 83, 84n, 86, 91, 145,
150, 179, 189, 194-5, 197-8, 201, 207, 214, 216, 218, 224, 229, 231, 233,
233, 242, 244, 247-50
Contradiction 9, 23, 48, 62, 69, 86, 88, 89, 132, 146, 159, 176, 186, 190, 222,
239, 251
Copula 50
Coral Reefs 61
Correspondence between myths in different societies 57, 61-2, 87-8, 92, 123,
149, 152
Corruption (see also Error) 43, 78, 79-80, 82-3, 178-9, 205, 208, 214-5, 219,
221, 222, 248
Cosmic
forces 216, 249
potence 249
Cousin, Victor 33n
Creuzer, Georg Friedrich 42n, 89-92, 126, 138, 214, 226
Crisis, spiritual 18, 20, 24, 100-4, 107, 110, 112-13, 116, 128, 131, 132, 155,
181, 233
Critical Spirit 61
Crius and Coeus 39
Cronus 7, 30-1, 39, 46, 85, 120-1, 122-4, 127, 130, 152, 173, 198
Crusades, and the spread of disease 96
Cudworth, Ralph 27, 85
Culture, so-called 239
Cuvier, Georges, Baron de 236
Cyclopean structures 117-8

D

Danaus 86
Darkness (see also Obscurity) 14, 17, 38, 44, 50, 59, 72, 86, 111
David 151, 169, 174n
Deed 6, 198, 233, 247
Definition 127
Deification 33, 178, 207
of Nature 76, 178, 205-7, 245
Delirium 55
Demeter 62
Derceto 152-3
Dialectic 9, 219
Differences
established at a stroke 130
non-natural 100
Dike 46
Diodorus of Sicily 154, 172
Dionysus 34, 37
derivation of the name 149
Diseases/illnesses 50, 96-7, 100, 222
Disintegrated monotheism 91-2, 208
Disintegration of original unity 122, 125, 137-9, 175, 208-9
Dissyllabism 133-6
Doctrinal meaning 10, 12, 16, 26, 67, 69, 195, 215
Doctrine 17, 27, 30, 33, 37, 42, 48, 53-4, 57, 67, 69, 78-81, 86-92, 109n, 116,
127, 137-9, 167, 175-6, 185, 198, 199, 201, 202, 220-1, 247
Persian 109n
Doom 192
Dornedden, Karl Friedrich 30n
Dorus 157
Dreams 55, 82, 163, 206
Dupuis, Charles François 76

E

Eastern poetry 88
Eastern religions 88
Eber 157
Ecstasy 221
Education 3, 28, 174n, 226
Egypt and Egyptians 24-5, 30n, 57-9, 62, 65, 86, 87, 99, 108, 111, 116, 153,
157, 158, 171, 238-40
lack of racial difference 99
negroid race (oldest inhabitants) in 99, 111
Egyptian
ancient language 111
art 238-40
deities 25
myths 25, 59, 86-7
priests 25, 116
religion 57, 116
theology 24, 30n, 90-1, 108
Eichhorn, Johann Gottfried 153n
El Elioun 166
El Olam 165-6, 168
El Shaddai 168-70, 189
Electromagnetism and chemical action 29
Ellora, temple of 238
Elohim 121, 142, 145-6, 161-3, 169
Elohim chadaschim 166
Emanation 90, 121
Energy 32, 139
Enos 145-9, 155
Epaphus 58
Epicureans 33
Epicurus 27, 55
Erebus 38, 43-4
Eros 38, 44
Error and Falsehood (see also Corruption) 15, 42, 47, 66, 68, 74, 86, 91, 102,
124, 144, 155, 156, 183n, 204, 205, 207-13, 219, 236, 251
Esau 158
Essence 5, 7, 16, 48, 52, 54, 95, 121, 137, 141, 147, 164, 168, 174, 176, 185,
187, 189, 192, 198, 204, 206, 208, 210, 214, 216, 220, 222, 231, 233, 235,
239, 241, 243, 245, 248, 250
definition of 220
Essential eternity 141
Eternity 49, 141, 147, 155, 164-6, 171, 182, 187, 189, 192, 219, 235, 236n,
242
Ethiopia 157
Ethnology and Ethnogeny 128
Euhemerism 27, 33, 68, 85, 214
inverted 233
Euhemerus 27, 68, 214, 233
Eunomia 46
Euphrates 152, 157, 166
Eusebius (see also Sanchuniathon) 102n
Eve 172n
Existence, concept of 68
Exodus 109
Explanation 251
independent of philosophy 8
its relation to coming into existence 8, 77

F

Fables 6, 13, 14, 58-9, 171, 195, 220-1
Fable-doctrine 220-1
Fact 5, 8, 20, 22, 42, 47, 61, 62, 83, 91, 99, 107-8, 125, 136, 143n, 155, 171,
175, 178, 180, 185, 189, 201, 217, 224, 229, 231, 235, 239, 243, 246, 252
great 62, 176, 224, 229
pure 125
supernatural 83
Færoe Islands 96
Fall of Man 87, 141, 144, 163, 205
Fanaticism 167
Far East (India) 35, 43
Fate 192, 248
Father 7, 30, 51, 85, 151, 154, 158, 161, 166, 169-70, 177, 201, 248-9
god the 248-9
meaning of the word in Hebrew 51
Fear and terror 13-14, 58-9, 68, 81, 112, 115, 116-7, 124, 138-9, 163
Fetishism 178
First race of men 144-9, 160
Flood (see also Water, Noah) 91, 149-55, 160
Folk-Poetry 60
Force 13, 19, 24, 31, 34-5, 39, 42, 64, 103-4, 109, 111, 113, 124, 129, 137, 139,
155, 175, 207, 215, 240, 243, 247, 249
independent of human will and thought 137
of Nature 34-5, 39, 42
spiritual 103
Form 23-4, 28, 31, 35, 38, 48-50, 52-4, 60, 77-8, 81, 88n, 109, 126, 130-1, 133,
140, 145, 188, 190, 193, 195, 200, 204, 205, 209, 214, 217, 219, 220, 229,
233, 241, 248
and content 53, 81, 195, 248
and material—see Material and form
Formal explanation 29
Formation (attribute of languages) 111
Forms of gods 130
Fortuitousness—see Chance
Fourcroy, Antoine-François de 217
Free 3, 24-5, 26, 31, 41, 53, 68, 87, 97, 122, 139, 159, 176, 192, 194, 200, 206,
230, 241, 248
activity = invention 53, 55, 200
-but-necessary 53
knowledge 186
movement 130
philosophy 45
poetry 12, 18, 21, 24, 241
relationship 176, 189-90, 194
French
bishop (Huet) 86
Encyclopædia, article on existence 69n
language 107n, 111n
philosophy of history 229
translation of Creuzer 89n
“translator” of Azara (Walckenær) 72n
Future 38, 84n, 130-1, 171-4, 176-8, 181, 188, 190, 230, 236

G

Gaul 158
Gæa 38-9, 43, 46
Generic and specific differences 247
Genesis 22, 86, 101, 142-3, 144-53, 157-64, 166-72, 235
Geological
elevation, hypothesis of 22
research 236
Germanic languages 135, 158-9
Germans and Germany 70, 196n, 203, 217-8, 243-4
academic life and freedom in 3, 203
explanation of the name “Deutsch” 159
stunting of spirit in 101
German
language 50, 51, 110
theology 159
Gesenius, Friedrich Heinrich Wilhelm 109n, 157n
Giants 36, 149-50
Gibbon, Edward 1580n
Gigantic, the 23927
God (see also true god) 74-8, 81, 83-6, 90, 104, 144-73, 175-8, 185-7, 189-90,
198, 208, 210, 215, 245-6, 248-50
God of heaven and earth 166
Gods, the 7, 13-20, 23-27, 40-1, 63, 68-70, 72-3, 197-8, 208
Gods A B and C 126-7, 130, 133, 136-7, 148, 152-3, 164-6
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 12, 22, 23, 23n, 202
Golden Age 175
Gothic language 158-9
Goyim 156
Grammatical personification 36, 41, 45
Grand universal context 160, 174n, 241
Gravity 130
Greece and Greeks 6, 8, 14-21, 23n, 24, 29, 32-3, 43, 57, 62, 73, 110, 117, 131,
212, 231
Greek
art 124, 238, 241
culture 46
gods 6, 8, 24, 29-39, 42-6, 86, 110, 120, 122-5, 130
gods, 3 races of 30-1, 33, 120-1, 130
language 21, 36, 107, 110-11, 135, 193, 220n
mythology 14, 57, 70, 87, 91, 124, 150, 152-4
Greeks, Pelasgians turning into 107-8, 131
Grimm, Jakob Ludwig Karl 159n
Gruter, Janus 213n
Guanas 63n
Guarani language 114
Guigniaut, Joseph-Daniel 89n

H

Hagar 167
Ham 85, 131, 157
Heathenism/paganism 33, 80, 85, 93, 105, 156, 163-6, 174, 176, 179, 195,
205, 212, 240-2, 246-9
Hebraic style 170
Hebrew
language 50n, 51, 135, 169n
the name 156-7
nation/society 145
Heeren, Arnold Hermann 238
Helen 29
Helicon 43
Helios 29
Hemera 38, 44
Hera 28
Hercules 33
Herder, Johann Gottfried 229
Here 58
Hermann, Gottfried 34-46, 53, 56-8, 61, 66, 68, 82, 110n, 127, 197, 214, 236,
244, 251
Herodotus 15-20, 25, 46, 99, 107-8, 110, 111n, 232
Hesiod and the Theogony 15-19, 27, 35-8, 42-6, 49, 57, 58n, 125
saw Cyclopean structures 117
Heyne, Christian Gottlob 30-4, 36, 40, 48, 56-7, 66, 67-8, 71, 197, 214
Hierapolis 152
Hierarchy of languages 110
Hindus (see also Indians) 212
Historical
analysis (Schelling‟s method) 9, 251
dialectic 9
era/time 56, 166, 181-2, 205, 229-38
motivation 55
research 5
History 21, 26, 55-6, 65, 85, 91-2, 131, 139, 144, 178-81, 186, 191, 197-8, 216,
223, 225, 229-41, 244
of the earth 153, 236
of the gods 7, 15-20, 26, 33, 67, 85, 122, 125-7, 198, 201
of man 72, 236
of religion 159, 243
Homer 11-12, 15-17, 19-20, 32, 43, 45-6, 60, 71, 117, 239
saw Cyclopean structures 117
Homogeneous humanity 95, 103-4, 112, 129, 155, 175
Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus) 4, 70, 96
Horæ 46
Hottentots, naked 238
How far! 49, 238
Huet, Daniel 86
Hüllmann, Karl Dietrich 27
Humboldt, Alexander von 72
Hume, David 69, 74, 78-83, 182-3, 197, 231
Humility 177
Hyperion and Iapetus 39
Hyperphysical 39, 41
Hypothesis 22, 30n, 37, 42, 87, 92, 97, 120, 122, 123, 137n, 140, 163, 179,
180, 191, 197, 199, 243
of revelation 179-80

I

Iao 172
Iapetus 39
Ibri (said of Abraham) 157
Ideal and real, their union 200
Ideas, their unauthorized appropriation 203
Identity 23, 49-50, 105, 127, 182, 212, 224, 235
Idolatry 79-80, 84, 162, 167, 183n
Iliad 60, 201
Ilios 29
Illnesses—see Diseases
Illusion 14, 218, 242
Image 18, 24, 82, 90, 147, 161, 174, 212
identical, of divine self 212
of procreation 31, 35
Imagination 68, 73, 79, 123, 150-2, 183, 186, 207
Immersion 186, 189
Immortals 19, 71
Inachus 58
Indian
art 238-40
castes 99
gods 23-4
myths 23, 87
poetry, literature, and ideas 21-4
polytheism 90-1
temples 238
theology 90
Indians, their numerousness 97
Individuals and Society 59-61
Infinity 14, 81, 90, 104, 222, 230-2, 237-8
Initial interpretations, their status 15
Inner nature
of consciousness 194, 207, 215
of man 95, 101, 111, 151, 199, 216
of mythology 223
Inspiration 17, 28, 48, 117, 142, 170, 226, 240, 242
Instinct 53, 59, 63, 66, 75-8, 97
Interdependence
of facts 228, 246
of phenomena 35, 130
Invention 12, 15-16, 23, 28, 29, 41, 44, 47-8, 53, 55, 56, 59-60, 63, 65-6, 70,
80-2, 102, 122, 124-5, 150, 164, 191, 193-5, 200, 202, 222, 229, 231-2, 236,
241
no time for 65
unintentional but intentional 53
Io, fable of 58
Ion 157
Irreligious theories of mythology 68, 74, 207
Isaac 161
Isis 62
Islam 167
Isræl/Isrælites (see also Hebrew, Judaism) 121, 151, 154-8, 166, 172-4, 176-7,
184, 190, 195, 239, 249
Ixion 13

J

Jacob 158, 161, 169, 172, 177
Japheth and Japhetites 131-2
Japhetic languages 135-6
Jehovah 116n, 145-6, 151, 157n, 161-6, 168-72, 177
called on by name 145
Jeremiah 154
Jerusalem 154, 241
Jesuits 28
Jews/Jewish nation—see Isræl, Isrælites
Jones, Sir William 88-90, 214
Joseph II 219
Joshua 166
Judaism 167, 246
Judgement 102, 139
Julius Cæsar 159
Juno 13
Jupiter 33

K

Kanne, Johann Arnold 224-5
Kant, Immanuel 30n, 144
Kantian
categories 217
school 53
King of Nations 156
Kinship between languages 114
Knowledge 13, 22, 29, 35-7, 41, 53, 75, 112, 116, 138-9, 144, 147, 155, 160,
165, 176-7, 186, 188-90, 206, 220, 229, 236
as free activity 186
how it becomes theory 220
Kobolds 73

L

Laban the Syrian 163
Language (see also Confusion of) 21, 31, 40, 49-52, 56, 64, 100-3, 106-11, 114-
5, 132-6, 222
and Philosophy 49-53
and society 64
like god 133
Laplace, Pierre Simon, Marquis de, his Système du Monde 37
Lares 213n
Latin language 50, 110
Law and legislation 27, 35, 63, 64, 76, 95-6, 97, 113, 117, 125, 129, 153, 154,
168, 173-4, 178, 193, 203, 216, 219, 222, 230, 234, 243, 249
Lecturing 3, 202-4
Legends 6, 35, 46, 59, 60, 117-8, 157, 161, 201-2
Legio Fulminatrix 201
Leibnitz, Baron Gottfried Wilhelm von 51
Lenguas 63n
Lessing, Gottfried Ephraim, his Education of Mankind 83-4
Liberation (see also Free and Salvation) 18, 138, 139, 155, 174, 190, 247
Light 35, 86, 109n, 137n
Linus 35
Literal meaning 26, 34, 43, 88, 143n, 156, 195-8, 215, 223
Löscher, Valentin Ernst 134n
Lucian 116n, 152
Luther, Martin 106n, 146, 152, 166
Lycia 35

M

Macrobius, Ambrosius Theodosius 172
Magnetism 203
Mahābalipuram, temple of 238
Marcomani 159
Material and form 29, 38, 52-3, 77, 81, 88n, 118, 130, 133, 140, 188, 193-4,
248
M‟bajas 63n
Mechanism 89n, 220
Megara 118
Melchizedek 166-8
Memory 82, 102, 106, 113, 117, 124, 149, 161n, 175, 235
Menzel, Wolfgang 226n
Metaphysics 33, 165
Michælis, Johann David 151n
Misunderstanding 31, 38, 42, 57, 59, 66, 88, 188, 210, 214, 223
Mizraim (Egypt) 157
Mnemosyne 39
Mohammed 167-8
Monolatry 133
Monosyllabism 133-6
Monotheism 83, 90, 140, 144, 148, 161, 164, 167, 170-1, 174, 176, 178, 184-5,
187-8, 190-1, 208-9, 212, 225
absolute 128, 174
historical 119, 208
one-sided 139-40, 177-8
relative 128, 131, 133, 136, 139, 140, 142-3, 173-4, 178, 180, 212
Monuments and relics 5, 9, 116-18, 240
Moritz, Karl Philipp 11
Mosaic
law 173
scriptures 85-8, 101, 105, 144-74, 231
standpoint 150
Moser, Georg Heinrich 89n
Moses (see also Mosaic) 86, 90, 151-2, 169-73
Mosheim, Johann Lorenz von 27
Moslem 167
Mountains 38, 44, 73, 96, 221
Mountain and water spirits 73
Movement 38, 77, 100, 104, 108, 130, 131, 186-7, 191, 192, 197-8, 206, 210,
211-12, 216, 220, 222, 226, 229, 233, 244
Müller, Karl Otfried 199-202
Multitheism (see also Polytheism) 85, 88, 92, 121, 122, 127, 133, 137, 139,
151n, 153, 160, 164, 168, 181, 182-4, 192, 208, 210
Music 89n
Mystical 205, 225
Mystics 186
Mythological
ideas or representations 10-11, 24, 53, 55, 61-2, 65-6, 86, 125, 193-5, 199,
202, 207, 214, 223, 240
religion 244-6
Mythology
meaning of the word 6-7, 223

N

Names 6, 17, 18, 23, 28, 35, 42-3, 45-6, 73-4, 85, 106, 110, 116, 145-50, 153,
156-9, 161-7, 169-72
want to make one for themselves 116
Nations, the (as adherents of false gods) 156
Natural
monotheism 187
religion 244-50
theism 187
Nature 11, 29-30, 32, 34, 35, 39, 41, 51, 59, 69, 72, 76-7, 79, 85, 90, 98, 123,
129, 175, 185, 197, 205, 207, 210-11, 215-16, 221-4, 241, 243, 245
deification of 76, 178, 245
Nature-philosophy 11, 221, 224, 229
Nauplia 118
Necessary process 193
Neo-Platonists 13, 33
New South Wales 97
New Testament 105, 107n, 156, 159
Niebuhr, Carsten 99, 154
Nile 58-9, 111
Noah (see also Flood) 85, 131, 147, 153-6, 160
becomes a husbandman 153
Nomadic way of life 95, 153, 157, 162, 167
Nominal concept, its inadequacy 6
Nominalism, Aristotle‟s 49
Non-societies 155-6
Nose and throat sounds 115
Notitia Dei Insita 75-8, 245
Nyx 38, 44

O

Oannes 153
Objective explanation 207
Objectivity 18, 51, 186, 192, 195, 198, 202, 205, 207-9, 214, 215-6, 218, 223,
244
Obnoxium 180
Obscurity (see also Darkness) 9, 17, 20, 76, 89, 92, 138, 166, 200, 229, 238,
245
Occidentalism and Orientalism 232
Oceanus 39, 58
Odysseus 12, 60, 71
Olam 235
Old German Bards 71
Old Hebraic
language 156
poetry 25
Old Testament 85-6, 88, 104, 105, 109, 132, 142, 144-74, 179, 183n, 184
Olen 35
Olympiodorus 33n
Olympus 43
One God 104-5, 119, 121, 125-6
Organic 31, 52-3, 70, 76, 90, 129-30, 195, 235, 239
and inorganic 31, 129-30, 235
explanation 53
life 52-3, 76, 130
Original
events, conforming to laws 97
knowledge, postulated 89, 137n, 139
mankind 64, 66, 100, 112-13, 128-9, 136-7, 137n, 140-2, 164, 184-7, 205-6
meaning 8, 50, 67, 70, 75, 78, 82, 89, 135, 204, 222
religion 132
whole 89, 213
Orpheus 35, 70-1
Osiris (Egyptian God) 86
Ossian 71
Other people 202-3
Outcome (see also Result) 20, 30, 103, 152, 244
Ovid 106, 213n

P

Pallas 137n
Pampas 63n
Pantheism 210, 225
Parallelism 170
Pariahs in India 99
Past 20, 25, 46, 77, 113, 121, 123-5, 163, 167, 182, 223-4, 230, 232, 237-8
Paul 106n, 108, 110n, 246, 249
Payaguas 73n
Pelasgians 18, 23n, 107-8, 131
Pentecost 108
Persephone 37, 87
Persian theology 109n
Personalities 7, 26-8, 31-2, 42, 44-5, 68, 86, 124, 195, 249
Personification 28, 32, 34, 36, 41, 44-5, 52, 59
grammatical 36, 41, 45
Philosophical
consciousness 252
method 8, 219
process 29
religion 244-7, 250
viewpoint 47, 67-8
Philosophy 4-5, 51-3, 219-24, 229-30, 237, 244, 250-2
begins with question about meaning 8
individual propositions in 210
and mythology, their relationship 3-5, 217-220
of art 218, 241
of chemistry 217
of history 178, 218, 227, 229-30, 232, 237, 241
of language 4, 223
of mythology 4-5, 217-18, 219, 223-4, 227, 228-9, 237, 241
of Nature 4, 218, 223
of the postal entity 217
of religion 227, 243-4
and subsequent genitive 217
Phoebe and Tethys 39
Phoebus 34
Phoenicians 25, 123, 153, 239
Physical interpretations 29-30
Pindus 43
Planets, destruction of 137n, 138, 236
Platen-Hallermünde, Karl August Georg Max, Graf von 242n
Plato 32, 219
his Phædrus 32
his Politicus (Statesman) 102n, 111n, 175
his Theatætus 106n
Pleasure and understanding 139
Plural of magnitude 162, 168
Plutarch 213n
Plutus 46
Poetical
truth 91
world-epoch 14
Poetry and poetical viewpoint 6, 10-21, 24-8, 32, 34, 46-9, 52-6, 60, 67, 69-71,
88, 91, 124, 157, 163, 196, 199, 202, 203, 214, 241-3
and Philosophy 48-9, 52-6
in language itself 52
Polysyllabism 133, 136
Polytheism (see also Multitheism) 7, 69, 75-81, 83-4, 88, 91-3, 104-5, 108, 119-
22, 126, 133, 138-9, 148-52, 155, 160, 162, 164, 170-1, 173, 176, 178-9,
182, 184, 187-90, 192-3, 197, 205, 208, 211, 212, 213
and nationhood 156
as agency for a higher knowledge 138
its spread 132
simultaneous (material) 120-22, 193
successive (formal) 120-22, 125-6, 131, 136, 184, 208-10
successive, requiring explanation 121
Pontus 38
Poseidon 46, 110
Potences 77, 124, 148, 164, 170, 179, 207-9, 215, 249
Power 49, 59, 64, 78, 79, 82, 96, 100, 129, 148, 150, 153, 167, 168, 175, 189,
193, 201, 240
mythological 49
spiritual 100, 175
Prechronological era 231, 235-6
Prehistoric era 6, 9, 41, 59, 80, 110, 113, 116-7, 137, 150, 166, 181-4, 191,
230-7
Prehistoric monuments, gigantic 116-7
Present, the 123-4, 171, 186, 243
Priest
of Apollo 201
of El Elioun 166, 168
Priestly statutes 116
Priests 16
Egyptian 25
power-hungry 56
Primal
consciousness 185, 187
era/time 56, 88, 111, 124, 150, 156, 165-6, 168-70, 176-7, 229, 243
Primordial society 87
Principle(s)
or force 129
Prior
doctrine 78
publishing 204
Process 98, 102, 150, 184, 193-5, 206, 209-12, 216, 233
concept of 193, 210
mythological 207, 209, 212
racial 99
suprahistorical 184
theogonic 198, 204, 207-8, 215, 229
universal (absolute) 216-7
Procreation 31, 35, 54
Prometheus 44n
Propagation 98
Property 113, 203-4
Prophecy 172-4
Proprietorship, scientific 196n, 203
Providence 27, 96, 177
Psychology 243
Pythagoreans 49

Q

Questions 8, 10, 11, 107, 126, 186, 194, 204

R

Races of men 97
Racial process 99
Rational religion 78, 245, 248, 250
Rationalism 183, 246, 248
Really religious
ideas 68
meaning 68, 71, 75, 78
viewpoint 68, 74
Reason/rational 78, 84, 135, 172, 180, 194, 220-21, 232, 246, 248, 250
Rechabites 154, 168
Refraction 224
Relative monotheism 127, 128, 131-3, 136, 139-40, 142-3, 173, 174, 178, 180-
81
Relatively prehistoric era/time 184, 234-5
Relatively-One 127-8, 144, 147, 148, 155, 160, 164, 170-1, 173, 177-9, 181-2,
184-6, 190, 192
Relatively-true 139
Religious
affections, relation to speech 108
consciousness, alteration in 142
instinct 75, 78
meaning 67, 89, 208
Reminiscence and recollection—see Memory
Remote things, bearing on each other 4
Remoteness 96, 129
Rémusat, Jean Pierre Abel 134
Representation and actuality 124-5
Reprints 204
Result (see also Outcome) 3, 16, 19, 37, 66, 89, 93, 119, 128, 137, 138-9, 190,
194, 204, 214, 227, 233, 244, 246, 248, 251
Reunion 172
Revealed
monotheism 178
religion 246-7, 249-50
Revelation 81-3, 85, 87, 91, 140-3, 156, 159-61, 169, 178-81, 191, 239, 240,
244-50
no room for 141
the last 180
Rhea 39
Rio de la Plata 72
Robertson, William 72
Rosenmüller, Ernst Friedrich Karl 152n

S

Sacrifice 16, 18, 71, 82, 164, 195
Saddik 167
Salem 167
Salvation (see also Liberation) 177, 190
Samuel 158
Sanchuniathon 166, 172
Sanscrit 21-22, 110-111, 135
Saturn 33
Schelling, works of
On the Antiquity of Cyclopean Constructions in Greece 117n
Outlines of a Philosophy of Nature 229n
Philosophy of Art 241
Philosophy of Mythology 8, 136
Philosophy of Revelation 109n
On the Samothracian Deities 23n, 88n, 196n
System of Transcendental Idealism 223
Schnurrer, Dr. Friedrich 100n
Science
effect of one on others 227, 228
extension of 3, 227, 252
Sciences, kinship between different 4, 228
Scientific meaning in the mythological names 11, 31, 37-8, 42-3
Sea 27, 37, 39, 94, 95, 96, 110n, 162n
Second race of men 146-50, 154
Sedek 167
Selene 29
Self-consciousness, its history 223
Self-knowledge 206
Semele 37
Semitic languages and words 51, 111, 134-6
Seth 145-8
Shamanism 178
Shem 131, 156
Shetland Islands 96
Sidon 157
Significance 231
Socrates 32, 44, 45
Solicitation to polytheism 164
Solicitations of multiplicity 162
Solomon 151, 169
Sons
of (the) god 149-50, 151n
of men 151n
Sophocles 239
South American natives 40, 63, 72, 112-15
South Sea Islands 97
Spanish language 111
Speaking with tongues 108
Speech, failing power of 114-15
Speech sounds, from nose and throat 115
Spirit 14, 28, 31n, 33, 35, 37, 51, 60, 61, 79, 91, 95-104, 112, 114, 128-9, 132,
133, 137, 169, 172, 175, 176, 190, 194, 206, 210, 221, 224, 230, 248, 249-
50
philosophical 37
scientific 3
Spiritual
force or power 103, 175
monotheism 139
movements 99-100
Stationariness 100, 222
Stoics 33
Stolberg-Stolberg, Friedrich Leopold, Reichsgraf von 153n
Storr, Gottlob Christian 162n, 169n
Strabo 106
Subject
of art 240-2
pure capability 50
Subject-object 196n
Subjective 198, 204-5, 207, 213, 215
explanations 207
forces 215
meaning 204, 207
necessity 205
process 207
truth 213
Substance 17, 29, 38, 48, 83, 85, 118, 133, 135, 165, 185, 187, 189, 191, 195,
198, 221, 248
Successive polytheism 120-7, 136, 179, 181, 184, 189, 208, 210
Sufis 186
Sun 29, 76, 99, 122, 138n, 234
Superstition 33n, 40, 41, 68, 74, 80, 151n, 157, 174n, 212-13
Suprahistorical 184, 191, 193, 205, 235
Synopsis 214

T

Taaut (Phoenician God) 86
Tacitus 159
Tautegorical 196
Tethys 39
Tension 39, 110n, 209, 215
Terror—see Fear
Thamyris 35
Theia and Rhea 39
Theism 74, 78-81, 83, 90, 183n, 187, 188, 191, 236
Théisme raisonné 78-9
Themis and Mnemosyne 39
Theogonic process 198, 204, 207-8, 215-16, 229, 243
Theogony 7, 16-20, 122, 123, 127, 130, 198
Theological viewpoint 205
Theory 220
Things (in the sense of material objects) 68, 206, 207, 210
Thrace 35
Thucydides 231
Time and duration 14, 103-4, 130-1, 234-8
Titans 19, 30, 39, 43
Totality—see Whole
Tradition 32, 33, 86, 90, 98, 113, 142, 150, 152, 161, 218
Transmission 57, 61, 124, 218
Tribes 85, 92, 94-5, 100, 103, 113, 131-2, 154, 155, 159, 175, 178
Troy 29
True god 77, 85, 109, 144-6, 148, 152, 155, 160-1, 164-6, 168-73, 176-7, 182,
185, 187, 188, 190, 212, 239
Trust 45, 177
Turgot, Anne Robert Jacques 69n
Tyrtaios 19

U

Unambiguous polytheism 105, 121, 133, 149, 173, 190
Unconditionally-One 126, 136
Unity
of descent 94, 110, 112-14
of human race, original 100
Universality 6, 26, 29, 49, 60, 61, 83, 93, 108, 114, 119, 128, 131, 135, 139,
150, 152, 155, 158, 160, 162, 164, 174n, 183n, 190, 215, 216, 218, 224, 226,
240-42, 245, 252
Uranus 7, 33, 38, 43, 85, 120-21, 122, 127, 130, 152, 198

V

Van Diemen's Land 97
Vedas 90
Versatility 24-5, 122
Viewpoints 252
and subjects 4-5
relation to meaning 8-9
Volney, Constantin François de 76
Voss, Christian Friedrich (Lessing‟s publisher) 84n
Voss or Vossius, Gerhard Johannes 86, 179
Voss, Johann Heinrich 69-71, 214, 226

W

Water (see also Flood, Sea) 39, 58-9, 61, 73, 110n, 138, 152-3
Wine and vines 34, 37, 105, 153-4, 168
Wolf, Friedrich August 16n, 60
Wonder, that deserving of, loved by philosophers 219
Wood, Robert 71
World
external 76, 233
higher 243
of the gods 7, 20, 206
history 96, 109, 158
inorganic 30
organic 31, 53
physical 221, 222
primæval 236
of the senses 76
of spirit 221
World-epochs 14, 111n
World-view 62, 64
World-wisdom 60

Y

Yogis 186

Z

Zeus 19, 20, 30-31, 46, 58, 120-21, 122, 127, 130
Zodiac, signs of 30
Zoroaster 86
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Re: Historico-Critical Introduction to the Philosophy of Myt

Postby admin » Mon Mar 19, 2018 3:33 am

Translator’s Notes

Lecture One


I viewpoints and their subjects. The German word translated as “viewpoint” is “Ansicht.” There is a third way here, with the subjects defined in terms of the viewpoints of them. This would make them identical : the subject would be no more and no less than the viewpoint, and vice versa.

II the Horatian precept. Horace, the Roman poet and satirist, whose Latin name was Quintus Horatius Flaccus, lived from 65 to 8 B.C. This is from his Epistle known as the Ars Poetica or Art of Poetry, lines 191‒2. (The Loeb edition has nec deus instead of Ne Deus.) In context, in the translation by H. Rushton Fairclough, and with our part italicized, it reads:

Let no play be shorter or longer than five acts, if when once seen it hopes to be be called for and brought back to the stage. And let no god intervene, unless a knot come worthy of such a deliverer, nor let a fourth actor essay to speak.


The god, who should await a knot worthy of him, is otherwise known as the deus ex machina, a god introduced into an ancient Greek or Roman play to resolve the plot.

III actually. The German word is wirklich. In everyday discourse this means either “actually” or “really.” The root, however, is the same as that of English “work,” and has the meaning of “act” or “effect.” For this reason I have, with very few exceptions, translated it as “actual,” “actually,” or even “effecting,” rather than “real” or “really.” Credibility is lent to this policy by Schelling's use, on page 176 for example, of ein wirklicher realer Gott (an actual real god), and on page 215 of jene realen (wirklichen) Mächte (those real (actual) forces). For a little about the relationship between actuality and potence, refer to the quotations from Schelling and from Aristotle's Metaphysics in my note to page 77.

IV eliminating itself. Throughout this paragraph the German word corresponding to my “eliminate” is aufheben. This can mean simply “eliminate,” but it also has a sense of retaining in that which eliminates—retaining as an aspect—that which has been eliminated, superseded, transcended, or supplanted; thus in some contexts where, as is the case here, it is used reflexively, it is better thought of as self-transcendence. (A word which has sometimes been used by other translators is “sublate.”) Contradiction comes into this too: the elimination or transcendence takes place through contradiction. Compare the following, from Schelling's System of Transcendental Idealism [I 3, 392]:

. . . the sole determining root of activity in the ego is a continual contradiction within the ego itself . . . neither may the original contradiction in the essential nature of the ego itself be eliminated without the ego itself being eliminated, nor can the contradiction, in itself and independently, continue to exist. It will continue to exist only through the necessity of continuing to exist, that is to say through the striving which results from it, the striving to preserve it, and thereby to introduce identity into it.


Schelling, following Fichte, also called the seat of this activity the “subject-object”; later (see page 196) he became disinclined to use that term, but it appears still in the first lecture of the Philosophy of Mythology.

V merely nominal. Note that this is not the same as “verbal,” since in a sense (understanding the word “word” in the widest sense and allowing for all the various levels) words form everything there is. What is mere about the initial concept is not its verbal nature but the limited number of relations or aspects which have been considered or passed through before we utter the name. Behind the mere name a quality of thought called integrity or sincerity is either lacking or has not yet had time to be fulfilled. Language is not language unless the utterance has been sincerely understood.

VI original matter. German Urstoff. Usually I have translated Stoff as “substance,” but it does not seem appropriate here. Another such instance occurs on page 3, where I translate Stoff as “a lifeless body.”

VII phase. The German word corresponding to “phase” here is Moment, and I have consistently translated it thus. I have judged the English word “moment” to be misleading. Schelling uses the word to mean a distinct stage or turning point, or an element of a progression; an aspect (of some process) beyond which no further division or analysis is possible. In the German Moment the idea of movement, consistent with its derivation from Latin moveo (move) through momentum (moving power, consequence, moment of time), is much more strongly felt than in English. In the Philosophy of Mythology, page [II 2, 50], he says this explicitly: “Moment, equivalent, as is well known, to movimentum, from moveo.” Often the progression is purely conceptual and associated with time only when it is analysed. Aristotle has a great deal to say about “movement” in Book three of his Physics, for example “a thing can cause a motion by its potency, and it causes a motion by actualizing that potency.” There is a lot in Plotinus too which is relevant. And note Schelling's remarks on page 223 about philosophy's beginning to advance in phases, in reference to his System of Transcendental Idealism.

VIII the forthcoming science itself. This refers to the Philosophy of Mythology in twenty-nine magnificent lectures, to which the present work is an introduction. In its final form it dates from the period 1842‒6, although parts were written as early as 1815 and it was essentially complete by 1828. It was first published in 1857 in division two volume two of Schelling's collected works. A translation is currently in preparation.

IX poetry, something made up. The German word here is Dichtung, which refers to creative literature in general. It is contrasted with truth not only here but in the title of Goethe's autobiography Aus mein Leben—Dichtung und Wahrheit, literally “From my Life—Fiction and Truth” (meaning something like “Fact and Fiction”). But to translate the word as “fiction” here and in the following paragraphs would not be true to Schelling's meaning, because while “fiction” in English really has two more or less separate senses (a lie and a work of literature), poetry in fact is not regarded as fiction in either of them, yet it is clear (would you not agree?) that poetry is in Schelling's mind here. In other words, Dichtung has much more to do with beauty than the English “fiction.”

X Moritz. Doubtless Karl Philipp Moritz, 1756-93, German novelist and writer on æsthetics and antiquity; author of Götterlehre oder Mythologische Dichtungen der Alten (Theory of Gods, or Mythological Fictions of the Ancients) of 1790, which, though no longer among his best-known works, is probably the one referred to by Schelling. Moritz regarded the Greek myths as nothing more than the result of the free play of the fantasy of successive poets. Better known among his works is Ueber die bildende Nachahmung des Schönen (On the Creative or Imaginative or Plastic Imitation of the Beautiful). He was professor of ancient studies in Berlin, and a close friend of Goethe, whom he met in Italy. The Theory of Gods is a beautifully written work, which consists of a short theoretical section followed by poetical descriptions of most of the mythological characters. It begins as follows:

The mythological fictions must be regarded as a language of fantasy. Taken in this way, they make up a world of their own, as it were, and are removed from the context of actual things.

In its own field, fantasy follows its inclinations and is nowhere restricted. Its nature is to form and to mould; and for this purpose it creates for itself a broad arena, while it is careful to shun all abstract and metaphysical concepts which might interfere with the things it has fashioned.

It avoids most of all the concept of a metaphysical infinity and permissiveness, because its delicate creations, as if in a barren desert, would there at once be lost.

It flies from the concept of an existence without beginning; everything, with it, is a coming into existence, generation and birth, right back to the most ancient history of the gods.

None of the higher beings devised by fantasy exists for ever, none possesses unlimited power. Fantasy shuns, too, the concept of omnipresence, which would impede life and movement in its world of the gods.

It seeks, rather, to link the things it has fashioned as far as possible to time and place; it prefers to be supported by, and to hover just above, actuality. But because the excess of closeness and clarity in what is actual would impair its tenebrous light, its preference is to cling to the obscure history of the primæval world, where time and place are themselves often still wavering and undefined and where it has a field which is all the more free: Jupiter, the father of gods and men, was suckled on the isle of Crete with the milk of a goat and was raised by wood-nymphs.

Now through the fact that in the mythological fictions there lies hidden at the same time a secret trace of the most ancient, long-forgotten history, they become more venerable, because they are no empty dream-image or mere plaything of the imagination, something which falls apart in the wind, but receive from their profound interweaving with the most ancient events a power through which their evaporation into mere allegory is held back.

To wish to change the ancient history of the gods, through interpretations of all kinds, into mere allegories, is just as foolish an undertaking as would it be to try to transform these fictions, through forced explanations of all kinds, into pure and true history.

The hand which desires wholly to draw aside the veil which covers these fictions, destroys at the same time the tender web of fantasy and encounters then, in place of the hoped-for discoveries, pure contradictions and absurdities.

In order to harm nothing in these beautiful fictions, it is necessary at first, without regard for anything they might mean, to take them exactly as they are, so as to encompass, as far as possible, a single view of the whole, and to trace gradually, too, the more distant references and relationships between the individual fragments which still remain to us.


Now a general paragraph about the favourites of the gods:

The fictions about the love-mates of the gods acquire a marvellous piquancy through a kind of faint and melancholy glow which envelops them. When youth and beauty became prey to death, it was said that some deity had abducted his favourite from the earth. In this way grief became mixed with joy, and the lamentation for the dead one was eased. Hence these fictions are also most commonly found represented on the marble coffins of the ancients.


Finally one of his shorter pieces about individual mythological characters, in this case Cyparissus:

For this love-mate of Apollo too, only a short life was destined.—The beautiful boy had a tame stag, which he loved exceedingly and which had been a joy to him since childhood. This stag he shot by accident in the darkness of the wood, and his too tender heart led him to regret this deed so very much that, mourning unceasingly, he sought out the most lonely shade and within a short time did himself to death. After he had died, Apollo caused to rise from his grave the dark cypress, which immortalized the name of the sleeping boy and remained for ever an image of mourning.—One may see from this, as from the preceding fictions, what an indelible impression was made on those gentle souls by youth and beauty carried off by death.


XI Homer's Odyssey, of course. Homer's dates and even his very existence as an individual person are uncertain, but certainly he would have lived before 800 B.C. Herodotus places him in the ninth century. In this passage, Odysseus, disguised as a beggar, has returned to his home after many years, and is speaking to his wife Penelope, who does not recognize him. He is telling stories about a (necessarily fictitious) relationship between his disguised self and his real self as a third person: ἴσκε ψεύδεα πολλὰ λέγων ἐτύμοισιν ὁμοῖα, “he spoke, and made the many falsehoods of his tale seem like truth” (translation A. T. Murray).

XII Juno. It is curious to find the Roman name “Juno” used here, whereas most of Schelling's other references are to Greek gods, Ixion is Greek, and this fable is usually related of the Greek goddess Hera with whom Juno was identified by the Romans. It may even be that the hand of an editor is visible here, but if so we should be thankful that his zeal flagged so soon. Perhaps he interfered with some of the younger gods listed on page 33; and Jupiter in the same passage, being Roman, should not go with Uranus and Saturn, come to that. As for the Neo-Platonists and pure matter, compare the following, from the Enneads, III. 6. 7, of Plotinus (205‒270), written in Rome in the Greek language, and translated by A. H. Armstrong:

Matter falls outside all these categories [body, soul, mind, life, form, limit, potency], and cannot even rightly be spoken of as being. It could appropriately be called non-being; not in the sense in which movement or rest are not being, but truly non-being. It is a ghostly image of bulk, a tendency towards substantial existence; it is at rest, but not in any resting-place; it is invisible in itself and escapes any attempt to see it, and appears when one is not looking; even if you look closely you cannot see it. It always has opposite appearances in itself, small and great, less and more, deficient and superabundant, a phantom which does not remain, and cannot get away either: for it has no strength even for this, since it has not received strength from Nous but is lacking in all being. Whatever announcement it makes, therefore, is a lie. If it appears great, it is small, if more, it is less: its apparent being is not real, but a sort of fleeting frivolity. Hence the things which seem to come into being in it are frivolities, nothing but phantoms in a phantom, like something in a mirror which really exists in one place but is reflected in another. It seems to be filled but holds nothing; it is all seeming. “Imitations of real beings pass into and out of it,” ghosts into a formless ghost, visible because of its formlessness. They seem to act on it, but do nothing, for they are wraith-like and feeble and have no thrust; nor does matter thrust against them, but they go through without making a cut, as if through water, or as if someone in a way projected shapes in the void people talk about.


XIII forces. I have consistently translated the German word Macht as “force”; in the sense of an agency, influence, or source of power likened to a physical force. Gewalt, on the other hand, I have translated as “power.” Kraft, which Schelling does not, in this work, use in such a strict sense, becomes “force” or “power” depending on the content.

XIV the right frame of mind. The destruction of the manifestation by attempting to qualify it or particularize it is exactly the idea behind quantum physics. Specifically, the idea behind the “uncertainty principle” of Werner Carl Heisenberg; defining what it is possible or impossible to know (he says). In a given experimental arrangement, the product of the latitude within which a coordinate is determined and, in that same arrangement, the latitude for the conjugate momentum, must be greater than or equal to Planck's constant divided by four times pi. The same applies for the respective latitudes in energy and time of observation. To quote Paul Davies, in Other Worlds:

Atoms are so delicate that forces which are, by everyday standards, incredibly minute, can nevertheless produce drastic disturbances. The problems of carrying out any sort of measurement on an object only ten billionths of a centimetre in size and weighing a millionth part of a billion billionth of a gram, without destroying, let alone upsetting it, are formidable. When it comes to studying subatomic particles such as electrons, one thousand times lighter and with no discernible size at all, profound problems of principle, as well as practical difficulties, arise. . . .

Energy and time are incompatible characteristics for a photon, and which of the two is more accurately manifested depends entirely on the nature of the measurement that we choose to perform. We glimpse here for the first time the astonishing role that the observer himself will turn out to play in the structure of the microcosmos, for the attributes possessed by a photon appear to depend on just what quantities an experimenter may decide to measure.


Davies goes on to quote an American called John Wheeler, who supports Bohr's view (which Einstein opposed) that what a particle is “really” doing can only be discussed in the context of an actual experimental arrangement:

Is the very mechanism for the universe to come into being meaningless or unworkable or both unless the universe is guaranteed to produce life, consciousness and observership somewhere and for some little time in its history-to-be? The quantum principle shows that there is a sense in which what the observer will do in the future defines what happens in the past—even in a past so remote that life did not then exist, and shows even more, that “observership” is a prerequisite for any useful version of “reality.”


The point about the destruction of the manifestation was in essence already stated in Schelling's previous paragraph, in respect to “pure matter.” Hegel too mentions the same idea at the start of his introduction to the Phenomenology of the Spirit, in relation to the use of cognition as an instrument to get hold of absolute being. He adds that the attitude which is called “fear of error” is revealed as being, on the contrary, fear of the truth. Incidentally, in view of his understandably antipathetic attitude even towards molecules, Schelling probably would not have approved of quantum physics. To quote from the Philosophy of Mythology, [II 2, 268]

True coherence is itself not a physical, but a purely spiritual relationship. True coherence is actually concrescence; not, though, of parts or molecules which are themselves already physical, but of spiritual potences (spiritual taken to mean, that is, the opposite of that which is already concrete).


XV Francis Bacon Verulam, Viscount St. Albans, 1561‒1626, English philosopher, statesman, and essayist. These words are found in De Sapienta Veterum, details of which appear in my note to page 28. They come from Bacon's preface to that work, and Schelling (who regarded Bacon as the most eminent British philosopher) has abbreviated and altered them somewhat. What Bacon wrote about the Greek myths was:

. . . sed veluti reliquiæ sacræ et auræ tenues temporum meliorum; quæ ex traditionibus nationum magis antiquarum in Græcorum tubas et fistulas incidissent.


In the 1858 edition of his collected works (volume six) this (with a few words preceding it) is translated, by the editor, James Spedding, as:

. . . for so they must be regarded as neither being the inventions nor belonging to the age of the poets themselves, but as sacred relics and light airs breathing out of better times, that were caught from the traditions of more ancient nations and so received into the flutes and trumpets of the Greeks.


XVI societies. The German word Volk, which occurs very frequently in these lectures, usually becomes “society” in this translation, because that is what best fits Schelling's meaning. In some contexts (particularly biblical or rhetorical ones) I have translated it as “nation,” which accords with Hume's sense in lecture four. (In English “nation” in this sense is rather old-fashioned.) Occasionally it is translated as “a people.” Schelling uses the German Romance word Nation only very rarely. The division of the world into nations or societies is one of the principal irrationalities and evils of the present day, but it is also possible to take advantage of it in some ways. There is a summary or definition in Kant's Anthropology from the Pragmatic Point of View of 1798 (part two section C); this will confuse matters, although a certain sort of person might approve:

By the word Volk (populus) is understood a united multitude of people within one area of land, to the extent that that multitude makes up a whole. That multitude or even a part thereof, which recognizes that it is united, through common descent, into a civil whole, is called a Nation (gens); the part which repudiates these laws (the wild multitude within this Volk), is called Pöbel (vulgus) [rabble], whose unlawful union is Rottiren (agere per turbas) [acting as a mob, rioting].


On page 129 Schelling describes (and to that extent defines) societies as “ensembles of spiritual differences.”

XVII Herodotus, c485‒c425 B.C., Greek traveller and historian. This is from his Histories II, 53. In the Loeb edition there are the following differences: 1. οΰτοι instead of Ωΰτοί. 2. δὲ εἰσὶ instead of εἰσιν. 3. ῞Ελλησι instead of ῞Ελλησιν. The translator of that edition (A. D. Godley) rendered it “these are they who taught the Greeks of the descent of the gods,” but I do not like this. Aubrey de Sélincourt and A. R. Burn (Penguin) say “composed” (“are the poets who composed our theogonies” [sic]). The word ποιήσαντες certainly relates to “making” or “poetry,” not “teaching.” Compare the nineteenth-century word “mythopoeia,” meaning the composition or making of myths. My use of simply “made” in the translation reflects Schelling 's German. He defines the word in more detail on page 20.

XVIII Friedrich August Wolf, 1759 ‒ 1824, German classical philologist, antiquarian, and Homer specialist. He was a close associate of Goethe. His understanding of Hellenism led him to regard it as an ideal for the harmonious education of man, and he encouraged the introduction of the study of classical philology in schools. The reference is to his Prolegomena ad Homerum: an introduction to his edition of the complete extant works of Homer, published in 1795 under the title: Homerus, Opera Omnia. An English translation of the Prolegomena was published in Princeton in 1985. In that edition this footnote, referring to the same line from Herodotus, appears on page 80:

Wesseling wrongly takes the words “These are the ones who made a theogony for the Greeks” in the sense that they are described as the first two to have expounded the theogony in verse, not to have founded it. Clearly ποιεῖν does occur in that sense. But the addition of a dative to the verb used in that sense would need illustration from examples, of a kind completely unknown to me. Athenagoras also agrees with the common view in Apologia pro Christianis 17, citing that passage and twisting it to agree with his opinion.


XIX Herodotus, again Histories II, 53. I have translated from Schelling's German. It may interest the reader to compare the translation by Sélincourt and Burn:

But it was only—if I may so put it—the day before yesterday that the Greeks came to know the origin and form of the various gods, and whether or not all of them had always existed; for Homer and Hesiod are the poets who composed our theogonies and described the gods for us, giving them all their appropriate titles, offices, and powers, and they lived, as I believe, not more than four hundred years ago.


XX πρώτιστα is from the Theogony of Hesiod (an early Greek poet, probably eighth century B.C.). It begins (after the first 103 lines, containing at least three distinct preludes) with the famous line: ῏Η τοι μὲν πρώτιστα Χάος γένετ᾿. This is translated by Hugh G. Evelyn-White (in the Loeb edition) as “Verily at the first Chaos came to be” and by Dorothea Wender (Penguin) as “Chaos was first of all.” Refer to page 45, where Schelling discusses Hermann's attitude to this line. Schelling's German version there (Siehe zuerst war Chaos, “Lo, first of all was Chaos”) has, like Miss Wender's, just a “was,” not a “came to be” (this difference is the subject of a long-running dispute among the learned), and a “Lo” at the beginning. Note that in the Philosophy of Mythology, on page [II 2, 596] for example, Schelling does translate this phrase as zuerst ward Chaos (first of all Chaos came to be).

XXI enfoldment = Einwicklung; unfolding = Entfaltung or (elsewhere) Entwicklung. This latter usually means “development” or “evolution,” with the implication, sometimes, that the process has run its full course; it can also mean “argument” or “analysis.” On the other hand, to translate Einwicklung as “implication” or “envelopment” would not be right. Envelopment of something means that something else is wrapped around it, whereas the idea in enfoldment is of something still wrapped up in itself and as yet undeveloped. “Involution,” too, would not be right in English as it refers more to complication (but Schelling uses it at [I 3, 268]: “Entwicklung out of an original Involution”). “Enfoldment” or “infoldment” might be considered a technical term in some dialectical logic. (Refer too to my note to page 160 about Schelling's use of the Latin term implicite.)

XXII Herodotus, Histories II, 52. In the translation by Sélincourt and Burn:

In ancient times, as I know from what I was told at Dodona, the Pelasgians offered sacrifices of all kinds, and prayed to the gods, but without any distinction of name or title—for they had not yet heard of any such thing. They called the gods by the Greek word theoi—"disposers‟—because they had "disposed‟ and arranged everything in due order, and assigned each thing to its proper division. Long afterwards the names of the gods were brought into Greece from Egypt and the Pelasgians learnt them—with the exception of Dionysus, about whom they knew nothing till much later. . . .


XXIII at least not real poetry. This is an example of the method of redefinition. Poetry cannot have come first; and if it did, there is a contradiction. We accept that poetry in the sense of the old definition did come first. We redefine the word, therefore, so as to exclude the poetry which could not have come first and did come first, and we use the predicate of “not real” to achieve this. Incidentally this also redefines “real,” as it has had its field of application made more precise. (But that is a little like the pressure of the sun's light on Jupiter; poetry is very much redefined, reality slightly so.) Poetry still cannot come first, but poetry has been redefined so as to exclude that which (earlier called poetry) did come first. This redefinition was based on observed facts, which are themselves defined in the same way in the moment of observation. Why are they observed (noted)? Because they contain or confront us with a contradiction. Note that, although we were forced to redefine in some way, we had a choice; we could have redefined poetry as being capable either of coming first or not, had this better suited our overall purpose.

XXIV Alkaios and Tyrtaios. Alkaios or Alcæus of Mytilene in Lesbos was a lyric poet of the seventh to sixth century B.C., a contemporary of Sappho. Only fragments of his poems survive; they deal with political as well as personal themes, wine, love, and his sufferings; there are also hymns to the gods. Where public affairs are concerned he shows a passionate energy. Cicero in his Tusculan Disputations describes Alkaios as “singing of the love of youths,” and Horace (Odes I 32) says that he “sang of Lykos, beautiful with his dark eyes and dark hair.” Tyrtaios, Turtaios, or Tyrtæus lived at Sparta about the middle of the seventh century B.C. He encouraged the Spartans with his war-songs and also exhorted them to political peace and order. Again only fragments of his work survive.

XXV In the first passage from Hesiod, the Loeb edition has the following differences: 1. βίηφι instead of βιῇφι. 2. βασιλευέμεν instead of βασιλεύεμεν. 3. Γαίης instead of Γάιης . 4. Ὀλύμπιον instead of ὀλύμπιον. 5. Ζῆν instead of Ζῆν᾿. 6. ὃ instead of ὁ . 7. ἑὰς instead of ὲῢ.

Evelyn-White's translation, with Schelling's emphasis, runs:

But when the blessed gods had finished their toil, and settled by force their struggle for honours with the Titans, they pressed far-seeing Olympian Zeus to reign and to rule over them, by Earth's prompting. So he divided their dignities amongst them.


Miss Wender's translation is:

But when the blessed gods had done their work
And forcibly put down the Titans' claim
To honour, they fulfilled Earth's plans and urged
Far-seeing Zeus, Olympian, to rule
And be the king of the immortals. Thus
He gave out rank and privilege to each.


The Herodotus passage (Histories, Book II, 53 still), has in Loeb δὲ εἰσὶ, not δέ εἰσι. Schelling's dash indicates an omission, and the emphasis is his. Two possible translations are A. D. Godley's “they who—gave to all their several names, and honours, and arts,” or Sélincourt and Burn's “—giving them all their appropriate titles, offices, and powers.” (To see this in context refer to the note to page 16.)

The second passage from Hesiod's Theogony is from the end of the prelude. (The Loeb edition lacks the comma after δάσσαντο .) In context, translated by Evelyn-White:

Tell how at the first gods and earth came to be, and rivers, and the boundless sea with its raging swell, and the gleaming stars, and the wide heaven above, and the gods who were born of them, givers of good things, and how they divided their wealth, and how they shared their honours amongst them, and also how at the first they took many-folded Olympus.


Miss Wender's translation is similar.

XXVI Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1749‒1832, German poet, novelist, dramatist, and scientist. Already very famous in his lifetime, he had his iron in a lot of fires, but can be wearisome in places as well as inspirational. He is most famous, of course, for his large-scale version of Faust. What Schelling is referring to is the Cotta edition of Goethe's works in sixty volumes, published between 1827 and 1842. Volumes 41 to 60 bear the secondary title of Posthumous Works and secondary volume numbers 1 to 20. Schelling's volume XI is thus volume 51 of the complete works, containing Goethe's writings on “mineralogy, geology, and meteorology,” and it was published in 1833. What Goethe says (in a short section entitled “Assorted Admissions”) is, beginning on page 189:

Everything which I state here I have observed repeatedly and regularly; in order that the images should not be erased from the memory I arranged for the most detailed drawings to be made, and so, in respect to that part of the Earth which I have studied, I have always found method and order, and consistently, in fact, in many different localities.

Following this principle of life and research, where only what is stable has come to my notice, since even basalt, which had been so problematic, was in the end obliged to appear well-ordered and thus necessary, I cannot change my way of thinking for the sake of a doctrine which starts out from an opposite viewpoint, where there is no longer any question of anything definite and methodical, but of accidental and unconnected occurrences. According to my point of view the Earth built itself up of its own accord; here, though, it seems to have everywhere burst asunder and these chasms to have been filled up from unknown depths below.

In making this admission I am not intending at all to put myself forward as an opponent of the more recent doctrine, but here too to assert the rights of my objective (gegenständlichen) thought, and here I will certainly admit that if, like the more recent researchers who maintain their thesis with such great unanimity, I too had long been able to form my view in the Auvergne or indeed even in the Andes, and to have had impressed upon me, as a law, that which at present appears to me as an anomaly in Nature, I too would probably have found myself in complete agreement with the doctrine now current.


Before I found a copy of the Cotta edition I looked at later editions, differently paginated, and made a guess as to what might be on page 190. I came up with this, from a short piece called Draft of an Introduction to Geological Problems, a few pages before. It is not the passage to which Schelling is directly referring, but it is, I think, relevant and rather more interesting and more memorable:

The most appalling thing one has to listen to is the repeated assurance that the entire body of natural scientists share, in this respect, the same conviction. But he who knows men, will know how that comes about: good, capable, and bold minds hammer out a view like that for themselves on the basis of the probabilities; they win over adherents and pupils; such a group acquires a literary power, the viewpoint is rated more highly, exaggerated, and propounded with a certain passionate energy. Hundreds upon hundreds of well-meaning, intelligent men, who work in other disciplines, and who want to see that their own field, too, is lively and effective, distinguished, and respected—what would be better and more sensible for them to do than to leave those others to their field and to assent to that which does not affect themselves? And then that is called universal agreement among scientists.


XXVII true, that is to say internal. I read this as a definition of both “true” and “internal” in terms of each other.

XXVIII The “West-Eastern Divan” was published in 1819-20. There are various pronouncements about the Indians and their religions in Goethe's notes to this book of poetry inspired by the Persians. (There are also a number of ideas about other subjects which Schelling mentions, subjects about which for the most part Goethe seems to hold the same view.) There is no specific discussion of a relation, or its absence, between ancient Greek theology and Indian. The passage Schelling is probably referring to is the following, from the article on Mahmud of Gasna:

Today the Indian monstrosities are still detestable for any pure sensibility, how ugly must they have appeared to the imageless Mohammedans! . . . The Indian doctrine is worthless from beginning to end; today still, in fact, its many thousand gods, gods indeed not even arranged in a hierarchy, but all equally possessed of unlimited power, simply confuse all the more the accidents of life, encourage the senselessness of every passion and favour the madness of depravity as the highest level of holiness and bliss. And even a higher polytheism, like that of the Greeks and Romans, was still in the end doomed to lose its believers and itself on false paths. In comparison the highest praise is due to the Christian [doctrine not polytheism, presumably], whose pure, noble origin . . . etc.


“expressed there.” This refers to Schelling's dissertation Ueber die Gottheiten von Samothrace (on the Samothracian Deities), not to Goethe. Another reference is made to the same passage in lecture four in a note on page 88. The page number (30) cited by Schelling in each case is not that in the collected works, where this dissertation may be found on pages [I 8, 345‒422]); there the relevant page numbers are almost certainly [I 8, 362‒3]. (The collected edition has additional numbers in the margins, in fact, but they only run from 1 to 20, and do not continue to the extensive notes which follow the dissertation itself. There are further curious numbers in the body of the text, running from 1 to 122, but these are references to the notes. The work was first published in 1815 and had, then, 117 pages.) In translation the passage runs:

One may be tempted to draw another conclusion from that comparison, cursory though it may be, between Samothracian and Old Testament ideas, especially since, taken further, it would lead to deeper correspondences still. One could hope to find in it a new confirmation of the older viewpoint formulated by Gerhard Vossius, Bochart [for these two, refer to my notes for page 86], and other highly regarded researchers. According to that view, the entire theology of paganism is just the misconstruction of the Old Testament story, and of the revelation imparted to God's chosen people. This revelation, therefore, is taken to be something ultimate and final, beyond which no historical explanation can go. But how is that possible, if this presumption itself were only arbitrary? If, already in Greek theology (not to speak of Indian, and other Oriental theologies), there were to appear the remnants of a knowledge, indeed of a scientific system, which far exceeded the circumference drawn by the oldest revelation known through written relics? If, in any case, this revelation had not so much broached a new stream of knowledge as simply confined the stream already broached by an earlier revelation within borders which were narrower, but for that very reason indicated all the more surely the way forward? If, once corruption and irresistible perversion into polytheism had begun, it had preserved from that original system, with the wisest possible discrimination, only a part, preserved those features, though, which would be able to lead it once again towards the great and comprehensive whole? Yet whatever the truth is about that, those comparisons do at least prove that Greek religion may be traced back to higher wellsprings than Egyptian and Indian ideas. Indeed if the question were to arise of which of the various theologies, be it the Egyptian and Indian, or on the other hand the Greek, had remained closer to the original source; then the unbiassed researcher would scarcely hesitate before deciding for the latter.


XXIX lack of form. In German, Unform. The passage quoted above from the Westöstliches Divan does not say this, exactly. Perhaps the following gives a better idea; from a letter, dated the twenty-second of October 1826, written to Karl Wilhelm von Humboldt, the German translator of the Bhagavad-Gita:

I am in no way averse to things Indian, but I am frightened of them, because they draw my imagination towards the formless and irregular, against which I must more than ever be on my guard.


XXX This refers to a passage in Herodotus which mentions the “Linus” song —a dirge for a slain youth or, as Schelling and others think, for a lost god, a young fertility divinity cut off in his prime—which was widespread amongst ancient peoples. Originally the song was perhaps a lament for the harvested crops. (Refer to my note to page 35.) Note that a few pages earlier there are flutes and women singing a hymn to Dionysus. The part about no more being added comes from the sentence before the Linus-song is mentioned. In A. D. Godley's translation:

They keep the ordinances of their fathers, and add none [sic] others to them. Among other notable customs of theirs is this, that they have one song, the Linus-song.


In the translation of Sélincourt and Burn this lack of addition becomes a lack of adoption:

The Egyptians keep to their native customs and never adopt any from abroad. Many of these customs are interesting, especially, perhaps, the “Linus” song.


XXXI This reference to Egyptian priests is a dig at Johann Heinrich Voss (refer to the note for page 69), who opposed Creuzer (page 89). The following passage from the Philosophy of Mythology [II 2, 278], although necessarily taken out of context, may indicate what is going on:

When Herodotus, whose uncommon accuracy is only confirmed all the more by all more recent investigations, finds in the Egyptian Osiris an essential core related to, and similar to, the Greek Dionysus, and thus admittedly recognizes in Dionysus some higher quality, which Voss calls “mystical,” then Voss describes Herodotus in this regard as a romancer taken in by Egyptian priests.


The passage where Herodotus finds Dionysus in Osiris is in his Histories II, 143‒146; II, 42 and II, 49 (which is quoted in my note to page 110) are also relevant.
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Re: Historico-Critical Introduction to the Philosophy of Myt

Postby admin » Mon Mar 19, 2018 3:34 am

Lecture Two

XXXII I have supplied the words “on the first level”; it looks as though something of the kind may have gone astray during some editing process.

XXXIII Johannes Clericus, 1657‒1736, also known as Jean Le Clerc of Amsterdam, Dutch theologian born in Switzerland. He was unorthodox in that he interpreted the Bible without resorting to dogma, and because of his strong emphasis on reason as the point of reference in questions of religion. The work referred to is an edition of Hesiod's works: Hesiodi Ascræi quæcumque exstant, Græce et Latine, ex recensione J. Clerici, cum ejusdem animadversionibus, in two volumes, published in Amsterdam in 1701.

XXXIV Johann Lorenz von Mosheim, c1693-1755, German Protestant theologian. He was the first Enlightenment historian of Christianity, and he used the analysis of sources to try to give Church history greater objectivity and free it from the domination of dogmatism. (For an example, see my note to page 201 about the legio fulminatrix.) The commentary referred to was incorporated in the Latin version of Cudworth's Systema (see below). There is a good edition of Cudworth, published in three volumes in 1845, which includes Mosheim's very extensive notes and dissertations translated into English by John Harrison. The only reference to mythology is in one of Mosheim's notes to chapter five, section three, on “the soul's celestial and ethereal body” (volume three page 293):

It is notorious that those who embodied the dogmas of antiquity in verse, borrowed the colouring and embellishments, by which they sought to gain for them a readier access into the popular mind, from ancient history, and formed a certain discipline called in the present day mythology, compounded of the precepts of ancient philosophers and the legends of their own country. Hence they also obscured with the same ornaments and fictions the most simple doctrine of the state of souls after death, in order to beguile and conciliate the ears of the multitude, who held in firm remembrance the affairs and exploits of bygone ages as handed down from their ancestors. First of all the subterranean place itself in which disembodied souls were supposed to be confined was depicted by them in such a way as accorded with Grecian conceptions, and the manners of the times in which they lived. In the next place, being aware that that incredible multitude of souls could not possibly dispense with a leader and king, they selected Pluto out of ancient tradition, a certain king probably of Epirus or some other province, well known to the common people for his severity, and assigned to him the sovereignty of the shades. . . . although the first authors and inventors of fables obeyed any thing other than reason, still I am certain that their discipline is in a certain measure consistent and in keeping with itself, and that nothing has been handed down by them which is repugnant to its first principles.


XXXV Ralph Cudworth, 1617‒1688, English philosopher and divine. Author of The True Intellectual System of the Universe, published in 1678. The first Latin version was published in Jena in 1733, and included a commentary by Mosheim (see above). The fourth chapter, which forms more than half of the book, is intended to show that a primitive monotheistic creed was implied in the ancient paganism. Cudworth espoused a Christian Platonism, influenced by Descartes, and opposed this both to the materialism of Hobbes (whom he suspected of atheism) and to Puritan dogmatism or fatalism.

XXXVI Karl Dietrich Hüllmann, 1765‒1846, German historian. He is best known for his works on economic and constitutional history, but did also publish Theogonia (investigations relating to the origin of the religion of antiquity) in 1804, and a discussion of the origin of the Cyclopes in 1826. The work to which Schelling refers, the Anfänge der griechischen Geschichte, was published in 1814.

XXXVII Euhemerus. A Sicilian writer in Greek who lived around 300 B.C. and who advanced, in his “travel novel” Heira Anagraphe (Sacred Scripture), the theory (for which he pretended to have found documentary evidence in an imaginary island, Panchæa, in the Indian ocean) that the gods of mythology had their origin in kings or heroes deified by those they had ruled over or benefited. “The Alexandrian period” commonly refers to the last three centuries B.C., deriving its name from the Egyptian city of Alexandria, rather than from Alexander the Great himself (356‒323 B.C.) who founded the city. Euhemerus was made known to the Romans by Ennius (239‒169 B.C.), but apart from that his work survives only in fragments and in an epitome by Eusebius.

XXXVIII “Occasions” is Ereignisse in German. For a remark on Schelling's use of this word, please refer to my note to page 102 in lecture five.

XXXIX Marcus Tullius Cicero, 106‒43 B.C., Roman consul, orator, and writer. He is said to have been the inventor of the words moralis, essentia, qualitas, individuum, vacuum, proprium, inductio, elementa, definitio, differentia, notio, comprehendo, appetitio, and finally of that concept much misused and inflated by mathematicians, infinitus. Although Cicero had Greek models for these words, Voltaire was right to say “He taught us how to think.” (But it may well be time for a review.) The work quoted is On the Nature of the Gods, written in 45 B.C. The Loeb edition has: 1. intellegi in place of intelligi. 2. quicquam instead of quidquam. 3. No commas after quicquam and quæri. 4. possit instead of potest (noted as a variant). Schelling gives the chapter reference; the section reference is I, 43.

The passage is set in the mouth of Velleius, portrayed as a dogmatic and arrogant follower of Epicurus. In Horace C. P. McGregor's translation it reads:

What race of men or nation is there which does not have some untaught apprehension of the gods? Such an innate idea Epicurus calls “prolepsis,” that is to say, a certain form of knowledge which is inborn in the mind, and without which there can be no other knowledge, no rational thought or argument.


H. Rackham's translation is worth quoting too, just because it is so different:

For what nation or what tribe of men is there but possesses untaught some “preconception” of the gods? Such notions Epicurus designates by the word “prolepsis,” that is, a sort of preconceived mental picture of a thing, without which nothing can be understood or investigated or discussed.


(I feel happier with McGregor.)

Epicurus, much discussed and quoted by Cicero, was a Greek philosopher who lived from 341 to 270 B.C. He had great personal charm, and after his service as an ephebe, he established a school in Athens in his private garden. He wrote many books, but all his works are lost except three letters and two collections of maxims. The text of these is not at all reliable as they were preserved only in the form of a copy by Diogenes Lærtius, who lived in Cilicia very much later (around 200‒250 A.D.), and wrote in Greek “The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers.” The following passage (sections 76‒77) from the Letter to Herodotus, in the translation by Cyril Bailey, is the one which is usually taken to express Epicurus's view about the completely idle gods:

Furthermore, the motions of the heavenly bodies and their turnings and eclipses and risings and settings, and kindred phenomena to these, must not be thought to be due to any being who controls and ordains or has ordained them and at the same time enjoys perfect bliss together with immortality (for trouble and care and anger and kindness are not consistent with a life of blessedness, but these things come to pass where there is weakness and fear and dependence on neighbours). Nor again must we believe that they, which are but fire agglomerated in a mass, possess blessedness, and voluntarily take upon themselves these movements. But we must preserve their full majestic significance in all expressions which we apply to such conceptions, in order that there may not arise out of them opinions contrary to this notion of majesty. Otherwise this very contradiction will cause the greatest disturbance in men's souls.


Of this, Cicero's Cotta (Of the Nature of the Gods III, 1), deliberately unsympathetic no doubt, says (in the translation by Hubert M. Poteat):

. . . in point of fact, the only consideration that deters him from denying their [the immortal gods'] existence is his fear of denunciation. But when he declares that the gods do nothing and are interested in nothing . . . I cannot but believe he is making game of us . . .


Next, from section 78 of the Letter to Herodotus, what Epicurus actually says of chance:

Furthermore, we must believe that to discover accurately the cause of the most essential facts is the function of the science of nature, and that blessedness for us in the knowledge of celestial phenomena lies in this and in the understanding of the nature of the existences seen in these celestial phenomena, and of all else that is akin to the exact knowledge requisite for our happiness: in knowing too that what occurs in several ways or is capable of being otherwise has no place here, but that nothing which suggests doubt or alarm can be included at all in that which is naturally immortal and blessed.


I have transcribed two further passages from the Letter to Herodotus in my note to page 55.

XL Differences between the Loeb edition and Schelling's version: 1. enim is inserted after cum. 2. No commas after aliquo, more, and est. 3. intellegi instead of intelligi . Schelling gives the chapter reference; the section reference is I, 44.

McGregor:

This is not a belief which has been prescribed to us by some authority, or law, or custom: it rests rather upon a firm and continuing consensus of opinion that we must admit the existence of the gods.


Rackham:

For the belief in the gods has not been established by authority, custom or law, but rests on the unanimous and abiding consensus of mankind; their existence is therefore a necessary inference.


XLI Bacon's De Sapientia Veterum (On the Wisdom of the Ancients) was first published in a small duodecimo volume in 1609. Its plan is to recite a number of myths, disclosing the moral, physical, and political lessons supposed to lie latent in them. The hypothesis on which the interpretations rest is of a primæval wisdom and high intellectual cultivation which existed on the Earth and passed out of memory long before Homer, but expressed itself in allegorical symbols. Bacon traces the origin of the myths to a time when abstract nouns had not been invented, and everything was spoken of as a person, assigned a name and a sex. For example, people said “Selene embraces Endymion” instead of “the sun is setting and the moon is rising.” The work was regarded, during his lifetime and for many years afterwards, as next in importance to the Essays. Bacon certainly interprets some of the myths in a political way, although the relevance to his own age is rather obscure, as is also the question of whether, as Schelling says, he is using them. Only the first three (“Cassandra, or Divination”; “Typhon, or a Rebel”; “The Cyclopes, or the Ministers of Terror”) of the thirty-one myths he interprets are treated in a political sense. And here is an extract from his preface, translated into English by Sir Arthur Gorges in 1619:

For who can be so stupid and blind in the open light, as (when he hears how Fame, after the Giants were destroyed, sprang up as their youngest Sister) not to refer it to the murmurs and seditious reports of both sides, which are wont to fly abroad for a time after the suppressing of insurrections? Or when he hears how the Giant Typhon having cut out and brought away Jupiter's nerves, which Mercury stole from him, and restored again to Jupiter; doth not presently perceive how fitly it may be applyed to powerful rebellions, which take from Princes their sinews of money and authority, but so, that by affability of speech, and wise edicts (the minds of their subjects being in time privily, and as it were by stealth reconciled) they recover their strength again? Or when he hears how (in that memorable expedition of the Gods against the Giants) the braying of Silenus his Ass, conduced much to the profligation of the Giants; doth not confidently imagine, that it was invented to shew, how the greatest enterprises of Rebels are oftentimes dispersed with vain rumours and fears?


XLII Pedro Calderón de la Barca, 1600‒81, Spanish dramatist. Of his work, about a hundred and ten comedias (secular plays) are preserved, and over seventy autos sacramentales (religious plays), to which genre he devoted himself entirely after 1651. His plays are said to have a Catholic purpose yet universal significance. The mystical La Vida Es Sueño (Life is a Dream) was written around 1631. His Mágico Prodigioso (the “Miraculous Magus,” or “Mighty Magician”), based on the life of Saint Cyprian, an analogue to Faust, was written in 1637, published in 1663, and translated into German in 1816 by Johann Diederich Gries (1775‒1842). Schelling quotes from this German translation and I have translated from that. Cyprian, speaking of a passage in Pliny saying that God is the highest good, all-knowing and all-powerful, complains that he cannot understand this in the light of the lower passions of a human kind displayed in the myths of Jupiter, Danæ, and Europa. It is in reply to this that the demon utters the speech which Schelling quotes. Cyprian is not satisfied with his answer, and the argument continues.

XLIII this—sic. The use of the singular number, here, seems intended to imply that electromagnetism and chemical action (Chemismus) are different aspects of a single natural phenomenon or process. Incidentally, there is an English word “chemism,” but I have judged it to be too unfamiliar for the main text, although I use it in this note. In fact there is a lot behind these apparently innocuous terms, and Schelling has an extensive theory about the processes they signify, a theory which would be done a disservice were I to try to summarize it here, particularly because of its unfamiliarity. I shall simply offer the following samples which may arouse interest rather than repel. The unenlightened reader will doubtless find himself almost wholly at a loss; I can only remind him that the terminology does not have the same meaning as that customary today.

1. (from the Introduction to the Outline of a System of Nature-Philosophy or concerning the Concept of Speculative Physics and the Inner Organisation of a System of this Science, of 1799, page [I 3, 317]):

We have, therefore, the following schema of the dynamic process:
First level: Unity of the product—magnetism
Second level: Duplicity of the products—electricity
Third level: Unity of the products—chemical process


2. (from the same work, page [I 3, 321]):

Magnetism, electricity, and chemical action are the categories of the original construction of Nature (matter)—this withdraws and lies beyond contemplation, and those categories are that which remains of it, that which stands firm, is fixed—the universal schemata of the construction of matter.


3. (from the Synoptic Deduction of the Dynamic Process or the Categories of Physics , of 1800, pages [I 4, 15‒47]):

Magnetism operates purely in the dimension of length . . . electricity operates purely in the dimensions of length and breadth . . . the chemical process is the representative of the third phase of construction for experience, or that phase which corresponds, among the processes of the second order, to the process of weight. Thus of bodies which change in the third phase (the third dimension), it is said that they change chemically. . . . Light is the reproducing of production itself (just as the other dynamic phenomena are only individual manifestations of this reproduction).


4. (from the Stuttgart Private Lectures of 1810, page [I 7, 450]):

We distinguish: 1) the processes or forms of activity which still exist more in the physical or in the product, and 2) the spiritual form of the same processes. The three basic processes of the first kind are: a) magnetism = first dimension = selfhood, egohood, b) electricity = polarity or opposition between that which is producing and product, that which is active and that which suffers—two bodies, of which one is always the sufferer, the other the active body. (It is these two processes which also determine, in respect of the Earth, the regions of the world.) c) totality of all processes = chemism or galvanism (the latter in fact simply living chemism, in which electricity is still found to play a part). Finally the process of combustion.

But as far as the spiritual content of these processes is concerned, then a) in the real, there is the spiritual process corresponding to magnetism = sound, b) as the ideal, the spiritual process corresponding to electricity = the process of light (light is a spiritual material), c) the process corresponding to chemism, as long as that which produces remains within the identity with the product = the process of heat (penetrating heat). In the decisive reaction against the product = fire (fire thus in fact basic substance—Vesta, hence counted among the elements).

In all these processes, then, out of the depth of matter itself, the spiritual is developed, which is precisely the intention of all creation. Everything is summoned forth out of the obscure principle itself by the higher creative principle, which we have called æther, but which is the true life-spirit of Nature: since we have shown that the bond residing in the product, from its ideal side, that is to say in so far as it is turned towards the absolutely ideal, is equivalent to light, light, then, is actually the direct manifestation of this life-spirit. Hence light has to be understood as that which universally animates— instigates evolution—, and there would be no objection were we, instead of opposing æther to gravitational force, to set light and gravitational force in this relationship.


Schelling relates all this to the work of Newton, Daniel Bernoulli, Coulomb, Faraday, etc.

XLIV Immanuel Kant, 1724‒1804, German philosopher. He sought to determine the limits of man's knowledge, and propounded theories of ethics, cosmology, and anthropology. A bachelor, he enjoyed the company of two or three young people over his midday meal and for an hour or so after that. He got up at five o'clock every morning, and went through life without ever having seen a mountain. His later works contain a large number of humorous anecdotes of the same kind as this suggestive quotation about the American native. For example, in his 1790 Kritik der Urteilskraft (Critical Analysis of the Power of Judgement), he speaks of an “Iroquois sachem” who said that nothing in Paris pleased him better than the food. (Nineteen out of twenty Frenchmen would have given him the same opinion.) Many of his works describe his own bodily functions and are not pleasant reading. In his Bestimmung des Begriffs einer Menschenrace (Specification of the Concept of a Human Race) of 1785 he states as a fact that human blood becomes black when it contains an excess of phlogiston. He then suggests that the powerful body odour of negroes is due to their skin giving off more phlogiston which has been extracted from their blood, and that their skin is dark because a great deal of phlogiston collects at the end of their arteries in readiness to be dephlogisticated through it. The air in the region of the River Gambia is, he says, highly phlogisticated, due to all the forests and swamps. I trust his philosophy no more than I do all this. It was difficult to track down the probable source of Schelling's “quotation,” as there was no young American and no mention of phlogiston at all. The subject of paragraph 54 of Kant's Critical Analysis of the Power of Judgement is laughter, and the alleged view of Epicurus that all pleasure is fundamentally bodily sensation. Kant says:

When someone tells the story of the Indian who, at the table of an Englishman in Surat [port in Gujarat on the west coast of India] saw a bottle of ale open and all that beer, transformed into foam, gushing out, showed his amazement with many exclamations, and to the Englishman's question of “What is there about that which is so amazing?” replied “I am not really surprised that it comes out, but at how you could have got it in,” then we laugh, and it affords us great enjoyment: not because we feel that we are cleverer than this ignorant man or about [sic] anything pleasurable which the understanding allows us to perceive in it; but our expectation had been aroused and has disappeared suddenly into nothing . . .

For if one assumes that with all our thoughts there is at the same time harmonically associated a movement in the organs of the body, then one will very well understand in this way how that sudden displacement of the mind, in observing its object, from one standpoint to another, could correspond to an alternating tension and relaxation of the elastic parts of our entrails, which is [sic] communicated to the diaphragm (just like that which ticklish people feel): during which the lungs expel the air in a quick succession of puffs and thus effect a movement beneficial to health, which movement alone, and not something going on in the mind, is the true reason for the pleasure in a thought which fundamentally represents nothing.


So either Kant repeats this rubbish in a different form elsewhere, or the only connection with phlogiston is the implied dephlogistication by way of the exercise of the lungs. (Which would mean Schelling's memory is playing him tricks, or he himself is having a good laugh.)

XLV Karl Friedrich Dornedden (1768‒1840), author of Phamenophis, od. Versuch e. neuen Theorie über Ursprung der Kunst u. Mythologie (Phamenophis, or Outline of a new Theory of the Origin of Art and Mythology), published in 1797, and of three other works about mythology: “On the Demons and Geniuses of the Ancients” (1793), “Outline of a Theory for the Explanation of the Greek Myths” (1801), and “New Theory for the Explanation of Greek Mythology” (1802, possibly the same work as the previous one). Schelling's spelling is “Pamenophis,” without the “h”. (According to Pausanias in his Description of Greece (I, 42, 3), a tourist guide dating from the second half of the second century A.D., the Egyptians at Thebes said that the gigantic whistling statue there, built in the fifteenth century B.C. and known to antiquity as the “colossus of Memnon” really depicted “Phamenoph”—some even said “Sesostris.” Pausanias mentions only one but there are two, which formed part of the facade of the funeral temple of Amenhotep III—this is the version of the name accepted today.)

XLVI Christian Gottlob Heyne, 1729‒1812, German classical philologist and bibliographer. Under his direction the library of the Göttingen university became the leading academic library of Germany. He edited, and made many contributions to, the eight volumes of Novi Commentarii (1769‒77) and the sixteen volumes of Commentationes (1778‒1808), from the Göttingen Academy of Sciences. Although Schelling's reference does not contain the word “Novi,” the dissertation is in fact in the eighth volume of the Novi Commentarii, dated 1777, on pages 34‒58 of the section on history and philology. (All these commentaries were reprinted in 1973.) The fourth word of its title is spelt caussis in the original, whereas Schelling writes “causis”; and the English equivalent is “On the Origin and Sources of the Homeric Legends.” Despite the date of 1776 (a misprint?) on the spine of the reprint of this volume, Heyne's lecture was first given in September 1777 and the title page bears this date, but also states that the volume was actually first printed in 1778.

XLVII There are a few differences in Heyne's original: 1. “(per fabulas)” (using fables) is lacking and must have been supplied by Schelling. 2. philosophandi aut narrandi genus instead of just philosophandi genus, such that Heyne's meaning is “for the purposes of philosophy or narration.” 3. the emphasis on allegoricum is Schelling's. 4. appelletur instead of appellatur. 5. a semicolon, not a comma, after allegoricum. 6. aliquo follows studio, but the meaning is not really changed. 7. commas after quod, exponerent, spiritum, luctantem, ponere, et, and modum. 8. exponerent (set out, explain, exhibit) instead of exprimerent (portray, express). 9. no comma after propria. The impression is that Schelling made what he considered improvements as he transcribed it. In translation the passage reads:

Nor, in truth, would it be appropriate to call that kind [of mythology], made (using fables) for the purposes of philosophy, allegorical, since it was not so much that intelligent and zealous men were searching for a cloak for their ideas, as that they did not possess another way of expressing what was in their mind. Indeed the difficulty and poverty of their language restricted and straitened the spirit which was as it were striving to break free, and their minds, as if struck by an access of some divine inspiration, and prevented, since both they and the community lacked suitable words, from displaying and representing to the visual sense those vague things themselves, laboured to render visible the facts they had pondered and to reveal them to an audience in the form of a drama.


XLVIII Plato (c428‒c348 B.C.): his dialogue Phædrus. I have translated from Schelling's German paraphrase. The reader may care to compare the following, extracted from Benjamin Jowett 's translation. Socrates, in ironic mood, is speaking to his “divine darling,” the youth Phædrus, as they walk together towards a shady, grassy, and delightful spot under a plane tree:

I might have a rational explanation that Orithyia was playing with Pharmacia, when a northern gust carried her over the neighbouring rocks; and this being the manner of her death, she was said to have been carried away by Boreas. There is a discrepancy, however, about the locality; according to another version of the story she was taken from the Areopagus, and not from this place. Now I quite acknowledge that these allegories are very nice, but he is not to be envied who has to invent them; much labour and ingenuity will be required of him; and when he has once begun, he must go on and rehabilitate Hippocentaurs and chimeras dire. Gorgons and winged steeds flow in apace, and numberless other inconceivable and portentous natures. And if he is sceptical about them, and would fain reduce them one after another to the rules of probability, this sort of crude philosophy will take up a great deal of time. Now I have no leisure for such inquiries; shall I tell you why? I must first know myself, as the Delphian inscription says; to be curious about that which is not my concern, while I am still in ignorance of my own self, would be ridiculous. And therefore I bid farewell to all this; the common opinion is enough for me. For, as I was saying, I want to know not about this, but about myself: am I a monster more complicated and swollen with passion than Typho, or a creature of a gentler and simpler sort, possessing, by divine grace, a nature devoid of pride.


The second Plato passage referred to by Schelling, from the Republic, section 391D, is as follows, again in Jowett's translation. Socrates is speaking to Adeimantus:

And let us equally refuse to believe, or allow to be repeated, the tale of Theseus son of Poseidon, and Peirithous son of Zeus, going forth as they did to perpetrate a horrid rape; or of any other hero or son of a god daring to do such impious and dreadful things as they falsely ascribe to them in our day: and let us further compel the poets to declare either that these acts were not done by them, or that they were not the sons of gods;—both in the same breath they shall not be permitted to affirm. We will not have them trying to persuade our youth that the gods are the authors of evil, and that heroes are no better than men—sentiments which, as we were saying, are neither pious nor true, for we have already proved that evil cannot come from the gods.


XLIX The emphasis is Schelling's. The Academic is Cotta (based on a real person) who in this section does not function (as he did earlier in the work) as an urbane man of the world, but, in his capacity of pontifex, as the devout believer who had no intention of overturning religion, accepting it on the strength of tradition and merely wishing to remove bad arguments for it.

Differences between the Loeb edition and Schelling's version: 1. No commas after Zeno, Cleanthes, vocabulorum, appellentur , and esse. 2. Comma after Chrysippus. 3. commenticiarum instead of commentitiarum. 4. quidque instead of quique. 5. appellatum sit instead of appellati sint. 6. se rem instead of rem se. 7. sit; instead of sit:. 8. di instead of Dii. 9. appellantur instead of appellentur . 10. deorum instead of Deorum. Schelling gives the chapter reference; the section reference is III, 63.

McGregor:

But all this was a great and quite unnecessary labour which Zeno, Cleanthes and Chrysippus undertook—this effort to give a rational meaning to imaginary stories and to give reasons for the names by which all the gods are called. And in so doing, you admit right away that the facts are very different from the popular belief, because the beings which are called gods are really natural forces and not personal deities at all.


Rackham:

A great deal of quite unnecessary trouble was taken first by Zeno, then by Cleanthus and lastly by Chrysippus, to rationalize these purely fanciful myths and explain the reasons for the names by which the various deities are called. But in so doing you clearly admit that the facts are widely different from men's belief, since the so-called gods are really properties of things, not divine persons at all.


Interesting the two translations of rerum naturas, as “natural forces” and “properties of things.” The latter is more literal. In the singular, the phrase occurs in the title of Lucretius 's (c99‒c55 B.C.) poem expounding the Epicurean philosophy: De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things); it means “the natural order” or “the way things happen,” or even just “the world” or “the universe.” The meaning of the word natura was one of the principal points of contention between the Stoics and the Epicureans: the Stoics spoke of Nature as the sustaining and governing principle of the world, which had not merely an accidental structure based on cohesion, but contained order, even art. The Epicureans (whom Cicero did not love after he turned twenty-two) called all things “natures” and divided natures into atoms, the void, and the attributes of both.

L The Roman god Hercules was probably derived from the Greek Heracles, who was exalted by the later Stoics as an ideal of human virtue, and perhaps reflects some real person, a vassal of the great king of Mycenæ. Castor and Polydeuces (Pollux in Latin) are both spoken of by Homer as mortal. “Æsculapius” is the Latin form of the Greek name “Asclepius.” He was the son of Apollo (opinions vary about who his mother was), and was a mortal, deified like Heracles. Using his art of healing, he attempted to revive the dead. Zeus regarded the raising of dead mortals as a dangerous precedent, and killed Asclepius with a thunderbolt. (I quote the words of Edward Tripp.) Apollo, the god of youth, music, and prophecy, is described as a younger immigrant among the Greek gods. In art he is portrayed as the ideal type of young, but not immature, manly beauty, and he was said to have been the real father of Plato.

LI The emphasis is Schelling's. This passage is set in the mouth of Balbus, represented as a typical Stoic. The Loeb edition lacks commas after ratione and tractatus. The German text gives the chapter reference “l. c. c. 24,” without pointing out that this is now chapter 24 of book two, not book three, so I have removed “l. c.” and added the “II”. The section reference is II, 63.

McGregor:

A great number of gods have also been derived from scientific theories about the world of nature. Endowed with human shapes, they have provided fables for the poets and have permeated human life with every form of superstition. This subject has been treated by Zeno and explained at greater length by Cleanthes and Chrysippus. etc. [Schelling's “etc.” could be intended to cover the following four or five pages, but I shall just continue to the end of Cicero's paragraph. ] For example, it was an old legend of the Greeks that the Sky-God (Uranus) was mutilated by his son Saturn and that Saturn in his turn was made captive by his son Jupiter. These impious tales are merely the picturesque disguise of a sophisticated scientific theory. Those who invented them felt that the high, æthereal and fiery nature of the Sky-God should have no use for those parts of the body which require intercourse with another to beget a child.


Rackham:

Another theory also, and that a scientific one, has been the source of a number of deities, who clad in human form have furnished the poets with legends and have filled man's life with superstitions of all sorts. This subject was handled by Zeno and was later explained more fully by Cleanthes and Chrysippus.


LII Victor Cousin, 1792‒1867, French philosopher. While in Germany in 1818 he made the acquaintance of Schelling, among others. He later published a spiritual system which he called “eclecticism”; it is an attempt to bring together the ideas of Descartes and Kant. In 1834 Schelling wrote a preface to the German translation of his Philosophical Fragments. In 1835 Cousin wrote to Schelling offering to arrange for the Philosophy of Mythology to be translated—an honourable and useful enterprise, he calls it—by one of his friends, and saying that three months after its publication in Germany a French version would be published in Paris. (This seems an unrealistically short term.) Olympiodorus was a pagan Greek historian and poet of the fifth century A.D., from Thebes in Upper Egypt. He wrote a History (really memoirs) in twenty-two books, now lost, relating to the period from 407 to 425. Cousin's extensive articles on him are reproduced in that volume of his Philosophical Fragments entitled Fragments de Philosophie Ancienne (Fragments of Ancient Philosophy). The following comes from his article about Olympiodorus's Commentary on Plato's Georgias, and begins with a passage quoted from Olympiodorus:

“The universe is made up of three things: the celestial, the terrestrial, and the intermediate, which are fire, air, and water. Jupiter presides over the celestial things, Pluto over the things of the earth: the realm of the intermediate is subject to Poseidon. These names designate the powers assigned to these different natures. Jupiter holds a sceptre, symbol of his functions as judge; Poseidon is armed with a trident, as presiding over the three intermediate elements; Pluto bears a helmet, by reason of the shades of his empire. Just as the helmet hides the head, so is Pluto the power which presides over what is obscure. Do not imagine that philosophers worship idols, stones, as deities; but as humanity is subject to the conditions of the sensibility and is unable easily to attain incorporeal and immaterial power, images were invented in order to awaken or recall the memory thereof; when we observe these natural images, when we render homage to them, we have in mind the powers which escape our senses.” [At this point Cousin adds the following footnote:] Is this not a response to the objections of Christianity against pagan idolatry?


Next a passage of Cousin from the same article:

Pagan mythology admitted demons who were offspring of the gods, but we do not believe that before the encounter of paganism with Christianity there had ever been any question of angels. It was in imitation of Christianity that the Alexandrians distinguished between angels and demons, and that they considered the ones as good and the others as evil.


Now a passage from another article, on Olympiodorus's Commentary on Plato's Phædo:

The Alexandrians were not pure antiquarians, applying their minds to the study of religious facts in the same way as to the study of all other facts, seeking the most legitimate explication in accordance with the rules of criticism; they were philosophers, statesmen, who had taken sides in the great dispute of the day, and who had no wish at all to accept the new religion, nor could they any longer take seriously the old religion as it stood, and they found themselves led to transform it with the aid of an interpretation which was often ingenious, sometimes profound, and invariably arbitrary. Without doubt there may be found among the philosophers of Alexandria some rare and questionable flashes of insight relating to the ancient religions of Greece; but that is not what should be sought in them. What is important here is not the past, but the present. It is not a matter of knowing whether, in fact, the Alexandrians rediscovered the true meaning of such and such a fable accredited to a certain little town in Greece: one should summon up another scene, that of the elite among the thinkers of an epoch endeavouring to give the people the most moral and most rational religion possible, while still preserving the old religion, but elevating it to the dignity of philosophy. This enterprise has only been carried through on one occasion, or at least history only offers it to us on one occasion on a grand scale, begun, and pursued, with high illumination, the most noble intentions, and the finest spirit [les plus beaux génies]. It is that which, especially in our time, makes Alexandrian mythology an admirable subject for study and meditation. This new mythology did not last as long as the old, and it never permeated down to the lowest ranks of society; but it had a real existence nonetheless; it reigned for several centuries; and even when vanquished in the political world, it continues in the fourth century to present, in the writings of some philosophers, for example in Proclus, a complete and well-integrated system.


Finally another short passage from the same work, bringing in metaphysics:

Instead of rejecting popular beliefs, the Alexandrian tried to explain them using the three methods which we have indicated, and especially using the last, moral and metaphysical symbolism. In this way they idealized to some degree the grosser cults of paganism, and gave an elevated and honest meaning to beliefs which often contradicted common sense and natural morality.


LIII Gottfried Hermann, 1772‒1848, German classical philologist. Famous for his analytical editions of classical Greek authors (particularly Homer, Pindar, and Æschylus), as well as for his studies of Greek grammar and pioneering work on ancient metrics.

LIV In German, this is den durchgängig eigentlichen Sinn. A similar phrase occurs later (on page 40), and is there translated as “wholly specific.” Please refer to the note for that page.

LV “On the Most Ancient Mythology of the Greeks.” This dissertation was included in volume two of Hermann's collection Opuscula of 1827, at page 167.

LVI Thamyris was a mythical bard, son of the poet Philammon by the nymph Argiope. The latter, repudiated by Philammon, went from Parnassus to Thrace, where Thamyris was born. He fell in love with Hyacinth before Apollo did; he is said to have been the first man to love a person of his own sex. He became so famous as a bard that he dared to challenge the muses to a contest. He lost and was severely punished for his impudence.

Orpheus was a Thracian minstrel, the son either of a Thracian king, Oeagrus, or of Apollo, and the muse Calliope. He joined the Argonauts and introduced them to the Samothracian mysteries. On his return to Thrace he was killed by raging Ciconian women; one of the reasons suggested for their enmity is that he became the first man to love boys. He came to be credited with the invention of mysteries and the authorship of many poems and mystical books. His cult, Orphism, involving various mysteries that were apparently somewhat similar to those of Dionysus, became prominent about the sixth century B.C. It strongly influenced Pythagorean philosophy.

The earliest mention of Linus is by Homer, and merely refers to the dirge (see my note to page 25), not to a person. A fragment attributed to Hesiod is the first to refer to him as a person, and he is there called a son of the Muse Urania. Later versions of his parentage differ widely, but some call him a brother of Orpheus. It is generally agreed that he grew up as an explanation of the ancient song.

Olen was a mythical epic poet, a Hyperborean or Lycian. He was said to have brought the worship of Apollo and Artemis from Lycia to Delos, where he celebrated their birth among the Hyperboreans in hymns which continued to be recited there. The Hyperboreans themselves were a legendary people of the distant north, where the sun rose and fell but once a year.

LVII The full title in German is Ueber das Wesen und die Behandlung der Mythologie; ein Brief an Herrn Hofrath Creuzer (On the Nature and Treatment of Mythology; a Letter to Counsellor Creuzer). Schelling quotes just the first part of the title. This work is mentioned often in different parts of Schelling's work, and I have put the English version of its title in the text. It does not seem to have been translated into English.

LVIII Kottos, sometimes referred to as “Cottus,” the Furious. κόπτω means “strike,” “smite,” or “pound.” Sons of Uranus and Gaia, these three “mighty, violent, and unspeakable” giants were at first hidden away inside Gaia by Uranus,

Because he envied them their looks and size
And overwhelming masculinity.


They each had fifty heads, as well as a hundred arms. Later Zeus enlisted their assistance in the battle against the Titans.

LIX Schelling's Greek reads Gyges—the Big-Limbed (probably this is what is unspeakable about him). In English versions he is sometimes called “Gyes,” γύης in classical Greek, meaning the curved piece of wood in a plough.

LX Briareus or Briareos, the Vigorous, the name of the third giant. The name comes from βριαρός, “strong” or “stout,” with the same root as βριθός , “weighty,” “heavy.” He was given this name by the gods, but by men he was called Ægæon.

LXI This is as close as I can come to Schelling's second example in German, which, did the word exist in English, might be translated as “The implement with which one ladles (hebt) wine from a barrel is called the 'ladler' (Heber).”

LXII This name is derived from the German verb blasen, to blow.

LXIII Pierre Simon, Marquis de Laplace, 1749‒1827, French mathematician, physicist, and astronomer. An archetypical determinist, he considered all the effects of Nature to be only the mathematical consequences of a small number of immutable laws. He devoted his whole life singlemindedly to the perfection of mathematical astronomy, and his results appeared in the Celestial Mechanics, published in five volumes between 1799 and 1825. The book which Schelling mentions, the System of the World, in two volumes, was published in 1796, and the German translation already in the following year. It contains a more readable account of his main achievements, without the mathematics. (It would be interesting to find out why Schelling rated it so highly.) He also wrote a definitive treatise on probability, and in 1795 was the first to formulate the idea of a one-way membrane in a very dense gravitational field, an idea which later led to the unfortunate theory of “black holes.” He proposed a cosmogonic hypothesis concerning the origin of nebulæ and the solar system, but different references have different views about whether or not he was aware of that of Kant (as expressed, for example, in the latter's Synoptic History of Nature and Theory of the Universe of 1755), and whether or not his diverges from Kant's.

LXIV Persephone. The daughter of Zeus and Demeter, carried off by Hades and made his queen in the lower world. Subsequently, Zeus could not release her wholly, as Pluto had given her some pomegranate seeds to eat there, so it was arranged that she should spend part of the year on earth and the rest with Hades. The myth probably relates to the burying of seed in the ground and the growth of the corn.

LXV Dionysus. The son of Zeus and Semele. Homer does not include him among the Olympian gods. He was accompanied by a rout of male and female votaries, dancing in a state of intoxication or possession. Later he appears as a god of wine, who loosens care, inspires music and poetry, and introduces into Greek religion the elements of ecstasy and mysticism that are found in his cult. He is frequently represented as a reposing youth of rather effeminate expression, with luxuriant hair, and in his hand grapes, a wine-cup, or the thyrsus.

LXVI χάω or χαίω means “to kindle” or “set on fire.” χαίνω means “to kill.” The OED says that the Greek (meaning “vast gulf, chasm, void”) comes from the verb stem χα- “to yawn” or “gape.” Perhaps Schelling was just noting down suggestions which he intended to investigate further. I do not know whether any lecture notes survive for this work, but if so, this is one of the points which they may be able to clarify.

LXVII A verb meaning “say,” “relate.”

LXVIII πιτνεῖν, which appears also in the form πίπτω, means “to fall.”

LXIX This name is introduced rather abruptly, so that one again suspects some corruption. It refers back to “matter,” which follows Chaos two paragraphs before, but there the name Gæa is not mentioned, not even in Greek, although its Greek derivation (pronounced gao, gegaa) is given.

LXX The German word I have translated as “strain” is streben, which more commonly means “strive.” The Greek τείνω means “stretch” or “extend,” as well as “aim at,” “strive,” “rush,” and “refer to.” The suggested derivation is not Schelling's, but Hesiod's, in lines 207‒10:

But the great father Ouranos reproached
His sons, and called them Titans, for, he said
They strained in insolence, and did a deed
For which they would be punished afterwards.


Miss Wender, the translator, adds the note: “Titans: 'strainers' (from teino, I strain), another probably false etymology.”

LXXI In German this phrase (durchaus eigentlich) is similar to “entirely literal” on page 34, “wholly literal” on page 195, and “literally throughout” on page 15 (and of course also refers to the “literal meaning” on page 26).

LXXII Félix de Azara, 1746‒1811, Spanish natural scientist, who explored the “La Plata” regions between 1781 and 1802. Voyages dans l'Amérique Méridionale (Travels in South America—the two acute accents and the “s” at the end of the first word had got lost in Schelling's footnote) was first published in 1809, in four volumes together with an atlas. Unlike his earlier works, it was published in French, not Spanish. It is not described as a translation, but as being “publié d'après” (published in conformity with) the author's manuscripts, by Baron Charles Athanase Walckenær. The latter explains in his preface that Azara had had at least the manuscript which forms the greater part of the book translated from the original Spanish, by persons unknown, under his, Azara's, supervision, and that Azara's renowned brother, at that time the Spanish ambassador to France, had revised and corrected it. Both Walckenær and Georges Cuvier (see my note to page 225) appended a number of notes to the work. Walckenær, who lived from 1771 to 1852, was a celebrated French scholar who, as well as novels, published works on literary history, geography, natural history, and the philosophy of history. Here is the complete paragraph (pages 184‒7) to which Schelling refers, from Azara's chapter eleven (“General Reflections on the Wild Indians”):

The first Spaniards who consorted with the Indians or Americans did not see them as men having the same origin as ourselves, but rather as a species intermediate between man and the animals, who, although of similar form, differed from us in other respects, and were not susceptible of the intelligence, the capacity, or the talent which were necessary to understand and practise our religion. Such was the view of the majority of the laity, and even of many of the respectable churchmen among the small number of priests who travelled to America in those times. What is more they could not disguise from themselves the fact that in holding this opinion they were unable to play any religious role in such a vast and rich new land. One of the principal spokesmen for this idea was François-Thomas Ortiz, bishop of Santa Marta. He wrote a long memorandum to the supreme council of Madrid, concluding that the experience he had acquired as a result of many years of consorting with the Indians had led him to regard them as stupid creatures, as incapable as the brute beasts of comprehending our religion and observing its precepts. Other clergymen, chief among whom was the renowned François Barthélemi de Las Casas, said on the contrary that the Indians were men of our own species, and as well adapted for Christianity as ourselves. The point was disputed with passion on both [not three, note] sides, and there were also clergymen who, in order to reconcile the two opinions, said that in truth the Indians were men of the same species as ourselves, but of such limited outlook that one should be content with baptising them, and refusing them, moreover, all the sacraments. Such was the situation when Las Casas declared himself to be the apologist and fervent protector of the Indians. He put forward all the arguments in their favour which he could find; and, to weaken the cases of his adversaries, he did not lose sight of the common method of lawyers and orators, that is to say he discredited the Spanish, saying that if they so much wanted the Indians to be pure beasts, this was in order to treat them as such, and to excuse the atrocities which they committed against them. This was the way he obtained from Pope Paul III a bull dated the second of June 1537, which declared the Indians to be truly men, and capable of all the sacraments of our religion. This victory brought Las Casas a bishopric and a great reputation, but this was not enough to induce the priests of Peru to administer the eucharist to the Indians. They persisted in their refusal for almost a century, under the pretext of the incapacity of these peoples. To overcome their repugnance the authority of many councils was required, three of which were held at Lima, and the others at Arequipa, at la Plata or Chuquisaca, at la Paz, and at Asunción.


Azara goes on to say that both [again] parties to this dispute had good arguments, that it is an important question, and that he himself makes no claim to be a judge in the matter.

LXXIII The full German title of this work is Briefe über Homer und Hesiodus, vorzüglich über die Theogonie (Correspondence Relating to Homer and Hesiod, Principally Relating to the Theogony). Schelling always quotes just the first part of the title, and since this, like the other work of Hermann, is very frequently mentioned, I always use its title in English.

LXXIV meaningless names. About the relationship (at least on some level—see pages 210 and 211 about the necessity of understanding the process or the whole and not relying on a single statement) between names (meaningless or not) and actuality, refer to the note to page 6 about “merely nominal.” The mixture of tenses in this sentence (“are associated” and “possessed”) corresponds to what Schelling wrote, and makes sense despite being a little awkward. There is something similar in the previous sentence: “understands,” “miscarried,” “do impart.”

LXXV This is Hesiod again, not Homer; it is line 125 of the Theogony. In the Loeb edition we find κυσαμένη instead of κυσσαμένη. Evelyn-White translates it (with a line or two before as context):

From Chaos came forth Erebus and black Night; but of Night were born Æther and Day, whom she conceived and bare [sic] from union in love with Erebus.


Miss Wender renders it as:

From Chaos came black Night and Erebos.
And Night in turn gave birth to Day and Space
Whom she conceived in love to Erebos.


Miss Wender adds a note to “Space” pointing out that it is “aither, the pure upper atmosphere, as opposed to ær, which we mortals breathe.”

LXXVI These lines (264‒5) are from Aristophanes' Clouds. Aristophanes lived from c446‒c383 B.C., and The Clouds was originally produced in 423 but revised later. In the Loeb edition, apart from differences of capitalization (I have retained Schelling's), there are the following differences: 1. a comma after μετέωρον , 2. λαμπρός instead of Λαμπρὸς.

LXXVII The Loeb edition differs from this with 1. δῖἑς or διὸς , but not δὶος, and 2. αἰθὴρ not αἰθήρ. The translator, Herbert Weir Smyth, is surely being free when he does not translate it as “O divine Æther,” but (with the invocations following) as:

O thou bright sky of heaven, ye swift-winged breezes, ye river-waters, and multitudinous laughter of the waves of ocean, O universal mother Earth, and thou, all-seeing orb of the sun, to you I call! Behold what I, a god, endure of evil from the gods.


This is uttered by Prometheus (whose name means “fore-thought”). Smyth observes that “the Greeks found in the name of a person a significant indication of his nature or his fate.”

LXXVIII The Penguin translation by David Barrett of lines 693 ff. of the play The Birds (414 B.C.) reads:

In the beginning there existed only Chaos, Night, Black Erebus and Dreary Tartarus: there was no Earth, no Air, no Sky. It was in the boundless womb of Erebus that the first egg was laid by blackwinged Night; and from this egg, in due season, sprang Eros the deeply-desired, Eros the bright, the golden-winged. And it was he, mingling in Tartarus with murky Chaos, who begot our race and hatched us out and led us up to the light. There was no race of immortal gods till Eros brought the elements together in love: only then did the Sky, the Ocean and the Earth come into being, and the deathless race of all the blessed gods.


I suppose the only jocular aspect of this is the egg. Schelling likens the passage to Hesiod's description of Eros, a description which has a different sequence of gods, and a different sex for Erebos (translation by Miss Wender):

Chaos was first of all, but next appeared
Broad-bosomed Earth, sure standing-place for all
The gods who live on snowy Olympus’ peak,
And misty Tartarus, in a recess
Of broad-pathed earth, and Love, most beautiful
Of all the deathless gods. He makes men weak,
He overpowers the clever mind, and tames
The spirit in the breasts of men and gods.
From Chaos came black Night and Erebos.


LXXIXFrom Aristophanes' Clouds, line 627. The Loeb edition has one difference: Ἀναπνοήν instead of Ἀναπνοὴν. Socrates is complaining about his new “pupil” Strepsiades. I can offer two translations: “In the name of Respiration and Chaos and Air” (continuing “and all that's holy——! I have never met such a clueless stupid forgetful bumpkin in all my life”), by Alan H. Sommerstein. And “Never by Chaos, Air, and Respiration” by Benjamin Buckley Rogers in the (poetical) Loeb edition.

LXXX “Poseidon” possibly means consort of Da, which was a pre-Hellenic name for an earth-goddess also preserved in the name Demeter (Mother Da). But see also pages 103‒4. “Zeus” comes, some say, from a root meaning “bright,” while others say from a word meaning just “sky” or possibly “bright sky.” Plutus was the god of wealth, born of Demeter, but he remained more an abstraction (just the concept of wealth) than an individualized god. The Horæ were the Seasons, two of which were Eunomia (Order) and Dike (Justice), and they had little mythology. “Charites” was the Greek name for the Graces, and these too had little part in myth except as abstractions. They were worshipped at Boeotian Orchomenus in the form of stones that were evidently meteorites.
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