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.