‘Scholars’
It would be useful if Mr. Max Müller were to define ‘scholar,’ ‘real scholar,’ ‘true scholar,’ ‘very thoughtful scholar.’ The latter may err, and have erred—like General Councils, and like Dr. Oldenberg, who finds in the Veda ‘remnants of the wildest and rawest essence of religion,’ totemism, and the rest (i. 210). I was wont to think that ‘scholar,’ as used by our learned author, meant ‘philological mythologist,’ as distinguished from ‘not-scholar,’ that is, ‘anthropological mythologist.’ But now ‘very thoughtful scholars,’ even Dr. Oldenberg, Mr. Rhys, Dr. Robertson Smith, and so on, use the anthropological method, so ‘scholar’ needs a fresh definition. The ‘not-scholars,’ the anthropologists, have, in fact, converted some very thoughtful scholars. If we could only catch the true scholar! But that we cannot do till we fully demonstrate comparisons which we may not make, for fear of first ‘obscuring the Veda by this kind of light from the Dark Continent.’