A Short History of Myth (8 page)

But in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, Christians in Western Europe rediscovered the works of Plato and Aristotle that had been lost to them during the Dark Age that had followed the collapse of the Roman Empire. Just at the moment when Jews and Muslims were beginning to retreat from the attempt to rationalise their mythology, Western Christians seized on the project with an enthusiasm that they would never entirely lose. They had started
to lose touch with the meaning of myth. Perhaps it was not surprising, therefore, that the next great transformation in human history, which would make it very difficult for people to think mythically, had its origins in Western Europe.

During the sixteenth century, almost by trial and error, the people of Europe and, later, in what would become the United States of America, had begun to create a civilisation that was without precedent in world history, and during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries it would spread to other parts of the globe. This was the last of the great revolutions in human experience. Like the discovery of agriculture or the invention of the city, it would have a profound impact, whose effect we are only now beginning to appreciate. Life would never be the same again, and perhaps the most significant – and potentially disastrous – result of this new experiment was the death of mythology.

Western modernity was the child of
logos
. It was founded on a different economic basis. Instead of relying on a surplus of agricultural produce, like all
pre-modern civilisations, the new Western societies were founded on the technological replication of resources and the constant reinvestment of capital. This freed modern society from many of the constraints of traditional cultures, whose agrarian base had inevitably been precarious. Hitherto an invention or an idea that required too much capital outlay was likely to be shelved, because no society before our own could afford the ceaseless replication of the infrastructure that we now take for granted. Agrarian societies were vulnerable because they depended upon such variables as harvests and soil erosion. An empire would expand and increase its commitments and, inevitably, outrun its financial base. But the West developed an economy that seemed, potentially, to be indefinitely renewable. Instead of looking back to the past and conserving what had been achieved, as had been the habit of the premodern civilisations, Western people began to look forward. The long process of modernisation, which took Europe some three centuries, involved a series of profound changes: industrialisation, the transformation of agriculture, political and social revolutions to reorganise
society to meet the new conditions, and an intellectual ‘enlightenment’ that denigrated myth as useless, false and outmoded.

The Western achievement relied on the triumph of the pragmatic, scientific spirit. Efficiency was the new watchword. Everything had to work. A new idea or an invention had to be capable of rational proof and be shown to conform to the external world. Unlike myth,
logos
must correspond to facts; it is essentially practical; it is the mode of thought we use when we want to get something done; it constantly looks ahead to achieve a greater control over our environment or to discover something fresh. The new hero of Western society was henceforth the scientist or the inventor, who was venturing into uncharted realms for the sake of his society. He would often have to overthrow old sanctities – just as the Axial sages had done. But the heroes of Western modernity would be technological or scientific geniuses of
logos
, not the spiritual geniuses inspired by
mythos
. This meant that intuitive, mythical modes of thought would be neglected in favour of the more pragmatic, logical spirit of scientific rationality.
Because most Western people did not use myth, many would lose all sense of what it was.

There was a new optimism in the West. People felt that they had more control over their environment. There were no more sacred, unalterable laws. Thanks to their scientific discoveries, they could manipulate nature and improve their lot. The discoveries of modern medicine, hygiene, labour-saving technologies and improved methods of transport revolutionised the lives of Western people for the better. But
logos
had never been able to provide human beings with the sense of significance that they seemed to require. It had been myth that had given structure and meaning to life, but as modernisation progressed and
logos
achieved such spectacular results, mythology was increasingly discredited. As early as the sixteenth century, we see more evidence of a numbing despair, a creeping mental paralysis, and a sense of impotence and rage as the old mythical way of thought crumbled and nothing new appeared to take its place. We are seeing a similar anomie today in developing countries that are still in the earlier stages of modernisation.

In the sixteenth century, this alienation was apparent in the reformers who tried to make European religion more streamlined, efficient and modern. Martin Luther (1483–1546) was prey to agonising depressions and paroxysms of rage. Ulrich Zwingli (1484–1531) and John Calvin (1509–64) both shared Luther’s utter helplessness before the trials of human existence – a dis-ease that impelled them to find a solution. Their reformed Christianity showed how antagonistic the dawning modern spirit was to the mythical consciousness. In premodern religion, likeness had been experienced as identity, so that a symbol was one with the reality it represented. Now, according to the reformers, a rite such as the Eucharist was ‘only’ a symbol – something essentially separate. Like any premodern rite, the Mass had reenacted Christ’s sacrificial death, which because it was mythical was timeless, and made it a present reality. For the reformers, it was simply a memorial of a bygone event. There was a new emphasis on scripture, but the modern invention of printing and the new widespread literacy altered people’s perception of the sacred text. Silent, solitary reading replaced liturgical recitation. People could now know
the Bible in greater detail and form their own opinions, but now that it was no longer read in a ritual context, it was easy to approach it in a secular manner for factual information, like any other modern text.

Like most things in life, many of the modern discoveries were also problematic. The new astronomy opened up an enthralling view of the cosmos. Nicolas Copernicus (1473–1543) saw his scientific investigations as a religious activity that filled him with awe. But his findings were disturbing. Myth had made human beings believe that they were bound up with the essence of the universe, yet now it appeared that they had only a peripheral place on an undistinguished planet revolving around a minor star. They could no longer trust their own perceptions, because the earth that seemed static was actually in rapid motion. They were increasingly encouraged to have their own ideas, but they were more and more in thrall to modern ‘experts’ who alone could decipher the nature of things.

In Britain, Francis Bacon (1561–1626) made a declaration of independence, to emancipate science from the shackles of mythology. In the
Advancement
of Learning
(1605), he proclaimed a new and glorious era. Science would put an end to human misery and save the world. Nothing must impede this development. All the myths of religion should be subjected to stringent criticism and if they contradicted the proven facts they must be cast aside. Reason alone gave access to this truth. The first scientist wholly to absorb this empirical ethos was probably Sir Isaac Newton (1642–1727), who synthesised the findings of his predecessors by a rigorous use of the evolving scientific disciplines of experiment and deduction. He believed that he was bringing his fellow human beings unprecedented and certain information about the world, that the cosmic system he had discovered coincided completely with the facts, and that it proved the existence of God, the great ‘Mechanick’ who had brought the intricate machine of the universe into being.

But this total immersion in
logos
made it impossible for Newton to appreciate the more intuitive forms of perception. For him, mythology and mysticism were primitive modes of thought. He felt that he had a mission to purge Christianity of such
doctrines as the Trinity, which defied the laws of logic. He was quite unable to see that this doctrine had been devised by the Greek theologians of the fourth century precisely as a myth, similar to that of the Jewish Kabbalists. As Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa (335–395), had explained, Father, Son and Spirit were not objective, ontological facts but simply ‘terms that we use’ to express the way in which the ‘unnameable and unspeakable’ divine nature adapts itself to the limitations of our human minds.
100
You could not prove the existence of the Trinity by rational means. It was no more demonstrable than the elusive meaning of music or poetry. But Newton could only approach the Trinity rationally. If something could not be explained logically, it was false. ‘’Tis the temper of the hot and superstitious part of mankind in matters of religion,’ he wrote irritably, ‘ever to be fond of mysteries & for that reason to like best what they understand least.’
101
Today’s cosmologists no longer believe in Newton’s rational god, but many Western people share his preference for reason and his uneasiness with myth, even in religious matters. Like Newton, they think that God
should be an objective, demonstrable reality. Hence a significant number of Western Christians have problems with the Trinity. Like Newton, they fail to understand that the Trinitarian myth was designed to remind Christians that they should not even attempt to think of the divine in terms of a simple personality.
102

Scientific
logos
and myth were becoming incompatible. Hitherto science had been conducted within a comprehensive mythology that explained its significance. The French mathematician Blaise Pascal (1623–62), a deeply religious man, was filled with horror when he contemplated the ‘eternal silence’ of the infinite universe opened up by modern science.

This type of alienation has also been part of the modern experience.

The cloud seemed to lift during the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. John Locke (1632–1704) realised that it was impossible to prove the existence of the sacred, but he had no doubt that God existed and that humanity had entered a more positive era. The German and French Enlightenment philosophers saw the old mystical and mythical religions as outmoded. So did the British theologians John Toland (1670–1722) and Matthew Tindal (1655–1733).
Logos
alone could lead us to truth, and Christianity must get rid of the mysterious and the mythical. The old myths were beginning to be interpreted as though they were
logoi
, an entirely new development which was doomed to disappoint, because these stories were not and never had been factual.

Paradoxically, however, the Age of Reason witnessed
an irruption of irrationality. The great Witch Craze of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which raged through many of the Catholic and Protestant countries of Europe, showed that scientific rationalism could not always hold the darker forces of the mind at bay. The Witch Craze was a collective demonic fantasy that led to the execution and torture of thousands of men and women. People believed that witches had sex with devils, and flew through the air to attend satanic orgies. Without a powerful mythology to explain people’s unconscious fears, they tried to rationalise those fears into ‘fact’. Fearful and destructive un-reason has always been part of the human experience, and it still is. It emerged very strongly in the new Christian movements that attempted to translate the ideals of the Enlightenment into a religious form. Quakers were so-called because they used to tremble, howl and yell during their meetings. The Puritans, many of whom were successful capitalists and good scientists, also had a tumultuous spirituality and traumatic conversion experiences, which many were ill equipped to sustain. A significant number fell into depressive states, and some even committed suicide.
104
The same syndrome
can be seen in the First Great Awakening in New England (1734–40). Everybody was attempting to be a mystic and achieve alternative psychic states. But the higher states of mysticism were not for everybody. It required special talent, temperament and one-to-one training. A group experience of untaught, unskilled individuals could lead to mass hysteria and even mental illness.

By the nineteenth century, people in Europe were beginning to think that religion was actually harmful. Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–72) argued that it alienated people from their humanity, and Karl Marx (1818–83) saw religion as the symptom of a sick society. And indeed the mythological religion of the period could create an unhealthy conflict. This was the scientific age, and people wanted to believe that their traditions were in line with the new era, but this was impossible if you thought that these myths should be understood literally. Hence the furore occasioned by
The Origin of Species
(1858), published by Charles Darwin (1809–82). The book was not intended as an attack on religion, but was a sober exploration of a scientific hypothesis. But because by
this time people were reading the cosmogonies of Genesis as though they were factual, many Christians felt – and still feel – that the whole edifice of faith was in jeopardy. Creation stories had never been regarded as historically accurate; their purpose was therapeutic. But once you start reading Genesis as scientifically valid, you have bad science and bad religion.

The new Higher Criticism, which applied the modern scientific methodology to the Bible itself, showed that it was impossible to read the Bible literally. Some of its claims were demonstrably untrue. The Pentateuch had not been written by Moses, but much later and by a number of different authors; King David had not composed the Psalms; and most of the miracle stories were literary tropes. The biblical narratives were ‘myths’ and, in popular parlance, that meant that they were not true. The Higher Criticism is still a bugbear of Protestant Fundamentalists, who claim that every word of the Bible is literally, scientifically and historically true – an untenable position that leads to denial and defensive polemic.