Joseph Campbell

178 Pages·2009·0.59 MB·English

MythstoLiveBy
Myths to Live By
by Joseph Campbell
Foreword by Johnson E. Fairchild
a.b.e-book v3.0 / Notes at EOF

Back Cover:

"There is no one quite like Joseph Campbell. . . He knows the vast sweeps of man's panoramic past as
few men have ever known it." -- The Village Voice

MAN THE MYTH-MAKER

What is a properly functioning mythology and what are its functions? Can we "live by" myths
today? Can they help relieve our modern anxiety, or do they help to foster it? In Myths to Live By,
Joseph Campbell explores the vital link of man to his myths and the way in which they can extend our
human potential.

RL 10, IL age 15 and up
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This edition contains the complete text
of the original hardcover edition.
NOT ONE WORD HAS BEEN OMITTED.

MYTHS TO LIVE BY
A. Bantam Book / published by arrangement with
Viking Penguin, Inc.

PRINTING HISTORY
Viking edition published April 1972
The Readers' Subscription edition published 1972
Bantam edition / June 1973

All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1972 by Joseph Campbell.
Cover illustration copyright © 1988 by Bantam Books.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The Clarendon Press: From The Art of War by Sun Tzu,
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translated by Samuel B. Griffith, 1963.

Harcourt Brace Jovanavich, Inc., and Faber and Faber Ltd.:
From "Burnt Norton" by T. S. Eliot.

Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., and Chatto and Windus Ltd.:
From pp. 22-24 In The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley.
Copyright 1954 by Aldous Huxley. Reprinted by permission of
the publishers.

The Macmlllan Company, The Macmlllan Company of Canada,
and Mr. M. B. Yeats: From "The Second Coming" from
Collected Poems by William Butler Yeata. Copyright 1924 by
The Macmillan Company, renewed 1932 by Bertha Georgie Yeats.

Penguin Books Ltd.: From The Politics of Experience,
R. D. Laing. Copyright © 1967 R. D. Laing.

Random House, Inc.: From Selected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers.
Copyright 1924 and renewed 1952 by Robinson Jeffers.

University of Chicago Press: From "Fable of the Four Treasure-Seekers"
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from Panchatantra, translated by Arthur W. Ryder. Copyright 1923 by
the University of Chicago.

I wish to thank Dr. Stanislav Grof for permission to adumbrate in
my last chapter tome of his findings, soon to be published in a work
entitled Agony and Ecstasy in Psychiatric Treatment (Science and
Behavior Books).

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording, or by any information
storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publisher.
For information address: Viking Penguin Inc.,
40 W. 23rd Street, New York, N.Y. 10010.

ISBN 0-553-27088-5

Published simultaneously in the United States and Canada

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
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30 29 28 27 26 25 24 23

Foreword

The seminal mind of Peter Cooper (1791-1883) -- the radical, free-thinking inventor,
moneymaker, and politician, the first real feminist of New York -- conceived, among other great things,
The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. Cooper was disturbed by his own lack of
education and by the knowledge that education was in his time conceived to be for the wealthy and for
men alone. He changed both concepts, stimulated probably by the Chautauqua movement and the deeds
of certain other philanthropists. His big and primary contribution was the idea of The Forum and adult
education, which produced the first adult education college of this nation.
From the day of Abraham Lincoln's address to the present, more than five thousand speakers and
artists have appeared on the Great Hall platform, and their ideas have reached an audience of millions:
an average of over a thousand people a night, three nights a week.
And today -- thanks to Mr. Seymour Siegel's nudging and the help of Mr. Bernard Buck -- the
offerings are being broadcast by the New York City municipal radio station, WNYC, to hundreds of
thousands more. This already is the longest radio lecture series in history; and greatly to the credit of
The Cooper Union is the fact that the director programing the lectures for The Forum -- entrusted with
the lonesome and awesome intellectual task of representing the past and looking into the future -- has
never once been interrupted in his work, directed, or interfered with by The Cooper Union.
One of my precepts during my twenty-two years at The Cooper Union has been that every one of
the more than a thousand whom I have invited to speak or to perform, and have presented on the
platform, should be my friend -- as should also every member both of the visible audience and of the
millions of invisible radio listeners. It would be difficult to select a single speaker; but Joseph Campbell,
the author of the present book, epitomizes the quality of communication and intellectuality required for
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The Forum. He never uses a note, speaks beautifully, and is brilliant; above all, he transmits ideas that
bridge the past and future and the worlds of East and West. He has delivered at The Forum many great
lectures and lecture series, and they have always been a joy and a pleasure. The present work, developed
from those lectures, synopsizes a lifetime of scholarship and the best principles of The Cooper Union
Forum. I am proud to be a part of this momentous book.
Johnson E. Fairchild
New York City,
October 15, 1971

Preface

From a series of some twenty-five talks on mythology delivered in The Great Hall of The Cooper
Union Forum, New York City, between 1958 and 1971, I have here selected and arranged a baker's
dozen -- Number Four being put together of parts of two from the same year. The topics and titles I owe
to the fertile mind of Dr. Johnson E. Fairchild, the Chairman of The Forum, whose wit, wisdom, and
personal charm kept that blithesome institution running for the best part of a quarter of a century. My
continuing pleasure in lecturing there derived in part, of course, from the old-fashioned, simple grandeur
of the Great Hall itself and the knowledge that Abraham Lincoln once spoke from the very stage on
which I stood (a certain secret sense of participation in the grand stream of the history of American
eloquence); but also, more immediately, from the mood and character of the open-eyed, open-hearted
audiences that Dr. Fairchild managed to attract to his numerous series of free lectures and discussions in
that friendly place. The question hours following the lectures, when he would amble with a microphone
up and down the aisles, letting anyone who raised a hand say what he would in comment, query, or
prepared oration, contributed more to my appreciation of the sheer fun of talking to people of good will
about the topics of my own concern in terms appropriate to their concerns than any other experience of
my years. And I hope that even in the more formal cast of the written prose of this book, something of
the freshness and ease of my delight in delivering these talks will have been retained.
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I am happy indeed that Dr. Fairchild has very kindly agreed to introduce the volume, as he
introduced from the platform every one of its talks; the last, March 1, 1971, delivered (by the way) on
the last evening before retirement of his long career as both Chairman of The Forum and Director of the
Department of Adult Education of The Cooper Union. I think of this collection as an appropriate token
of my debt and gratitude to him for the encouragement, warm friendship, and always timely suggestions
of themes and titles that taught me to bring my Buffalo-Gods, Quetzalcoatls, Buddhas, and Fairy Queens
into mutually illuminating dialogue with those hundreds of members of his audiences -- many of them
faithful for years -- who finally were the inspiration for these talks. My thanks go out to them all as well
as to their chairman.
I would thank, also, the technicians and officers of radio station WNYC for the tape-recordings
from which I have prepared these chapters; Miss Marcia Sherman for her faithful typing and retyping of
the many drafts, not only of these, but also of the lectures not here included; and my wife, Jean Erdman,
for the idea, in the first place, of turning these talks into the chapters of a book, and the criticism and
suggestions, then, that brought the book into being.
J. C.
New York City
July 4, 1971

Contents

Foreword by Johnson E. Fairchild
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Preface

I The Impact of Science on Myth
II The Emergence of Mankind
III The Importance of Rites
IV The Separation of East and West
V The Confrontation of East and West in Religion
VI The Inspiration of Oriental Art
VII Zen
VIII The Mythology of Love
IX Mythologies of War and Peace
X Schizophrenia -- the Inward Journey
XI The Moon Walk -- the Outward Journey
XII Envoy: No More Horizons

Reference Notes

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I
The Impact of Science on Myth
[1961]

I was sitting the other day at a lunch counter that I particularly enjoy, when a youngster about
twelve years old, arriving with his school satchel, took the place at my left. Beside him came a younger
little man, holding the hand of his mother, and those two took the next seats. All gave their orders, and,
while waiting, the boy at my side said, turning his head slightly to the mother, "Jimmy wrote a paper
today on the evolution of man, and Teacher said he was wrong, that Adam and Eve were our first
parents."
My Lord! I thought. What a teacher!
The lady three seats away then said, "Well, Teacher was right. Our first parents were Adam and
Eve."
What a mother for a twentieth-century child!
The youngster responded, "Yes, I know, but this was a scientific paper." And for that, I was
ready to recommend him for a distinguished-service medal from the Smithsonian Institution.
The mother, however, came back with another. "Oh, those scientists!" she said angrily. "Those
are only theories."
And he was up to that one too. "Yes, I know," was his cool and calm reply; "but they have been
factualized: they found the bones."
The milk and the sandwiches came, and that was that.
So let us now reflect for a moment on the sanctified cosmic image that has been destroyed by the
facts and findings of irrepressible young truth-seekers of this kind.
At the height of the Middle Ages, say in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, there were current
two very different concepts of the earth. The more popular was of the earth as flat, like a dish
surrounded by, and floating upon, a boundless cosmic sea, in which there were all kinds of monsters
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