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This volume is composed of a series of lectures Joseph Campbell gave to 'open-eyed, open-hearted audiences' at The Cooper Union Forum between 1958 and 1971, a period that includes the publication dates of his monumental tetralogy on mythology, The Masks of God (Primitive Mythology, Oriental Mythology, Occidental Mythology, and Creative Mythology). His view of myths in that work and in these lectures is the same: myths are vital elements in man's life and they reflect his nature as well as shape it; they serve both to mobilize and to reconcile man to himself and to his environment. Campbell treats myths from the adaptive point of view and thus the title, Myths To Live By, though prosaic, is very apt.
Now the first and most important effect of a living mythological symbol is to waken and give guidance to the energies of life. It is an energy-releasing and -directing sign, which not only 'turns you on' as they say today, but turns you on in a certain direction, making you function a certain way—which will be one conducive to your participation in the life and purposes of a functioning social group (p. 88).
Compare this with Jacob Arlow's statement:
Through its mythology, the society tends to induce a climate favorable to the realization of appropriate identifications. Every society interprets and reinterprets its history and its heroes in keeping with this need. What makes this technique so effective is the powerful, motive force of the childhood instinctual wish through the medium of the vicarious (unconscious) gratification which comes from identification with the hero of the myth. The path is prepared for identification and subsequent character transformations in keeping with the idealized qualities of the hero.1
Drawing from many disciplines (the range of his erudition is truly extraordinary), Campbell shows how myths serve adaptive functions. Comparing myths across space (anthropology) and over time (history and archeology), he describes the way myths lead ind