But this fact is falsified
by the error that I put first in this note on mythology.
It is misunderstanding the psychology of day-dreams. A child
pretending there is a goblin in a hollow tree will do a crude
and material thing, like leaving a piece of cake for him.
A poet might do a more dignified and elegant thing, like bringing
to the god fruits as well as flowers. But the degree of seriousness
in both acts may be the same or it may vary in almost any degree.
The crude fancy is no more a creed than the ideal fancy is a creed.
Certainly the pagan does not disbelieve like an atheist,
any more than he believes like a Christian. He feels
the presence of powers about which he guesses and invents.
St. Paul said that the Greeks had one altar to an unknown god.
But in truth all their gods were unknown gods. And the real
break in history did come when St. Paul declared to them whom
they had ignorantly worshipped.
-The Everlasting Man (1925)
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