The myth-makers endeavoured to explain the world, but that was only
one-half of their endeavour; they attempted also to explain
themselves. They discovered the striking analogies between certain
natural phenomena or processes and the phenomena and processes of
their own nature; they discovered the tasks and wanderings of the sun,
and they perceived the singular resemblance of these tasks and
wanderings to the happenings of their own lives. So the hero and the
wanderer became subjective as well as objective, and symbolised what
was deepest and most universal in human nature and human experience,
as well as what was most striking in the external world. When
primitive men looked into their hearts and their experience, they
found their deepest hopes, longings, and possibilities bound up and
worked out in two careers,--the career of the hero and the career of
the wanderer.
These two figures became the commanding types of all the nobler
mythologies, because they symbolised what was best, deepest, and most
real in human nature and life. They represent the possible reach and
the occasional achievement of the human soul; they stand for that
which is potential as well as for that which is actual in human
experience.
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