Myth is an excitation of thought that begins with the soul's own experience and ends with a comprehension of the principles that underlie that experience. The deeper significance of the rhetorical function and mimetic quality of myth is that it cultivates the power required to grasp the principles it frames, and it does so in terms amenable to the experience of the individual interlocutor. Consequently, through myth, the interlocutor can come to see the principle for himself in his own experience, rather than adopting it as a hypothesis or supposition.
Joe McCoy, "The Appropriation of Myth and the Sayings of the Wise in Plato's Meno and Philebus," Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association (Volume 78, 2004) 175.
