It is a myth, not a mandate, a fable not a logic, and symbol rather than a reason by which men are moved.

A myth is a religion in which no one any longer believes.

All the great things have been denied and we live in an intricacy of new and local mythologies, political, economic, poetic, which are asserted with an ever-enlarging incoherence.

The poets were not alone in sanctioning myths, for long before the poets the states and the lawmakers had sanctioned them as a useful expedient. They needed to control the people by superstitious fears, and these cannot be aroused without myths and marvels.

One may as well preach a respectable mythology as anything else.