CHAPTER XVIII

STORY AS A MODE OF THINKING

In our consideration of poetry in its fundamental conception it appeared that poetry was both a mode of philosophy and a mode of art. It is possible to review these two functions of poetry, and indeed of literature in general, separately. This will be the subject of the Fifth and Sixth books of this work.

The nucleus of creative literature is story. A story lies at the back of every single drama or epic, and story may enter largely into the poetry that is lyric. Such story is an end in itself: a thing of beauty needing no further justification. But story is also a means to an end, a vehicle for conveying philosophic thought. We can imagine the Schoolmen, in a spasm of their philosophic curiosity, inquiring what would have happened to the world if one of our first parents had eaten of the forbidden fruit, and the other had not. In their hands the inquiry would have been a tempest of discussion, in which abstract principles would be tossed to and fro. But it is clear that this problem-if it must be discussed-might equally well have been raised by making up an imaginary story to the effect that this occurred, and that under these circumstances a child was born to these parents: such a child, born of one parent who was innocent and one who was guilty, would be a concrete embodiment of the question at issue, and the adventures of this Ichild would be a concrete embodiment of some solution to the question. Similarly, a previous chapter has shown how a delicate piece of creation like the White Lady of Avenel reveals, on analysis, abstract speculations as to elemental existence, and holds the whole Rosicrucian philosophy in solution. This principle of story as a mode of thinking is universal. There is,

it is true, a wholesome prejudice against 'stories with a purpose': but this is because with the wide prevalence of the author fallacy—the phrase is understood to imply a conscious purpose in the author; and if a creative author is consciously dominated by a philosophic motive there is so much less room for artistic inspiration. In reality, what makes a problem drama or problem story is that, irrespective of the author, the personalities and incidents presented do in fact raise problems of human life. It is impossible to construct a story touching things human which does not involve underlying conceptions of life; if the author so intended, then the story reveals his conceptions of life; if he did not so intend, his conceptions of life are betrayed. Thus story by the manner of its execution connects with art: by its matter, with philosophy. The concrete life resolved into its underlying abstract principles must always yield thought that is philosophic.

The best discussion of such a principle is the application of it to particular cases. This I have elsewhere done on a considerable scale. The present work is concerned with literary theory: and the present chapter will take up theoretic points implied in the conception of story as a mode of thinking.

I

The word 'mythology' of itself suggests story as a mode of thinking. The early study of mythology was a branch of literary study, inquiring into myth-making as a phenomenon of primitive literature. In our own time the study has traveled far outside literature: modern mythology, as seen in the researches of a Grimm or a Frazer, attempts to interpret the mind of antiquity reflected in language, folk-lore, popular cus

'My work on Shakespeare as Dramatic Thinker is wholly devoted to this purpose, and in all I have written on the Bible, Shakespeare, the Ancient Classical Drama-a large part has been occupied with analysis of ideas underlying imaginative pictures.

tom, rites and ceremonies, as well as in poetry. The early mythology was a study of literary origins. It suffered severely from the 'premature methodization' which erects single bases of interpretation into complete sciences. Thus successive schools of mythologists arose: one school would persuade us that all myths were attempts to explain phenomena of external nature; another school would rest them all upon a disease of language; yet another school would, with Mr. Andrew Lang,' see in myths echoes of popular customs that had become obsolete. It is abundantly clear that all these bases of origination-and many more besides these will have validity in application to particular myths. But when we review poetic myths as a whole, it would seem that the word 'myth' is simply a variant of story. The story of Prometheus or of Persephone we call a myth; the story of Odysseus and Penelope we do not call a myth. The distinction is one that belongs purely to criticism: myth is story considered in its function of suggestive interpretation. If the tale of Persephone, in addition to the story interest of a fair maiden and a dark monster and a sorrowing mother, can be so shaped as to suggest the annual miracle of summer and winter, the story becomes a myth. Or, by virtue of a play upon two meanings of the word daphne—a laurel tree, and dawn—the mere story of a nymph escaping her pursuer by transformation into a tree can be given the additional interest of suggesting the coloring of dawn swallowed up in the growing sunlight, with a hint of the laurel tree as consecrated to the worship of the sun-god: here again a story is elevated into a myth. The distinctiveness of a myth is part of general poetic suggestiveness. And the fact that such myth-making should characterize primitive literature, and disappear in later stages, requires no further explanation than the fact that creative poetry is the universal literature of the primitive world: it must thus satisfy, in its own mode of

1 Custom and Myth (Harper). Cox's Introduction to Mythology (Holt) and the writings of Max Müller will represent the other schools.

creative thinking, the embryonic instinct of speculation which, when fully developed, will demand a new literary medium of science and philosophy.

The prehistoric stage of history—if such an expression may be permitted is largely occupied with myth-making. A particularly simple illustration of the myth as story in its interpretative function is afforded by the use of genealogy to convey ideas of race connection. As Grote in his History of Greece1 says:

Every association of men, large or small, in whom there existed a feeling of present union, traced back that union to some common initial progenitor. A series of names, placed in filiation or fraternity, together with a certain number of family or personal adventures ascribed to some of the individuals among them, constitute the ante-historical past.

As a detail in his treatment of this subject, Grote takes from Apollodorus certain genealogical stories, the sum of which I can most briefly indicate in the form of a genealogical table.

The essential ideas reflected in such genealogical presentation are easy to interpret. The Greeks fall into four well-marked

1 Volume I, chapter iv, page 77. What follows is based on this chapter.