ABSTRACT
That we may believe that all men possess the supernatural powers, I would restore to the philosopher his mythology. - A Vision.
It is the effort to prove the myth, century after century, that has made civilization. l
1 Yeats, in conversation with Myles Dillon. 2 Explorations, p. 291. He picked it up in 'The Life of St Pe1agia the
Hermit', in Helen Waddell's The Desert Fathers, pp. 178-80. 'A certain Byzantine Bishop had said upon seeing a singe! of Antioch, "I looked long
THE LONELY TOWER
-with me on the Anglo-Irish background of the Big House and its "mythology'; as well as to the Lecturers of the past four years at the Y eats International Summer School at Sligo -especially to Marion Witt, Myles Dillon and Frank O'Connor - and to the members of the Advanced Seminar Group at those meetings. I owe a particular debt to Francis Warner, for reading this edition both in script and in proof. It is possible that I have inadvertently taken ideas from others which I have not acknowledged; if so, I ask their pardon.
