"'Well, this man Aristotle (for, we have not yet pluralised him, although I--but this would pass your horizon, my young friend)--this clever man has left us, amongst other works, one called "Politics." It is not wanting in quality, and it is said, if with certain doubts, that there are a few things to be learnt from it. It is, of course, also said that no professor has ever learnt them. But this is mere calumny. Look at their vast commentaries. Of course, how can one accept some of the glaring fallacies of Aristotle? Imagine, that man Aristotle wants us to believe that nearly all Greek states were founded, equipped with a constitution, and in a word, completely fitted out by _one_ man in each case. Thus, that Sparta was founded, washed, dressed, fed, and educated by one Lycurgus. How ridiculous! "'Having proved, as we have, that Homer's poetry, a mere book, was made by a Joint Stock Company, Unlimited, how can we admit that a big and famous state like Sparta was ordered, cut out, tailored, stuffed and set on foot by one man? Where would be Evolution? If a state like Sparta was made in the course of a few months by one man, what would Evolution do with all the many, many years and ages she has to drag along? Why, she would die with _ennui_, bored to death. Can we admit that? _Can one let Evolution die?_ Is she not a nice, handy, comely Evolution, and so useful in the household that we cannot be happy until we get her? To believe in a big, important state like Sparta having been completely established by one man is like saying that my colleague, the Professor of Zoology, taking a shilling bottle of Bovril, has reconstituted out of its contents a live ox walking stately into his lecture-room. Hah-hah-hah! Very good joke. (Secretary! Put it into my table-talk! Voltairian joke! serious, but not grave.) "'Now, you see, my young friend, in that capital point Aristotle was most childishly mistaken; and even so in many another point. We have definitely done away with all state-founders of the ancients. Romulus is a myth; so is Theseus; so is Moses; so is Samson (not to speak of Delilah); so is everybody who pretended to have founded a city-state. Since he never existed, how could he have founded anything? Could I found a city-state? Or any state, except a certain state of mind, in which I say that no single man can found a city-state? Could I? Of course, I could not. Well then, how could Lycurgus? Was he a LL.D.? Was he a member of the British Academy? Was he a professor at Oxford? Had he written numerous letters to _The Times_? Was he subscriber to so respectable a paper as _The Spectator_? It is ridiculous to speak of such a thing. Lycurgus founding Sparta! It is too amusing for words. These are all myths. Whatever we cannot understand, we call a myth; and since we do not understand many things, we get every day a richer harvest of myths. We are full of them. We are the real living mythology.'