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.