Modern Mythology

by Andrew Lang

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.