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51 LECTURE FOUR [XI 67] If nothing is to be done either with the opinion that there was no truth at all originally in mythology or with the opinion that indeed concedes an original truth in it, but not in mythology as such—that is, especially so far as it is the doctrine of the gods [Götterlehre] and the history of the gods— then with the elimination of both these views the third is of itself grounded, and now already necessarily: mythology was thus, as it is, meant as truth; but this is already from itself the same as the claim that mythology is originally meant as the doctrine [Götterlehre] of the gods and history of the gods, that it originally has religious meaning. And just this latter is now also that which the earlier explanations exclude. For all sought to bring out that the religious meaning, which they had to grant to mythology insofar as it was undeniably in force as the doctrine of the gods [Götterlehre], has only later entered it and was foreign to its original emergence into being. Admittedly, the purely poetic explanation, insofar as it disavows only the intentionally imputed sense, is able to grant originally religious echoes, but for the same reason is immune to every religious emergence into being; and what is able to appear in mythology as something religious must count for it as something just as contingent and unintentional as every other seemingly doctrinal meaning. The matter is entirely different with the non-poetic, more philosophical explanations . Here the religious is not even admitted as something originally contingent. According to Heyne, the creators, on the contrary, are very well conscious that the personalities that they poetically invent [erdichten] are not actual beings and already thus [XI 68], for this reason, that they are not gods. For the least in the concept of the gods is that they are feared beings, but only actual ones or ones considered actual are feared. In the most consistent development, as is admittedly only found in Hermann, the religious meaning even has to become what is intentionally excluded. Now, accordingly, if we wanted via a common name to call the previously judged theories as a whole the irreligious theories (as understood without any suspicious corollary meaning), then they would perhaps nevertheless reject the name because according to their opinion they in part at least presuppose of mythology actually religious ideas [Vorstellungen], and thus they do not completely exclude the religious. And, indeed, whoever for example concurred with Eumeros would have to imagine actual gods before the mythological gods, which for Eumeros are only inactual. Likewise, Hermann speaks of a preliminary level of mythology, of a coarsely physical superstition that, to be sure, conceived of actual beings believed to be in connection with phenomena of nature; and also Heyne, if one were able to question him about it, would not hesitate to accept this view. For he also, in order for his personalities—which are not actual gods—to be taken as gods, must presuppose actual ones. Thus, also these explanations want, according to their view, actual gods, and consequently what really is religious—at least as background . Thus it would appear that one would be unable to establish a category of irreligious views in general. But, at least with reference to the views just mentioned, it would still first have to be decided if we will grant to the beings that the views presuppose to the properly and authentically mythological ones a claim to be beings of an actually religious meaning. For initially, indeed they are actual beings that man fancies to hide behind natural effects, whether it be on account of a lack of knowledge of the true causes, or from a merely animal and thoughtless fear, or in consequence of a positive proclivity—which one ascribes to man wherever he perceives an effect—to also presuppose will and freedom; or even if it were also simply because he only [XI 69] creates the concept of existence out of himself, the concept of existence under which he conceives things apart from himself, and only gradually generalizes and learns to separate from himself that which is bound up with this concept in human consciousness.a As ones that were overwhelming, superior in general to human force, these beings standing in connection with natural processes are feared (primus in orbe Deos fecit timor); and because according to their arbitrariness and moods they appear for...

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