Myths That Every Child Should Know | Page 3

If every time we think of a force we should think of a person, we
should see the world as the men and women who made the myths saw
it. Everything that moved, or made a sound, or flashed out light, or
gave out heat was a person to them; they could not think of the wind
rushing through the trees or the storm devastating the fields without out
imagining someone like themselves, only more powerful, behind the
uproar and destruction, any more than we can see a lantern moving
along the road at night without thinking instinctively that somebody is
carrying it.
Our idea of the world is scientific because it is based on exact though
by no means complete knowledge; the myth-makers' idea of the world

was poetic because, with very incomplete knowledge, they could not
imagine how anything could be done unless it was done as they did
things. When the black clouds gather on a summer afternoon and roll
up the sky in great, terrifying masses, and the lightning flashes from
them and the crash of the thunder fills the air and the rain beats down
the crops, we feel as if we were in the laboratory of nature seeing a
wonderful experiment made; when our ancestors saw the same
spectacle they were sure that a great dragon, breathing fire and roaring
with anger, was ravaging the earth. As children to-day imagine that
dolls are alive, that fairies dance in moonlit meadows on summer nights,
or beasts or Indians make the sounds in the woods, so the people who
made the myths filled the world with creatures unlike themselves, but
with something of human intelligence, feeling and will.
As imaginative children personify the sounds they hear, so the men and
women of an early time personified everything that lived or moved or
gave any sign of life. They filled the earth, air, and sea with imaginary
beings who had power over the elements and affected the lives of men.
There were nymphs in the sea, dryads in the trees, kindly or destructive
spirits in the air, household gods who watched over the home, and
greater gods who managed the affairs of the world. When an intelligent
man finds himself in new surroundings, he begins at once to study them
and try to understand them. In every age this has been one of the
greatest objects of interest to men, and every generation has
endeavoured to explain the world, so as to satisfy not only its curiosity
but its reason. The myths were explanations of the world created by
people who had not had time to study that world closely nor to train
themselves to study it in a scientific way. They saw the world with their
imaginations quite as much as with their eyes, and as they put persons
behind every kind and form of life, they told stories about the world
instead of making accurate and matter-of-fact reports of it. The change
of the seasons is not at all mysterious to us; but to the Norsemen it was
a wonderful struggle between gods and giants. In the summer the gods
had their triumph, but in the winter the giants had their way. Year after
year and century after century this terrible warfare went on until a day
should come when, in a last great battle, both gods and giants would be
destroyed and a new heaven and earth arise. These same brave and

warlike men believed that the most powerful fighter among the gods
was Thor, and that it was the swinging and crashing of his terrible
hammer which made the lightning and thunder.
The sun, which vanquished the darkness, put out the stars, drove the
cold to the far north, called back the flowers, made the fields fertile,
awoke men from sleep and filled them with courage and hope, was the
centre of mythology, and appears and reappears in a thousand stories in
many parts of the world, and in all kinds of disguises. Now he is the
most beautiful and noble of the Greek gods, Apollo; now he is Odin,
with a single eye; now he is Hercules, the hero, with his twelve great
labours for the good of men; now he is Oedipus, who met the Sphinx
and solved her riddle. In the early times men saw how everything in the
world about them drew its strength and beauty from the sun; how the
sun warmed the earth and made the crops grow; how it brought
gladness and hope and inspiration to men; and they made it the centre
of the great world story, the foremost hero of the great world play. For
the myths form a poetical explanation of the earth, the sea, the sky, and
of the life of man in this