ABSTRACT
Seemingly immune to rational explication, myths nevertheless stimulate rational enquiry, which accounts for the diversity of conflicting explanations, none of which is ever comprehensive enough to explain myths away. Mythogonies are invented by people who cannot bring themselves to accept Malinowski’s view that myths simply mean what they say. On the contrary, mythogonists habitually assume that a myth conceals a ‘real’ meaning beneath its apparent meaning. Anybody who studies the study of myths, must accordingly tremble to know precisely what qualifications he should bring to the task. Mythology is a subject in its own right, although not recognized as such in the educational system. Each discipline such as classics, anthropology, etc., looks at mythology in the light of its own preoccupations, which means that an inquisitive outsider who drifts promiscuously from one to another is likely to conclude that the various specialists are not really talking about the same thing at all, but about different things under the same name.
