Myths are essential to the process of keeping our souls alive and bringing us new meaning in a difficult and often meaningless world. Such aspects of eternity as beauty, love, great ideas, appear suddenly or gradually in the language of myths. Man positively needs general ideas and convictions that will give a meaning to his life and enable him to find his place in the universe. He can stand the most incredible hardships when he is convinced that they make sense but he is crushed when, on top of all his misfortunes, he has to admit that he is taking part in a 'tale told by an idiot'. The need for mythic statements is satisfied when we frame a view of the world which adequately explains the meaning of human existence in the cosmos, a view which springs from our psychic wholeness, from the co-operation between conscious and unconscious.
Meaninglessness inhibits fullness of life and is therefore equivalent to illness.
Meaning makes a great many things endurable - perhaps everything. No science will ever replace myth, and a myth cannot be made out of any science.