What Hooke did, in his day, occasionally, and in an empirical manner, some German literati have attempted in a quite systematic, _a priori_ fashion. They first determine that the myth or legend has been composed by a certain play of the imagination--as the representing the history of a people, or a tribe, under the personal adventures of an imaginary being; and then they hope to unravel this work of the fancy, and get back again the raw material of plain truth. If they are partially correct in describing this to have been _one_ course the imagination pursued--which is all that can be admitted--still the attempt is utterly hopeless to recover, in its first shape, what has been confessedly disguised and distorted. The naturalists of Laputa were justified in supposing that the light of the sun had much to do with the growth of gerkins, but it does not follow that they would succeed in their project of "extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers." For the _briefest_ illustration we can call to mind of this philosophical ingenuity, we will refer the reader to Michelet's preface to his History of Rome. We see the absurdity none the worse for it being presented through the transparent medium of the French writer. He thus explains the discovery of the learned Germans whom he follows:--"Ce qu'il y a de plus original, c'est d'avoir prouve que ces fictions historiques etaient une necessite de notre nature. L'humanite d'abord materielle et grossiere, ne pouvait dans les langues encore toutes concretes, exprimer la pensee abstraite, qu'en la realisant, en lui donnant un corps, une personalite humaine, un nom propre. Le meme besoin do simplification, si naturel a la faiblesse, fit aussi designer une collection d'individus par un nom d'homme. Cet homme mythique, ce fils de la pensee populaire, exprima a la fois le peuple et l'idee du peuple. Romulus c'etait la force, et le peuple de la force; Juda, l'election divine et le peuple elu." Having thus expounded the theory of the construction of a myth, he afterwards tries his hand upon the resolution of one into its constituent elements. The fourth chapter of his introduction commences thus:--"Circe, dit Hesiode, (_Theog._ v. 1111, 1115) eut d'Ulysse deux fils, Latinos et Agrios (le barbare,) qui au fond des saintes iles gouvenerent la race celebre des Tyrseniens. J'enterpreterais volontiers ce passage de la maniere suivante: Des Pelasges, navigateurs et magiciens, (c'est-a-dire, industrieux) sortirent les deux grandes societes Italiennes--les _Osci_, (dont les Latins sont une tribu,) et les Tusci ou Etrusques. Circe, fille du soleil, a tous les caracteres d'une Telchine Pelasgique. Le poete nous la montre pres d'un grand feu, rarement utile dans un pays chaud, si ce n'est pour un but industriel; elle file la toile, ou prepare de puissants breuvages."