谁想严格地考验自己是不是类似真正的审美观众，抑或属于苏格拉底式批评家之列，只须抚心自问，他欣赏舞台上表演的奇迹时的感触如何：他是否觉得他那坚持严格心理因果律的历史意识受到侮辱呢，他是否善意地承认这些奇迹是儿童所喜闻乐见，但对他格格不入的现象呢，抑或他能从其中取得一些别的经验？
Whoever wishes to test rigorously to what extent he himself is related to the true aesthetic listener or belongs to the community of the Socratic-critical persons needs only to examine sincerely the feeling with which he accepts miracles represented on the stage: whether he feels his historical sense, which insists on strict psychological causality, insulted by them,whether he makes a benevolent concession and admits the miracle as a phenomenon intelligible to childhood but alien to him, or whether he experiences anything else.
因为这样，他才能够测量他了解神话的能力毕竟有多少。神话是集中的世界画景，作为现象的缩写来说，是不能缺少奇迹的。
For in this way he will be able to determine to what extent he is capable of understanding myth as a concentrated image of the world that, as a condensation of phenomena, cannot dispense with miracles.
然而，很有可能，几乎每个人在严格检查之下，总觉得自己被现代文化的历史批判精神腐蚀得这么深，以致只有在学术上，通过间接的抽象，才相信昔日也许有神话存在。
It is probable, however, that almost everyone, upon close examination, finds that the critical-historical spirit of our culture has so affected him that he can only make the former existence of myth credible to himself by means of scholarship, through intermediary abstractions.
但是，没有神话，则任何一种文化都会失掉它的健康的、天然的创造力，正是神话的视野，约束着全部文化运动，使之成为一个体系。正是依赖神话的救济，一切想象力，一切梦境的幻想，才得免于漫无目的的彷徨。
But without myth every culture loses the healthy natural power of its creativity: only a horizon defined by myths completes and unifies a whole cultural movement. Myth alone saves all the powers of the imagination and of the Apollinian dream from their aimless wanderings.
神话的形象，必须是肉眼不见，但无所不在的护守神灵：在神鬼的庇佑下，年轻的心灵逐渐长成；凭鬼神的指点，成年人明白了自己的生存和斗争的意义；甚至国家也承认，最有力的不成文法莫过于神话的根据，它保证国家与宗教的联系，证明国家从神话观念长成。
The images of the myth have to be the unnoticed omnipresent demonic guardians, under whose care the young soul grows to maturity and whose signs help the man to interpret his life and struggles. Even the state knows no more powerful unwritten laws than the mythical foundation that guarantees its connection with religion and its growth from mythical notions.
另一方面，我们试设想不靠神话指导的抽象的的人，抽象的教育，抽象的道德，抽象的正义，抽象的国家；
By way of comparison let us now picture the abstract man, untutored by myth; abstract education; abstract morality; abstract law; abstract state; let us imagine the lawless roving of the artistic imagination, unchecked by any native myth;
我们试设想，不受本国神话约制的艺术想象力如何想入非非；我们试设想这样一种文化：它没有固定的神圣的发祥地，而命定要耗尽它的一切潜能，要依靠一切外来文化艰苦度日，——这就是今日的时代，苏格拉底主义因为铲除神话而招致的恶果。
let us think of a culture that has no fixed and sacred primordial site but is doomed to exhaust all possibilities and to nourish itself wretchedly on all other cultures--there we have the present age, the result of that Socratism which is bent on the destruction of myth.
今日，丧失神话的人们，总是饥肠辘辘，徘徊在过去时代中，竭力去探寻，去掘发一些根苗，哪怕是必须向最遥远的古代探掘。
And now the mythless man stands eternally hungry, surrounded by all past ages, and digs and grubs for roots, even if he has to dig for them among the remotest antiquities.
我们如饥如渴的现代文化的强烈的历史兴趣，我们集无数其它文化之大成，我们如火如荼的求知欲；——这一切表示甚么呢，可不是表示丧失了神话，丧失了神话的故乡，丧失了神话的母怀吗？
The tremendous historical need of our unsatisfied modern culture, the assembling around one of countless other cultures, the consuming desire for knowledge--what does all this point to, if not to the loss of myth, the loss of the mythical home, the mythical maternal womb?
试问这种文化的狂热不安的兴奋，不是像饥者贫得无厌，饥不择食，还像甚么呢？这样一种狼吞虎咽，不知餍足的文化，即使接触到最滋补最有益的东西，也往往把它化为“历史与批评”，试问谁愿意给它更多一些营养呢？
Let us ask ourselves whether the feverish and uncanny excitement of this culture is anythingbut the greedy seizing and snatching at food of a hungry man--and who would care to contribute anything to a culture that cannot be satisfied no matter how much it devours, and at whose contact the most vigorous and wholesome nourishment is changed into "history and criticism"?