One is almost tempted to say that the language itself is a mythology deprived of its vitality, a bloodless mythology so to speak, which has only preserved in a formal and abstract form what mythology contains in living and concrete form.
Interpretation
Language can be seen as a lifeless version of mythology, stripped of its vibrant essence.
Schelling suggests that language, while it serves as a vessel for mythological concepts, lacks the vitality and richness that original mythologies possess. In his view, language reduces the lively, dynamic nature of myth into a mere abstract representation, thereby losing the depth and experiential quality that makes mythology so powerful and engaging in its living form.
In practice
In a lecture on the importance of storytelling, one might use this quote to emphasize how language can fail to capture the essence of lived experiences.
The fear of speculation, the ostensible rush from the theoretical to the practical, brings about the same shallowness in action that it does in knowledge. It is by studying a strictly theoretical philosophy that we become most acquainted with Ideas, and only Ideas provide action with vigour and ethical meaning.
When the emperor is crowned or the three dukes are appointed, rather than sending a gift of jade carried by four horses, remain still and offer the Way.
A spiritual desert is spreading: an interior emptiness, an unnamed fear, a quiet sense of despair.
Capitalism tries for a delicate balance: It attempts to work things out so that everyone gets just enough stuff to keep them from getting violent and trying to take other people’s stuff.
We Greeks are lovers of the beautiful, yet simple in our tastes, and we cultivate the mind without loss of manliness.
For me, the Immaculate Conception is the feast of 'passive action,' the action that functions simply by the transmission through us of divine energy. Purity, in spite of outward appearances, is essentially an active virtue, because it concentrates God in us and on those who are subject to our influence.
The president is the high priest of what sociologist Robert Bellah calls the 'American civil religion.' The president must invoke the name of God (though not Jesus), glorify America's heroes and history,quote its sacred texts (the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution), and perform the transubstantiation of pluribus unum.
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