John Ruskin on Myth

For today, I came across this interesting piece by John Ruskin on myth. Myth is something which in a way does not fit into the scientific universe of fact, although as Popper argued, science can develop from myths. But for Ruskin it represents part of the human psyche which cannot be easily subject to reduction to mere facts. It is the imaginative pole of human existence.

One of the most unusual finds in this reflection is that Ruskin does not view the earliest form of a myth as necessarily the best. It is honed by storytellers and the wise, ti changes, it improves, it becomes rather than a rougher shape, a perfectly shaped stone sculpture to call for engagement with the viewer, or in the case of myths, the reader or listener.

There's a tendence to fall into a fallacy by which we regard the earliest version of a story as the best, and for history that is the case where we need early sources, but we should not assume that also applies to myth. The ancient Israelites wrenched Babylonian myths out of their surrounding culture, and rewrote them, and while the start of the Genesis story... "In the beginning..." owes a lot to surrounding myths, they made the myth their own, polished and perfected it, so that there is nothing quite like it in ancient literature.

John Ruskin on Myth

A Myth, in its simplest definition, is a story with a meaning attached to it, other than it seems to have at first; and the fact that it has such a meaning is generally marked by some of its circumstances being extraordinary, or, in the common use of the word, unnatural.

Thus, if I tell you that Hercules killed a water-serpent in the lake of Lerna, and if I mean, and you understand, nothing more than that fact, the story, whether true or false, is not a myth. But if by telling you this, I mean that Hercules purified the stagnation of many streams from deadly miasmata, my story, however simple, is a true myth; only, as, if I left it in that simplicity, you would probably look for nothing beyond, it will be wise in me to surprise your attention by adding some singular circumstance; for instance, that the water-snake had several heads, which revived as fast as they were killed, and which poisoned even the foot that trode upon them as they slept.


And in proportion to the fulness of intended meaning I shall probably multiply and refine upon these improbabilities; as, suppose, if, instead of desiring only to tell you that Hercules purified a marsh, I wished you to understand that he contended with the venom and vapour of envy and evil ambition, whether in other men's souls or in his own, and choked that malaria only by supreme toil, -- I might tell you that this serpent was formed by the Goddess whose pride was in the tria of Hercules; and that its place of abode was by a palm- tree; and that for every head of it that was cut off, two rose up with renewed life; and that the hero found at last he could not kill the creature at all by cutting its heads off or crushing them; but only by burning them down; and that the midmost of them could not be killed even that way, but had to be buried alive.

Only in proportion as I mean more, I shall certainly appear more absurd in my statement; and at last, when I get unendurably significant, all practical persons will agree that I was talking mere nonsense from the beginning, and never meant anything at all.

This story of Hercules and the Hydra, then, was to the general Greek mind, in its best days, a tale about a real hero and a real monster. Not one in a thousand knew anything of the way in which the story had arisen, any more than the English peasant generally is aware of the plebeian origin of St. George; or supposes that there were once alive in the world, with sharp teeth and claws, real, and very ugly, flying dragons.

On the other hand, few persons traced any moral or symbolical meaning in the story, and the average Greek was as far from imagining any interpretation like that I have just given you, as an average Englishman is from seeing in St. George the Red Cross Knight of Spenser, or in the Dragon the Spirit of Infidelity.

But, for all that, there was a certain undercurrent of consciousness in all minds, that the figures meant more than they at first showed; and, according to each man's own faculties of sentiment, he judged and read them; just as a Knight of the Garter reads more in the jewel on his collar than the George and Dragon of a public-house expresses to the host or to his customers.

Thus, to the mean person the myth always meant little; to the noble person, much: and the greater their familiarity with it, the more contemptible it became to the one, and the more sacred to the other: until vulgar commenta tors explained it entirely away, while Virgil made it the crowning glory of his choral hymn to Hercules

"Around thee, powerless to infect thy soul,
Rose, in his crested crowd, the Lerna worm."

"Non te rationis egentem
Lernæus turbâ capitum circumstetit anguis."

And although, in any special toil of the hero's life, the moral interpretation was rarely with definiteness attached to its event, yet in the whole course of the life, not only a symbolical meaning, but the warrant for the existence of a real spiritual power, was apprehended of all men. Hercules was no dead hero, to be remembered only as a victor over monsters of the past -- harmless now, as slain. He was the perpetual type and mirror of heroism, and its present and living aid against every ravenous form of human trial and pain.

The great myths; that is to say, myths made by great people. For the first plain fact about myth-making is one which has been most strangely lost sight of, -- that you cannot make a myth unless you have something to make it of. You cannot tell a secret which you don''t know. If the myth is about the sky, it must have been made by somebody who had looked at the sky. If the myth is about justice and fortitude, it must have been made by some one who knew what it was to be just or patient.

According to the quantity of understanding in the person will be the quantity of significance in his fable; and the myth of a simple and ignorant race must necessarily mean little, be. cause a simple and ignorant race have little to mean.

So the great question in reading a story is always, not what wild hunter dreamed, or what childish race first dreaded it; but what wise man first perfectly told, and what strong people first perfectly lived by it.

And the real meaning of any myth is that which it has at the noblest age of the nation among whom it is current. The farther back you pierce, the less significance you will find, until you come to the first narrow thought, which, indeed, contains the germ of the accomplished tradition; but only as the seed contains the flower.

As the intelligence and passion of the race develop, they cling to and nourish their beloved and sacred legend; leaf by leaf it expands under the touch of more pure affections, and more delicate imagination, until at last the perfect fable burgeons out into symmetry of milky stem, and honied bell.

But through whatever changes it may pass, remember that our right reading of it is wholly dependent on the materials we have in our own minds for an intelligent answering sympathy. If it first arose among a people who dwelt under stainless skies, and measured their journeys by ascending and declining stars, we certainly cannot read their story, if we have never seen anything above us in the day, but smoke; nor anything round us in the night but candles.

If the tale goes on to change clouds or planets into living creatures, -- to invest them with fair forms -- and inflame them with mighty passions, we can only understand the story of the human-hearted things, in so far as we ourselves take pleasure in the perfectness of visible form, or can sympathize, by an effort of imagination, with the strange people who had other loves than that of wealth, and other interests than those of commerce.

And, lastly, if the myth complete itself to the fulfilled thoughts of the nation, by attributing to the gods, whom they have carved out of their fantasy, continual presence with their own souls; and their every effort for good is finally guided by the sense of the companionship, the praise, and the pure will of Immortals, we shall be able to follow them into this last circle of their faith only in the degree in which the better parts of our own beings have been also stirred by the aspects of nature, or strengthened by her laws.

It may be easy to prove that the ascent of Apollo in his chariot signifies nothing but the rising of the sun. But what does the sunrise itself signify to us? If only languid return to frivolous amusement, or fruitless labour, it will, indeed, not be easy for us to conceive the power, over a Greek, of the name of Apollo.

But if, for us also, as for the Greek, the sunrise means daily restoration to the sense of passionate gladness and of perfect life -- if it means the thrilling of new strength through every nerve, -- the shedding over us of a better peace than the peace of night, in the power of the dawn, -- and the purging of evil vision and fear by the baptism of its dew; -- if the sun itself is an influence to us also, of spiritual good -- and becomes thus in reality, not is imagination, to us also, a spiritual power, -- we may then soon over-pass the narrow limit of conception which kept that power impersonal, and rise with the Greek to the thought of an angel who rejoiced as a strong man to run his course, whose voice, calling to life and to labour, rang round the earth, and whose going forth was to the ends of heaven.