"The beautiful,
weeping creatures, vexed by the wind, suffering, torn to pieces, and
rejuvenescent again at last, like a tender shoot of living green out of
the hardness and stony darkness of the earth, becomes an emblem or ideal
of chastening and purification, and of final victory through suffering."
This theory would also explain the fact that one nation's myths are not
only similar to, but to a large extent practically identical with, those
of other nations. There is a common stock of ideas supplied by the
common elements of human nature in all lands and times; and these, when
finely expressed, produce a common fund of ideals which will appeal to
the majority of the human race.
Thus mythology was originally simple storytelling. But men, even in the
telling of the story, began to find meanings for it beyond the mere
narration of events; and thus there arose in connection with all stories
that were early told, a certain number of judgments of what was high and
admirable in human nature. These were not grounded upon philosophical or
scientific bases, but upon the bed-rock of man's experience.
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