There is one piece of nonsense that modern people still find themselves saying,even after they are more or less awake,by which I am particularly irritated.It arose in the popularised science of the nineteenth century,especially in connection with the study of myths and religions.The fragment of gibberish to which I refer generally takes the form of saying "This god or hero really represents the sun."Or "Apollo killing the Python MEANS that the summer drives out the winter."Or "The King dying in a western battle is a SYMBOL of the sun setting in the west."Now I should really have thought that even the skeptical professors,whose skulls are as shallow as frying-pans,might have reflected that human beings never think or feel like this.Consider what is involved in this supposition.It presumes that primitive man went out for a walk and saw with great interest a big burning spot on the sky.He then said to primitive woman,"My dear,we had better keep this quiet.
We mustn't let it get about.The children and the slaves are so very sharp.They might discover the sun any day,unless we are very careful.
So we won't call it 'the sun,'but I will draw a picture of a man killing a snake;and whenever I do that you will know what I mean.The sun doesn't look at all like a man killing a snake;so nobody can possibly know.It will be a little secret between us;and while the slaves and the children fancy I am quite excited with a grand tale Of a writhing dragon and a wrestling demigod,I shall really MEAN this delicious little discovery,that there is a round yellow disc up in the air."One does not need to know much mythology to know that this is a myth.It is commonly called the Solar Myth.
Quite plainly,of course,the case was just the other way.The god was never a symbol or hieroglyph representing the sun.The sun was a hieroglyph representing the god.Primitive man (with whom my friend Dombey is no doubt well acquainted)went out with his head full of gods and heroes,because that is the chief use of having a head.Then he saw the sun in some glorious crisis of the dominance of noon on the distress of nightfall,and he'said,"That is how the face of the god would shine when he had slain the dragon,"or "That is how the whole world would bleed to westward,if the god were slain at last."No human being was ever really so unnatural as to worship Nature.No man,however indulgent (as I am)to corpulency,ever worshipped a man as round as the sun or a woman as round as the moon.No man,however attracted to an artistic attenuation,ever really believed that the Dryad was as lean and stiff as the tree.We human beings have never worshipped Nature;and indeed,the reason is very simple.It is that all human beings are superhuman beings.We have printed our own image upon Nature,as God has printed His image upon us.We have told the enormous sun to stand still;we have fixed him on our shields,caring no more for a star than for a starfish.And when there were powers of Nature we could not for the time control,we have conceived great beings in human shape controlling them.Jupiter does not mean thunder.Thunder means the march and victory of Jupiter.Neptune does not mean the sea;the sea is his,and he made it.In other words,what the savage really said about the sea was,"Only my fetish Mumbo could raise such mountains out of mere water."What the savage really said about the sun was,"Only my great-great-grandfather Jumbo could deserve such a blazing crown."About all these myths my own position is utterly and even sadly simple.
I say you cannot really understand any myths till you have found that one of them is not a myth.Turnip ghosts mean nothing if there are no real ghosts.Forged bank-notes mean nothing if there are no real bank-notes.
Heathen gods mean nothing,and must always mean nothing,to those of us that deny the Christian God.When once a god is admitted,even a false god,the Cosmos begins to know its place:which is the second place.When once it is the real God the Cosmos falls down before Him,offering flowers in spring as flames in winter."My love is like a red,red rose"does not mean that the poet is praising roses under the allegory of a young lady."My love is an arbutus"does not mean that the author was a botanist so pleased with a particular arbutus tree that he said he loved it."Who art the moon and regent of my sky"does not mean that Juliet invented Romeo to account for the roundness of the moon."Christ is the Sun of Easter"does not mean that the worshipper is praising the sun under the emblem of Christ.Goddess or god can clothe themselves with the spring or summer;but the body is more than raiment.Religion takes almost disdainfully the dress of Nature;and indeed Christianity has done as well with the snows of Christmas as with the snow-drops of spring.
And when I look across the sun-struck fields,I know in my inmost bones that my joy is not solely in the spring,for spring alone,being always returning,would be always sad.There is somebody or something walking there,to be crowned with flowers:and my pleasure is in some promise yet possible and in the resurrection of the dead.
