Transcribed from the 1897 Longmans, Green, and Co. edition by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk

MODERN MYTHOLOGY

DEDICATION

Dedicated to the memory of John Fergus McLennan.

INTRODUCTION

It may well be doubted whether works of controversy serve any useful purpose. ‘On an opponent,’ as Mr. Matthew Arnold said, ‘one never does make any impression,’ though one may hope that controversy sometimes illuminates a topic in the eyes of impartial readers. The pages which follow cannot but seem wandering and desultory, for they are a reply to a book, Mr. Max Müller’s Contributions to the Science of Mythology, in which the attack is of a skirmishing character. Throughout more than eight hundred pages the learned author keeps up an irregular fire at the ideas and methods of the anthropological school of mythologists. The reply must follow the lines of attack.

Criticism cannot dictate to an author how he shall write his own book. Yet anthropologists and folk-lorists, ‘agriologists’ and ‘Hottentotic’ students, must regret that Mr. Max Müller did not state their general theory, as he understands it, fully and once for all. Adversaries rarely succeed in quite understanding each other; but had Mr. Max Müller made such a statement, we could have cleared up anything in our position which might seem to him obscure.

Our system is but one aspect of the theory of evolution, or is but the application of that theory to the topic of mythology. The archæologist studies human life in its material remains; he tracks progress (and occasional degeneration) from the rudely chipped flints in the ancient gravel beds, to the polished stone weapon, and thence to the ages of bronze and iron. He is guided by material ‘survivals’—ancient arms, implements, and ornaments. The student of Institutions has a similar method. He finds his relics of the uncivilised past in agricultural usages, in archaic methods of allotment of land, in odd marriage customs, things rudimentary—fossil relics, as it were, of an early social and political condition. The archæologist and the student of Institutions compare these relics, material or customary, with the weapons, pottery, implements, or again with the habitual law and usage of existing savage or barbaric races, and demonstrate that our weapons and tools, and our laws and manners, have been slowly evolved out of lower conditions, even out of savage conditions.

The anthropological method in mythology is the same. In civilised religion and myth we find rudimentary survivals, fossils of rite and creed, ideas absolutely incongruous with the environing morality, philosophy, and science of Greece and India. Parallels to these things, so out of keeping with civilisation, we recognise in the creeds and rites of the lower races, even of cannibals; but there the creeds and rites are not incongruous with their environment of knowledge and culture. There they are as natural and inevitable as the flint-headed spear or marriage by capture. We argue, therefore, that religions and mythical faiths and rituals which, among Greeks and Indians, are inexplicably incongruous have lived on from an age in which they were natural and inevitable, an age of savagery.

That is our general position, and it would have been a benefit to us if Mr. Max Müller had stated it in his own luminous way, if he wished to oppose us, and had shown us where and how it fails to meet the requirements of scientific method. In place of doing this once for all, he often assails our evidence, yet never notices the defences of our evidence, which our school has been offering for over a hundred years. He attacks the excesses of which some sweet anthropological enthusiasts have been guilty or may be guilty, such as seeing totems wherever they find beasts in ancient religion, myth, or art. He asks for definitions (as of totemism), but never, I think, alludes to the authoritative definitions by Mr. McLennan and Mr. Frazer. He assails the theory of fetishism as if it stood now where De Brosses left it in a purely pioneer work—or, rather, where he understands De Brosses to have left it. One might as well attack the atomic theory where Lucretius left it, or the theory of evolution where it was left by the elder Darwin.

Thus Mr. Max Müller really never conies to grips with his opponents, and his large volumes shine rather in erudition and style than in method and system. Anyone who attempts a reply must necessarily follow Mr. Max Müller up and down, collecting his scattered remarks on this or that point at issue. Hence my reply, much against my will, must seem desultory and rambling. But I have endeavoured to answer with some kind of method and system, and I even hope that this little book may be useful as a kind of supplement to Mr. Max Müller’s, for it contains exact references to certain works of which he takes the reader’s knowledge for granted.

The general problem at issue is apt to be lost sight of in this guerilla kind of warfare. It is perhaps more distinctly stated in the preface to Mr. Max Müller’s Chips from a German Workshop, vol. iv. (Longmans, 1895), than in his two recent volumes. The general problem is this: Has language—especially language in a state of ‘disease,’ been the great source of the mythology of the world? Or does mythology, on the whole, represent the survival of an old stage of thought—not caused by language—from which civilised men have slowly emancipated themselves? Mr. Max Müller is of the former, anthropologists are of the latter, opinion. Both, of course, agree that myths are a product of thought, of a kind of thought almost extinct in civilised races; but Mr. Max Müller holds that language caused that kind of thought. We, on the other hand, think that language only gave it one means of expressing itself.

The essence of myth, as of fairy tale, we agree, is the conception of the things in the world as all alike animated, personal, capable of endless interchanges of form. Men may become beasts; beasts may change into men; gods may appear as human or bestial; stones, plants, winds, water, may speak and act like human beings, and change shapes with them.

Anthropologists demonstrate that the belief in this universal kinship, universal personality of things, which we find surviving only in the myths of civilised races, is even now to some degree part of the living creed of savages. Civilised myths, then, they urge, are survivals from a parallel state of belief once prevalent among the ancestors of even the Aryan race. But how did this mental condition, this early sort of false metaphysics, come into existence? We have no direct historical information on the subject. If I were obliged to offer an hypothesis, it would be that early men, conscious of personality, will, and life—conscious that force, when exerted by themselves, followed on a determination of will within them—extended that explanation to all the exhibitions of force which they beheld without them. Rivers run (early man thought), winds blow, fire burns, trees wave, as a result of their own will, the will of personal conscious entities. Such vitality, and even power of motion, early man attributed even to inorganic matter, as rocks and stones. All these things were beings, like man himself. This does not appear to me an unnatural kind of nascent, half-conscious metaphysics. ‘Man never knows how much he anthropomorphises.’ He extended the only explanation of his own action which consciousness yielded to him, he extended it to explain every other sort of action in the sensible world. Early Greek philosophy recognised the stars as living bodies; all things had once seemed living and personal. From the beginning, man was eager causas cognoscere rerum. The only cause about which self-consciousness gave him any knowledge was his own personal will. He therefore supposed all things to be animated with a like will and personality. His mythology is a philosophy of things, stated in stories based on the belief in universal personality.

My theory of the origin of that belief is, of course, a mere guess; we have never seen any race in the process of passing from a total lack of a hypothesis of causes into that hypothesis of universally distributed personality which is the basis of mythology.

But Mr. Max Müller conceives that this belief in universally distributed personality (the word ‘Animism’ is not very clear) was the result of an historical necessity—not of speculation, but of language. ‘Roots were all, or nearly all, expressive of action. . . . Hence a river could only be called or conceived as a runner, or a roarer, or a defender; and in all these capacities always as something active and animated, nay, as something masculine or feminine.’

But why conceived as ‘masculine or feminine’? This necessity for endowing inanimate though active things, such as rivers, with sex, is obviously a necessity of a stage of thought wholly unlike our own. We know that active inanimate things are sexless, are neuter; we feel no necessity to speak of them as male or female. How did the first speakers of the human race come to be obliged to call lifeless things by names connoting sex, and therefore connoting, not only activity, but also life and personality? We explain it by the theory that man called lifeless things male or female—by using gender-terminations—as a result of his habit of regarding lifeless things as personal beings; that habit, again, being the result of his consciousness of himself as a living will.

Mr. Max Müller takes the opposite view. Man did not call lifeless things by names denoting sex because he regarded them as persons; he came to regard them as persons because he had already given them names connoting sex. And why had he done that? This is what Mr. Max Müller does not explain. He says:

‘In ancient languages every one of these words’ (sky, earth, sea, rain) ‘had necessarily’ (why necessarily?) ‘a termination expressive of gender, and this naturally produced in the mind the corresponding idea of sex, so that these names received not only an individual but a sexual character.’ [{0a}]

It is curious that, in proof apparently of this, Mr. Max Müller cites a passage from the Printer’s Register, in which we read that to little children ‘everything is alive. . . . The same instinct that prompts the child to personify everything remains unchecked in the savage, and grows up with him to manhood. Hence in all simple and early languages there are but two genders, masculine and feminine.’

The Printer’s Register states our theory in its own words. First came the childlike and savage belief in universal personality. Thence arose the genders, masculine and feminine, in early languages. These ideas are the precise reverse of Mr. Max Müller’s ideas. In his opinion, genders in language caused the belief in the universal personality even of inanimate things. The Printer’s Register holds that the belief in universal personality, on the other hand, caused the genders. Yet for thirty years, since 1868, Mr. Max Müller has been citing his direct adversary, in the Printer’s Register, as a supporter of his opinion! We, then, hold that man thought all things animated, and expressed his belief in gender-terminations. Mr. Max Müller holds that, because man used gender-terminations, therefore he thought all things animated, and so he became mythopœic. In the passage cited, Mr. Max Müller does not say why ‘in ancient languages every one of these words had necessarily terminations expressive of gender.’ He merely quotes the hypothesis of the Printer’s Register. If he accepts that hypothesis, it destroys his own theory—that gender-terminations caused all things to be regarded as personal; for, ex hypothesi, it was just because they were regarded as personal that they received names with gender-terminations. Somewhere—I cannot find the reference—Mr. Max Müller seems to admit that personalising thought caused gender-terminations, but these later ‘reacted’ on thought, an hypothesis which multiplies causes præter necessitatem.

Here, then, at the very threshold of the science of mythology we find Mr. Max Müller at once maintaining that a feature of language, gender-terminations, caused the mythopœic state of thought, and quoting with approval the statement that the mythopœic state of thought caused gender-terminations.

Mr. Max Müller’s whole system of mythology is based on reasoning analogous to this example. His mot d’ordre, as Professor Tiele says, is ‘a disease of language.’ This theory implies universal human degradation. Man was once, for all we know, rational enough; but his mysterious habit of using gender-terminations, and his perpetual misconceptions of the meaning of old words in his own language, reduced him to the irrational and often (as we now say) obscene and revolting absurdities of his myths. Here (as is later pointed out) the objection arises, that all languages must have taken the disease in the same way. A Maori myth is very like a Greek myth. If the Greek myth arose from a disease of Greek, how did the wholly different Maori speech, and a score of others, come to have precisely the same malady?

Mr. Max Müller alludes to a Maori parallel to the myth of Cronos. [{0b}] ‘We can only say that there is a rusty lock in New Zealand, and a rusty lock in Greece, and that, surely, is very small comfort.’ He does not take the point. The point is that, as the myth occurs in two remote and absolutely unconnected languages, a theory of disease of language cannot turn the wards of the rusty locks. The myth is, in part at least, a nature-myth—an attempt to account for the severance of Heaven and Earth (once united) by telling a story in which natural phenomena are animated and personal. A disease of language has nothing to do with this myth. It is cited as a proof against the theory of disease of language.

The truth is, that while languages differ, men (and above all early men) have the same kind of thoughts, desires, fancies, habits, institutions. It is not that in which all races formally differ—their language—but that in which all early races are astonishingly the same—their ideas, fancies, habits, desires—that causes the amazing similarity of their myths.

Mythologists, then, who find in early human nature the living ideas which express themselves in myths will hardily venture to compare the analogous myths of all peoples. Mythologists, on the other hand, who find the origin of myths in a necessity imposed upon thought by misunderstood language will necessarily, and logically, compare only myths current among races who speak languages of the same family. Thus, throughout Mr. Max Müller’s new book we constantly find him protesting, on the whole and as a rule, against the system which illustrates Aryan myths by savage parallels. Thus he maintains that it is perilous to make comparative use of myths current in languages—say, Maori or Samoyed—which the mythologists confessedly do not know. To this we can only reply that we use the works of the best accessible authorities, men who do know the languages—say, Dr. Codrington or Bishop Callaway, or Castren or Egede. Now it is not maintained that the myths, on the whole, are incorrectly translated. The danger which we incur, it seems, is ignorance of the original sense of savage or barbaric divine or heroic names—say, Maui, or Yehl, or Huitzilopochhtli, or Heitsi Eibib, or Pundjel. By Mr. Max Müller’s system such names are old words, of meanings long ago generally lost by the speakers of each language, but analysable by ‘true scholars’ into their original significance. That will usually be found by the philologists to indicate ‘the inevitable Dawn,’ or Sun, or Night, or the like, according to the taste and fancy of the student.

To all this a reply is urged in the following pages. In agreement with Curtius and many other scholars, we very sincerely doubt almost all etymologies of old proper names, even in Greek or Sanskrit. We find among philologists, as a rule, the widest discrepancies of interpretation. Moreover, every name must mean something. Now, whatever the meaning of a name (supposing it to be really ascertained), very little ingenuity is needed to make it indicate one or other aspect of Dawn or Night, of Lightning or Storm, just as the philologist pleases. Then he explains the divine or heroic being denoted by the name—as Dawn or Storm, or Fire or Night, or Twilight or Wind—in accordance with his private taste, easily accommodating the facts of the myth, whatever they may be, to his favourite solution. We rebel against this kind of logic, and persist in studying the myth in itself and in comparison with analogous myths in every accessible language. Certainly, if divine and heroic names—Artemis or Pundjel—can be interpreted, so much is gained. But the myth may be older than the name.

As Mr. Hogarth points out, Alexander has inherited in the remote East the myths of early legendary heroes. We cannot explain these by the analysis of the name of Alexander! Even if the heroic or divine name can be shown to be the original one (which is practically impossible), the meaning of the name helps us little. That Zeus means ‘sky’ cannot conceivably explain scores of details in the very composite legend of Zeus—say, the story of Zeus, Demeter, and the Ram. Moreover, we decline to admit that, if a divine name means ‘swift,’ its bearer must be the wind or the sunlight. Nor, if the name means ‘white,’ is it necessarily a synonym of Dawn, or of Lightning, or of Clear Air, or what not. But a mythologist who makes language and names the fountain of myth will go on insisting that myths can only be studied by people who know the language in which they are told. Mythologists who believe that human nature is the source of myths will go on comparing all myths that are accessible in translations by competent collectors.

Mr. Max Müller says, ‘We seldom find mythology, as it were, in situ—as it lived in the minds and unrestrained utterances of the people. We generally have to study it in the works of mythographers, or in the poems of later generations, when it had long ceased to be living and intelligible.’ The myths of Greece and Rome, in Hyginus or Ovid, ‘are likely to be as misleading as a hortus siccus would be to a botanist if debarred from his rambles through meadows and hedges.’ [{0c}]

Nothing can be more true, or more admirably stated. These remarks are, indeed, the charter, so to speak, of anthropological mythology and of folklore. The old mythologists worked at a hortus siccus, at myths dried and pressed in thoroughly literary books, Greek and Latin. But we now study myths ‘in the unrestrained utterances of the people,’ either of savage tribes or of the European Folk, the unprogressive peasant class. The former, and to some extent the latter, still live in the mythopœic state of mind—regarding bees, for instance, as persons who must be told of a death in the family. Their myths are still not wholly out of concord with their habitual view of a world in which an old woman may become a hare. As soon as learned Jesuits like Père Lafitau began to understand their savage flocks, they said, ‘These men are living in Ovid’s Metamorphoses.’ They found mythology in situ! Hence mythologists now study mythology in situ—in savages and in peasants, who till very recently were still in the mythopœic stage of thought. Mannhardt made this idea his basis. Mr. Max Müller says, [{0d}] very naturally, that I have been ‘popularising the often difficult and complicated labours of Mannhardt and others.’ In fact (as is said later), I published all my general conclusions before I had read Mannhardt. Quite independently I could not help seeing that among savages and peasants we had mythology, not in a literary hortus siccus, but in situ. Mannhardt, though he appreciated Dr. Tylor, had made, I think, but few original researches among savage myths and customs. His province was European folklore. What he missed will be indicated in the chapter on ‘The Fire-Walk’—one example among many.

But this kind of mythology in situ, in ‘the unrestrained utterances of the people,’ Mr. Max Müller tells us, is no province of his. ‘I saw it was hopeless for me to gain a knowledge at first hand of innumerable local legends and customs;’ and it is to be supposed that he distrusted knowledge acquired by collectors: Grimm, Mannhardt, Campbell of Islay, and an army of others. ‘A scholarlike knowledge of Maori or Hottentot mythology’ was also beyond him. We, on the contrary, take our Maori lore from a host of collectors: Taylor, White, Manning (‘The Pakeha Maori’), Tregear, Polack, and many others. From them we flatter ourselves that we get—as from Grimm, Mannhardt, Islay, and the rest—mythology in situ. We compare it with the dry mythologic blossoms of the classical hortus siccus, and with Greek ritual and temple legend, and with Märchen in the scholiasts, and we think the comparisons very illuminating. They have thrown new light on Greek mythology, ritual, mysteries, and religion. This much we think we have already done, though we do not know Maori, and though each of us can hope to gather but few facts from the mouths of living peasants.

Examples of the results of our method will be found in the following pages. Thus, if the myth of the fire-stealer in Greece is explained by misunderstood Greek or Sanskrit words in no way connected with robbery, we shall show that the myth of the theft of fire occurs where no Greek or Sanskrit words were ever spoken. There, we shall show, the myth arose from simple inevitable human ideas. We shall therefore doubt whether in Greece a common human myth had a singular cause—in a ‘disease of language.’

It is with no enthusiasm that I take the opportunity of Mr. Max Müller’s reply to me ‘by name.’ Since Myth, Ritual, and Religion (now out of print, but accessible in the French of M. Marillier) was published, ten years ago, I have left mythology alone. The general method there adopted has been applied in a much more erudite work by Mr. Frazer, The Golden Bough, by Mr. Farnell in Cults of the Greek States, by Mr. Jevons in his Introduction to the History of Religion, by Miss Harrison in explanations of Greek ritual, by Mr. Hartland in The Legend of Perseus, and doubtless by many other writers. How much they excel me in erudition may be seen by comparing Mr. Farnell’s passage on the Bear Artemis [{0e}] with the section on her in this volume.

Mr. Max Müller observes that ‘Mannhardt’s mythological researches have never been fashionable.’ They are now very much in fashion; they greatly inspire Mr. Frazer and Mr. Farnell. ‘They seemed to me, and still seem to me, too exclusive,’ says Mr. Max Müller. [{0f}] Mannhardt in his second period was indeed chiefly concerned with myths connected, as he held, with agriculture and with tree-worship. Mr. Max Müller, too, has been thought ‘exclusive’—‘as teaching,’ he complains, ‘that the whole of mythology is solar.’ That reproach arose, he says, because ‘some of my earliest contributions to comparative mythology were devoted exclusively to the special subject of solar myths.’ [{0g}] But Mr. Max Müller also mentions his own complaints, of ‘the omnipresent sun and the inevitable dawn appearing in ever so many disguises.’

Did they really appear? Were the myths, say the myths of Daphne, really solar? That is precisely what we hesitate to accept. In the same way Mannhardt’s preoccupation with vegetable myths has tended, I think, to make many of his followers ascribe vegetable origins to myths and gods, where the real origin is perhaps for ever lost. The corn-spirit starts up in most unexpected places. Mr. Frazer, Mannhardt’s disciple, is very severe on solar theories of Osiris, and connects that god with the corn-spirit. But Mannhardt did not go so far. Mannhardt thought that the myth of Osiris was solar. To my thinking, these resolutions of myths into this or that original source—solar, nocturnal, vegetable, or what not—are often very perilous. A myth so extremely composite as that of Osiris must be a stream flowing from many springs, and, as in the case of certain rivers, it is difficult or impossible to say which is the real fountain-head.

One would respectfully recommend to young mythologists great reserve in their hypotheses of origins. All this, of course, is the familiar thought of writers like Mr. Frazer and Mr. Farnell, but a tendency to seek for exclusively vegetable origins of gods is to be observed in some of the most recent speculations. I well know that I myself am apt to press a theory of totems too far, and in the following pages I suggest reserves, limitations, and alternative hypotheses. Il y a serpent et serpent; a snake tribe may be a local tribe named from the Snake River, not a totem kindred. The history of mythology is the history of rash, premature, and exclusive theories. We are only beginning to learn caution. Even the prevalent anthropological theory of the ghost-origin of religion might, I think, be advanced with caution (as Mr. Jevons argues on other grounds) till we know a little more about ghosts and a great deal more about psychology. We are too apt to argue as if the psychical condition of the earliest men were exactly like our own; while we are just beginning to learn, from Prof. William James, that about even our own psychical condition we are only now realising our exhaustive ignorance. How often we men have thought certain problems settled for good! How often we have been compelled humbly to return to our studies! Philological comparative mythology seemed securely seated for a generation. Her throne is tottering:

Our little systems have their day,
They have their day and cease to be,
They are but broken lights from Thee,
And Thou, we trust, art more than they.

But we need not hate each other for the sake of our little systems, like the grammarian who damned his rival’s soul for his ‘theory of the irregular verbs.’ Nothing, I hope, is said here inconsistent with the highest esteem for Mr. Max Müller’s vast erudition, his enviable style, his unequalled contributions to scholarship, and his awakening of that interest in mythological science without which his adversaries would probably never have existed.

Most of Chapter XII. appeared in the ‘Contemporary Review,’ and most of Chapter XIII. in the ‘Princeton Review.’

REGENT MYTHOLOGY

Mythology in 1860-1880

Between 1860 and 1880, roughly speaking, English people interested in early myths and religions found the mythological theories of Professor Max Müller in possession of the field. These brilliant and attractive theories, taking them in the widest sense, were not, of course, peculiar to the Right Hon. Professor. In France, in Germany, in America, in Italy, many scholars agreed in his opinion that the science of language is the most potent spell for opening the secret chamber of mythology. But while these scholars worked on the same general principle as Mr. Max Müller, while they subjected the names of mythical beings—Zeus, Helen, Achilles, Athênê—to philological analysis, and then explained the stories of gods and heroes by their interpretations of the meanings of their names, they arrived at all sorts of discordant results. Where Mr. Max Müller found a myth of the Sun or of the Dawn, these scholars were apt to see a myth of the wind, of the lightning, of the thunder-cloud, of the crépuscule, of the upper air, of what each of them pleased. But these ideas—the ideas of Kuhn, Welcker, Curtius (when he appeared in the discussion), of Schwartz, of Lauer, of Bréal, of many others—were very little known—if known at all—to the English public. Captivated by the graces of Mr. Max Müller’s manner, and by a style so pellucid that it accredited a logic perhaps not so clear, the public hardly knew of the divisions in the philological camp. They were unaware that, as Mannhardt says, the philological school had won ‘few sure gains,’ and had discredited their method by a ‘muster-roll of variegated’ and discrepant ‘hypotheses.’

Now, in all sciences there are differences of opinion about details. In comparative mythology there was, with rare exceptions, no agreement at all about results beyond this point; Greek and Sanskrit, German and Slavonic myths were, in the immense majority of instances, to be regarded as mirror-pictures on earth, of celestial and meteorological phenomena. Thus even the story of the Earth Goddess, the Harvest Goddess, Demeter, was usually explained as a reflection in myth of one or another celestial phenomenon—dawn, storm-cloud, or something else according to taste.

Again, Greek or German myths were usually to be interpreted by comparison with myths in the Rig Veda. Their origin was to be ascertained by discovering the Aryan root and original significance of the names of gods and heroes, such as Saranyu—Erinnys, Daphne—Dahanâ, Athene—Ahanâ. The etymology and meaning of such names being ascertained, the origin and sense of the myths in which the names occur should be clear.

Clear it was not. There were, in most cases, as many opinions as to the etymology and meaning of each name and myth, as there were philologists engaged in the study. Mannhardt, who began, in 1858, as a member of the philological school, in his last public utterance (1877) described the method and results, including his own work of 1858, as ‘mainly failures.’

But, long ere that, the English cultivated public had, most naturally, accepted Mr. Max Müller as the representative of the school which then held the field in comparative mythology. His German and other foreign brethren, with their discrepant results, were only known to the general, in England (I am not speaking of English scholars), by the references to them in the Oxford professor’s own works. His theories were made part of the education of children, and found their way into a kind of popular primers.

For these reasons, anyone in England who was daring enough to doubt, or to deny, the validity of the philological system of mythology in general was obliged to choose Mr. Max Müller as his adversary. He must strike, as it were, the shield of no Hospitaler of unsteady seat, but that of the Templar himself. And this is the cause of what seems to puzzle Mr. Max Müller, namely the attacks on his system and his results in particular. An English critic, writing for English readers, had to do with the scholar who chiefly represented the philological school of mythology in the eyes of England.

Autobiographical

Like other inquiring undergraduates in the sixties, I read such works on mythology as Mr. Max Müller had then given to the world; I read them with interest, but without conviction. The argument, the logic, seemed to evade one; it was purely, with me, a question of logic, for I was of course prepared to accept all of Mr. Max Müller’s dicta on questions of etymologies. Even now I never venture to impugn them, only, as I observe that other scholars very frequently differ, toto cælo, from him and from each other in essential questions, I preserve a just balance of doubt; I wait till these gentlemen shall be at one among themselves.

After taking my degree in 1868, I had leisure to read a good deal of mythology in the legends of all races, and found my distrust of Mr. Max Müller’s reasoning increase upon me. The main cause was that whereas Mr. Max Müller explained Greek myths by etymologies of words in the Aryan languages, chiefly Greek, Latin, Slavonic, and Sanskrit, I kept finding myths very closely resembling those of Greece among Red Indians, Kaffirs, Eskimo, Samoyeds, Kamilaroi, Maoris, and Cahrocs. Now if Aryan myths arose from a ‘disease’ of Aryan languages, it certainly did seem an odd thing that myths so similar to these abounded where non-Aryan languages alone prevailed. Did a kind of linguistic measles affect all tongues alike, from Sanskrit to Choctaw, and everywhere produce the same ugly scars in religion and myth?

The Ugly Scars

The ugly scars were the problem! A civilised fancy is not puzzled for a moment by a beautiful beneficent Sun-god, or even by his beholding the daughters of men that they are fair. But a civilised fancy is puzzled when the beautiful Sun-god makes love in the shape of a dog. [{5}] To me, and indeed to Mr. Max Müller, the ugly scars were the problem.

He has written—‘What makes mythology mythological, in the true sense of the word, is what is utterly unintelligible, absurd, strange, or miraculous.’ But he explained these blots on the mythology of Greece, for example, as the result practically of old words and popular sayings surviving in languages after the original, harmless, symbolical meanings of the words and sayings were lost. What had been a poetical remark about an aspect of nature became an obscene, or brutal, or vulgar myth, a stumbling block to Greek piety and to Greek philosophy.

To myself, on the other hand, it seemed that the ugly scars were remains of that kind of taste, fancy, customary law, and incoherent speculation which everywhere, as far as we know, prevails to various degrees in savagery and barbarism. Attached to the ‘hideous idols,’ as Mr. Max Müller calls them, of early Greece, and implicated in a ritual which religious conservatism dared not abandon, the fables of perhaps neolithic ancestors of the Hellenes remained in the religion and the legends known to Plato and Socrates. That this process of ‘survival’ is a vera causa, illustrated in every phase of evolution, perhaps nobody denies.

Thus the phenomena which the philological school of mythology explains by a disease of language we would explain by survival from a savage state of society and from the mental peculiarities observed among savages in all ages and countries. Of course there is nothing new in this: I was delighted to discover the idea in Eusebius as in Fontenelle; while, for general application to singular institutions, it was a commonplace of the last century. [{6a}] Moreover, the idea had been widely used by Dr. E. B. Tylor in Primitive Culture, and by Mr. McLennan in his Primitive Marriage and essays on Totemism.

My Criticism of Mr. Max Müller

This idea I set about applying to the repulsive myths of civilised races, and to Märchen, or popular tales, at the same time combating the theories which held the field—the theories of the philological mythologists as applied to the same matter. In journalism I criticised Mr. Max Müller, and I admit that, when comparing the mutually destructive competition of varying etymologies, I did not abstain from the weapons of irony and badinage. The opportunity was too tempting! But, in the most sober seriousness, I examined Mr. Max Müller’s general statement of his system, his hypothesis of certain successive stages of language, leading up to the mythopœic confusion of thought. It was not a question of denying Mr. Max Müller’s etymologies, but of asking whether he established his historical theory by evidence, and whether his inferences from it were logically deduced. The results of my examination will be found in the article ‘Mythology’ in the Encyclopædia Britannica, and in La Mythologie. [{6b}] It did not appear to me that Mr. Max Müller’s general theory was valid, logical, historically demonstrated, or self-consistent. My other writings on the topic are chiefly Custom and Myth, Myth, Ritual, and Religion (with French and Dutch translations, both much improved and corrected by the translators), and an introduction to Mrs. Hunt’s translation of Grimm’s Märchen.

Success of Anthropological Method

During fifteen years the ideas which I advocated seem to have had some measure of success. This is, doubtless, due not to myself, but to the works of Mr. J. G. Frazer and of Professor Robertson Smith. Both of these scholars descend intellectually from a man less scholarly than they, but, perhaps, more original and acute than any of us, my friend the late Mr. J. F. McLennan. To Mannhardt also much is owed, and, of course, above all, to Dr. Tylor. These writers, like Mr. Farnell and Mr. Jevons recently, seek for the answer to mythological problems rather in the habits and ideas of the folk and of savages and barbarians than in etymologies and ‘a disease of language.’ There are differences of opinion in detail: I myself may think that ‘vegetation spirits,’ the ‘corn spirit,’ and the rest occupy too much space in the systems of Mannhardt, and other moderns. Mr. Frazer, again, thinks less of the evidence for Totems among ‘Aryans’ than I was inclined to do. [{7}] But it is not, perhaps, an overstatement to say that explanation of myths by analysis of names, and the lately overpowering predominance of the Dawn, and the Sun, and the Night in mythological hypothesis, have received a slight check. They do not hold the field with the superiority which was theirs in England between 1860 and 1880. This fact—a scarcely deniable fact—does not, of course, prove that the philological method is wrong, or that the Dawn is not as great a factor in myth as Mr. Max Müller believes himself to have proved it to be. Science is inevitably subject to shiftings of opinion, action, and reaction.

Mr. Max Müller’s Reply

In this state of things Mr. Max Müller produces his Contributions to the Science of Mythology, [{8}] which I propose to criticise as far as it is, or may seem to me to be, directed against myself, or against others who hold practically much the same views as mine. I say that I attempt to criticise the book ‘as far as it is, or may seem to me to be, directed against’ us, because it is Mr. Max Müller’s occasional habit to argue (apparently) around rather than with his opponents. He says ‘we are told this or that’—something which he does not accept—but he often does not inform us as to who tells us, or where. Thus a reader does not know whom Mr. Max Müller is opposing, or where he can find the adversary’s own statement in his own words. Yet it is usual in such cases, and it is, I think, expedient, to give chapter and verse. Occasionally I find that Mr. Max Müller is honouring me by alluding to observations of my own, but often no reference is given to an opponent’s name or books, and we discover the passages in question by accident or research. This method will be found to cause certain inconveniences.

THE STORY OF DAPHNE

Mr. Max Müller’s Method in Controversy

As an illustration of the author’s controversial methods, take his observations on my alleged attempt to account for the metamorphosis of Daphne into a laurel tree. When I read these remarks (i. p. 4) I said, ‘Mr. Max Müller vanquishes me there,’ for he gave no reference to my statement. I had forgotten all about the matter, I was not easily able to find the passage to which he alluded, and I supposed that I had said just what Mr. Max Müller seemed to me to make me say—no more, and no less. Thus:

‘Mr. Lang, as usual, has recourse to savages, most useful when they are really wanted. He quotes an illustration from the South Pacific that Tuna, the chief of the eels, fell in love with Ina and asked her to cut off his head. When his head had been cut off and buried, two cocoanut trees sprang up from the brain of Tuna. How is this, may I ask, to account for the story of Daphne? Everybody knows that “stories of the growing of plants out of the scattered members of heroes may be found from ancient Egypt to the wigwams of the Algonquins,” but these stories seem hardly applicable to Daphne, whose members, as far as I know, were never either severed or scattered.’

I thought, perhaps hastily, that I must have made the story of Tuna ‘account for the story of Daphne.’ Mr. Max Müller does not actually say that I did so, but I understood him in that sense, and recognised my error. But, some guardian genius warning me, I actually hunted up my own observations. [{10a}] Well, I had never said (as I conceived my critic to imply) that the story of Tuna ‘accounts for the story of Daphne.’ That was what I had not said. I had observed, ‘As to interchange of shape between men and women and plants, our information, so far as the lower races are concerned, is less copious’—than in the case of stones. I then spoke of plant totems of one kin with human beings, of plant-souls, [{10b}] of Indian and Egyptian plants animated by human souls, of a tree which became a young man and made love to a Yurucari girl, of metamorphosis into vegetables in Samoa, [{10c}] of an Ottawa myth in which a man became a plant of maize, and then of the story of Tuna. [{10d}] Next I mentioned plants said to have sprung from dismembered gods and heroes. All this, I said, all of it, proves that savages mythically regard human life as on a level with vegetable no less than with animal life. ‘Turning to the mythology of Greece, we see that the same rule holds good. Metamorphosis into plants and flowers is extremely common,’ and I, of course, attributed the original idea of such metamorphoses to ‘the general savage habit of “levelling up,”’ of regarding all things in nature as all capable of interchanging their identities. I gave, as classical examples, Daphne, Myrrha, Hyacinth, Narcissus, and the sisters of Phaethon. Next I criticised Mr. Max Müller’s theory of Daphne. But I never hinted that the isolated Mangaian story of Tuna, or the stories of plants sprung from mangled men, ‘accounted,’ by themselves, ‘for the story of Daphne.’

Mr. Max Müller is not content with giving a very elaborate and interesting account of how the story of Tuna arose (i. 5-7). He keeps Tuna in hand, and, at the peroration of his vast work (ii. 831), warns us that, before we compare myths in unrelated languages, we need ‘a very accurate knowledge of their dialects . . . to prevent accidents like that of Tuna mentioned in the beginning.’ What accident? That I explained the myth of Daphne by the myth of Tuna? But that is precisely what I did not do. I explained the Greek myth of Daphne (1) as a survival from the savage mental habit of regarding men as on a level with stones, beasts, and plants; or (2) as a tale ‘moulded by poets on the same model.’ [{11}] The latter is the more probable case, for we find Daphne late, in artificial or mythographic literature, in Ovid and Hyginus. In Ovid the river god, Pentheus, changes Daphne into a laurel. In Hyginus she is not changed at all; the earth swallows her, and a laurel fills her place.

Now I really did believe—perhaps any rapid reader would have believed—when I read Mr. Max Müller, that I must have tried to account for the story of Daphne by the story of Tuna. I actually wrote in the first draft of this work that I had been in the wrong. Then I verified the reference which my critic did not give, with the result which the reader has perused. Never could a reader have found out what I did really say from my critic, for he does not usually when he deals with me give chapter and verse. This may avoid an air of personal bickering, but how inconvenient it is!

Let me not be supposed to accuse Mr. Max Müller of consciously misrepresenting me. Of that I need not say that he is absolutely incapable. My argument merely took, in his consciousness, the form which is suggested in the passage cited from him.

Tuna and Daphne

To do justice to Mr. Max Müller, I will here state fully his view of the story of Tuna, and then go on to the story of Daphne. For the sake of accuracy, I take the liberty of borrowing the whole of his statement (i. 4-7):—

‘I must dwell a little longer on this passage in order to show the real difference between the ethnological and the philological schools of comparative mythology.

‘First of all, what has to be explained is not the growing up of a tree from one or the other member of a god or hero, but the total change of a human being or a heroine into a tree, and this under a certain provocation. These two classes of plant-legends must be carefully kept apart. Secondly, what does it help us to know that people in Mangaia believed in the change of human beings into trees, if we do not know the reason why? This is what we want to know; and without it the mere juxtaposition of stories apparently similar is no more than the old trick of explaining ignotum per ignotius. It leads us to imagine that we have learnt something, when we really are as ignorant as before.

‘If Mr. A. Lang had studied the Mangaian dialect, or consulted scholars like the Rev. W. W. Gill—it is from his “Myths and Songs from the South Pacific” that he quotes the story of Tuna—he would have seen that there is no similarity whatever between the stories of Daphne and of Tuna. The Tuna story belongs to a very well known class of ætiological plant-stories, which are meant to explain a no longer intelligible name of a plant, such as Snakeshead, Stiefmütterchen, &c.; it is in fact a clear case of what I call disease of language, cured by the ordinary nostrum of folk-etymology. I have often been in communication with the Rev. W. W. Gill about these South Pacific myths and their true meaning. The preface to his collection of Myths and Songs from the South Pacific was written by me in 1876; and if Mr. A. Lang had only read the whole chapter which treats of these Tree-Myths (p. 77 seq.), he would easily have perceived the real character of the Tuna story, and would not have placed it in the same class as the Daphne story; he would have found that the white kernel of the cocoanut was, in Mangaia, called the “brains of Tuna,” a name like many more such names which after a time require an explanation.

‘Considering that “cocoanut” was used in Mangaia in the sense of head (testa), the kernel or flesh of it might well be called the brain. If then the white kernel had been called Tuna’s brain, we have only to remember that in Mangaia there are two kinds of cocoanut trees, and we shall then have no difficulty in understanding why these twin cocoanut trees were said to have sprung from the two halves of Tuna’s brain, one being red in stem, branches, and fruit, whilst the other was of a deep green. In proof of these trees being derived from the head of Tuna, we are told that we have only to break the nut in order to see in the sprouting germ the two eyes and the mouth of Tuna, the great eel, the lover of Ina. For a full understanding of this very complicated myth more information has been supplied by Mr. Gill. Ina means moon; Ina-mae-aitu, the heroine of our story, means Ina-who-had-a-divine (aitu) lover, and she was the daughter of Kui, the blind. Tuna means eel, and in Mangaia it was unlawful for women to eat eels, so that even now, as Mr. Gill informs me, his converts turn away from this fish with the utmost disgust. From other stories about the origin of cocoanut trees, told in the same island, it would appear that the sprouts of the cocoanut were actually called eels’ heads, while the skulls of warriors were called cocoanuts.

‘Taking all these facts together, it is not difficult to imagine how the story of Tuna’s brain grew up; and I am afraid we shall have to confess that the legend of Tuna throws but little light on the legend of Daphne or on the etymology of her name. No one would have a word to say against the general principle that much that is irrational, absurd, or barbarous in the Veda is a survival of a more primitive mythology anterior to the Veda. How could it be otherwise?’

Criticism of Tuna and Daphne

Now (1), as to Daphne, we are not invariably told that hers was a case of ‘the total change of a heroine into a tree.’ In Ovid [{14}] she is thus changed. In Hyginus, on the other hand, the earth swallows her, and a tree takes her place. All the authorities are late. Here I cannot but reflect on the scholarly method of Mannhardt, who would have examined and criticised all the sources for the tale before trying to explain it. However, Daphne was not mangled; a tree did not spring from her severed head or scattered limbs. She was metamorphosed, or was buried in earth, a tree springing up from the place.

(2) I think we do know why the people of Mangaia ‘believe in the change of human beings into trees.’ It is one among many examples of the savage sense of the intercommunity of all nature. ‘Antiquity made its division between man and the world in a very different sort than do the moderns.’ [{15a}] I illustrate this mental condition fully in M. R. R. i. 46-56. Why savages adopt the major premise, ‘Human life is on a level with the life of all nature,’ philosophers explain in various ways. Hume regards it as an extension to the universe of early man’s own consciousness of life and personality. Dr. Tylor thinks that the opinion rests upon ‘a broad philosophy of nature.’ [{15b}] M. Lefébure appeals to psychical phenomena as I show later (see ‘Fetishism’). At all events, the existence of these savage metaphysics is a demonstrated fact. I established it [{15c}] before invoking it as an explanation of savage belief in metamorphosis.

(3) ‘The Tuna story belongs to a very well known class of ætiological plant-stories’ (ætiological: assigning a cause for the plant, its peculiarities, its name, &c.), ‘which are meant to explain a no longer intelligible name of a plant, &c.’ I also say, ‘these myths are nature-myths, so far as they attempt to account for a fact in nature—namely, for the existence of certain plants, and for their place in ritual.’ [{16}]

The reader has before him Mr. Max Müller’s view. The white kernel of the cocoanut was locally styled ‘the brains of Tuna.’ That name required explanation. Hence the story about the fate of Tuna. Cocoanut was used in Mangaia in the sense of ‘head’ (testa). So it is now in England.

See Bell’s Life, passim, as ‘The Chicken got home on the cocoanut.’

The Explanation

On the whole, either cocoanut kernels were called ‘brains of Tuna’ because ‘cocoanut’=‘head,’ and a head has brains—and, well, somehow I fail to see why brains of Tuna in particular! Or, there being a story to the effect that the first cocoanut grew out of the head of the metamorphosed Tuna, the kernel was called his brains. But why was the story told, and why of Tuna? Tuna was an eel, and women may not eat eels; and Ina was the moon, who, a Mangaian Selene, loved no Latmian shepherd, but an eel. Seriously, I fail to understand Mr. Max Müller’s explanation. Given the problem, to explain a no longer intelligible plant-name—brains of Tuna—(applied not to a plant but to the kernel of a nut), this name is explained by saying that the moon, Ina, loved an eel, cut off his head at his desire, and buried it. Thence sprang cocoanut trees, with a fanciful likeness to a human face—face of Tuna—on the nut. But still, why Tuna? How could the moon love an eel, except on my own general principle of savage ‘levelling up’ of all life in all nature? In my opinion, the Mangaians wanted a fable to account for the resemblance of a cocoanut to the human head—a resemblance noted, as I show, in our own popular slang. The Mangaians also knew the moon, in her mythical aspect, as Ina; and Tuna, whatever his name may mean (Mr. Max Müller does not tell us), was an eel. [{17}] Having the necessary savage major premise in their minds, ‘All life is on a level and interchangeable,’ the Mangaians thought well to say that the head-like cocoanut sprang from the head of her lover, an eel, cut off by Ina. The myth accounts, I think, for the peculiarities of the cocoanut, rather than for the name ‘brains of Tuna;’ for we still ask, ‘Why of Tuna in particular? Why Tuna more than Rangoa, or anyone else?’

‘We shall have to confess that the legend of Tuna throws but little light on the legend of Daphne, or on the etymology of her name.’

I never hinted that the legend of Tuna threw light on the etymology of the name of Daphne. Mangaian and Greek are not allied languages. Nor did I give the Tuna story as an explanation of the Daphne story. I gave it as one in a mass of illustrations of the savage mental propensity so copiously established by Dr. Tylor in Primitive Culture. The two alternative explanations which I gave of the Daphne story I have cited. No mention of Tuna occurs in either.

Disease of Language and Folk-etymology

The Tuna story is described as ‘a clear case of disease of language cured by the ordinary nostrum of folk-etymology.’ The ‘disease’ showed itself, I suppose, in the presence of the Mangaian words for ‘brain of Tuna.’ But the story of Tuna gives no folk-etymology of the name Tuna. Now, to give an etymology of a name of forgotten meaning is the sole object of folk-etymology. The plant-name, ‘snake’s head,’ given as an example by Mr. Max Müller, needs no etymological explanation. A story may be told to explain why the plant is called snake’s head, but a story to give an etymology of snake’s head is superfluous. The Tuna story explains why the cocoanut kernel is called ‘brains of Tuna,’ but it offers no etymology of Tuna’s name. On the other hand, the story that marmalade (really marmalet) is so called because Queen Mary found comfort in marmalade when she was sea-sick—hence Marie-malade, hence marmalade—gives an etymological explanation of the origin of the word marmalade. Here is a real folk-etymology. We must never confuse such myths of folk-etymology with myths arising (on the philological hypothesis) from ‘disease of language.’ Thus, Daphne is a girl pursued by Apollo, and changed into a daphne plant or laurel, or a laurel springs from the earth where she was buried. On Mr. Max Müller’s philological theory Daphne=Dahanâ, and meant ‘the burning one.’ Apollo may be derived from a Sanskrit form, *Apa-var-yan, or *Apa-val-yan (though how Greeks ever heard a Sanskrit word, if such a word as Apa-val-yan ever existed, we are not told), and may mean ‘one who opens the gate of the sky’ (ii. 692-696). [{18}] At some unknown date the ancestors of the Greeks would say ‘The opener of the gates of the sky (*Apa-val-yan, i.e. the sun) pursues the burning one (Dahanâ, i.e. the dawn).’ The Greek language would retain this poetic saying in daily use till, in the changes of speech, *Apa-val-yan ceased to be understood, and became Apollo, while Dahanâ ceased to be understood, and became Daphne. But the verb being still understood, the phrase ran, ‘Apollo pursues Daphne.’ Now the Greeks had a plant, laurel, called daphne. They therefore blended plant, daphne, and heroine’s name, Daphne, and decided that the phrase ‘Apollo pursues Daphne’ meant that Apollo chased a nymph, Daphne, who, to escape his love, turned into a laurel. I cannot give Mr. Max Müller’s theory of the Daphne story more clearly. If I misunderstand it, that does not come from want of pains.

In opposition to it we urge that (1) the etymological equations, Daphne=Dahanâ, Apollo=*Apa-val-yan, are not generally accepted by other scholars. Schröder, in fact, derives Apollo ‘from the Vedic Saparagenya, “worshipful,” an epithet of Agni,’ who is Fire (ii. 688), and so on. Daphne=Dahanâ is no less doubted. Of course a Greek simply cannot be ‘derived’ from a Sanskrit word, as is stated, though both may have a common origin, just as French is not ‘derived from’ Italian.

(2) If the etymologies were accepted, no proof is offered to us of the actual existence, as a vera causa, of the process by which a saying. ‘Apollo pursues Daphne,’ remains in language, while the meaning of the words is forgotten. This process is essential, but undemonstrated. See the chapter here on ‘The Riddle Theory.’

(3) These processes, if demonstrated, which they are not, must be carefully discriminated from the actual demonstrable process of folk-etymology. The Marmalade legend gives the etymology of a word, marmalade; the Daphne legend does not give an etymology.

(4) The theory of Daphne is of the kind protested against by Mannhardt, where he warns us against looking in most myths for a ‘mirror-picture’ on earth of celestial phenomena. [{20a}] For these reasons, among others, I am disinclined to accept Mr. Max Müller’s attempt to explain the story of Daphne.

Mannhardt on Daphne

Since we shall presently find Mr. Max Müller claiming the celebrated Mannhardt as a sometime deserter of philological comparative mythology, who ‘returned to his old colours,’ I observe with pleasure that Mannhardt is on my side and against the Oxford Professor. Mannhardt shows that the laurel (daphne) was regarded as a plant which, like our rowan tree, averts evil influences. ‘Moreover, the laurel, like the Maibaum, was looked on as a being with a spirit. This is the safest result which myth analysis can extract from the story of Daphne, a nymph pursued by Apollo and changed into a laurel. It is a result of the use of the laurel in his ritual.’ [{20b}] In 1877, a year after Mannhardt is said by Mr. Max Müller to have returned to his old colours, he repeats this explanation. [{21a}] In the same work (p. 20) he says that ‘there is no reason for accepting Max Müller’s explanation about the Sun-god and the Dawn, wo jeder thätliche Anhalt dafür fehlt.’ For this opinion we might also cite the Sanskrit scholars Whitney and Bergaigne. [{21b}]

THE QUESTION OF ALLIES

Athanasius

Mr. Max Müller protests, most justly, against the statement that he, like St. Athanasius, stands alone, contra mundum. If ever this phrase fell from my pen (in what connection I know not), it is as erroneous as the position of St. Athanasius is honourable. Mr. Max Müller’s ideas, in various modifications, are doubtless still the most prevalent of any. The anthropological method has hardly touched, I think, the learned contributors to Roscher’s excellent mythological Lexicon. Dr. Brinton, whose American researches are so useful, seems decidedly to be a member of the older school. While I do not exactly remember alluding to Athanasius, I fully and freely withdraw the phrase. But there remain questions of allies to be discussed.

Italian Critics

Mr. Max Müller asks, [{22}] ‘What would Mr. Andrew Lang say if he read the words of Signer Canizzaro, in his “Genesi ed Evoluzione del Mito” (1893), “Lang has laid down his arms before his adversaries”?’ Mr. Lang ‘would smile.’ And what would Mr. Max Müller say if he read the words of Professor Enrico Morselli, ‘Lang gives no quarter to his adversaries, who, for the rest, have long been reduced to silence’? [{23}] The Right Hon. Professor also smiles, no doubt. We both smile. Solvuntur risu tabulæ.

A Dutch Defender

The question of the precise attitude of Professor Tiele, the accomplished Gifford Lecturer in the University of Edinburgh (1897), is more important and more difficult. His remarks were made in 1885, in an essay on the Myth of Cronos, and were separately reprinted, in 1886, from the ‘Revue de l’Histoire des Religions,’ which I shall cite. Where they refer to myself they deal with Custom and Myth, not with Myth, Ritual, and Religion (1887). It seems best to quote, ipsissimis verbis, Mr. Max Müller’s comments on Professor Tiele’s remarks. He writes (i. viii.):

‘Let us proceed next to Holland. Professor Tiele, who had actually been claimed as an ally of the victorious army, declares:—“Je dois m’élever, au nom de la science mythologique et de l’exactitude . . . centre une méthode qui ne fait que glisser sur des problèmes de première importance.” (See further on, p. 35.)

‘And again:

‘“Ces braves gens qui, pour peu qu’ils aient lu un ou deux livres de mythologie et d’anthropologie, et un ou deux récits de voyages, ne manqueront pas de se mettre à comparer à tort et à travers, et pour tout résultat produiront la confusion.”’

Again (i. 35):

‘Besides Signer Canizzaro and Mr. Horatio Hale, the veteran among comparative ethnologists, Professor Tiele, in his Le Mythe de Kronos (1886), has very strongly protested against the downright misrepresentations of what I and my friends have really written.

‘Professor Tiele had been appealed to as an unimpeachable authority. He was even claimed as an ally by the ethnological students of customs and myths, but he strongly declined that honour (1. c., p. 31):-

‘“M. Lang m’a fait 1’honneur de me citer,” he writes, “comme un de ses alliés, et j’ai lieu de croire que M. Gaidoz en fait en quelque mesure autant. Ces messieurs n’ont point entièrement tort. Cependant je dois m’élever, au nom de la science mythologique et de 1’exactitude dont elle ne peut pas plus se passer que les autres sciences, contre une méthode qui ne fait que glisser sur des problèmes de première importance,” &c.

‘Speaking of the whole method followed by those who actually claimed to have founded a new school of mythology, he says (p. 21):—

‘“Je crains toutefois que ce qui s’y trouve de vrai ne soit connu depuis longtemps, et que la nouvelle école ne pèche par exclusionisme tout autant que les aînées qu’elle combat avec tant de conviction.”

‘That is exactly what I have always said. What is there new in comparing the customs and myths of the Greeks with those of the barbarians? Has not even Plato done this? Did anybody doubt that the Greeks, nay even the Hindus, were uncivilised or savages, before they became civilised or tamed? Was not this common-sense view, so strongly insisted on by Fontenelle and Vico in the eighteenth century, carried even to excess by such men as De Brosses (1709-1771)? And have the lessons taught to De Brosses by his witty contemporaries been quite forgotten? Must his followers be told again and again that they ought to begin with a critical examination of the evidence put before them by casual travellers, and that mythology is as little made up of one and the same material as the crust of the earth of granite only?’

Reply

Professor Tiele wrote in 1885. I do not remember having claimed his alliance, though I made one or two very brief citations from his remarks on the dangers of etymology applied to old proper names. [{25a}] To citations made by me later in 1887 Professor Tiele cannot be referring. [{25b}] Thus I find no proof of any claim of alliance put forward by me, but I do claim a right to quote the Professor’s published words. These I now translate:—[{25c}]

‘What goes before shows adequately that I am an ally, much more than an adversary, of the new school, whether styled ethnological or anthropological. It is true that all the ideas advanced by its partisans are not so new as they seem. Some of us—I mean among those who, without being vassals of the old school, were formed by it—had not only remarked already the defects of the reigning method, but had perceived the direction in which researches should be made; they had even begun to say so. This does not prevent the young school from enjoying the great merit of having first formulated with precision, and with the energy of conviction, that which had hitherto been but imperfectly pointed out. If henceforth mythological science marches with a firmer foot, and loses much of its hypothetical character, it will in part owe this to the stimulus of the new school.’

‘Braves Gens’

Professor Tiele then bids us leave our cries of triumph to the servum imitatorum pecus, braves gens, and so forth, as in the passage which Mr. Max Müller, unless I misunderstand him, regards as referring to the ‘new school,’ and, notably, to M. Gaidoz and myself, though such language ought not to apply to M. Gaidoz, because he is a scholar. I am left to uncovenanted mercies.

Professor Tiele on Our Merits

The merits of the new school Professor Tiele had already stated:—[{26}]

‘If I were reduced to choose between this method and that of comparative philology, I would prefer the former without the slightest hesitation. This method alone enables us to explain the fact, such a frequent cause of surprise, that the Greeks like the Germans . . . could attribute to their gods all manner of cruel, cowardly and dissolute actions. This method alone reveals the cause of all the strange metamorphoses of gods into animals, plants, and even stones. . . . In fact, this method teaches us to recognise in all these oddities the survivals of an age of barbarism long over-past, but lingering into later times, under the form of religious legends, the most persistent of all traditions. . . . This method, enfin, can alone help us to account for the genesis of myths, because it devotes itself to studying them in their rudest and most primitive shape. . . . ’

Destruction and Construction

Thus writes Professor Tiele about the constructive part of our work. As to the destructive—or would-be destructive—part, he condenses my arguments against the method of comparative philology. ‘To resume, the whole house of comparative philological mythology is builded on the sand, and her method does not deserve confidence, since it ends in such divergent results.’ That is Professor Tiele’s statement of my destructive conclusions, and he adds, ‘So far, I have not a single objection to make. I can still range myself on Mr. Lang’s side when he’ takes certain distinctions into which it is needless to go here. [{27}]

Allies or Not?

These are several of the passages on which, in 1887, I relied as evidence of the Professor’s approval, which, I should have added, is only partial It is he who, unsolicited, professes himself ‘much more our ally than our adversary.’ It is he who proclaims that Mr. Max Midler’s central hypothesis is erroneous, and who makes ‘no objection’ to my idea that it is ‘builded on the sand.’ It is he who assigns essential merits to our method, and I fail to find that he ‘strongly declines the honour’ of our alliance. The passage about ‘braves gens’ explicitly does not refer to us.

Our Errors

In 1887, I was not careful to quote what Professor Tiele had said against us. First, as to our want of novelty. That merit, I think, I had never claimed. I was proud to point out that we had been anticipated by Eusebius of Cæsarea, by Fontenelle, and doubtless by many others. We repose, as Professor Tiele justly says, on the researches of Dr. Tylor. At the same time it is Professor Tiele who constantly speaks of ‘the new school,’ while adding that he himself had freely opposed Mr. Max Müller’s central hypothesis, ‘a disease of language,’ in Dutch periodicals. The Professor also censures our ‘exclusiveness,’ our ‘narrowness,’ our ‘songs of triumph,’ our use of parody (M. Gaidoz republished an old one, not to my own taste; I have also been guilty of ‘The Great Gladstone Myth’) and our charge that our adversaries neglect ethnological material. On this I explain myself later. [{28a}]

Uses of Philology

Our method (says Professor Tiele) ‘cannot answer all the questions which the science of mythology must solve, or, at least, must study.’ Certainly it makes no such pretence.

Professor Tiele then criticises Sir George Cox and Mr. Robert Brown, junior, for their etymologies of Poseidon. Indiscreet followers are not confined to our army alone. Now, the use of philology, we learn, is to discourage such etymological vagaries as those of Sir G. Cox. [{28b}] We also discourage them—severely. But we are warned that philology really has discovered ‘some undeniably certain etymologies’ of divine names. Well, I also say, ‘Philology alone can tell whether Zeus Asterios, or Adonis, or Zeus Labrandeus is originally a Semitic or a Greek divine name; here she is the Pythoness we must all consult.’ [{29a}] And is it my fault that, even in this matter, the Pythonesses utter such strangely discrepant oracles? Is Athene from a Zend root (Benfey), a Greek root (Curtius), or to be interpreted by Sanskrit Ahanâ (Max Müller)? Meanwhile Professor Tiele repeats that, in a search for the origin of myths, and, above all, of obscene and brutal myths, ‘philology will lead us far from our aim.’ Now, if the school of Mr. Max Müller has a mot d’ordre, it is, says Professor Tiele, ‘to call mythology a disease of language.’ [{29b}] But, adds Mr. Max Müller’s learned Dutch defender, mythologists, while using philology for certain purposes, ‘must shake themselves free, of course, from the false hypothesis’ (Mr. Max Müller’s) ‘which makes of mythology a mere maladie du langage.’ This professor is rather a dangerous defender of Mr. Max Müller! He removes the very corner-stone of his edifice, which Tiele does not object to our describing as founded on the sand. Mr. Max Müller does not cite (as far as I observe) these passages in which Professor Tiele (in my view, and in fact) abandons (for certain uses) his system of mythology. Perhaps Professor Tiele has altered his mind, and, while keeping what Mr. Max Müller quotes, braves gens, and so on, has withdrawn what he said about ‘the false hypothesis of a disease of language.’ But my own last book about myths was written in 1886-1887, shortly after Professor Tiele’s remarks were published (1886) as I have cited them.

Personal Controversy

All this matter of alliances may seem, and indeed is, of a personal character, and therefore unimportant. Professor Tiele’s position in 1885-86 is clearly defined. Whatever he may have published since, he then accepted the anthropological or ethnological method, as alone capable of doing the work in which we employ it. This method alone can discover the origin of ancient myths, and alone can account for the barbaric element, that old puzzle, in the myths of civilised races. This the philological method, useful for other purposes, cannot do, and its central hypothesis can only mislead us. I was not aware, I repeat, that I ever claimed Professor Tiele’s ‘alliance,’ as he, followed by Mr. Max Müller, declares. They cannot point, as a proof of an assertion made by Professor Tiele, 1885-86, to words of mine which did not see the light till 1887, in Myth, Ritual, and Religion, i. pp. 24, 43, 44. Not that I deny Professor Tiele’s statement about my claim of his alliance before 1885-86. I merely ask for a reference to this claim. In 1887 [{30}] I cited his observations (already quoted) on the inadequate and misleading character of the philological method, when we are seeking for ‘the origin of a myth, or the physical explanation of the oldest myths, or trying to account for the rude and obscene element in the divine legends of civilised races.’ I added the Professor’s applause of the philological method as applied to other problems of mythology; for example, ‘the genealogical relations of myths. . . . The philological method alone can answer here,’ aided, doubtless, by historical and archæological researches as to the inter-relations of races. This approval of the philological method, I cited; the reader will find the whole passage in the Revue, vol. xii. p. 260. I remarked, however, that this will seem ‘a very limited province,’ though, in this province, ‘Philology is the Pythoness we must all consult; in this sphere she is supreme, when her high priests are of one mind.’ Thus I did not omit to notice Professor Tiele’s comments on the merits of the philological method. To be sure, he himself does not apply it when he comes to examine the Myth of Cronos. ‘Are the God and his myth original or imported? I have not approached this question because it does not seem to me ripe in this particular case.’ [{31a}] ‘Mr. Lang has justly rejected the opinion of Welcker and Mr. Max Müller, that Cronos is simply formed from Zeus’s epithet, κρονιων.’ [{31b}] This opinion, however, Mr. Max Müller still thinks the ‘most likely’ (ii. 507).

My other citation of Professor Tiele in 1887 says that our pretensions ‘are not unacknowledged’ by him, and, after a long quotation of approving passages, I add ‘the method is thus applauded by a most competent authority, and it has been warmly accepted’ (pray note the distinction) by M. Gaidoz. [{31c}] I trust that what I have said is not unfair. Professor Tiele’s objections, not so much to our method as to our manners, and to my own use of the method in a special case, have been stated, or will be stated later. Probably I should have put them forward in 1887; I now repair my error. My sole wish is to be fair; if Mr. Max Müller has not wholly succeeded in giving the full drift of Professor Tiele’s remarks, I am certain that it is from no lack of candour.

The Story of Cronos

Professor Tiele now devotes fifteen pages to the story of Cronos, and to my essay on that theme. He admits that I was right in regarding the myth as ‘extraordinarily old,’ and that in Greece it must go back to a period when Greeks had not passed the New Zealand level of civilisation. [Now, the New Zealanders were cannibals!] But ‘we are the victims of a great illusion if we think that a mere comparison of a Maori and Greek myth explains the myth.’ I only profess to explain the savagery of the myth by the fact (admitted) that it was composed by savages. The Maori story ‘is a myth of the creation of light.’ I, for my part, say, ‘It is a myth of the severance of heaven and earth.’ [{32a}] And so it is! No Being said, in Maori, ‘Fiat lux!’ Light is not here created. Heaven lay flat on Earth, all was dark, somebody kicked Heaven up, the already existing light came in. Here is no création de la lumière. I ask Professor Tiele, ‘Do you, sir, create light when you open your window-shutters in the morning? No, you let light in!’ The Maori tale is also ‘un mythe primitif de l’aurore,’ a primitive dawn myth. Dawn, again! Here I lose Professor Tiele.

‘Has the myth of Cronos the same sense?’ Probably not, as the Maori story, to my mind, has not got it either. But Professor Tiele says, ‘The myth of Cronos has precisely the opposite sense.’ [{32b}] What is the myth of Cronos? Ouranos (Heaven) married Gaea (Earth). Ouranos ‘hid his children from the light in the hollows of Earth’ (Hesiod). So, too, the New Zealand gods were hidden from light while Heaven (Rangi) lay flat on Papa (Earth). The children ‘were concealed between the hollows of their parent’s breasts.’ They did not like it, for they dwelt in darkness. So Cronos took an iron sickle and mutilated Ouranos in such a way, enfin, as to divorce him a thoro. ‘Thus,’ I say, ‘were Heaven and Earth practically divorced.’ The Greek gods now came out of the hollows where they had been, like the New Zealand gods, ‘hidden from the light.’

Professor Tiele on Sunset Myths

No, says Professor Tiele, ‘the story of Cronos has precisely the opposite meaning.’ The New Zealand myth is one of dawn, the Greek myth is one of sunset. The mutilated part of poor Ouranos is le phallus du ciel, le soleil, which falls into ‘the Cosmic ocean,’ and then, of course, all is dark. Professor Tiele may be right here; I am indifferent. All that I wanted to explain was the savage complexion of the myth, and Professor Tiele says that I have explained that, and (xii. 264) he rejects the etymological theory of Mr. Max Müller.

I say that, in my opinion, the second part of the Cronos myth (the child-swallowing performances of Cronos) ‘was probably a world-wide Märchen, or tale, attracted into the cycle of which Cronos was the centre, without any particular reason beyond the law which makes detached myths crystallise round any celebrated name.’

Professor Tiele says he does not grasp the meaning of, or believe in, any such law. Well, why is the world-wide tale of the Cyclops told about Odysseus? It is absolutely out of keeping, and it puzzles commentators. In fact, here was a hero and there was a tale, and the tale was attracted into the cycle of the hero; the very last man to have behaved as Odysseus is made to do. [{34}] But Cronos was an odious ruffian. The world-wide tale of swallowing and disgorging the children was attracted to his too notorious name ‘by grace of congruity.’ Does Professor Tiele now grasp my meaning (saisir)?

Our Lack of Scientific Exactness

I do not here give at full length Professor Tiele’s explanation of the meaning of a myth which I do not profess to explain myself. Thus, drops of the blood of Ouranos falling on Earth begat the Mélies, usually rendered ‘Nymphs of the Ash-trees.’ But Professor Tiele says they were really bees (Hesychius, μελιαι=μελισσαι)—‘that is to say, stars.’ Everybody has observed that the stars rise up off the earth, like the bees sprung from the blood of Ouranos. In Myth, Ritual, and Religion (i. 299-315) I give the competing explanations of Mr. Max Müller, of Schwartz (Cronos=storm god), Preller (Cronos=harvest god), of others who see the sun, or time, in Cronos; while, with Professor Tiele, Cronos is the god of the upper air, and also of the underworld and harvest; he ‘doubles the part.’ ‘Il est l’un et l’autre’—that is, ‘le dieu qui fait mûrir le blé’ and also ‘un dieu des lieux souterrains.’ ‘Il habite les profondeurs sous la terre,’ he is also le dieu du ciel nocturne.

It may have been remarked that I declined to add to this interesting collection of plausible explanations of Cronos. A selection of such explanations I offer in tabular form:—

Cronos was God of

Time (?)—Max Müller
Sun—Sayce
Midnight sky—Kuhn

Under-world }
Midnight sky}—Tiele
Harvest }

Harvest—Preller
Storm—Schwartz
Star-swallowing sky—Canon Taylor
Sun scorching spring—Hartung

Cronos was by Race

Late Greek (?)—Max Müller
Semitic—Böttiger
Accadian (?)—Sayce

Etymology of Cronos

Χρονος=Time (?)—Max Müller
Krāna (Sanskrit)—Kuhn
Karnos (Horned)—Brown
κραινω—Preller

The pleased reader will also observe that the phallus of Ouranos is the sun (Tiele), that Cronos is the sun (Sayce), that Cronos mutilating Ouranos is the sun (Hartung), just as the sun is the mutilated part of Ouranos (Tiele); Or is, according to others, the stone which Cronos swallowed, and which acted as an emetic.

My Lack of Explanation of Cronos

Now, I have offered no explanation at all of who Cronos was, what he was god of, from what race he was borrowed, from what language his name was derived. The fact is that I do not know the truth about these important debated questions. Therefore, after speaking so kindly of our method, and rejecting the method of Mr. Max Müller, Professor Tiele now writes thus (and this Mr. Max Müller does cite, as we have seen):—

‘Mr. Lang and M. Gaidoz are not entirely wrong in claiming me as an ally. But I must protest, in the name of mythological science, and of the exactness as necessary to her as to any of the other sciences, against a method which only glides over questions of the first importance’ (name, origin, province, race of Cronos), ‘and which to most questions can only reply, with a smile, C’est chercher raison où il n’y en a pas.’

My Crime

Now, what important questions was I gliding over? In what questions did I not expect to find reason? Why in this savage fatras about Cronos swallowing his children, about blood-drops becoming bees (Mr. Max Müller says ‘Melian nymphs’), and bees being stars, and all the rest of a prehistoric Märchen worked over again and again by the later fancy of Greek poets and by Greek voyagers who recognised Cronos in Moloch. In all this I certainly saw no ‘reason,’ but I have given in tabular form the general, if inharmonious, conclusions of more exact and conscientious scholars, ‘their variegated hypotheses,’ as Mannhardt says in the case of Demeter. My error, rebuked by Professor Tiele, is the lack of that ‘scientific exactitude’ exhibited by the explanations arranged in my tabular form.

My Reply to Professor Tiele

I would reply that I am not engaged in a study of the Cult of Cronos, but of the revolting element in his Myth: his swallowing of his children, taking a stone emetic by mistake, and disgorging the swallowed children alive; the stone being on view at Delphi long after the Christian era. Now, such stories of divine feats of swallowing and disgorging are very common, I show, in savage myth and popular Märchen. The bushmen have Kwai Hemm, who swallows the sacred Mantis insect. He is killed, and all the creatures whom he has swallowed return to light. Such stories occur among Australians, Kaffirs, Red Men, in Guiana, in Greenland, and so on. In some cases, among savages. Night (conceived as a person), or one star which obscures another star, is said to ‘swallow’ it. Therefore, I say, ‘natural phenomena, explained on savage principles, might give the data of the swallowing myth, of Cronos’ [{37}]—that is, the myth of Cronos may be, probably is, originally a nature-myth. ‘On this principle Cronos would be (ad hoc) the Night.’ Professor Tiele does not allude to this effort at interpretation. But I come round to something like the view of Kuhn. Cronos (ad hoc) is the midnight [sky], which Professor Tiele also regards as one of his several aspects. It is not impossible, I think, that if the swallowing myth was originally a nature-myth, it was suggested by Night. But the question I tried to answer was, ‘Why did the Greeks, of all people, tell such a disgusting story?’ And I replied, with Professor Tiele’s approval, that they inherited it from an age to which such follies were natural, an age when the ancestors of the Greeks were on (or under) the Maori stage of culture. Now, the Maoris, a noble race, with poems of great beauty and speculative power, were cannibals, like Cronos. To my mind, ‘scientific exactitude’ is rather shown in confessing ignorance than in adding to the list of guesses.

Conclusion as to Professor Tiele

The learned Professor’s remarks on being ‘much more my ally than my opponent’ were published before my Myth, Ritual, and Religion, in which (i. 24, 25) I cited his agreement with me in the opinion that ‘the philological method’ (Mr. Max Müller’s) is ‘inadequate and misleading, when it is a question of discovering the origin of a myth.’ I also quoted his unhesitating preference of ours to Mr. Max Müller’s method (i. 43, 44). I did not cite a tithe of what he actually did say to our credit. But I omitted to quote what it was inexcusable not to add, that Professor Tiele thinks us ‘too exclusive,’ that he himself had already, before us, combated Mr. Max Müller’s method in Dutch periodicals, that he blamed our ‘songs of triumph’ and our levities, that he thought we might have ignorant camp-followers, that I glided over important questions (bees, blood-drops, stars, Melian nymphs, the phallus of Ouranos, &c.), and showed scientific inexactitude in declining chercher raison où il n’y en a pas.

None the less, in Professor Tiele’s opinion, our method is new (or is not new), illuminating, successful, and alone successful, for the ends to which we apply it, and, finally, we have shown Mr. Max Müller’s method to be a house builded on the sand. That is the gist of what Professor Tiele said.

Mr. Max Müller, like myself, quotes part and omits part. He quotes twice Professor Tiele’s observations on my deplorable habit of gliding over important questions. He twice says that we have ‘actually’ claimed the Professor as ‘an ally of the victorious army,’ ‘the ethnological students of custom and myth,’ and once adds, ‘but he strongly declined that honour.’ He twice quotes the famous braves gens passage, excepting only M. Gaidoz, as a scholar, from a censure explicitly directed at our possible camp-followers as distinguished from ourselves.

But if Mr. Max Müller quotes Professor Tiele’s remarks proving that, in his opinion, the ‘army’ is really victorious; if he cites the acquiescence in my opinion that his mythological house is ‘builded on the sands,’ or Professor Tiele’s preference for our method over his own, or Professor Tiele’s volunteered remark that he is ‘much more our ally than our adversary,’ I have not detected the passages in Contributions to the Science of Mythology.

The reader may decide as to the relative importance of what I left out, and of what Mr. Max Müller omitted. He says, ‘Professor Tiele and I differ on several points, but we perfectly understand each other, and when we have made a mistake we readily confess and correct it’ (i. 37).

The two scholars, I thought, differed greatly. Mr. Max Müller’s war-cry, slogan, mot d’ordre, is to Professor Tiele ‘a false hypothesis.’ Our method, which Mr. Max Müller combats so bravely, is all that Professor Tiele has said of it. But, if all this is not conspicuously apparent in our adversary’s book, it does not become me to throw the first stone. We are all, in fact, inclined unconsciously to overlook what makes against our argument. I have done it; and, to the best of my belief, Mr. Max Müller has not avoided the same error.

MANNHARDT

Mannhardt’s Attitude

Professor Tiele, it may appear, really ‘fights for his own hand,’ and is not a thorough partisan of either side. The celebrated Mannhardt, too, doubtless the most original student of folk-lore since Grimm, might, at different periods of his career, have been reckoned an ally, now by philologists, now by ‘the new school.’ He may be said, in fact, to have combined what is best in the methods of both parties. Both are anxious to secure such support as his works can lend.

Moral Character Impeached

Mr. Max Müller avers that his moral character seems to be ‘aimed at’ by critics who say that he has no right to quote Mannhardt or Oldenberg as his supporters (1. xvi.). Now, without making absurd imputations, I do not reckon Mannhardt a thorough partisan of Mr. Max Müller. I could not put our theory so well as Mannhardt puts it. ‘The study of the lower races is an invaluable instrument for the interpretation of the survivals from earlier stages, which we meet in the full civilisation of cultivated peoples, but which arose in the remotest fetishism and savagery.’

Like Mr. Max Müller, I do not care for the vague word ‘fetishism,’ otherwise Mannhardt’s remark exactly represents my own position, the anthropological position. [{42a}] Now, Mr. Max Müller does not like that position. That position he assails. It was Mannhardt’s, however, when he wrote the book quoted, and, so far, Mannhardt was not absolutely one of Mr. Max Müller’s ‘supporters’—unless I am one. ‘I have even been accused,’ says Mr. Max Müller, ‘of intentionally ignoring or suppressing Mannhardt’s labours. How charitable!’ (1. xvii.) I trust, from our author’s use of the word todtschweigen, that this uncharitable charge was made in Germany.

Mannhardt

Mannhardt, for a time, says Mr. Max Müller, ‘expressed his mistrust in some of the results of comparative mythology’ (1. xvii.). Indeed, I myself quote him to that very effect. [{42b}] Not only ‘some of the results,’ but the philological method itself was distrusted by Mannhardt, as by Curtius. ‘The failure of the method in its practical working lies in a lack of the historical sense,’ says Mannhardt. [{42c}] Mr. Max Müller may have, probably has, referred to these sayings of Mannhardt; or, if he has not, no author is obliged to mention everybody who disagrees with him. Mannhardt’s method was mainly that of folklore, not of philology. He examined peasant customs and rites as ‘survivals’ of the oldest paganism. Mr. Frazer applies Mannhardt’s rich lore to the explanation of Greek and other rites in The Golden Bough, that entrancing book. Such was Mannhardt’s position (as I shall prove at large) when he was writing his most famous works. But he ‘returned at last to his old colours’ (1. xvii.) in Die lettischen Sonnenmythen (1875). In 1880 Mannhardt died. Mr. Max Müller does not say whether Mannhardt, before a decease deeply regretted, recanted his heretical views about the philological method, and his expressed admiration of the study of the lower races as ‘an invaluable instrument.’ One would gladly read a recantation so important. But Mr. Max Müller does tell us that ‘if I did not refer to his work in my previous contributions to the science of mythology the reason was simple enough. It was not, as has been suggested, my wish to suppress it (todtschweigen), but simply my want of knowledge of the materials with which he dealt’ (German popular customs and traditions) ‘and therefore the consciousness of my incompetence to sit in judgment on his labours.’ Again, we are told that there was no need of criticism or praise of Mannhardt. He had Mr. Frazer as his prophet—but not till ten years after his death.

Mannhardt’s Letters

‘Mannhardt’s state of mind with regard to the general principles of comparative philology has been so exactly my own,’ says Mr. Max Müller, that he cites Mannhardt’s letters to prove the fact. But as to the application to myth of the principles of comparative philology, Mannhardt speaks of ‘the lack of the historical sense’ displayed in the practical employment of the method. This, at least, is ‘not exactly’ Mr. Max Müller’s own view. Probably he refers to the later period when Mannhardt ‘returned to his old colours.’

The letters of Mannhardt, cited in proof of his exact agreement with Mr. Max Müller about comparative philology, do not, as far as quoted, mention the subject of comparative philology at all (1. xviii-xx.). Possibly ‘philology’ is here a slip of the pen, and ‘mythology’ may be meant.

Mannhardt says to Müllenhoff (May 2, 1876) that he has been uneasy ‘at the extent which sun myths threaten to assume in my comparisons.’ He is opening ‘a new point of view;’ materials rush in, ‘so that the sad danger seemed inevitable of everything becoming everything.’ In Mr. Max Müller’s own words, written long ago, he expressed his dread, not of ‘everything becoming everything’ (a truly Heraclitean state of affairs), but of the ‘omnipresent Sun and the inevitable Dawn appearing in ever so many disguises.’ ‘Have we not,’ he asks, ‘arrived both at the same conclusion?’ Really, I do not know! Had Mannhardt quite cashiered ‘the corn-spirit,’ who, perhaps, had previously threatened to ‘become everything’? He is still in great vigour, in Mr. Frazer’s Golden Bough, and Mr. Frazer is Mannhardt’s disciple. But where, all this time, is there a reference by Mannhardt to ‘the general principles of comparative philology’? Where does he accept ‘the omnipresent Sun and the inevitable Dawn’? Why, he says the reverse; he says in this letter that he is immeasurably removed from accepting them at all as Mr. Max Müller accepts them!

‘I am very far from looking upon all myths as psychical reflections of physical phenomena, still less as of exclusively solar or meteorological phenomena, like Kuhn, Schwartz, Max Müller and their school.’ What a queer way of expressing his agreement with Mr. Max Müller!

The Professor expostulates with Mannhardt (1. xx.):—‘Where has any one of us ever done this?’ Well, when Mannhardt said ‘all myths,’ he wrote colloquially. Shall we say that he meant ‘most myths,’ ‘a good many myths,’ ‘a myth or two here and there’? Whatever he meant, he meant that he was ‘still more than very far removed from looking upon all myths’ as Mr. Max Müller does.

Mannhardt’s next passage I quote entire and textually from Mr. Max Müller’s translation:—

‘I have learnt to appreciate poetical and literary production as an essential element in the development of mythology, and to draw and utilise the consequences arising from this state of things. [Who has not?] But, on the other hand, I hold it as quite certain that a portion of the older myths arose from nature poetry which is no longer directly intelligible to us, but has to be interpreted by means of analogies. Nor does it follow that these myths betray any historical identity; they only testify to the same kind of conception and tendency prevailing on similar stages of development. Of these nature myths some have reference to the life and the circumstances of the sun, and our first steps towards an understanding of them are helped on by such nature poetry as the Lettish, which has not yet been obscured by artistic and poetical reflexion. In that poetry mythical personalities confessedly belonging to a solar sphere are transferred to a large number of poetical representatives, of which the explanation must consequently be found in the same (solar) sphere of nature. My method here is just the same as that applied by me to the Tree-cult.’

Mr. Max Müller asks, ‘Where is there any difference between this, the latest and final system adopted by Mannhardt, and my own system which I put forward in 1856?’ (1. xxi.)

How Mannhardt differs from Mr. Max Müller

I propose to show wherein the difference lies. Mannhardt says, ‘My method is just the same as that applied by me to the Tree-cult.’ What was that method?

Mannhardt, in the letter quoted by Mr. Max Müller, goes on to describe it; but Mr. Max Müller omits the description, probably not realising its importance. For Mannhardt’s method is the reverse of that practised under the old colours to which he is said to have returned.

Mannhardt’s Method

‘My method is here the same as in the Tree-cult. I start from a given collection of facts, of which the central idea is distinct and generally admitted, and consequently offers a firm basis for explanation. I illustrate from this and from well-founded analogies. Continuing from these, I seek to elucidate darker things. I search out the simplest radical ideas and perceptions, the germ-cells from whose combined growth mythical tales form themselves in very different ways.’

Mr. Frazer gives us a similar description of Mannhardt’s method, whether dealing with sun myths or tree myths. [{46}] ‘Mannhardt set himself systematically to collect, compare, and explain the living superstitions of the peasantry.’ Now Mr. Max Müller has just confessed, as a reason for incompetence to criticise Mannhardt’s labours, ‘my want of knowledge of the materials with which he dealt—the popular customs and traditions of Germany.’ And yet he asks where there is any difference between his system and Mannhardt’s. Mannhardt’s is the study of rural survival, the system of folklore. Mr. Max Müller’s is the system of comparative philology about which in this place Mannhardt does not say one single word. Mannhardt interprets some myths ‘arising from nature poetry, no longer intelligible to us,’ by analogies; Mr. Max Müller interprets them by etymologies.

The difference is incalculable; not that Mannhardt always abstains from etymologising.

Another Claim on Mannhardt

While maintaining that ‘all comparative mythology must rest on comparison of names as its most certain basis’ (a system which Mannhardt declares explicitly to be so far ‘a failure’), Mr. Max Müller says, ‘It is well known that in his last, nay posthumous essay, Mannhardt, no mean authority, returned to the same conviction.’ I do not know which is Mannhardt’s very last essay, but I shall prove that in the posthumous essays Mannhardt threw cold water on the whole method of philological comparative mythology.

However, as proof of Mannhardt’s return to Mr. Max Müller’s convictions, our author cites Mythologische Forschungen (pp. 86-113).

What Mannhardt said

In the passages here produced as proof of Mannhardt’s conversion, he is not investigating a myth at all, or a name which occurs in mythology. He is trying to discover the meaning of the practices of the Lupercalia at Rome. In February, says Dionysius of Halicarnassus, the Romans held a popular festival, and lads ran round naked, save for skins of victims, whipping the spectators. Mannhardt, in his usual way, collects all the facts first, and then analyses the name Luperci. This does not make him a philological mythologist. To take a case in point, at Selkirk and Queensferry the bounds are ridden, or walked, by ‘Burleymen’ or ‘Burrymen.’ [{48}] After examining the facts we examine the words, and ask, ‘Why Burley or Burry men?’ At Queensferry, by a folk etymology, one of the lads wears a coat stuck over with burrs. But ‘Borough-men’ seems the probable etymology. As we examine the names Burley, or Burry men, so Mannhardt examines the name Luperci; and if a true etymology can be discovered, it will illustrate the original intention of the Lupercalia (p. 86).

He would like to explain the Lupercalia as a popular play, representing the spirits of vegetation opposing the spirits of infertility. ‘But we do not forget that our whole theory of the development of the rite rests on a hypothesis which the lack of materials prevents us from demonstrating.’ He would explain Luperci as Lupiherci—‘wolf-goats.’ Over this we need not linger; but how does all this prove Mannhardt to have returned to the method of comparing Greek with Vedic divine names, and arriving thence at some celestial phenomenon as the basis of a terrestrial myth? Yet he sometimes does this.

My Relations to Mannhardt

If anything could touch and move an unawakened anthropologist it would be the conversion of Mannhardt. My own relations with his ideas have the interest of illustrating mental coincidences. His name does not occur, I think, in the essay, ‘The Method of Folklore,’ in the first edition of my Custom and Myth. In that essay I take, as an example of the method, the Scottish and Northumbrian Kernababy, the puppet made out of the last gleanings of harvest. This I compared to the Greek Demeter of the harvest-home, with sheaves and poppies in her hands, in the immortal Seventh Idyll of Theocritus. Our Kernababy, I said, is a stunted survival of our older ‘Maiden,’ ‘a regular image of the harvest goddess,’ and I compared κορη. Next I gave the parallel case from ancient Peru, and the odd accidental coincidence that there the maize was styled Mama Cora (μητηρ κορη!).

In entire ignorance of Mannhardt’s corn-spirit, or corn-mother, I was following Mannhardt’s track. Indeed, Mr. Max Müller has somewhere remarked that I popularise Mannhardt’s ideas. Naturally he could not guess that the coincidence was accidental and also inevitable. Two men, unknown to each other, were using the same method on the same facts.

Mannhardt’s Return to his old Colours

If, then, Mannhardt was re-converted, it would be a potent argument for my conversion. But one is reminded of the re-conversion of Prince Charles. In 1750 he ‘deserted the errors of the Church of Rome for those of the Church of England.’ Later he returned, or affected to return, to the ancient faith.

A certain Cardinal seemed contented therewith, and, as the historian remarks, ‘was clearly a man not difficult to please.’ Mr. Max Müller reminds me of the good Cardinal. I do not feel so satisfied as he does of Mannhardt’s re-conversion.

Mannhardt’s Attitude to Philology

We have heard Mannhardt, in a letter partly cited by Mr. Max Müller, describe his own method. He begins with what is certain and intelligible, a mass of popular customs. These he explains by analogies. He passes from the known to the obscure. Philological mythologists begin with the unknown, the name of a god. This they analyse, extract a meaning, and (proceeding to the known) fit the facts of the god’s legend into the sense of his name. The methods are each other’s opposites, yet the letter in which Mannhardt illustrates this fact is cited as a proof of his return to his old colours.

Irritating Conduct of Mannhardt

Nothing irritates philological mythologists so much, nothing has injured them so much in the esteem of the public which ‘goes into these things a little,’ as the statement that their competing etymologies and discrepant interpretations of mythical names are mutually destructive. I have been told that this is ‘a mean argument.’ But if one chemical analyst found bismuth where another found iridium, and a third found argon, the public would begin to look on chemistry without enthusiasm; still more so if one chemist rarely found anything but inevitable bismuth or omnipresent iridium. Now Mannhardt uses this ‘mean argument.’

Mannhardt on Demeter Erinnys

In a posthumous work, Mythologische Forschungen (1884), the work from which Mr. Max Müller cites the letter to Müllenhoff, Mannhardt discusses Demeter Erinnys. She is the Arcadian goddess, who, in the form of a mare, became mother of Despoina and the horse Arion, by Poseidon. [{51a}] Her anger at the unhandsome behaviour of Poseidon caused Demeter to be called Erinnys—‘to be angry’ being ερινυειν in Arcadian—a folk-etymology, clearly. Mannhardt first dives deep into the sources for this fable. [{51b}] Arion, he decides, is no mythological personification, but a poetical ideal (Bezeichnung) of the war-horse. Legend is ransacked for proof of this. Poseidon is the lord of wind and wave. Now, there are waves of corn, under the wind, as well as waves of the sea. When the Suabian rustic sees the wave running over the corn, he says, Da lauft das Pferd, and Greeks before Homer would say, in face of the billowing corn, ’Εκιθι θεουσι ιπποι, There run horses! And Homer himself [{51c}] says that the horses of Erichthonius, children of Boreas, ran over cornfield and sea. We ourselves speak of sea-waves as ‘white horses.’ So, to be brief, Mannhardt explains the myth of Demeter Erinnys becoming, as a mare, a mother by Poseidon as a horse, thus, ‘Poseidon Hippies, or Poseidon in horse’s form, rushes through the growing grain and weds Demeter,’ and he cites peasant proverbs, such as Das Korn heirathet; das Korn feiert Hochzeit (p. 264). ‘This is the germ of the Arcadian Saga.’

‘The Arcadian myth of Demeter Erinnys is undeniably a blending of the epic tradition [of the ideal war-horse] with the local cult of Demeter. . . . It is a probable hypothesis that the belief in the wedding of Demeter and Poseidon comes from the sight of the waves passing over the cornfield. . . .’ [{52}]

It is very neat! But a certain myth of Loki in horse-form comes into memory, and makes me wonder how Mannhardt would have dealt with that too liberal narrative.

Loki, as a mare (he being a male god), became, by the horse of a giant, the father of Sleipnir, Odin’s eight-footed steed. Mr. W. A. Craigie supplies this note on Loki’s analogy with Poseidon, as a horse, in the waves of corn:—

‘In North Jutland, when the vapours are seen going with a wavy motion along the earth in the heat of summer, they say, “Loki is sowing oats today,” or “Loki is driving his goats.”

‘N.B.—Oats in Danish are havre, which suggests O.N. hafrar, goats. Modern Icelandic has hafrar=oats, but the word is not found in the old language.’

Is Loki a corn-spirit?

Mannhardt’s ‘Mean Argument’

Mannhardt now examines the explanations of Demeter Erinnys, and her legend, given by Preller, E. Curtius, O. Müller, A. Kuhn, W. Sonne, Max Müller, E. Burnouf, de Gubernatis, Schwartz, and H. D. Müller. ‘Here,’ he cries, ‘is a variegated list of hypotheses!’ Demeter is

Storm-cloud
Sun Goddess
Earth and Moon Goddess
Dawn
Night.

Poseidon is

Sea
Storm God
Cloud-hidden Sun
Rain God.

Despoina is

Rain
Thunder
Moon.

Arion, the horse, is

Lightning
Sun
Thunder-horse.

Erinnys is

Storm-cloud
Red Dawn.

Mannhardt decides, after this exhibition of guesses, that the Demeter legends cannot be explained as refractions of any natural phenomena in the heavens (p. 275). He concludes that the myth of Demeter Erinnys, and the parallel Vedic story of Saranyu (who also had an amour as a mare), are ‘incongruous,’ and that neither sheds any light on the other. He protests against the whole tendency to find prototypes of all Aryan myths in the Veda, and to think that, with a few exceptions, all mythology is a terrestrial reflection of celestial phenomena (p. 280). He then goes into the contending etymologies of Demeter, and decides (‘for the man was mortal and had been a’ philologer) in favour of his own guess, Ζεια δη+μητηρ=‘Corn-mother’ (p. 294).

This essay on Demeter was written by Mannhardt in the summer of 1877, a year after the letter which is given as evidence that he had ‘returned to his old colours.’ The essay shows him using the philological string of ‘variegated hypotheses’ as anything but an argument in favour of the philological method. On the other hand, he warns us against the habit, so common in the philological school, of looking for prototypes of all Aryan myths in the Veda, and of finding in most myths a reflection on earth of phenomena in the heavens, Erinnys being either Storm-cloud or Dawn, according to the taste and fancy of the inquirer. We also find Mannhardt, in 1877, starting from the known—legend and rural survival in phrase and custom—and so advancing to the unknown—the name Demeter. The philologists commence with the unknown, the old name, Demeter Erinnys, explain it to taste, and bring the legend into harmony with their explanation. I cannot say, then, that I share Mr. Max Müller’s impression. I do not feel sure that Mannhardt did return to his old colours.

Why Mannhardt is Thought to have been Converted

Mannhardt’s friend, Müllenhoff, had an aversion to solar myths. He said: [{54}] ‘I deeply mistrust all these combinations of the new so-called comparative mythology.’ Mannhardt was preparing to study Lithuanian solar myths, based on Lithuanian and Lettish marriage songs. Müllenhoff and Scherer seem to have thought this work too solar for their taste. Mannhardt therefore replied to their objections in the letter quoted in part by Mr. Max Müller. Mannhardt was not the man to neglect or suppress solar myths when he found them, merely because he did not believe that a great many other myths which had been claimed as celestial were solar. Like every sensible person, he knew that there are numerous real, obvious, confessed solar myths not derived from a disease of language. These arise from (1) the impulse to account for the doings of the Sun by telling a story about him as if he were a person; (2) from the natural poetry of the human mind. [{55}] What we think they are not shown to arise from is forgetfulness of meanings of old words, which, ex hypothesi, have become proper names.

That is the theory of the philological school, and to that theory, to these colours, I see no proof (in the evidence given) that Mannhardt had returned. But ‘the scalded child dreads cold water,’ and Müllenhoff apparently dreaded even real solar myths. Mr. Max Müller, on the other hand (if I do not misinterpret him), supposes that Mannhardt had returned to the philological method, partly because he was interested in real solar myths and in the natural poetry of illiterate races.

Mannhardt’s Final Confession

Mannhardt’s last work published in his life days was Antike Wald- und Feldkulte (1877). In the preface, dated November 1, 1876 (after the famous letter of May 1876), he explains the growth of his views and criticises his predecessors. After doing justice to Kuhn and his comparisons of European with Indian myths, he says that, in his opinion, comparative Indo-Germanic mythology has not yet borne the expected fruits. ‘The assured gains shrink into very few divine names, such as Dyaus—Zeus—Tius, Parjany—Perkunas, Bhaga—Bug, Varuna—Uranus, &c.’ I wish he had completed the list included in &c. Other equations, as Sarameya=Hermeias, Saranyu=Demeter Erinnys, he fears will not stand close criticism. He dreads that jeux d’esprit (geistvolle Spiele des Witzes) may once more encroach on science. Then, after a lucid statement of Mr. Max Müller’s position, he says, ‘Ich vermag dem von M. Müller aufgestellten Principe, wenn überhaupt eine, so doch nur eine sehr beschrankte Geltung zuzugestehen.’

‘To the principle of Max Müller I can only assign a very limited value, if any value at all.’ [{56}]

‘Taken all in all, I consider the greater part of the results hitherto obtained in the field of Indo-Germanic comparative mythology to be, as yet, a failure, premature or incomplete, my own efforts in German Myths (1858) included. That I do not, however, “throw out the babe with the bath,” as the proverb goes, my essay on Lettish sun myths in Bastian-Hartmann’s Ethnological Journal will bear witness.’

Such is Mannhardt’s conclusion. Taken in connection with his still later essay on Demeter, it really leaves no room for doubt. There, I think, he does ‘throw out the child with the bath,’ throw the knife after the handle. I do not suppose that Mr. Max Müller ever did quote Mannhardt as one of his supporters, but such a claim, if really made, would obviously give room for criticism.

Mannhardt on Solar Myths

What the attitude of Mannhardt was, in 1877 and later, we have seen. He disbelieves in the philological system of explaining myths by etymological conjectures. He disbelieves in the habit of finding, in myths of terrestrial occurrences, reflections of celestial phenomena. But earlier, in his long essay Die lettischen Sonnenmythen (in Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1875), he examines the Lettish popular songs about the Sun, the Sun’s daughters, the god-sons, and so forth. Here, of course, he is dealing with popular songs explicitly devoted to solar phenomena, in their poetical aspect. In the Lettish Sun-songs and Sun-myths of the peasants we see, he says, a myth-world ‘in process of becoming,’ in an early state of development, as in the Veda (p. 325). But, we may reply, in the Veda, myths are already full-grown, or even decadent. Already there are unbelievers in the myths. Thus we would say, in the Veda we have (1) myths of nature, formed in the remote past, and (2) poetical phrases about heavenly phenomena, which resemble the nature-poetry of the Letts, but which do not become full-grown myths. The Lett songs, also, have not developed into myths, of which (as in the Apollo and Daphne story, by Mr. Max Müller’s hypothesis) the original meaning is lost.

In the Lett songs we have a mass of nature-pictures—the boat and the apples of the Sun, the red cloak hung on the oak-tree, and so on; pictures by which it is sought to make elemental phenomena intelligible, by comparison with familiar things. Behind the phenomena are, in popular belief, personages—mythical personages—the Sun as ‘a magnified non-natural man,’ or woman; the Sun’s mother, daughters, and other heavenly people. Their conduct is ‘motived’ in a human way. Stories are told about them: the Sun kills the Moon, who revives.

All this is perfectly familiar everywhere. Savages, in their fables, account for solar, lunar, and similar elemental processes, on the theory that the heavenly bodies are, and act like, human beings. The Eskimo myth of the spots on the Moon, marks of ashes thrown by the Sun in a love-quarrel, is an excellent example. But in all this there is no ‘disease of language.’ These are frank nature-myths, ‘ætiological,’ giving a fabulous reason for facts of nature.

Mannhardt on Märchen.

But Mannhardt goes farther. He not only recognises, as everyone must do, the Sun, as explicitly named, when he plays his part in myth, or popular tale (Märchen). He thinks that even when the Sun is not named, his presence, and reference to him, and derivation of the incidents in Märchen from solar myth, may sometimes be detected with great probability (pp. 326, 327). But he adds, ‘not that every Märchen contains a reference to Nature; that I am far from asserting’ (p. 327).

Now perhaps nobody will deny that some incidents in Märchen may have been originally suggested by nature-myths. The all-swallowing and all-disgorging beast, wolf, or ogre, may have been derived from a view of Night as the all-swallower. But to disengage natural phenomena, mythically stated, from the human tangle of Märchen, to find natural phenomena in such a palimpsest as Perrault’s courtly and artificial version of a French popular tale, is a delicate and dangerous task. In many stories a girl has three balls—one of silver, one of gold, one of diamond—which she offers, in succession, as bribes. This is a perfectly natural invention. It is perilous to connect these balls, gifts of ascending value, with the solar apple of iron, silver, and gold (p. 103 and note 5). It is perilous, and it is quite unnecessary. Some one—Gubernatis, I think—has explained the naked sword of Aladdin, laid between him and the Sultan’s daughter in bed, as the silver sickle of the Moon. Really the sword has an obvious purpose and meaning, and is used as a symbol in proxy-marriages. The blood shed by Achilles in his latest victories is elsewhere explained as red clouds round the setting Sun, which is conspicuously childish. Mannhardt leans, at least, in this direction.

‘The Two Brothers’

Mannhardt takes the old Egyptian tale of ‘The Two Brothers,’ Bitiou and Anepou. This fable, as old, in actual written literature, as Moses, is a complex of half the Märchen plots and incidents in the world. It opens with the formula of Potiphar’s Wife. The falsely accused brother flies, and secretes his life, or separable soul, in a flower of the mystic Vale of Acacias. This affair of the separable soul may be studied in Mr. Hartland’s Perseus, and it animates, as we shall see, Mr. Frazer’s theory of the Origin of Totemism. A golden lock of the wicked wife’s hair is then borne by the Nile to the king’s palace in Egypt. He will insist on marrying the lady of the lock. Here we are in the Cinderella formula, en plein, which may be studied, in African and Santhal shapes, in Miss Coxe’s valuable Cinderella. [{60}] Pharaoh’s wise men decide that the owner of the lock of hair is (like Egyptian royalty at large) a daughter of the Sun-god (p. 239). Here is the Sun, in all his glory; but here we are dealing with a literary version of the Märchen, accommodated to royal tastes and Egyptian ideas of royalty by a royal scribe, the courtly Perrault of the Egyptian Roi-Soleil. Who can say what he introduced?—while we can say that the Sun-god is absent in South African and Santhal and other variants. The Sun may have slipped out here, may have been slipped in there; the faintest glimmer of the historical sense prevents us from dogmatising.

Wedded to Pharaoh, the wicked wife, pursuing her vengeance on Bitiou, cuts down his life-tree. Anepou, his brother, however, recovers his concealed heart (life), and puts it in water. Bitiou revives. He changes himself into the sacred Bull, Apis—a feature in the story which is practically possible in Egypt alone. The Bull tells the king his story, but the wicked wife has the Bull slain, as by Cambyses in Herodotus. Two of his blood-drops become two persea trees. One of them confesses the fact to the wicked wife. She has them cut down; a chip flies into her mouth, she becomes a mother by the chip, the boy (Bitiou) again becomes king, and slays his mother, the wicked wife.

In the tree, any tree, acacia or persea, Mannhardt wishes to recognise the Sun-tree of the Lett songs. The red blossoms of the persea tree are a symbol of the Sun-tree: of Horus. He compares features, not always very closely analogous, in European Märchen. For example, a girl hides in a tree, like Charles II. at Boscobel. That is not really analogous with Bitiou’s separable life in the acacia! ‘Anepou’ is like ‘Anapu,’ Anubis. The Bull is the Sun, is Osiris—dead in winter. Mr. Frazer, Mannhardt’s disciple, protests à grands cris against these identifications when made by others than Mannhardt, who says, ‘The Märchen is an old obscure solar myth’ (p. 242). To others the story of Bitiou seems an Egyptian literary complex, based on a popular set of tales illustrating furens quid femina possit, and illustrating the world-wide theory of the separable life, dragging in formulas from other Märchen, and giving to all a thoroughly classical Egyptian colouring. [{61a}] Solar myths, we think, have not necessarily anything to make in the matter.

The Golden Fleece

Mannhardt reasons in much the same way about the Golden Fleece. This is a peculiarly Greek feature, interwoven with the world-wide Märchen of the Lad, the Giant’s helpful daughter, her aid in accomplishing feats otherwise impossible, and the pursuit of the pair by the father. I have studied the story—as it occurs in Samoa, among Red Indian tribes, and elsewhere—in ‘A Far-travelled Tale.’ [{61b}] In our late Greek versions the Quest of the Fleece of Gold occurs, but in no other variants known to me. There is a lamb (a boy changed into a lamb) in Romaic. His fleece is of no interest to anybody. Out of his body grows a tree with a golden apple. Sun-yarns occur in popular songs. Mannhardt (pp. 282, 283) abounds in solar explanations of the Fleece of Gold, hanging on the oak-tree in the dark Ææan forest. Idyia, wife of the Colchian king, ‘is clearly the Dawn.’ Aia is the isle of the Sun. Helle=Surya, a Sanskrit Sun-goddess; the golden ram off whose back she falls, while her brother keeps his seat, is the Sun. Her brother, Phrixus, may be the Daylight. The oak-tree in Colchis is the Sun-tree of the Lettish songs. Perseus is a hero of Light, born in the Dark Tower (Night) from the shower of gold (Sun-rays).

‘We can but say “it may be so,”’ but who could explain all the complex Perseus-saga as a statement about elemental phenomena? Or how can the Far-travelled Tale of the Lad and the Giant’s Daughter be interpreted to the same effect, above all in the countless examples where no Fleece of Gold occurs? The Greek tale of Jason is made up of several Märchen, as is the Odyssey, by epic poets. These Märchen have no necessary connection with each other; they are tagged on to each other, and localised in Greece and on the Euxine. [{62a}] A poetic popular view of the Sun may have lent the peculiar, and elsewhere absent, incident of the quest of the Fleece of Gold on the shores of the Black Sea. The old epic poets may have borrowed from popular songs like the Lettish chants (p. 328). A similar dubious adhesion may be given by us in the case of Castor and Polydeuces (Morning and Evening Stars?), and Helen (Dawn), [{62b}] and the Hesperides (p. 234). The germs of the myths may be popular poetical views of elemental phenomena. But to insist on elemental allegories through all the legends of the Dioskouroi, and of the Trojan war, would be to strain a hypothesis beyond the breaking-point. Much, very much, is epic invention, unverkennbar das werk der Dichter (p. 328).

Mannhardt’s Approach to Mr. Max Müller

In this essay on Lettish Sun-songs (1875) Mannhardt comes nearest to Mr. Max Müller. He cites passages from him with approval (cf. pp. 314, 322). His explanations, by aid of Sun-songs, of certain features in Greek mythology are plausible, and may be correct. But we turn to Mannhardt’s explicit later statement of his own position in 1877, and to his posthumous essays, published in 1884; and, on the whole, we find, in my opinion, much more difference from than agreement with the Oxford Professor, whose Dawn-Daphne and other equations Mannhardt dismisses, and to whose general results (in mythology) he assigns a value so restricted. It is a popular delusion that the anthropological mythologists deny the existence of solar myths, or of nature-myths in general. These are extremely common. What we demur to is the explanation of divine and heroic myths at large as solar or elemental, when the original sense has been lost by the ancient narrators, and when the elemental explanation rests on conjectural and conflicting etymologies and interpretations of old proper names—Athene, Hera, Artemis, and the rest. Nevertheless, while Mannhardt, in his works on Tree-cult, and on Field and Wood Cult, and on the ‘Corn Demon,’ has wandered far from ‘his old colours’—while in his posthumous essays he is even more of a deserter, his essay on Lettish Sun-myths shows an undeniable tendency to return to Mr. Max Müller’s camp. This was what made his friends so anxious. It is probably wisest to form our opinion of his final attitude on his preface to his last book published in his life-time. In that the old colours are not exactly his chosen banner; nor can the flag of the philological school be inscribed tandem triumphans.

In brief, Mannhardt’s return to his old colours (1875-76) seems to have been made in a mood from which he again later passed away. But either modern school of mythology may cite him as an ally in one or other of his phases of opinion.

PHILOLOGY AND DEMETER ERINNYS

Mr. Max Müller on Demeter Erinnys.

Like Mannhardt, our author in his new treatise discusses the strange old Arcadian myth of the horse-Demeter Erinnys (ii. 537). He tells the unseemly tale, and asks why the Earth goddess became a mare? Then he gives the analogous myth from the Rig-Veda, [{65}] which, as it stands, is ‘quite unintelligible.’ But Yâska explains that Saranyu, daughter of Tvashtri, in the form of a mare, had twins by Vivasvat, in the shape of a stallion. Their offspring were the Asvins, who are more or less analogous in their helpful character to Castor and Pollux. Now, can it be by accident that Saranyu in the Veda is Erinnys in Greek? To this ‘equation,’ as we saw, Mannhardt demurred in 1877. Who was Saranyu? Yâska says ‘the Night;’ that was Yâska’s idea. Mr. Max Müller adds, ‘I think he is right,’ and that Saranyu is ‘the grey dawn’ (ii. 541).

‘But,’ the bewildered reader exclaims, ‘Dawn is one thing and Night is quite another.’ So Yâska himself was intelligent enough to observe, ‘Night is the wife of Aditya; she vanishes at sunrise.’ However, Night in Mr. Max Müller’s system ‘has just got to be’ Dawn, a position proved thus: ‘Yâska makes this clear by saying that the time of the Asvins, sons of Saranyu, is after midnight,’ but that ‘when darkness prevails over light, that is Madhyama; when light prevails over darkness, that is Aditya,’ both being Asvins. They (the Asvins) are, in fact, darkness and light; and therefore, I understand, Saranyu, who is Night, and not an Asvin at all, is Dawn! To make this perfectly clear, remember that the husband of Saranyu, whom she leaves at sunrise, is—I give you three guesses—is the Sun! The Sun’s wife leaves the Sun at sunrise. [{66}] This is proved, for Aditya is Vivasvat=the Sun, and is the husband of Saranyu (ii. 541). These methods of proving Night to be Dawn, while the substitute for both in the bed of the Sun ‘may have been meant for the gloaming’ (ii. 542), do seem to be geistvolle Spiele des Witzes, ingenious jeux d’esprit, as Mannhardt says, rather than logical arguments.

But we still do not know how the horse and mare came in, or why the statue of Demeter had a horse’s head. ‘This seems simply to be due to the fact that, quite apart from this myth, the sun had, in India at least, often been conceived as a horse . . . . and the dawn had been likened to a mare.’ But how does this explain the problem? The Vedic poets cited (ii. 542) either referred to the myth which we have to explain, or they used a poetical expression, knowing perfectly well what they meant. As long as they knew what they meant, they could not make an unseemly fable out of a poetical phrase. Not till after the meaning was forgotten could the myth arise. But the myth existed already in the Veda! And the unseemliness is precisely what we have to account for; that is our enigma.

Once more, Demeter is a goddess of Earth, not of Dawn. How, then, does the explanation of a hypothetical Dawn-myth apply to the Earth? Well, perhaps the story, the unseemly story, was first told of Erinnys (who also is ‘the inevitable Dawn’) or of Deo, ‘and this name of Deo, or Dyâvâ, was mixed up with a hypokoristic form of Demeter, Deo, and thus led to the transference of her story to Demeter. I know this will sound very unlikely to Greek scholars, yet I see no other way out of our difficulties’ (ii. 545). Phonetic explanations follow.

‘To my mind,’ says our author, ‘there is no chapter in mythology in which we can so clearly read the transition of an auroral myth of the Veda into an epic chapter of Greece as in the chapter of Saranyu (or Suramâ) and the Asvins, ending in the chapter of Helena and her brothers, the Διοσκοροι λευκοπωλοι’ (ii. 642). Here, as regards the Asvins and the Dioskouroi, Mannhardt may be regarded as Mr. Max Müller’s ally; but compare his note, A. F. u. W. K. p. xx.

My Theory of the Horse Demeter

Mannhardt, I think, ought to have tried at an explanation of myths so closely analogous as those two, one Indian, one Greek, in which a goddess, in the shape of a mare, becomes mother of twins by a god in the form of a stallion. As Mr. Max Müller well says, ‘If we look about for analogies we find nothing, as far as I know, corresponding to the well-marked features of this barbarous myth among any of the uncivilised tribes of the earth. If we did, how we should rejoice! Why, then, should we not rejoice when we find the allusion in Rig Veda?’ (x 17, 1).

I do rejoice! The ‘song of triumph,’ as Professor Tiele says, will be found in M. R. R. ii. 266 (note), where I give the Vedic and other references. I even asked why Mr. Max Müller did not produce this proof of the identity of Saranyu and Demeter Erinnys in his Selected Essays (pp. 401, 492).

I cannot explain why this tale was told both of Erinnys and of Saranyu. Granting the certainty of the etymological equation, Saranyu=Erinnys (which Mannhardt doubted), the chances against fortuitous coincidence may be reckoned by algebra, and Mr. Edgeworth’s trillions of trillions feebly express it. Two goddesses, Indian and Greek, have, ex hypothesi, the same name, and both, as mares, are mothers of twins. Though the twins (in India the Asvins, in Greek an ideal war-horse and a girl) differ in character, still the coincidence is evidential. Explain it I cannot, and, clearly as the confession may prove my lack of scientific exactness, I make it candidly.

If I must offer a guess, it is that Greeks, and Indians of India, inherited a very ordinary savage idea. The gods in savage myths are usually beasts. As beasts they beget anthropomorphic offspring. This is the regular rule in totemism. In savage myths we are not told ‘a god’ (Apollo, or Zeus, or Poseidon) ‘put on beast shape and begat human sons and daughters’ (Helen, the Telmisseis, and so on). The god in savage myths was a beast already, though he could, of course, shift shapes like any ‘medicine-man,’ or modern witch who becomes a hare. This is not the exception but the rule in savage mythology. Anyone can consult my Myth, Ritual, and Religion, or Mr. Frazer’s work Totemism, for abundance of evidence. To Loki, a male god, prosecuting his amours as a female horse, I have already alluded, and in M. R. R. give cases from the Satapatha Brahmana.

The Saranyu-Erinnys myth dates, I presume, from this savage state of fancy; but why the story occurred both in Greece and India, I protest that I cannot pretend to explain, except on the hypothesis that the ancestors of Greek and Vedic peoples once dwelt together, had a common stock of savage fables, and a common or kindred language. After their dispersion, the fables admitted discrepancies, as stories in oral circulation occasionally do. This is the only conjecture which I feel justified in suggesting to account for the resemblances and incongruities between the myths of the mare Demeter-Erinnys and the mare Saranyu.

TOTEMISM

Totemism

To the strange and widely diffused institution of ‘Totemism’ our author often returns. I shall deal here with his collected remarks on the theme, the more gladly as the treatment shows how very far Mr. Max Müller is from acting with a shadow of unfairness when he does not refer to special passages in his opponent’s books. He treats himself and his own earlier works in the same fashion, thereby, perhaps, weakening his argument, but also demonstrating his candour, were any such demonstration required.

On totems he opens (i. 7)—

‘When we come to special cases we must not imagine that much can be gained by using such general terms as Animism, Totemism, Fetishism, &c., as solvents of mythological problems. To my mind, all such general terms, not excluding even Darwinism or Puseyism, seem most objectionable, because they encourage vague thought, vague praise, or vague blame.

‘It is, for instance, quite possible to place all worship of animal gods, all avoidance of certain kinds of animal food, all adoption of animal names as the names of men and families, under the wide and capacious cover of totemism. All theriolatry would thus be traced back to totemism. I am not aware, however, that any Egyptologists have adopted such a view to account for the animal forms of the Egyptian gods. Sanskrit scholars would certainly hesitate before seeing in Indra a totem because he is called vrishabha, or bull, or before attempting to explain on this ground the abstaining from beef on the part of orthodox Hindus [i. 7].’

Totemism Defined

I think I have defined totemism, [{71}] and the reader may consult Mr. Frazer’s work on the subject, or Mr. MacLennan’s essays, or ‘Totemism’ in the Encyclopædia Britannica. However, I shall define totemism once more. It is a state of society and cult, found most fully developed in Australia and North America, in which sets of persons, believing themselves to be akin by blood, call each such set by the name of some plant, beast, or other class of objects in nature. One kin may be wolves, another bears, another cranes, and so on. Each kin derives its kin-name from its beast, plant, or what not; pays to it more or less respect, usually abstains from killing, eating, or using it (except in occasional sacrifices); is apt to claim descent from or relationship with it, and sometimes uses its effigy on memorial pillars, carved pillars outside huts, tattooed on the skin, and perhaps in other ways not known to me. In Australia and North America, where rules are strict, a man may not marry a woman of his own totem; and kinship is counted through mothers in many, but not in all, cases. Where all these notes are combined we have totemism. It is plain that two or three notes of it may survive where the others have perished; may survive in ritual and sacrifice, [{72a}] and in bestial or semi-bestial gods of certain nomes, or districts, in ancient Egypt; [{72b}] in Pictish names; [{72c}] in claims of descent from beasts, or gods in the shape of beasts; in the animals sacred to gods, as Apollo or Artemis, and so on. Such survivals are possible enough in evolution, but the evidence needs careful examination. Animal attributes and symbols and names in religion are not necessarily totemistic. Mr. Max Müller asks if ‘any Egyptologists have adopted’ the totem theory. He is apparently oblivious of Professor Sayce’s reference to a prehistoric age, ‘when the religious creed of Egypt was still totemism.’

Dr. Codrington is next cited for the apparent absence of totemism in the Solomon Islands and Polynesia, and Professor Oldenberg as denying that ‘animal names of persons and clans [necessarily?] imply totemism.’ Who says that they do? ‘Clan Chattan,’ with its cat crest, may be based, not on a totem, but on a popular etymology. Animal names of individuals have nothing to do with totems. A man has no business to write on totemism if he does not know these facts.

What a Totem is

Though our adversary now abandons totems, he returns to them elsewhere (i. 198-202). ‘Totem is the corruption of a term used by North American Indians in the sense of clan-mark or sign-board (“ododam”).’ The totem was originally a rude emblem of an animal or other object ‘placed by North American Indians in front of their settlements.’

The Evidence for Sign-boards

Our author’s evidence for sign-boards is from an Ottawa Indian, and is published from his MS. by Mr. Hoskyns Abrahall. [{73}] The testimony is of the greatest merit, for it appears to have first seen the light in a Canadian paper of 1858. Now in 1858 totems were only spoken of in Lafitau, Long, and such old writers, and in Cooper’s novels. They had not become subjects of scientific dispute, so the evidence is uncontaminated by theory. The Indians were, we learn, divided into [local?] tribes, and these ‘into sections or families according to their ododams’—devices, signs, in modern usage ‘coats of arms.’ [Perhaps ‘crests’ would be a better word.] All people of one ododam (apparently under male kinship) lived together in a special section of each village. At the entrance to the enclosure was the figure of an animal, or some other sign, set up on the top of one of the posts. Thus everybody knew what family dwelt in what section of the village. Some of the families were called after their ododam. But the family with the bear ododam were called Big Feet, not Bears. Sometimes parts of different animals were ‘quartered’ [my suggestion], and one ododam was a small hawk and the fins of a sturgeon.

We cannot tell, of course, on the evidence here, whether ‘Big Feet’ suggested ‘Bear,’ or vice versa, or neither. But Mr. Frazer has remarked that periphrases for sacred beasts, like ‘Big Feet’ for Bear, are not uncommon. Nor can we tell ‘what couple of ancestors’ a small hawk and a sturgeon’s fins represent, unless, perhaps, a hawk and a sturgeon. [{74a}]

For all this, Mr. Max Müller suggests the explanation that people who marked their abode with crow or wolf might come to be called Wolves or Crows. [{74b}] Again, people might borrow beast names from the prevalent beast of their district, as Arkades, Αρκτοι, Bears, and so evolve the myth of descent from Callisto as a she-bear. ‘All this, however, is only guesswork.’ The Snake Indians worship no snake. [The Snake Indians are not a totem group, but a local tribe named from the Snake River, as we say, ‘An Ettrick man.’] Once more, the name-giving beast, say, ‘Great Hare,’ is explained by Dr. Brinton as ‘the inevitable Dawn.’ [{74c}] ‘Hasty writers,’ remarks Dr. Brinton, ‘say that the Indians claim descent from different wild beasts.’ For evidence I refer to that hasty writer, Mr. Frazer, and his book, Totemism. For a newly sprung up modern totem our author alludes to a boat, among the Mandans, ‘their totem, or tutelary object of worship.’ An object of worship, of course, is not necessarily a totem! Nor is a totem by the definition (as a rule one of a class of objects) anything but a natural object. Mr. Max Müller wishes that ‘those who write about totems and totemism would tell us exactly what they mean by these words.’ I have told him, and indicated better sources. I apply the word totemism to the widely diffused savage institution which I have defined.

More about Totems

The origin of totemism is unknown to me, as to Mr. McLennan and Dr. Robertson Smith, but Mr. Max Müller knows this origin. ‘A totem is a clan-mark, then a clan-name, then the name of the ancestor of a clan, and lastly the name of something worshipped by a clan’ (i. 201). ‘All this applies in the first instance to Red Indians only.’ Yes, and ‘clan’ applies in the first instance to the Scottish clans only! When Mr. Max Müller speaks of ‘clans’ among the Red Indians, he uses a word whose connotation differs from anything known to exist in America. But the analogy between a Scottish clan and an American totem-kin is close enough to justify Mr. Max Müller in speaking of Red Indian ‘clans.’ By parity of reasoning, the analogy between the Australian Kobong and the American totem is so complete that we may speak of ‘Totemism’ in Australia. It would be childish to talk of ‘Totemism’ in North America, ‘Kobongism’ in Australia, ‘Pacarissaism’ in the realm of the Incas: totems, kobongs, and pacarissas all amounting to the same thing, except in one point. I am not aware that Australian blacks erect, or that the subjects of the Incas, or that African and Indian and Asiatic totemists, erected ‘sign-boards’ anywhere, as the Ottawa writer assures us that the Ottawas do, or used to do. And, if they don’t, how do we know that kobongs and pacarissas were developed out of sign-boards?

Heraldry and Totems

The Ottawas are armigeri, are heraldic; so are the natives of Vancouver’s Island, who have wooden pillars with elaborate quarterings. Examples are in South Kensington Museum. But this savage heraldry is not nearly so common as the institution of totemism. Thus it is difficult to prove that the heraldry is the origin of totemism, which is just as likely, or more likely, to have been the origin of savage heraldic crests and quarterings. Mr. Max Müller allows that there may be other origins.

Gods and Totems

Our author refers to unnamed writers who call Indra or Ammon a totem (i. 200).

This is a foolish liberty with language. ‘Why should not all the gods of Egypt with their heads of bulls and apes and cats be survivals of totemisms?’ Why not, indeed? Professor Sayce remarks, ‘They were the sacred animals of the clans,’ survivals from an age ‘when the religion of Egypt was totemism.’ ‘In Egypt the gods themselves are totem-deities, i.e. personifications or individual representations of the sacred character and attributes which in the purely totem stage of religion were ascribed without distinction to all animals of the holy kind.’ So says Dr. Robertson Smith. He and Mr. Sayce are ‘scholars,’ not mere unscholarly anthropologists. [{76}]

An Objection

Lastly (ii. 403), when totems infected ‘even those who ought to have been proof against this infantile complaint’ (which is not even a ‘disease of language’ of a respectable type), then ‘the objection that a totem meant originally a clan-mark was treated as scholastic pedantry.’ Alas, I fear with justice! For if I call Mr. Arthur Balfour a Tory will Mr. Max Müller refute my opinion by urging that ‘a Tory meant originally an Irish rapparee,’ or whatever the word did originally mean?

Mr. Max Müller decides that ‘we never find a religion consisting exclusively of a belief in fetishes, or totems, or ancestral spirits.’ Here, at last, we are in absolute agreement. So much for totems and sign-boards. Only a weak fanatic will find a totem in every animal connected with gods, sacred names, and religious symbols. But totemism is a fact, whether ‘totem’ originally meant a clan-mark or sign-board in America or not. And, like Mr. Sayce, Mr. Frazer, Mr. Rhys, Dr. Robertson Smith, I believe that totemism has left marks in civilised myth, ritual, and religion, and that these survivals, not a ‘disease of language,’ explain certain odd elements in the old civilisations.

A Weak Brother

Our author’s habit of omitting references to his opponents has here caused me infinite inconvenience. He speaks of some eccentric person who has averred that a ‘fetish’ is a ‘totem,’ inhabited by ‘an ancestral spirit.’ To myself it seems that you might as well say ‘Abracadabra is gas and gaiters.’ As no reference was offered, I invented ‘a wild surmise’ that Mr. Max Müller had conceivably misapprehended Mr. Frazer’s theory of the origin of totems. Had our author only treated himself fairly, he would have referred to his own Anthropological Religion (pp. 126 and 407), where the name of the eccentric definer is given as that of Herr Lippert. [{78}] Then came into my mind the words of Professor Tiele, ‘Beware of weak brethren’—such as Herr Lippert seems, as far as this definition is concerned, to be.

Nobody knows the origin of totemism. We find no race on its way to becoming totemistic, though we find several in the way of ceasing to be so. They are abandoning female kinship for paternity; their rules of marriage and taboo are breaking down; perhaps various totem kindreds of different crests and names are blending into one local tribe, under the name, perhaps, of the most prosperous totem-kin. But we see no race on its way to becoming totemistic, so we have no historical evidence as to the origin of the institution. Mr. McLennan offered no conjecture, Professor Robertson Smith offered none, nor have I displayed the spirit of scientific exactitude by a guess in the dark. To gratify Mr. Max Müller by defining totemism as Mr. McLennan first used the term is all that I dare do. Here one may remark that if Mr. Max Müller really wants ‘an accurate definition’ of totemism, the works of McLennan, Frazer, Robertson Smith, and myself are accessible, and contain our definitions. He does not produce these definitions, and criticise them; he produces Dr. Lippert’s and criticises that. An argument should be met in its strongest and most authoritative form. ‘Define what you mean by a totem,’ says Professor Max Müller in his Gifford Lectures of 1891 (p. 123). He had to look no further for a definition, an authoritative definition, than to ‘totem’ in the Encyclopædia Britannica, or to McLennan. Yet his large and intelligent Glasgow audience, and his readers, may very well be under the impression that a definition of ‘totem’ is ‘still to seek,’ like Prince Charlie’s religion. Controversy simply cannot be profitably conducted on these terms.

‘The best representatives of anthropology are now engaged not so much in comparing as in discriminating.’ [{79}] Why not refer, then, to the results of their discriminating efforts? ‘To treat all animal worship as due to totemism is a mistake.’ Do we make it?

Mr. Frazer and Myself

There is, or was, a difference of opinion between Mr. Frazer and myself as to the causes of the appearance of certain sacred animals in Greek religion. My notions were published in Myth, Ritual, and Religion (1887), Mr. Frazer’s in The Golden Bough (1890). Necessarily I was unaware in 1887 of Mr. Frazer’s still unpublished theory. Now that I have read it, he seems to me to have the better logic on his side; and if I do not as yet wholly agree with him, it is because I am not yet certain that both of our theories may not have their proper place in Greek mythology.

Greek Totemism

In C. and M. (p. 106) I describe the social aspects of totemism. I ask if there are traces of it in Greece. Suppose, for argument’s sake, that in prehistoric Greece the mouse had been a totem, as it is among the Oraons of Bengal. [{80}] In that case (1) places might be named from a mouse tribe; (2) mice might be held sacred per se; (3) the mouse name might be given locally to a god who superseded the mouse in pride of place; (4) images of the mouse might be associated with that of the god, (5) and used as a local badge or mark; (6) myths might be invented to explain the forgotten cause of this prominence of the mouse. If all these notes occur, they would raise a presumption in favour of totemism in the past of Greece. I then give evidence in detail, proving that all these six facts do occur among Greeks of the Troads and sporadically elsewhere. I add that, granting for the sake of argument that these traces may point to totemism in the remote past, the mouse, though originally a totem, ‘need not have been an Aryan totem’ (p. 116).

I offer a list of other animals closely connected with Apollo, giving him a beast’s name (wolf, ram, dolphin), and associated with him in myth and art. In M. R. R. I apply similar arguments in the case of Artemis and the Bear, of Dionysus and the Bull, Demeter and the Pig, and so forth. Moreover, I account for the myths of descent of Greek human families from gods disguised as dogs, ants, serpents, bulls, and swans, on the hypothesis that kindreds who originally, in totemistic fashion, traced to beasts sans phrase, later explained their own myth to themselves by saying that the paternal beast was only a god in disguise and en bonne fortune.

This hypothesis at least ‘colligates the facts,’ and brings them into intelligible relationship with widely-diffused savage institutions and myths.

The Greek Mouse-totem?

My theory connecting Apollo Smintheus and the place-names derived from mice with a possible prehistoric mouse-totem gave me, I confess, considerable satisfaction. But in Mr. Frazer’s Golden Bough (ii. 129-132) is published a group of cases in which mice and other vermin are worshipped for prudential reasons—to get them to go away. In the Classical Review (vol. vi. 1892) Mr. Ward Fowler quotes Aristotle and Ælian on plagues of mice, like the recent invasion of voles on the Border sheep-farms. He adopts the theory that the sacred mice were adored by way of propitiating them. Thus Apollo may be connected with mice, not as a god who superseded a mouse-totem, but as an expeller of mice, like the worm-killing Heracles, and the Locust-Heracles, and the Locust-Apollo. [{81a}] The locust is still painted red, salaamed to, and set free in India, by way of propitiating his companions. [{81b}] Thus the Mouse-Apollo (Smintheus) would be merely a god noted for his usefulness in getting rid of mice, and any worship given to mice (feeding them, placing their images on altars, their stamp on coins, naming places after them, and so on) would be mere acts of propitiation.

There would be no mouse-totem in the background. I do not feel quite convinced—the mouse being a totem, and a sacred or tabooed animal, in India and Egypt. [{82a}] But I am content to remain in a balance of opinion. That the Mouse is the Night (Gubernatis), or the Lightning (Grohmann), I am disinclined to believe. Philologists are very apt to jump at contending meteorological explanations of mice and such small deer without real necessity, and an anthropologist is very apt to jump at an equally unnecessary and perhaps equally undemonstrated totem.