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From, A History of Greek Philosophy, vol. I, The early Presocratics and the Pythagoreans, Cambridge University Press, 1962, pp. 1-25.
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Page 4
This is not a condemnation of myth as false in itself. Its stories and images may be, at an early stage of civilization, the only available means (and an effective one) of expressing profound and universal truths. Later, a mature religious thinker like Plato may choose it deliberately, and as the culmination of a reasoned argument, to communicate experiences and beliefs, the reality and cogency of which is a matter of conviction outrunning logical proof. This is genuine myth, and its validity and importance are undoubted. The danger begins when men believe they have left all that behind and are relying on a scientific method based solely on a combination of observation and logical inference. The unconscious retention of inherited and irrational modes of thought, cloaked in the vocabulary of reason, then becomes an obstacle, rather than an aid, to the pursuit of truth.
The reason for making this point at the outset is that the implicit acceptance of mythical concepts is a habit that never completely relaxes its hold. Today it is even more heavily overlaid than in ancient Greece with the terminology of rational disciplines. This makes it more difficult to detect and therefore more dangerous. Without belittling the magnificent achievements of the Greeks in natural philosophy, metaphysics, psychology, epistemology, ethics and politics, we shall find that because they were pioneers, and therefore much nearer than ourselves to the mythical, magical or proverbial origins of some of the principles which they accepted without question, we can see these origins clearly; and this in turn throws light on the dubious credentials of some of the principles which gain a similarly unquestioned acceptance among many today. ...
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Reference address : https://www.ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/ancient-greece/guthrie-history-intro.asp?pg=4
