An Introduction to Mythology

by Lewis Spence

THE PROGRESS OF MYTHIC SCIENCE

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Many are the hypotheses and systems advanced to account for the origin and existence of myth. It will greatly assist our comprehension of these and our ability to discern those most worthy of consideration if we examine them chronologically as well as critically. If we begin our review with the gropings of the first far-off thinkers who attempted an analysis of myth, and put to themselves the question "What is myth, its origin and its meaning?" and advance through the centuries until we encounter present-day theories, then we should be well equipped to pursue our course without fear of the pitfalls encountered by early writers on tradition, or, let us hope, of falling into the grave errors inevitable when mythological data were less plentiful than at the present time.

It must be clearly understood that this sketch does not deal with the makers or restorers of myth, but with the views and notions of critics who have sought to discover its nature and meaning. Again, we would remind the reader that we are not dealing with religious science, but with such mythological notions as have come down to us from early times to the present.[1]

The first critic of myth was Xenophanes of Colophon (fl. 540-500 B.C.), an Ionian exile in Sicily, afterward living at Elea, in Southern Italy. He supported himself by travelling from place to place and reciting his own poems. The important part of his writings for us is that in which he attacks the polytheism prevalent in his day. Xenophanes did not accept the mythical idea of man-like deities then current. "There is one God, greatest among gods and men," he writes, "neither in shape nor in thought like unto mortals ... yet men imagine gods to be born and to have raiment and voice and body, like themselves.... Even so oxen, lions, and horses, if they had hands to grave images, would fashion gods after their own shapes and make them bodies like to their own." Again he says: "The rainbow, which men call Iris,[2] is a cloud." Xenophanes appears by his writings to have taken up the position of a theologian protesting not against polytheism, but against the idea that the gods possessed human appearance and attributes. Besides the one great god he seems to have recognized a plurality of minor divinities who govern portions of the universe. He stigmatized anthropomorphic myths as "the fables of men of old."

Theagenes of Rhegium was the founder of a very popular system of mythology. He pleaded for an allegorical rather than a literal reading of myth. For example, as we have already mentioned, he considered the battle of the gods 'unbecoming,' and attempted to show that in reality it was an allegorical rendering of the war of the elements. According to his view, Hephæstus and Apollo personified fire; Hera, wife of Zeus, was air; Poseidon, the sea-god, represented water; Artemis was the moon, and so on. Other gods, he attempted to show by an examination of their names, were personifications of moral or intellectual qualities.

Pherecydes of Syros (fl. sixth century B.C.) wrote a treatise, in which myth, allegory, and science were blended, on nature and the gods. He contended that the elements of fire, air, and water sprang from Cronus, the principle of time, and that from these elements later gods emerged. Zeus is called the 'principle of life,' so that we have in Pherecydes' interpretation of myth a pseudo-scientific idea that time was the originator of the elements, from which in turn the gods had their being—a very daring hypothesis for the sixth century B.C.!

Hecatæus of Miletus (c. 550-476 B.C.) was probably the first critic to distinguish myth from historic fact Socrates (c. 471-399 B.C.) attempted to show that the nature of divine beings could be discovered by an analysis of their names. Prodicus (born c. 465 B.C.) is noteworthy for the 'modern' character of his outlook. First of all, he says, arose such great powers as benefit mankind (for example, the Nile), then deified men, who rendered services to humanity.

Pherecydes of Leros (fl. c. 454 B.C.) modified the myths of Greece in order to adjust them to popular belief, so that it is scarcely correct to class him as a critic of myth. Ephorus (c. 400-330 B.C.) treated myths as historical episodes. "By straining after this fancied history he was prevented from searching into the genuine import of the legends."[3]

EUHEMERUS

The system of Euhemerus (fourth century B.C.), who lived under King Cassander of Macedonia, deserves more than passing mention. Like Ephorus, he considered that myth is history in disguise. The gods were men, and mists of time and later phantasy had so magnified and distorted their figures as to make them appear divine. In short, they were great men deified by later generations. The dead are magnified into gods in many countries, so Euhemerus' theory possesses a good deal of truth, but every god was not once a man, nor have all gods been evolved from the worship of the dead. The truth is that the myths of many gods have passed through a phase and have been coloured by an environment in which ancestor-worship has prevailed. Graves of gods are shown in many lands, and probably portions of legends relating to real men have been attracted into the myths of certain gods. Euhemerus' system of interpretation is known as 'euhemerism,' and was adopted by Vossius, the Abbé Banier, Huet Bishop of Avranches, Clavier, Sainte-Croix, Rochette, Hoffman, and to some extent by Herbert Spencer. Ennius popularized his system in ancient Rome. Leclerc, one of Euhemerus' later disciples, actually proposed the theory that Greek mythology consisted of the diaries of old merchantmen and seamen!

Some Stoics and Platonists, such as Plutarch, endeavoured to render myths more intelligible by explaining them 'pragmatically,' and this system too saw in the gods of Greece kings or merely men. Another system, the 'Psychic,' believed myth to be explanatory of the various stages through which the soul must pass. Other Stoics, again, saw in myths reference to natural phenomena. Thus the first school, the 'Pragmatic,' would see in the figure of Pallas Athene a transfigured mortal queen; the second, the 'Psychic,' would explain her as the 'understanding,' and the third, the 'Stoic,' as the thicker air between moon and earth.

Driven to the wall by Christianity, the remaining believers in Greek myth attempted to justify it by the allegorical system of interpretation. The early Christian fathers like St Augustine (A.D. 354-430) applauded the system of Euhemerus, in which they beheld the abhorred mythology abandoned by one himself a pagan. Porphyry (A.D. 233-304), however, considered that there might be a moral meaning in myth, and others thought it possible that it concealed a germ of religious truth.

MEDIEVAL MYTHOLOGY

The Middle Ages produced no criticism of myth worthy of attention. Popular belief in medieval times regarded the gods and goddesses of antiquity as of diabolic origin, or at least as 'pagans' who had been relegated to Hell on the advent of Christianity. This view was, of course, sedulously supported by the priesthood, as may be seen in the medieval legend of Tannhäuser. Prior to the Renaissance period, with its revival of classical studies, the gods of Greece and Rome were frequently confused or identified with other pagan deities and even with religious leaders like Mohammed, as, for instance, in the phrase 'Mahound and Termagent,' which alludes to the pairing of Mohammed and Tyr, or Tyr Magus, a Scandinavian divinity. In The King of Tars, an English romance, probably of the fourteenth century, we read how the Sultan of Damascus destroyed his idols, "with sterne strokes and with grete, on Jovyn and Plotoun, on Astrot and sire Jovyn." Here Roman and Semitic deities are mingled in "hideous ruin," like the wicked angels of Milton, whose poem, by the way, encouraged a later belief that the Arch-fiend and his associates were no other than the gods of the elder faiths, Beelzebub, Belial, and, among others,

Osiris, Isis, Orus and their train.

An old Scots piece, entitled Sir John Rowll's Cursings dating perhaps from the last quarter of the fifteenth century, and in all probability written by a priest of Corstorphine, near Edinburgh, contains several interesting allusions which show the condition of mythological knowledge at that day. It is directed against certain persons who have rifled the priest's poultry-yard. Sir John is powerful in anathema, and his thunders must have caused trepidation among the more superstitious of his parishioners, but the only lines of his rhymed 'Billingsgate' apposite here are those containing the names of demons, because these show us how the mythic characters of antiquity were regarded in his time. He says that the pilferers of his hen-roosts will be hanged and given to the fiend, and continues:

... and Cerberus thair banis sall knaw
For thair dispyt of the Kirkis law,
Gog and Magog and grym Garog,
The Devill of hell the theif Harog,
Sym Skynar and St Garnega,
Julius appostata,
Prince Pluto and quene Cokatrice,
Devetinus the devill that maid the dyce,
Cokadame and Semiamis,
Fyremouth and Tutivillus,
And Browny als that can play kow[4]
Behind the claith wt mony mow.[5]
All this about the beir salbe[6]
Singand ane dolorous dergie.

Let us try to identify some of these figures. We may pass over Cerberus, and Gog Magog, who has by this date evidently resolved himself into two separate individuals. In Harog we probably see that 'Old Harry' who is so frequently apostrophized, perhaps a variant of the Norse god Odin. In Sym Skynar we may have Skrymir, the Norse giant in whose glove Thor found shelter from an earthquake, and who sadly fooled him and his companions. Skrymir was, of course, one of the Jötunn, or Norse Titans, and probably one of the powers of winter; and he may have received the popular name of 'Sym' in the same manner as we speak of 'Jack' Frost. Julius the Apostate, Pluto, and the Cokatrice are easily identified. Semiamis is, of course, Semiramis, and it was quite possible that the Babylonian queen bulked in the popular imagination as an Eastern goddess, fit companion for Mahound or Mohammed.

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY MYTHOLOGERS

The study of myth can hardly be considered scientific in our modern sense until nearly the end of the eighteenth century. During the seventeenth century and the early portion of the eighteenth works were published from time to time which professed to give an outline of the myths of Greece and Rome, but in these the critical spirit was almost entirely absent. Francis Bacon (1561-1626) leaned to the allegorical interpretation of myth. Thus, Narcissus was self-love, Dionysus passion, and the Sphinx science. Natalis Comes (d. 1582) saw in myth allegories of natural and moral philosophy. The first writer to strike upon the true line of interpretation was De Brosses (1709-1777), who in 1760 published a work, Du culte des dieux fétiches, ou parallèle de l'ancienne religion de l'Égypte avec la religion actuelle de Nigritie. De Brosses showed that animal-worship in ancient Egypt was a survival of practices such as existed among modern savages. Lafitau (in 1724) also pointed out the savage element surviving in Greek myth, for which he found many parallels in his experience as a Jesuit missionary among the Indians of North America. But all writers on myth were not so rational as these. Thus the Abbé Banier in his La mythologie et les fables expliquées par l'histoire (Paris, 1738) traced (as the title of the book indicates) all myths to an historical basis.

Bryant (1715-1804) in 1774 published A New System, or an Analysis of Ancient Mythology, in which he traced all mythologies to Biblical sources. Thomas Taylor (1758-1835) in his translation of Pausanias regarded all myth as allegory.

Friedrich Schelling (1775-1854) was the first to see a connexion between the formation of myth and national development. Without possessing the orderly and logical mind so necessary to the student of tradition, he was able to seize spasmodically upon truths or facts which strongly buttressed his theory. Creuzer in his Symbolik und Mythologie (Leipzig, 1810-1812) laid stress on the religious character of myth. According to his view, myth is of the nature of religious teaching, proceeding from an original revelation, and carefully handed down in symbolic form by priestly schools. This secret wisdom passed from the Orient to Greece and became the kernel of all myths, which therefore contain the wisdom of antiquity in an allegorical form. To unriddle this is the task of the mythologist, who can only succeed in doing so by intuition. The mythologist is, like the poet, born not made, according to Creuzer.

Although the symbolic method is nowadays as dead as the dodo, and in any case could only apply to very late myths which were the work of poets or philosophers, it still holds good that the elucidation of myth is not a matter of pure mental induction, but that it frequently results from intuition; and who can doubt, with the brilliant examples of Lang, Gomme, Marett, Saussaye, Hubert and Mauss, Reinach, Rendel Harris, and Elliot Smith before them, the proud assertion that great students of tradition are "born not made"?

With K.O. Müller's (1797-1840) Prolegomena zu einer wissenschäftlicher Mythologie (1825; Eng. trans, by Leitch, 1844) the truly scientific treatment of myth begins. He saw clearly that the true laws underlying the confusion of mythic science as he found it were not to be approached by one but by many ways. The explanation of a myth, he said, must be the explanation of its origin. A knowledge of the popular life of antiquity he regarded as indispensable, and he drew a distinction between the actual, original myth and the myth as sophisticated by poets and philosophers. Mythic materials, he argued, must be resolved into their original elements. His dicta are landmarks, almost laws—if the term 'law' may be applied to a science where at present all is rather nebulous.

THE PHILOLOGICAL SCHOOL

The comparative study of language did much to reawaken both interest and industry in the study of myth, and the philological method of explaining mythic phenomena arose. This system has been called 'comparative mythology.' The appellation is scarcely correct from a scientific standpoint, as, strictly speaking, the term 'comparative mythology' implies the comparison of the details of one myth with those of another, in an attempt to prove the universality of the nature of myth, or by 'the test of recurrence' to show that widely distributed myths are related, and that fragments found only in one 'fit' the other. This comparative mythology implied the comparison of mythic names in various Indo-European languages with a view to showing that what was dark and seemingly inexplicable in one language might be made clear by comparison with the known mythic appellations in another language.[7]

The leader of this school, the history of which is important for the proper comprehension of the evolution of mythic science, was Professor Max Müller[8] (1823-1900), who, coming from Germany to Oxford at the age of twenty-three to undertake the translation of the ancient religious books of India on behalf of the East India Company, rapidly made a position for himself in English scientific circles by his sound scholarship, indefatigable energy, and wide general culture. The deep study of comparative philology led him to apply its results to myth. He regarded language as a necessary condition of thought, not its arbitrary expression, and considered that words, therefore, contain the key to thoughts. If language is determined by thought, thought is also determined by language. Mythology, according to Müller, is properly a form of thought so essentially determined by language that it may be described as 'a disease of language.' Its origin must be looked for in a stage of human development in which intuition or instinct almost predominates, while abstract thought is unknown. Thus mythical terms precede mythical thought, and the peculiarities of language which lead to the formation of myth are the gender of words, polyonymy (numerous meanings attached to one word), synonymy (the possession of similar meanings by two or more words), poetical metaphor, and so forth. But the entire Müllerian conception of mythic science must not be taken as being contained only in the expression that myth is a 'disease of language.' Myth, according to Müller, is to be comprehended principally through language, but not through language only. By reference to language many but not all mythic phenomena may be understood. Just as certain rash disciples of Darwin did much to stultify their leader's evolutionary theory by their applications of it, in the same manner some of Müller's followers so distorted and exaggerated his views on myth as to hamper him greatly.

Müller was not the first to apply the methods of comparative philology to myth, but he was by far the most distinguished exponent of the system. Before him G. Herman and others attempted to explain myths by etymology, but they restricted their efforts to the Greek language only. It was not until the researches of Franz Bopp[9] (1791-1867) and others laid the foundations of the science of comparative philology that the way was clear for the study of myth on a linguistic basis. These studies succeeded in establishing the relationship of the 'Indo-Germanic' languages, and, working with these proven facts behind him, Müller boldly applied them to mythic phenomena. For example, he brought forward a comparative formula of the name of Zeus or Jupiter which he stated thus:

Diaush-Pitar = Zeus Pater = Jupiter = Tyr.

Thus, according to him, the name Diaush-Pitar in Sanskrit was equivalent to Zeus Pater in Greek, Jupiter in Latin, and Tyr in old Teutonic.[10] This etymological result is sufficiently scientific in character for acceptance by even a severe critic of the system. But scarcely had Müller's method acquired vogue—and its recognition was of the widest—than a small army of critics arose whose determined opposition had to be reckoned with. Many of their objections, it is now clear, were due to misunderstandings. Wherever they lit upon a paradox or were enabled to confuse the issue by any ambiguity or slackness in Müller's phraseology, they too often took more than a full advantage of the chance to score. Indeed, so unsparing was the criticism to which his conclusions were subjected, and so great was his irritation thereat, that at length he accused certain of his adversaries of an attempt to traduce his moral character by charging him with mendacity.

MÜLLER'S CONTEMPORARY CRITICS

But if his critics were unfair, they had legitimate grounds for a certain opposition to his system. Many of his propositions, as well as those of his followers, were doubtful; the method was often pushed to extremes which just escaped being ludicrous; and the somewhat ponderous erudition behind it seemed only to heighten the absurdity of some of its conclusions, although the charm and usual clarity of Müller's literary style were not to be denied. The combat waxed fierce, and both sides brought up all their forces. Linguistic science, it was said, is an uncertain medium for determining the substance and nature of thought. The linguistic and etymological methods had been discarded by philosophy, only to make an unwelcome reappearance in mythology. The original meaning of a word is often totally at variance with its later use. Again, similar mythic conceptions are found with totally different names, and divergent ones with the same names. These were serious objections, but they do not destroy the strictly verifiable conclusions of the philological school. At present the school is in the deepest discredit; indeed, it may be said to possess scarcely a single follower; but that its methods are applicable to certain classes of mythic phenomena no mythologist of experience would deny.

MÜLLERIAN INTERPRETATIONS

Examples which illustrate the Müllerian interpretation or misinterpretation of myth are his treatment of the tale of Cephalus, Aurora (Eos), and Procris. Cephalus was the sun, the son of Herse, the dew; therefore he represented the sun rising over dewy fields. Eos, as the word implies, is the dawn. Procris comes from a Sanskrit root park, meaning to sprinkle, and is also the dew; therefore it is the equivalent of Herse, the meaning of which may be found in a Sanskrit root vrish, 'to sprinkle.' The myth is then interpreted: Cephalus loves Procris—that is, the sun kisses the morning dew; Eos loves Cephalus—that is, the dawn loves the sun. Procris is faithless, but her new lover turns out to be the sun in another guise—that is, the dewdrops reflect the sun in manifold colours. Procris is slain by Cephalus—that is, the dew is absorbed by the sun. Thus natural phenomena lurk behind the names of gods and heroes.

The philological school had its internal divisions also. Its arbitrary interpretations made for schism, and there was considerable diversity of opinion regarding myths and mythic personages. Two sub-schools arose, the solar and the meteorological. The first, headed by Müller himself, "saw sun-gods everywhere," in myth, folklore, and legend. Perhaps its most zealous disciple was the Rev. Sir George William Cox (1827-1902), author of The Mythology of the Aryan Nations (1870) and An Introduction to Mythology and Folklore (1881), two works of great erudition and charm, powerfully advocating the universality of the sun myth and based upon a truly scientific investigation of a large number of myths and tales. Cox did not insist upon the philological interpretation of myths so much as on their solar character, and he is "fully aware of the dangers involved in attempts to explain Teutonic, or Greek, or Latin, or Scandinavian myths solely from Aryan sources." He also admits the existence of nature myths other than solar, but to his mind most of those which are not solar are stellar or nebular.

The founders of the meteorological school saw in all myths the phenomena of the thunder and lightning. Dragons and similar monsters guard treasures and fair maidens in a celestial stronghold till the arrival of the hero-god, who slays the monsters and rescues the maiden. Thus, said they, the dark and threatening thunder-clouds imprison the light of heaven until the coming of the god, who dissipates them. The chief supporters of this theory were Kuhn (1812-1881) and Darmesteter (1849-1894). Laestrin too attempted to interpret myths from nebular phenomena which he had observed on the Alps.[11]

Few perfectly certain results were achieved by the philological school. Of convincing certainty at the first blush, a more searching examination reveals difficulties, and shows that the theories do not fit the myth with any degree of exactitude; but philology has rendered and will render real service to mythology, and this young mythologists would do well to bear in mind.[12]

THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL SCHOOL

But the final blow to the pretensions of the philological method as a 'universal solvent' of mythic problems was dealt by the anthropological school of mythologists. This school accounts for the "wild and senseless" element in myth by replying that such "wild and senseless" conceptions can occur only in a savage and primitive state of society, and that therefore when such elements are found in the myths of civilized and cultured peoples they must necessarily be a legacy from a savage past—survivals of savage belief. But ere we proceed further in our investigation of the work of the anthropological school, let us see by what arguments it finally divested the philologists of all authority in the sphere of mythology.

It held, then, that Max Müller's system was a result of the discovery of the basic unity of the Aryan languages, and was founded on an analysis of these languages, but it showed that precisely similar myths exist among Eskimos, Red Indians, South Sea Islanders, Maoris, Bushmen, and other savage races. "The facts being identical, an identical explanation should be sought; and as the languages in which the myths exist are essentially different, an explanation founded upon the Aryan language is likely to prove too narrow."[13] Again, although we may discover the original meaning of a god's name, it does not assist us to understand the myths connected with him, for a striking figure in myth collects around it many age-old stories and mythic incidents which have originally no connexion whatsoever with it, just as barnacles are collected by a vessel in harbour. "Therefore, though we may ascertain that Zeus means 'sky,' and Agni 'fire,' we cannot assert with Max Müller that all the myths about Agni and Zeus were originally told of fire and sky. When these gods became popular they would inevitably inherit any current exploits of earlier heroes or gods."[14] So that if these were credited to them it would be erroneously. Names derived from natural phenomena too, such as sky, clouds, dawn, and sun, are habitually assigned by savage peoples to living persons. Thus a tale told of a real man or woman bearing one of these names might easily become mingled or confused with myths about the real sky, cloud, sun, dawn, etc. For such reasons the philological analysis of names is bound to be uncertain in its results. Moreover, when primitive or savage people think of natural phenomena and celestial bodies, they have no such ideas in their minds concerning them as have civilized people. They usually think of them as human beings with like passions to themselves—in fact, in an 'animistic' way. Müller held that it was gender-terminations that led later ages to the belief that natural phenomena possessed personalities, whereas the anthropological school retorted that au contraire "gender-terminations were survivals from an early stage of thought in which personal characteristics, including sex, had been attributed to all phenomena." This stage of thought is to be observed among savages and young children, who habitually regard inanimate objects as alive.

MANNHARDT

The defection of Mannhardt, who had long been a pillar of the philological school, was a further blow to its failing prestige. In a work published shortly before his death (Antike Wald- und Feldkulte, 1877) he explains the growth of his views, and states that "the assured gains" of the philological school "shrink into very few divine names such as Dyaus = Zeus = Tuis; Parjany = Perkunas; Bhaga = Bug; Varuna = Uranus, etc." Many of the other equations of divine names he regards as mere jeux d'esprit. "To the principle of Max Müller," he says, "I can only assign a very limited value, if any value at all" (op. cit., p. 20). And again: "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." In an essay on Demeter published somewhat later he further insisted upon the weakness of the philological method. Moreover, he disapproved of finding celestial phenomena in myths of terrestrial happenings. To this standpoint he was brought by his own experience of how easy (and fatal) it is to become the victim of a 'mythological habit'—that is, the interpretation of myths by one method and by that alone. Writing to his friend Müllenhoff in 1876, he said that he had become uneasy "at the extent which sun myths threaten to assume in my comparisons." Mannhardt was a wise man and an honest one. He saw clearly that there is no universal solvent for myth, no single philosopher's stone by which it may be made to yield its secrets, no royal road to its elucidation.

At the same time he adhered to the truth 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.... Of these nature myths, some have reference to the life and circumstances of the sun." As Lang has said of him:[15] "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. What we think they are not shown to arise from is forgetfulness of meanings of old words, which, ex hypothesi, have become proper names." And again: "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."

Mannhardt's method was more that of the folklorist than the philologist. He closely examined peasant custom and rite in the hope of discovering survivals of paganism. Indeed, his work may be said to be the foundation upon which Sir James George Frazer (whose work will be fully reviewed later) built his imposing edifices of research, The Golden Bough and other works.

THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL POSITION

The anthropological creed might, broadly, be stated as follows, with, of course, small divergences caused by internal division:

(1) The savage and irrational element in 'civilized' myth is composed of primitive survivals in more civilized times.

(2) The comparison of civilized with savage myth—that is, of later with earlier myth—frequently throws light upon the character of the latter.

(3) The comparison of similar myths among widely divergent peoples frequently illuminates their primitive character and meaning.

Broadly speaking, too, the anthropological school accepts such views as have been laid down in the introductory chapter concerning animism, fetishism, and totemism; and when we come to deal with authorities who diverge in any way from these views we shall show how they differ.

SIR E. B. TYLOR

Sir E. B. Tylor, the virtual founder of the anthropological school, in his Researches into the Early History of Mankind (1865) and Primitive Culture (1871), first laid down the anthropological position with clearness and accuracy.

In a statement which appeared in his epoch-making work, Primitive Culture, Tylor briefly reviews the conceptions of the early commentators regarding myth, and shows how necessary breadth of knowledge and handling is for mythological work. The scientific interpretation of myth is strengthened and assisted by the comparison of examples. There are groups of myths, and the greater the number which can be grouped together, the more evidence is provided for the formation of a true science of mythology. Few and simple are the principles which underlie a solid system of interpretation. "The treatment of similar myths from different regions, by arranging them in large compared groups, makes it possible to trace in mythology the operation of imaginative processes recurring with the evident regularity of mental law; and thus stories of which a single instance would have been a mere isolated curiosity take their place among well-marked and consistent structures of the human mind. Evidence like this will again and again drive us to admit that even as 'truth is stranger than fiction,' so myth may be more uniform than history."[16]

The work is limited to the consideration of well-authenticated mythic ideas of almost universal occurrence. "The general thesis maintained is that myth arose in the savage condition prevalent in remote ages among the whole human race, that it remains comparatively unchanged among the modern rude tribes who have departed least from these primitive conditions, while even higher and later grades of civilisation, partly by retaining its actual principles, and partly by carrying on its inherited results in the form of ancestral tradition, have continued it not merely in toleration but in honour."[17]

IMPORTANCE OF SAVAGE MYTH

The evolutionary character of myth necessitates that its study should be commenced among races of low culture. "If savage races, as the nearest modern representatives of primeval culture, show in the most distinct and unchanged state the rudimentary mythic conceptions thence to be traced onward in the course of civilisation, then it is reasonable for students to begin, so far as may be, at the beginning. Savage mythology may be taken as a basis, and then the myths of more civilised races may be displayed as compositions sprung from like origin, though more advanced in art. This mode of treatment proves satisfactory through almost all the branches of the enquiry, and eminently so in investigating those most beautiful of poetic fictions to which may be given the title of Nature Myths."[18]

The nature of personalism in myth is debated, as is the share of language in its formation, and here it will be seen that Tylor has not the extreme hostility of certain of his followers to the Müllerian doctrine. He says: "Language, no doubt, has had a great share in the formation of myth. The mere fact of its individualising in words such notions as winter and summer, cold and heat, war and peace, vice and virtue, gives the myth-maker the means of imagining these thoughts as personal beings. Language not only acts in thorough unison with the imagination whose product it expresses, but it goes on producing of itself, and thus, by the side of the mythic conceptions in which language has followed imagination, we have others in which language has led, and imagination has followed in the track. These two actions coincide too closely for their effects to be thoroughly separated, but they should be distinguished as far as possible. For myself, I am disposed to think (differing here in some measure from Professor Max Müller's view of the subject) that the mythology of the lower races rests especially on a basis of real and sensible analogy, and that the great expansion of verbal metaphor into myth belongs to more advanced periods of civilisation. In a word, I take material myth to be the primary, and verbal myth to be the secondary, formation. But whether this opinion be historically sound or not, the difference in nature between myth founded on fact and myth founded on word is sufficiently manifest. The want of reality in verbal metaphor cannot be effectually hidden by the utmost stretch of imagination. In spite of this essential weakness, however, the habit of realising everything that words can describe is one which has grown and flourished in the world. Descriptive names become personal, the notion of personality stretches to take in even the most abstract notions to which a name may be applied, and realised name, epithet, and metaphor pass into interminable mythic growths by the process which Max Müller has so aptly characterised as 'a disease of language.' It would be difficult indeed to define the exact thought lying at the root of every mythic conception, but in easy cases the course of formation can be quite well followed."[19]

The student of myth must possess the ability to transport himself into the imaginative atmosphere of the untutored mind. The inspection of 'nature mythology' helps to show that much myth is related to natural phenomena. "In interpreting heroic legend as based on nature-myth," says Tylor, "circumstantial analogy must be very cautiously appealed to, and at any rate, there is need of evidence more cogent than vague likenesses between human and cosmic life. Now such evidence is forthcoming at its strongest in a crowd of myths, whose open meaning it would be wanton incredulity to doubt, so little do they disguise, in name or sense, the familiar aspects of nature which they figure as scenes of personal life. Even where the tellers of legend may have altered or forgotten its earlier mythic meaning, there are often sufficient grounds for an attempt to restore it. In spite of change and corruption, myths are slow to lose all consciousness of their first origin."[20] And "the etymology of names, moreover, is at once the guide and safeguard of the mythologist [p. 321]. There was no disputing the obvious fact that Helios (Sol) was the sun, and Selene the moon." He examines groups of myths "produced from that craving to know causes and reasons which ever besets mankind" (p. 392). Allegory is then treated of. It "cannot maintain the large place often claimed for it [p. 408], yet it cannot be passed over by the mythologist. A number of fanciful myths are of the nature of allegory, as that of Pandora in Hesiod, or Herakles choosing between the paths of pleasure and virtue." In concluding his chapters on myth, Tylor remarks in a passage of profound insight: "The investigation of these intricate and devious operations has brought ever more and more broadly into view two principles of mythologie science. The first is that legend, when classified on a sufficient scale, displays a regularity of development which the notion of motiveless fancy quite fails to account for, and which must be attributed to laws of formation whereby every story, old and new, has arisen from its definite origin and sufficient cause. So uniform indeed is such development that it becomes possible to treat myth as an organic product of mankind at large, in which individual, national, and even racial distinctions stand subordinate to universal qualities of the human mind. The second principle concerns the relation of myth to history. It is true that the search for mutilated and mystified traditions of real events, which formed so main a part of old mythological researches, seems to grow more hopeless the further the study of legend extends.... Yet unconsciously, and as it were in spite of themselves, the shapers and transmitters of poetic legend have preserved for us masses of sound historical evidence."[21]

TYLOR'S ANIMISTIC THEORY

The widely accepted theory of animism which has already been described ([p. 22]) was promulgated by Tylor in this work. Man, he thinks, first attained to the idea of spirit by reflection on various experiences such as sleep, dreams, trances, shadows, hallucinations, breath, and death, and by degrees extended the conception of soul or ghost until he peopled all nature with spirits. From among these spirits one is finally supreme, if the process of evolution is continued. This theory discounts the early connexion between religion and ethics, and Tylor believed that primitive man had no notion of religion or ethics.

JOHN FERGUSON McLENNAN

John Ferguson McLennan (1827-1881), author of Primitive Marriage (1865) and Studies in Ancient History (1876), threw much light upon the origin and rise of the family and, incidentally, of totemism. Although he treats the subject from a sociological point of view, his work is of great value to students of myth because of its illustrations of totemism. His principal writings on totemism first appeared in the Fortnightly Review of 1869-1870.

HERBERT SPENCER

Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) explained his system of mythology in Principles of Sociology. The mental condition of man when he animates and personifies all phenomena is accounted for by degeneration, as in Spencer's view it is not primary but the result of misconception. Language is only one cause of this misconception: statements which had originally a different significance are, he thinks, misinterpreted, as are names of human beings, so that primitive races are gradually led to a belief in personalized phenomena. The defect in early speech, the "lack of words free from implication of vitality," is one of the causes which favour personalization. But in making this statement he appears to overlook the circumstance that such words as "imply vitality" do so because they reflect the thought of the men who use them before misconception can arise through their prolonged use. In any case, the misconstructions of language which he believes to have brought about the idea of personality are in his system "different in kind" from those of the philological school, "and the erroneous course of thought is opposite in direction." He believes the names of human beings in early society to be derived from incidents of the moment, the period of the day, or the condition of the weather. In certain tribes we discover persons named Dawn, Dark Cloud, Sun, etc. Spencer thinks that if a story exists concerning people so named, in process of time it will be transferred to the object or event, which will thereby become personalized. It is clear, however, that few such stories could be apposite, and that their occurrence would be rare.

Traditions of persons coming from the neighbourhood of some mountain or river may grow into belief in actual birth from it. For example, should tradition state that a man's parents came "from the rising sun," he will believe himself a descendant of the luminary, which thus becomes personalized. Holding as he does that ancestor-worship is the first form of religion, and that persons with such names as Sun, Wind, or Cloud may be thus worshipped, Spencer believed that nature myths are a kind of worship of ancestors. Implicit belief in the statements of forefathers is a further cause of personalizing. He explains the idea of descent from beast ancestors by the ancestor of the stock or tribe possessing an animal name, such as Wolf, Tiger, and so forth, and being confounded by his descendants with a real wolf or tiger. Spencer never saw that ancestral memory in savages is extremely short and rarely survives more than three generations. Nor is the savage at a loss to understand the custom of bestowing animal or nature names upon persons. He calls his own child Dawn or Wolf, and therefore he is not tempted to believe that his ancestor was really a tiger or the dawn. The animal descent almost invariably comes through the female line, and the mother's totem-kin name is adopted, yet savages do not worship their ancestresses. The theory, as Lang has said, requires "as a necessary condition a singular amount of memory on the one hand and of forgetfulness on the other."

WILLIAM ROBERTSON SMITH

One of the first and most remarkable upholders of the anthropological school was William Robertson Smith (1846-1894) a professor of Hebrew in the Free Church College, Aberdeen. The heterodox character of an encyclopædia article on the Bible led to his prosecution for heresy, of which charge, however, he was acquitted. But a further article upon "Hebrew Language and Literature" in the Encyclopædia Britannica (1880) led to his removal from the professoriate of the college. In 1881 he assisted Professor Baynes in editing the Encyclopædia Britannica, and in 1887 succeeded him as editor-in-chief. He was appointed Lord Almoner's Professor of Arabic at Cambridge in 1883, and Adams Professor of Arabic in 1889.

Robertson Smith's most remarkable work—that to which every modern student of comparative religion owes so much—is his celebrated Religion of the Semites, originally delivered as a series of lectures at Aberdeen in the three years from October 1888 to October 1891.

It is of course only this author's views on mythology that we have here to take into account.

Robertson Smith points out that in all ancient religious systems mythology takes the place of dogma. The sacred lore of a race assumes the form of stories about the gods, and these tales offer the sole explanation of religious precept and ritual act, but as myth had no sacred sanction and no binding force on the worshippers, it was not an essential part of religion. Myths "connected with individual sanctuaries and ceremonies were merely part of the apparatus of the worship; they served to excite the fancy and sustain the interest of the worshipper; but he was often offered a choice of several accounts of the same thing, and, provided that he fulfilled the ritual with accuracy, no one cared what he believed about its origin. Belief in a certain series of myths was neither obligatory as a part of true religion, nor was it supposed that, by believing, a man acquired religious merit and conciliated the favour of the gods. What was obligatory or meritorious was the exact performance of certain sacred acts prescribed by religious tradition. This being so, it follows that mythology ought not to take the prominent place that is too often assigned to it in the scientific study of ancient faiths."

Robertson Smith thought that in almost every case the myth was derived from the ritual, not the ritual from the myth. Ritual was fixed, and myth was variable. The one was obligatory, the other at the discretion of the worshipper. "Now by far the largest part of the myths of antique religions is connected with the ritual of particular shrines, or with the religious observances of particular tribes and districts. In all such cases it is probable, in most cases it is certain, that the myth is merely the explanation of a religious usage; and ordinarily it is such an explanation as could not have arisen till the original sense of the usage had more or less fallen into oblivion. As a rule the myth is no explanation of the origin of the ritual to any one who does not believe it to be a narrative of real occurrences, and the boldest mythologist will not believe that. But if it be not true, the myth itself requires to be explained, and every principle of philosophy and common sense demands that the explanation be sought, not in arbitrary allegorical theories, but in the actual facts of ritual or religious custom to which the myth attaches. The conclusion is that in the study of ancient religions we must begin, not with myth, but with ritual and traditional usage."

Myths which do not merely explain traditional practices, but "exhibit the beginnings of larger religious speculation," Robertson Smith also regards as secondary in character. They may be primitive philosophy or political attempts to unite religious groups, originally distinct, or perhaps due to the play of epic imagination. In the later stages of ancient religions mythology became increasingly important. "Myth interpreted by the aid of allegory became the favourite means of infusing a new significance into ancient forms. But the theories thus developed are the falsest of false guides as to the original meaning of the old religions. On the other hand, the ancient myths, taken in their natural sense, without allegorical gloss, are plainly of great importance as testimonies to the views of the nature of the gods that were prevalent when they were formed."

In the third lecture or chapter the author propounds the theory of animism in much the same terms as Tylor, and, speaking generally, the remainder of the work is occupied with considerations regarding the religious life of the Semitic peoples, their holy places, their ritual and sacrifice.

THEOBIOGRAPHY

Robertson Smith is undoubtedly correct in his statement that myth takes the place of dogma in primitive religion—that "the sacred lore of priests and people ... assumes the form of stories about the gods." But having thus connected theobiography[22] with religion and the religious spirit, it is difficult to discover why he denies a religious character to myth. "These stories," he says (p. 17), "afford the only explanation that is offered of the precepts of religion and the prescribed rules of ritual." If that be the case, surely the group of myths which detail the deeds of the chief deities is of prime importance to religion. The 'story' of a religion is its most precious asset. It is from the 'story' of their faith that the majority of people receive their ideas concerning it. What would Mohammedanism be without the story of the Prophet? What Buddhism without the tale of Gautama? What Christianity without the life of Christ? And if the argument applies to the higher forms of religion, it may surely be applied, and more so, to primitive faiths. Among savage or barbarous peoples the myth, the body of tales which circles round the gods, is universal tribal property. It takes the place of written scripture, it infuses all poetry and epic, it is represented in sacred drama, it is recited by the neophytes for the priesthood, it underlies the most sacred mysteries. The contention that myth was "no essential part of ancient religion" is based upon a fundamental misconception of the spoken or written story of the gods. In the present writer's view myth is a most important element of primitive religion; for whereas ritual often impresses an alien people as magical and therefore inimical, and is not so readily borrowed, the wide transmission of myth proves that it not only impresses the imagination of the races among whom it has origin, but that it is able to take hold of neighbouring and even distant peoples as well.

Akin to the first error is Robertson Smith's further fallacy that ritual is prior in origin to myth in primitive religion. "It may be affirmed with confidence," he says, "that the myth was derived from the ritual, not the ritual from the myth." Therefore the savage sacrifices with much involved ceremonial to something concerning which he knows and has invented nothing!

THE CONSERVATISM OF CHILDHOOD

That myth is sacred may be seen, if our conclusions are correct, in a fact already employed to explain the fixed and unchangeable character of the folk-tale. Children, it is observed, listening to a traditional story do not approve of any alteration in its plot or circumstances. Is this dislike—one might almost say horror—of alteration in folk-tale a legacy of the religious dread of any attempt to tamper with the tales of the gods? If so, such a sentiment would only be likely to arise in an environment where the idea of the sacred had already made considerable headway.

This argument does not claim an ethical character for myth, nor for ritual or the other elements of religion, which did not originally know of or possess any ethical spirit, but had to acquire it painfully. The argument that belief in myth was not "obligatory as a part of true religion" is futile. It was not obligatory because it was natural and general. That one could not acquire religious merit by knowing it is also untrue. Intimate acquaintance with the religious story is in many civilized modern communities (Mohammedans, Hindus, British rural folk) the measure of piety, and among savages and the peoples of antiquity (Egyptians, Greeks, Australians, etc.) the religious story is the nucleus of the most sacred mysteries of the faith.

CORNELIUS PETRUS TIELE

Cornelius Petrus Tiele (1830-1902), a professor of the history of religions at Leyden, although claimed as an ally by Max Müller, was much more inclined toward fellowship with the anthropological school. In his Revue de l'Histoire des Religions (1876, trans. 1878, xii, 250) he says: "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."

Again he says (op. cit., p. 253): "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 recognize 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, then, 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." At the same time, Tiele thought that the anthropological method "cannot answer all the questions which the science of mythology must solve, or at least must study." He also states that the anthropological school is "not entirely wrong" in claiming him as an ally, and goes on to say: "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 and which to most questions can only reply, with a smile, C'est chercher raison où il n'y en a pas."

Tiele also considered the anthropological school "too exclusive," and thought that it might have ignorant camp-followers. In the latter fear he was justified, as writers who saw totems and fetishes everywhere were at that time rife; and there are not wanting popular writers of the present day just as extravagant, who, while highly enthusiastic over the achievements of the school, only dimly appreciate the anthropological standpoint.

ANDREW LANG

Perhaps the greatest binding force, and certainly the greatest popularity, was given to the anthropological school by Andrew Lang (1844-1913), whose works Myth, Ritual, and Religion (1887), Modern Mythology (1897), and The Making of Religion (1898), contain originality, great dialectic ability, and keen insight. Waxing autobiographical in the second work, Lang wrote concerning his own position: "Like other inquiring under-graduates 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 cœlo, 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 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. To me, and indeed to Mr Max Müller, the ugly scars were the problem."

Lang's first work on myth, Myth, Ritual, and Religion, after briefly reviewing the various systems of mythic interpretation prior to and current in his time, lays stress upon the difference between religion and myth, in which he sees two distinct human moods, the one sacred, the other wholly frivolous in origin. This conflict is present in all religions. The two moods, we are told (p. 5), are conspicuous even in Christianity, in prayers, hymns, and "the dim religious light" of cathedrals on the one hand, and on the other in the buffoonery of miracle plays and the uncouth blasphemies of folk-tales. Backward peoples too make a distinction between their religion and their mythology. The 'wild' element of mythic story is then explained as a survival from the savage state, the mental condition of savages is described in its bearing upon primitive fiction, and its outstanding types are outlined, as are some of the world's chief mythic systems—all to illustrate the anthropological standpoint of the author. Incidentally is developed the 'All-Father' theory, which will be dealt with later.

'ERRATIC FANCY' IN MYTH

In this work we have, perhaps, the most valuable statement of the anthropological case extant, but in it Lang insists too much upon a fundamental difference between myth and religion. He says (loc. cit.): "For the present we can only say that the religious conception uprises from the human intellect in one mood, that of earnest contemplation and submission: while the mythical ideas uprise from another mood, that of playful and erratic fancy." Absurd and unholy stories of the gods are common, but all myths are not of this kind, and many were and are employed as ritual by various peoples, who recite them frequently as the histories of the gods they worship. Again, Lang's contention that myth is not 'religious' would seem to be defeated by his own just argument that myth containing 'wild' elements dates from primitive times. He accounts for its 'wildness' by its primitiveness; it was blasphemous because savage. But although blasphemous to the civilized man, it may not be so to the uncultured barbarian, and to him may be even religious. Elsewhere Lang cites Australian myth to prove that one tale is told to "unimportant persons," such as women and boys, another to the initiated.[23] The first is of the nature of myth, the second religious in character. We can discern a measure of truth in what he advocates, but a hard and fast line cannot be drawn between myth and religion, as no one can say where myth ends and religion begins. They overlap; and when we read of the pranks of the Greek Zeus or the Chinook Blue Jay we may say to ourselves: "Thus the gods figure in the imagination of the savage, in whom the religious sense is faint. Once myth emerges from the animistic, totemistic, and barbarous state it rises in character." But—and this is important—there still cling to it the age-long tales of the gods as savages, barbaric, bloodthirsty, absurd, in no way to be cleansed or 'edited' or rendered 'decent,' They are regarded by men as sacred because they are old.

The arguments against Lang's conception of myth as the ribald brother of religion are as follows: (1) The majority of ancient myths are not absurd, obscene, or blasphemous in essence, as is proved by the circumstances of their invention. (2) Other myths which appear blasphemous to the civilized mind do not necessarily seem so to the savage mind. The strange sense of humour peculiar to savages is not taken into consideration by Lang, nor that most of the absurdities and obscenities arise from totemic sources and are therefore necessarily animal in their characteristics, (3) The preservation and recital of myths by priests proves their sacred character.[24]

Therefore, although a difference exists between myth and dogma, it is one of degree only, not of kind. In all ages the ribald mind has concocted scandalous stories concerning the gods, but most primitive myth is not to be classed as 'ribald,' as a careful perusal of it will show.

LANG'S GENERAL THESIS

Lang states his general thesis clearly on p. 8. He says: "Before going further, it is desirable to set forth what our aim is, and to what extent we are seeking an interpretation of mythology. It is not our purpose to explain every detail of every ancient legend, either as a distorted historical fact or as the result of this or that confusion of thought caused by forgetfulness of the meanings of language, or in any other way; nay, we must constantly protest against the excursions of too venturesome ingenuity. Myth is so ancient, so complex, so full of elements, that it is vain labour to seek a cause for every phenomenon. We are chiefly occupied with the quest for an historical condition of the human intellect to which the element in myths, regarded by us as irrational, shall seem rational enough. If we can prove that such a state of mind widely exists among men, and has existed, that state of mind may be provisionally considered as the fount and origin of the myths which have always perplexed men in a reasonable modern mental condition."

The irrational element in myth, to which we have already given some consideration, is then discussed by Lang, and as our manner of dealing with it is founded upon his, it is unnecessary to recapitulate his arguments. It must be remarked, however, that he lays down (vol. i, p. 22) the conclusion that "All interpretations of myth have been formed in accordance with the ideas prevalent in the time of the interpreters." He states that his theory naturally attaches itself to the general system of evolution, and through it we are enabled to examine myth as "a thing of gradual development and of slow and manifold modifications." Thus we find that much of ancient myth is a thing of great complexity, composed of the savage 'explanation,' the civilized and poetic modification thereof, and the later popular idea of the original tale. "A critical study of these three stages in myth is in accordance with the recognised practice of science. Indeed, the whole system is only an application to this particular province, mythology, of the method by which the development either of organisms or of human institutions is traced. As the anomalies and apparently useless and accidental features in the human or in other animal organisms may be explained as stunted or rudimentary survivals of organs useful in a previous stage of life, so the anomalous and irrational myths of civilised races may be explained as survivals of stories which, in an earlier state of thought and knowledge, seemed natural enough. The persistence of the myths is accounted for by the well-known conservatism of the religious sentiment—a conservatism noticed even by Eusebius."

DIFFUSION OF IDENTICAL MYTHS

The diffusion of identical myths, Lang argues, is due to the universal prevalence of similar mental habits and ideas at one time or another, but he admits that this argument may be pressed too far, and that it will "scarcely account for the world-wide distribution of long and intricate mythical plots." The diffusion of mythic fiction would, in the judgment of the present writer, justify the opinion that in many instances borrowing and transmission take place; but all cases should be examined on their individual merits.

Lang proceeds to examine the mental condition of savages, in accordance with the views in our introductory chapter, and with special reference to totemism and magic. The animistic hypothesis is examined. His chapters relating to cosmogony may be passed over as containing no very original criticism. The author's 'All-Father' theory, as outlined in our notice of his book The Making of Religion, is set forth, and the remainder of that work is occupied with a description of the greater mythological systems of the world, regarding some of which he was not sufficiently well informed to speak with authority.[25]

"MODERN MYTHOLOGY"

In Modern Mythology(1897) Lang shows why the anthropological school in England was obliged to challenge Professor Max Müller. After pointing out the inconveniences of Müller's method in controversy, the author proves that Tiele leans more in the direction of his school than to that of Müller. He then reviews Mannhardt's position, which he shows to be also anti-Müllerian. He touches upon Müller's misunderstandings regarding totemism and reviews "the value of anthropological evidence." He points out that the past of savages must have been "a very long past," and insists upon the value of Tylor's "test of undesigned coincidence in testimony" (the famous 'test of recurrence') as a criterion of the value of myth. "The philological method in anthropology" is discussed. Says Lang: "Given Dr Hahn's book on Hottentot manners and religion: the anthropologist compares the Hottentot rites, beliefs, social habits, and general ideas with those of other races known to him, savage or civilised. A Hottentot custom, which has a meaning among Hottentots, may exist where its meaning is lost, among Greeks or other 'Aryans.' A story of a Hottentot god, quite a natural sort of tale for a Hottentot to tell, may be told about a god in Greece, where it is contrary to the Greek spirit. We infer that the Greeks perhaps inherited it from savage ancestors, or borrowed it from savages. This is the method, and if we can also get a scholar to analyse the names of Hottentot gods, we are all the luckier—that is, if his processes and inferences are logical. May we not decide on the logic of scholars? But, just as Mr Max Müller points out to us the dangers attending our evidence, we point out to him the dangers attending his method. In Dr Hahn's book, the doctor analyses the meaning of the names Tsuni-Goam and other names, discovers their original sense, and from that sense explains the myths about Hottentot divine beings. Here we anthropologists first ask Mr Max Müller, before accepting Dr Hahn's etymologies, to listen to other scholars about the perils and difficulties of the philological analysis of divine names even in Aryan languages. I have already quoted his 'defender' Dr Tiele. 'The philological method is inadequate and misleading, when it is a question of (1) discovering the origin of a myth, or (2) the physical explanation of the oldest myths, or (3) of accounting for the rude and obscene element in the divine legends of civilised races.' To the two former purposes Dr Hahn applies the philological method in the case of Tsuni-Goam. Other scholars agree with Dr Tiele. Mannhardt, as we said, held that Mr Max Müller's favourite etymological 'equations' (Sarameya = Hermeias; Saranyu = Demeter Erinnys; Kentauros = Gandharvas, and others) would not stand criticism. 'The method in its practical working shows a lack of the historical sense,' said Mannhardt. Curtius—a scholar, as Mr Max Müller declares—says, 'It is especially difficult to conjecture the meaning of proper names, and above all of local and mythical names,' I do not see that it is easier when these names are not Greek, but Hottentot, or Algonquin!"

Then follows a review of the contending methods of the philological and anthropological schools in the explanation of various myths and ritualistic customs, and the method of the latter school is clearly vindicated.

LANG'S ANTI-ANIMISTIC HYPOTHESIS

The thesis of the first portion of Lang's The Making of Religion (London, 1898) is that the abnormal phenomena believed in by savages and later civilized peoples assisted them to evolve the idea of godhead. Lang holds that "the savage beliefs, however erroneous, however darkened by fraud and fancy, repose on a basis of real observation of actual phenomena." With such a contention, however ingenious, anthropology can scarcely concern itself, as our knowledge of the supernatural is by no means sufficient to permit us to apply it to anthropology.

The arguments put forward in the second part of the book are: (1) "That the conception of a separable surviving soul of a dead man was not only not essential to the savage's idea of his supreme god ... but would have been wholly inconsistent with that conception." (2) That the original idea of god among primitive peoples was not animistic and did not evolve from the idea of the existence of spirit, but came first in order of evolution and was that of a "magnified non-natural man" (anthropomorphic and monotheistic). "He existed before death came into the world and he still exists." Moreover, such cults contained ethical and moral ideas not usually discovered in 'animistic' religions. Lang illustrates this theory by examples taken from Australian, Fuegian, Andamanese, Zulu, and other races of low culture.

As regards the first part of his contention, whatever may have been the case with primitive man (concerning whose religious ideas we can only theorize), it does not hold good of savages of the present day, when animistic ideas are universally in the transition state. The second argument is very much open to criticism, because the religious ideas of the races alluded to by Lang as monotheistic may have been modified by the theology of missionaries, Christian or Mohammedan. This criticism Lang himself held not to be justified by facts, and there are grounds for believing that his theory possesses a certain amount of truth. Before, however, it can be discussed in its entirety, the religious ideas of the peoples to which he alludes and those of other races similarly environed will require to be much more fully and rigorously examined and a much larger body of data collected. If Lang's conclusions could be justified, they would revolutionize the whole study of comparative religion. It would perhaps mean that such gods as Yahweh in Israel and Tezcatlipoca in Mexico, instead of being gradually evolved from lower spiritual forms, were survivals of very early conceptions of non-spiritual forms of deity. But Lang's data show that the early monotheistic, or the 'All-Father' idea, as he calls it, disappears because of the adoption of animistic ideas. Yahweh and Tezcatlipoca, we know, flourished side by side with and in an atmosphere of animism. It would be strange if the Hebrews, a branch of a race typically polytheistic (and therefore animistic), had not at one time been given to a similar worship, and everything seems to prove that they were originally polytheistic. If Yahweh was, as Lang suggested, an original 'All-Father,' it is strange that Noldeke should have been able to trace his name through the form Shaddai to Shedi ('my demon') a name sufficiently animistic. This would appear to be a test of Lang's theory, but the question, as he stated, "can only be settled by specialists." He was right. He himself failed entirely to realize the weight and abundance of the evidence for early polytheism and animism among the Israelites. Again, when in Mexico we observe the rise of Tezcatlipoca from the obsidian stone, we must repeat that further special study alone can throw light on the question. Lang called his examination of the subject "a 'sketch'—not an exhaustive survey," but the thoughtful student of comparative religion will admit that it is a sketch raising questions of the greatest import to the science he explores.[26]

SIR JAMES GEORGE FRAZER

One of the greatest modern names in primitive religious science is that of Sir James George Frazer, the world-famous author of The Golden Bough. Founded to some extent upon the principles of Mannhardt, Sir J.G. Frazer's mythological studies relate chiefly to vegetation and the deities connected therewith. Indeed, it has been said that he has seen gods of vegetation everywhere, just as the Müller school saw sun-gods everywhere.

Perhaps the most acute criticism upon Sir J.G. Frazer's great work is to be found in Lang's Magic and Religion, in the essay "The Ghastly Priest." The first critical paragraph of this makes amusing reading: "Still, the new school of mythology does work the vegetable element in mythology hard; nearly as hard as the solar element used to be worked. Aphrodite, as the female mate of Adonis, gets mixed up with plant life. So does Attis with Cybele, so does Balder, so does Death, so does Dionysus with undoubted propriety; so does Eabani, so does Gilgamesh, so does Haman, so does Hera, so does Iasion with Demeter, so does Isis, so does Jack-in-the-Green, so does Kupalo, so do Linus and Lityerses, so does Mamurius Veturius, so does Merodach or Marduk (if he represents Eabani or Gilgamesh), so does Mars, so does Osiris, so, I think, does Semiramis, so does Tammuz, so does Virbius, so does Zeus, probably; so does a great multitude of cattle, cats, horses, bulls, goats, cocks, with plenty of other beasts. The solar mythologists did not spare heroes like Achilles; they too were the sun. But the vegetable school, the Covent Garden school of mythologists, mixes up real human beings with vegetation."

FRAZER'S MAIN CONTENTION

Frazer's main contention is that the priest of the sanctuary of Diana Nemorensis, near the modern Nemi, in Italy (a priest who was invariably a murderer, and who only held office until another murderer dispossessed and slew him, after plucking a bough from the tree under which he sheltered), has numerous parallels in other, ancient and modern, barbarian priesthoods. He says: "If we can show that a barbarous custom, like that of the priesthood of Nemi, has existed elsewhere; if we can detect the motives which led to its institution; if we can prove that these motives have operated widely, perhaps universally, in human society, producing in varied circumstances a variety of institutions specifically different but generally alike; if we can show, lastly, that these very motives, with some of their derivative institutions, were actually at work in classical antiquity; then we may fairly infer that at a remoter age the same motives gave birth to the priesthood of Nemi. Such an inference, in default of direct evidence as to how the priesthood did actually arise, can never amount to demonstration. But it will be more or less probable according to the degree of completeness with which it fulfils the conditions indicated above. The object of this book is, by meeting these conditions, to offer a fairly probable explanation of the priesthood of Nemi."

According to Frazer, too, the priest of Nemi was of a class regarded as divine. He says (vol. i, p. 231): "Thus the cult of the Arician grove was essentially that of a tree-spirit or sylvan deity. But our examination of European folk-custom demonstrated that a tree-spirit is frequently represented by a living person, who is regarded as an embodiment of the tree-spirit and possessed of its fertilising powers; and our previous survey of primitive belief proved that this conception of a god incarnate in a living man is common among rude races, Further, we have seen that the living person who is believed to embody in himself the tree-spirit is often called a king, in which respect, again, he strictly represents the tree-spirit. For the sacred cedar of the Gilgit tribes is called, as we have seen, 'the Dreadful King'; and the chief forest god of the Finns, by name Tapio, represented as an old man with a brown beard, a high hat of fir-cones, and a coat of tree-moss, was styled the Wood King, Lord of the Woodland, Golden King of the Wood. May not then the King of the Wood in the Arician grove have been, like the King of May, the Leaf King, the Grass King, and the like, an incarnation of the tree-spirit or spirit of vegetation? His title, his sacred office, and his residence in the grove all point to this conclusion, which is confirmed by his relation to the Golden Bough. For since the King of the Wood could only be assailed by him who had plucked the Golden Bough, his life was safe from assault so long as the bough, or the tree on which it grew, remained uninjured. In a sense, therefore, his life was bound up with that of the tree; and thus to some extent he stood to the tree in the same relation in which the incorporate or immanent tree-spirit stands to it."

LANG'S CRITICISM OF FRAZER'S THESIS

But Lang controverts these premises. He does not regard the priest of the Arician grove as a likely representative of a god of vegetation. "First," he says (I quote at length because of the importance of the passage), "let us ask what we know about this ghastly priest. Let us begin with the evidence of Virgil, in the Sixth Book of the Æneid (line 136 and so onwards). Virgil says nothing about the ghastly priest, or, in this place, about Diana, or the grove near Aricia. Virgil, indeed, tells us much about a bough of a tree, a golden branch, but as to the singular priest, nothing. But some four hundred years after Virgil's date (say A.D. 370), a commentator on Virgil, Servius, tried to illustrate the passage cited from the Æneid. He obviously knows nothing about Virgil's mystic golden bough, but he tells us that, in his own time, 'public opinion' (publica opinio) placed the habitat of Virgil's bough in the grove haunted by the ghastly priest, near Aricia. It is, in fact, not known whether Virgil invented his bough, with its extraordinary attributes, or took it from his rich store of antiquarian learning. It may have been a folklore belief, like Le Rameau d'Or of Madame d'Aulnoy's fairy-tale. Virgil's bough, as we shall see, has one folklore attribute in common with a mystic sword in the Arthurian cycle of romances, and in the Volsunga Saga. I think that Mr Frazer has failed to comment on this point. If I might hazard a guess as to Virgil's branch, it is that, of old, suppliants approached gods or kings with boughs in their hands. He who would approach Proserpine carried, in Virgil, a bough of pure gold, which only the favoured and predestined suppliant could obtain, as shall be shown.

"In the four centuries between Virgil and Servius the meaning and source of Virgil's branch of gold were forgotten. But people, and Servius himself, knew of another bough, near Aricia, and located (conjecturally?) Virgil's branch of gold in that district. Servius, then, in his commentary on the Æneid, after the manner of annotators in all ages, talks much about the boughs of a certain tree in a certain grove, concerning which Virgil makes no remark. Virgil, as we shall see, was writing about a golden branch of very peculiar character. Knowing, like the public opinion of his age, something about quite other branches, and nothing about Virgil's branch, Servius tells us that, in the grove of Diana at Aricia, there grew a tree from which it was unlawful (non licebat) to break a bough. If any fugitive slave, however, could break a branch from this tree, he might fight the priest, taking his office if successful. In the opinion of Servius the temple was founded by Orestes, to the barbaric Diana of the Chersonese, whence he had fled after a homicide. That Diana received human sacrifices of all strangers who landed on her coasts. The rite of human sacrifice was, in Italy, commuted, Servius thinks, for the duel between the priest and the fugitive slave, Orestes having himself been a fugitive. The process is, first a Greek wanderer on a barbarous coast is in danger of being offered, as all outlanders were offered, to the local goddess. This rite was a form of xenelasia, an anti-immigrant statute. Compare China, the Transvaal, the agitation against pauper immigrants. Having escaped being sacrificed, and having killed the king in an unfriendly land, Orestes flies to Italy and appeases the cruel Diana by erecting her fane at Aricia. But, instead of sacrificing immigrants, he, or his successors, establishes a duel between the priest and any other fugitive slave. Servius then, not observing this, goes off into an allegorising interpretation of Virgil's branch, as worthless as all such interpretations always are.

"The story about Orestes appears to myself to be a late 'ætiological myth,' a story invented to explain the slaying of the slayer—which it does not do; in short, it is an hypothesis. The priesthood is open not to men flying the blood feud like Orestes, but only to runaway slaves. The custom introduced by Orestes was the sacrifice of outlanders, not of priests. The story has a doublette in Pausanias. According to Pausanias, Hippolytus was raised from the dead, and, in hatred of his father, and being a fugitive, he went and reigned at the Arician grove of the goddess.

THE GHASTLY PRIEST

"For these reasons, apparently, Statius calls the Arician grove profugis regibus aptum, a sanctuary of exiled princes, Orestes and Hippolytus. From Suetonius we learn that the ghastly priest was styled Rex Nemorensis King of the Wood, and that the envious Caligula, thinking the priest had held office long enough, set another athlete to kill him. The title of 'king,' borne by a priest, suggests, of course, the sacrificial king at Rome. Also Mr Frazer adduces African kings of fire and water, credited with miraculous powers over the elements. They kill nobody and nobody kills them. Then we have Jack-in-the-Green = May-tree = the Spirit of Vegetation—the May King and the Queen of the May. 'These titles,' as Mannhardt observes, 'imply that the spirit incorporate in vegetation is a ruler, whose creative power extends far and wide.' Possibly so. Now, the King of the Wood, the ghastly priest, lived in the grove of Diana, who (among other things) has the attributes of a tree-spirit. 'May not, then, the King of the Wood, in the Arician grove, have been, like the King of the May ... an incarnation of the tree-spirit, or spirit of vegetation?' Given a female tree-spirit, we should rather expect a Queen of the Wood; and we assuredly do not expect a priest of Diana to represent the supreme Aryan god, nay to incarnate him. But this Mr Frazer thinks probable. Again, 'since the King of the Wood could only be assailed by him who had plucked the Golden Bough, his life was safe from assault so long as the bough, or the tree on which it grew, remained uninjured.'

WHAT IS THE 'GOLDEN BOUGH'?

"Here we remark the nimbleness of Mr Frazer's method. In vol. i, 4, he had said: 'Tradition averred that the fatal branch' (in the grove near Aricia) 'was that golden bough which, at the Sibyl's bidding, Æneas plucked before he assayed the perilous journey to the world of the dead.' But I have tried to show that, according to Servius, this identification of two absolutely distinct boughs, neither similar nor similarly situated, was the conjecture of 'public opinion' in an age divided from Virgil's date by four hundred years.

"In the space between vol. i, 4, and i, 231, the averment of tradition, as Mr Frazer calls it, the inference of the curious, as I suppose, to the effect that Virgil's golden branch and the Arician branch were identical, has become matter of fact for Mr Frazer. 'Since the King of the Wood could only be assailed by him who had plucked the Golden Bough,' he says; with what follows.

"But who has told us anything about the breaking, by a fugitive slave, near Aricia, of a golden bough? Nobody, as far as I am aware, has mentioned the circumstance. After an interval of four hundred years, the golden bough of Virgil is only brought by Servius into connection with the wood at Aricia, because Servius, and the public opinion of his age, knew about a branch there, and did not know anything about Virgil's branch of gold.

"That branch is a safe passport to Hades. It is sacred, not to a tree-spirit named Diana, but to Infernal Juno, or Proserpine. It cannot be broken by a fugitive slave, or anybody else; no, nor can it be cut with edge of iron. None but he whom the Fates call can break it. It yields at a touch of the predestined man, and another golden branch grows instantly in its place.

"Primo avolso non deficit alter
Aureus....
... Ipse volens facilisque sequetur,
Si te fata vocant.

"Virgil's bough thus answers to the magical sword set in a stone in the Arthurian legends, in a tree-trunk in the Volsunga Saga, as Mr H.S.C. Everard reminds me. All the knights may tug vainly at the sword, but you can draw it lightly, si te fata vacant, if you are the predestined king, if you are Arthur or Sigmund. When Æneas bears this bough, Charon recognises the old familiar passport. Other living men, in the strength of this talisman, have already entered the land of the dead.

"Ille admirans venerabile donum
Fatalis virgæ, longo post tempore visum.

"I have collected all these extraordinary attributes of Virgil's bough (in origin, a suppliant's bough, perhaps), because, as far as I notice, Mr Frazer lays no stress on the many peculiarities which differentiate Virgil's bough from any casual branch of the tree at Aricia, and connect it with the mystic sword. The 'general reader' (who seldom knows Latin) needs, I think, to be told precisely what Virgil's bough was. Nothing can be more unlike a branch, any accessible branch, of the Arician tree, than is Virgil's golden bough. It does not grow at Aricia. It is golden. It is not connected with a tree-spirit, but is dear to Proserpine. (I easily see, of course, that Proserpine may be identified with a tree-spirit.) Virgil's branch is not to be plucked by fugitive slaves. It is not a challenge, but a talismanic passport to Hades, recognised by Charon, who has not seen a specimen for ever so long. It is instantly succeeded, if plucked, by another branch of gold, which the Arician twig is not. So I really do not understand how Mr Frazer can identify Virgil's golden bough with an ordinary branch of a tree at Aricia, which anybody could break, though only runaway slaves, strongly built, had an interest in so doing."[27]

FARNELL'S CRITICISM OF "THE GOLDEN BOUGH"

The Golden Bough is an exhaustive repository of mythic and anthropological fact. It has been criticized[28] as leaning too much to the side of the 'stratification' theory—that is, the belief in the existence of certain fixed religious conditions at different epochs of man's experience and the labelling of these by such names as 'animism,' 'totemism,' and the like. At least,

Thus says the Quarterly, So savage and Tartarly.

The present writer cannot subscribe to such criticism. It should be plain that in the earliest times the animistic and pre-animistic types of religious experience must have held single and undisputed sway among the whole of mankind. 'Totemism' and 'fetishism' are merely animism in another form, and in effect there are only two great types of primitive religious belief, the animistic and the polytheistic, the latter differing from the former merely because animism, or personalization of all phenomena, animal or vegetable, developed into anthropomorphism, which saw man's nature in the gods. It is admitted that the lesser stages of animism overlap each other in numerous instances, but one outstanding type gives shape to most systems of belief capable of classification, lesser types serving only to throw the one great one into relief. Thus Greek religion was unquestionably an anthropomorphic polytheism; the Mexican a polytheism with survivals of totemism and fetishism; and so on. But although the great central type permits us to give a broad classification to any religion, it is the lesser attributes which help us to pigeon-hole it properly. Thus we might class the majority of American religions as polytheisms newly emerged or emerging from animistic influences; but such a general definition would be imperfect because the combination of the bird-and-serpent myth has provided America with many outstanding divine forms in some measure different from gods evolved elsewhere. Monotheism is a religious condition so rare that it may be altogether discounted in classifying primitive religion. These conclusions hedge between the Frazerian view that religious experience is capable of more or less concrete classification, and the bewildering, chaotic opinion that classification should be entirely discountenanced in religious science. While we may hesitate to speak with Sir James Frazer of such hard and fast periods as an "age of magic" or an "age of religion," we can subscribe to "anthropomorphism superimposed upon a previous theriomorphism or theriolatry," a description at which Sir James Frazer's reviewer cavils. He would doubtless tell us that many religious types coexisted in that age. Quite so; but were they as distinctive, as widespread, and as illustrative of prevailing conditions in such-and-such a region at such-and-such a period as the above?

THE 'ADJACENT' METHOD

Sir James Frazer is further accused of employing the universal comparative method at the expense of the 'adjacent' method, the method which studies the religion of a certain people in its own sphere. It is often pretended nowadays that more merit accrues to the pursuit of this form of anthropological science than to the comparative method. We do not deny that a very considerable degree of training, experience, and erudition is required to achieve success in it, but the assumption that it in any way approaches in magnitude the task which the comparative student proposes to himself is absurd. The greatest mythological studies are comparative in character. True, many works on particular mythologies are of outstanding excellence and charm; but students of comparative religion still await a work dealing with an isolated mythology of the calibre of The Golden Bough, mistaken as are many of its premises, Payne's New World called America, or Lang's Myth, Ritual, and Religion, unless it be, perhaps, Robertson Smith's Religion of the Semites.

It is, further, scarcely criticism to label Sir James Frazer's great work 'second-hand.' In works dealing with comparative mythology the facts collated must of necessity be gleaned from the writings of others. This cry is surely unsuitable to mythological debate!

The criticism that Sir James Frazer is unable to pursue to their logical ends the problems he proposes to himself is better founded, as is the charge of discursiveness. It is true, too, that he possesses the faculty of seeing resemblances but not differences when dealing with analogies, and that, consequently, he lumps too many diverse facts together. Lastly he is tacitly charged with perversion of evidence![29]

His definition of magic will be dealt with elsewhere.

The Golden Bough has served the passing and the present generations of mythologists and folklorists well as a great compendium of mythic and anthropological fact. From its far-flung influence none can escape. It is a body of learning to which the searcher must return again and yet again.

E.J. PAYNE

Edward John Payne, in his History of the New World called America, a work of surprising erudition too little known, applied the anthropological conception of myth to the mythologies of Mexico and Peru, but although his reading on these subjects was wide and his treatment marked by care and insight, he does not appear to have been closely acquainted with the pinturas or manuscript remains of the Mexican peoples, a knowledge of which is essential to all students of the subject. Instead of specializing upon any one department of American aboriginal civilization, he took the whole of it for his province and applied the anthropological method to all the conditions of American life, social, linguistic, agricultural, and religious; and he produced a work truly monumental in spirit, not surpassed by any kindred effort of his generation, in spite of the defect mentioned above.

SALOMON REINACH

Salomon Reinach has done good service to the science of comparative religion in France. After a distinguished archæological career he interested himself in the study of religious science. In 1905 he began his Cultes, mythes, et religions[30] and in 1909 he published a general sketch of the history of religions under the title Orpheus. In his preface to Cultes, mythes, et religions M. Reinach makes some lively and amusing remarks concerning the ignorance in France of later developments of religious science. Speaking of new theories, he says: "As a matter of fact, I do not exactly know who made the discoveries. The names of Tylor, McLennan, Lang, Smith, Frazer, and Jevons suggest themselves; but the one thing certain is that it was not myself. Mine has been a lowlier part—to grasp the ideas of my betters, and to diffuse them as widely as I might, first in my lectures at the École du Louvre, then in the Académie des Inscriptions, and again in many popular and scientific reviews. In France, when I began my excursions into these fields, the whole subject was so absolutely a sealed book that M. Charles Richet had to ask me to explain the word totemism, before I dealt with that group of phenomena in the Revue Scientifique. At the Académie des Inscriptions in 1900 the only members who did not doubt my sanity when I read some lucubrations on the Biblical taboos and the totemism of the Celts were MM. Maspero and Hamy. The German scholars whom I saw about the same time, Mommsen among the rest, had never heard of a totem.[31] The taboos and totems of the Bible, a question underlying those alimentary interdictions which ignorance regards as hygienic precepts, brought the Jewish theologians into the lists. One of them dealt faithfully with me as an anti-Semite, an epithet already hurled at me by my distinguished friend Victor Bérard, because I had ventured to impugn, in the pages of the Mirage Oriental, the antiquity and omnipresence of Phœnician commerce. To-day the voice of ignorance is a little less heard in the land. Thanks to the diffusion of the English works which have inspired me, thanks to the labours of the lamented Marillier and the editors of the Année Sociologique—thanks perhaps, in some degree, to my own missionary efforts, which, with the ardour of the neophyte, I have carried into the very precincts of the popular universities—those who once kicked most obstinately against the pricks now acknowledge that the system of anthropological exegesis is 'the fashion,' and that 'something may be said for' totems and taboos."

DR F. B. JEVONS

Dr F. B. Jevons in his Introduction to the History of Religion avows himself a disciple of Lang so far as his views upon myth are concerned. He too believes that the religious feeling in myth is conspicuously absent, but that the consideration of myth cannot be excluded from the history of religion. He says (p. 250): "Myths are not like psalms or hymns, lyrical expressions of religious emotion; they are not like creeds or dogmas, statements of things which must be believed: they are narratives. They are not history, they are tales told about gods and heroes, and they all have two characteristics: on the one hand, they are to us obviously or demonstrably untrue and often irrational; on the other hand, they were to their first audience so reasonable as to appear truths which were self-evident." Some myths, he thinks, "explain nothing and point no moral; they are tales told for the sake of telling and repeated for the pleasure of hearing, like fairy-tales." What, then, he asks, is the difference between myths that 'explain' phenomena and those which obviously do not? He considers that totems aroused curiosity and necessitated explanations, and that when the beliefs were dead and forgotten the stories invented to account for them would appear no longer as reasons or explanations, but as statements of facts which occurred 'once upon a time.' These stories were often appropriated to the wrong persons, and we have also yet to learn why they were grouped together, a point Dr Jevons considers as of first-rate importance, because "they would not have survived if they had not been combined together. We cannot suppose that they were first dissevered from the beliefs on which they originally depended for their existence, and then were subsequently combined so as to obtain a renewed existence, because they would probably have perished in the interval. We must therefore suppose that they were combined into tales ere yet the beliefs or institutions which gave them their first lease of life had perished. This means that the various parts of one institution, for instance, must have had each its separate explanation, and that these explanations were combined into one whole, the unity of which corresponded to the unity of the institution," (P. 254.) These contentions are confirmed, Jevons thinks, by certain ceremonies obviously representing the details of certain myths. "They afford instances of myths which from the beginning were tales and not merely single incidents; a single rite might consist of a series of acts, each of which demanded its own explanation; and the unity of the rite might produce a unity of interest and action in the resulting myth." (P. 254.) Stories designed to explain phenomena would provide a groundwork for a rich embroidery of incidents. The person who could remember these and could tell them effectively would not have to seek an audience, and semi-consciously he might substitute for part of the story an analogous incident.[32] "Tales with a permanent human interest would easily spread beyond the limits of the original audience." Myth is not religion; it is not the source of religion, it is "one of the spheres of human activity in which religion may manifest itself, one of the departments of human reason which religion may penetrate, suffuse, and inspire." The religious consciousness rejected the repugnant elements of myth, and perhaps the whole primitive hypothesis upon which myth was based. "The result would be twofold: the imagination would be more and more excluded from the region of speculation which produced the ordinary myths of early peoples; and more and more restricted to the path of religious meditation." (P. 266.) These are all conclusions which we cannot admit. Myth is not any less religious in character because associated with an early instead of a later form of religion, or because it was discarded in later times! In an important passage Dr Jevons declares with a great deal of truth that: "The extraordinary notion that mythology is religion is the outcome of the erroneous and misleading practice of reading modern ideas into ancient religions. It is but one form of the fallacy that mythology was to the antique religions what dogma is to the modern—with the superadded fallacy that dogma is the source, instead of the expression, of religious conviction. Mythology is primitive science, primitive philosophy, an important constituent of primitive history, the source of primitive poetry, but it is not primitive religion. It is not necessarily or usually even religious. It is not the proper or even the ordinary vehicle for the expression of the religious spirit." Where the sensitiveness of the religious spirit "was great only those pieces of primitive science survived which were capable of being informed" by it.

THE RELIGIOUS INFLUENCE OF MYTH

Jevons' conception of the nature of myth, however, does not take into consideration that at least one class of myth—that which deals with the gods—has probably more influence upon the popular acceptance and spread of religious ideas of a primitive type than either dogma or ritual. Those myths which furnish accounts of the deeds and adventures of the gods are as much religion as are ritual or dogma. No religion can exist without an explanation of a god or the gods, their nature, their attitude toward men, and their divine environment; and such an explanation was myth. Although savage and primitive, myths furnished a suitable account of the gods to their primitive worshippers, whose habits they almost certainly reflected.

DR R. R. MARETT

Dr R. R. Marett, in an admirable and suggestive volume, The Threshold of Religion (1909), has, as we already know, distinguished between animism and the forms which preceded it. Regarding mythology proper and its "quality of religiousness," and speaking in connexion with religious observances, he says: "Meanwhile, whatever view be taken of the parts respectively played by animism, mythology, animatism, or what not, in investing these observances with meaning and colour, my main point is that the quality of religiousness attaches to them far less in virtue of any one of these ideal constructions, than in virtue of that basic feeling of awe which drives a man, ere he can think or theorize upon it, into personal relations with the supernatural."

Regarding 'explanatory' myths, Dr Marett says (p. 149): "What the learned know as 'ætiological myths' and juvenile readers of Mr Kipling as 'Just So Stories' undoubtedly tend to arise in connection with human institutions no less than in connection with the rest of the more perplexing or amazing facts and circumstances of life. It is the 'nature of man' (as it is of the child, the father of the man) to ask 'Why?' and further to accept any answer as more satisfactory than none at all. Again, it is sound method in dealing with myth as associated with ritual at the stage of rudimentary religion to assume that for the most part it is the ritual that generates the myth, and not the myth the ritual."[33]

THE EUROPEAN 'SKY-GOD'

Professor A.B. Cook of Cambridge has collected a wealth of material to prove the existence throughout the length and breadth of Europe of a sky-god worshipped by both Celt and Teuton; but he elevates this cult into something resembling a state mythology, and we have no record of any such state religion. Early Celtic and Teutonic religions must have been incipient only, and far from possessing any such organization and unity.

THE GRIMMS

Having concluded our review of the ideas and hypotheses of the great mythologists proper, we will glance at what has been said by the great students of folklore. Jakob Ludwig Karl Grimm (1785-1863) along with his brother Wilhelm Karl (1786-1859) published in 1816-1818 Deutsche Sagen, an analysis and criticism of the old German epic traditions, and in 1812-1815 Kinder- und Hausmärchen. Their first volume of the Eddaic songs of Iceland saw the light in 1815, and the Deutsche Mythologie in 1835. The last-named work traces the myths of Germany from a period as remote as is permitted by the evidence down to the time when they became merged in popular tradition. Folklore is indebted to the Grimms, who originally discerned its importance, but they did not in any way connect the stories themselves with custom or superstition. They were inimical to the allegorical method and decidedly trended toward the later position of Mannhardt and his school.

SIR G. L. GOMME

Few names are more distinguished in folklore than that of the late Sir George Laurence Gomme. His standpoint on myth is to be found in his able and liberal-minded treatise upon Folklore as an Historical Science, on p. 101 of which he says: "They [the mythologists] have entirely denied or ignored all history contained in the folk-tale, and they have proceeded on the assumption, the bald assumption not accompanied by any kind of proof, that the folk-tale contains nothing but the remnants of a once prevalent system of mythology.... It is not, however, upon the mistakes of other inquirers that the mythologists may rest a good claim for their own view. The Historia Britonum of Geoffrey of Monmouth disposes of neither the myths nor the history of the Celts. It shows myth in its secondary position, in the handling of those who would make it all history, just as now there are scholars who would make it all myth. In front of the legends attaching to persons and places is the history of these persons and places. Behind these legends lies the domain of the unattached and primitive folk-tale."

There should not be much doubt concerning which tales are of the nature of myth and those which enshrine historic fact. Does the tale bear a strong resemblance in more than one of its circumstances to any other tradition or group of traditions? If so, it should be a comparatively simple matter to judge to which group it belongs, although the student requires to be constantly on his guard. The transition from fact or surmise to myth, myth to pseudo-history, or from history to myth, and then perhaps to history again; from legend to history, from history to legend, or from folk-tale to history—these metamorphoses must be searched for diligently. Our 'test of recurrence' is not always sufficient, for occasionally myth will be seen to group with folklore and legend and vice versa.

On p. 125 of his admirable book Sir George says: "The traditional narrative, the myth, the folk-tale, or the legend, is not dependent upon the text in which it appears for the first time. That text as we have it was not written down by contemporary or nearly contemporary authority. Before it had become a written document it had lived long as oral tradition. In some cases the written document is itself centuries old, the record of some early chronicler or early writer who did not make the record for tradition's sake. In other cases the written document is quite modern, the record of a professed lover of tradition. This unequal method of recording tradition is the main source of the difficulty in the way of those who cannot accept tradition as a record of fact. In all cases the test of its value and the interpretation of its testimony are matters which need special study and examination before the exact value of each tradition is capable of being determined. The date when and the circumstances in which a tradition is first reduced to literary form are important factors in the evidence as to the credibility of the particular form in which the tradition is preserved; but they are not all the factors, nor do they of themselves afford better evidence when they are comparatively ancient than forms of much later date and of circumstances far different. It cannot be too often impressed upon the student of tradition that the tradition itself affords the chief if not the only sure evidence of its age, its origin, and its meaning; for the preservation of tradition is due to such varied influences that the mere fact of preservation or the method or particular date of preservation cannot be relied upon to give the necessary authority for the authenticity of the tradition. Tradition can never assume the position of written history, because it does not owe its origin, but only its preservation, to writing."

Dealing with the relations of myth to history, Sir George says (p. 128): "Because mythic tradition has been found to include many traditions which of late years have been claimed to belong to a definitely historical race of people, it must not be identified with history. This claim is based upon two facts, the presence of myth in the shape of the folk-tale and the preservation of much mythic tradition beyond the stage of thought to which it properly belongs by becoming attached to an historical event or series of events, or to an historical personage, and in this way carrying on its life into historic periods and among historic peoples. The first position has resulted in an appropriation of the folk-tale to the cause of the mythologists; the second position has hitherto resulted either in a disastrous appropriation of the entire tradition to mythology, or in a still more disastrous rejection both of the tradition and the historical event round which it clusters. Historians doubting the myth doubt too the history; mythologists doubting the history reject the myth from all consideration, and in this way much is lost to history which properly belongs to it, and something is lost to myth."

Sir George subscribes to Robertson Smith's statement that "Mythology was no essential part of ancient religion, for it had no sacred sanction and no binding force on the worshippers." Yet on the next page (p. 148) he says: "Myths constitute a part of the serious life of the people." He also speaks of myth (p. 149) as being told "in the hushed sanctity of a great wonder," of primitive myth being "preserved in a special manner and for religious purposes" (p. 150), and (on the same page) he alludes to its "sacredness." Yet it had "no sacred sanction and no binding force "!

MR SIDNEY HARTLAND

Mr Sidney Hartland in his Science of Fairy Tales (1890) has applied "the principles and methods which guide investigators into popular traditions to a few of the most remarkable stories embodying the fairy superstitions of the Celtic and Teutonic peoples." The unity of human imagination is pleaded for. "Man's imagination," writes Mr Hartland, "like every other known power, works by fixed laws, the existence and operation of which it is possible to trace; and it works upon the same material—the external universe, the mental and moral constitution of man, and his social relations. Hence diverse as may seem at first sight the results among the cultured Europeans and the debased Hottentots, the philosophical Hindoos and the Red Indians of the Far West, they present, on a close examination, features absolutely identical.... The incidents [of story-plots] ... are not merely alike; they are often indistinguishable." Further, the anthropological standpoint is upheld. In The Legend of Perseus (1894-1896) the author has attempted to show "the dependence of the folk-tale upon custom and superstition, and to determine the place of origin of one world-famous tale."

DR RENDEL HARRIS

Dr Rendel Harris of Manchester has in several works propounded mythological views of startling novelty, with a wealth of illustration and argument which do credit alike to his scholarship and his didactical skill. In his latest work, The Ascent of Olympus, which it is incumbent upon all students of myth to study, he explains the cults of Dionysus, Apollo, Artemis, and Aphrodite. In Dr Harris's view the cults of these gods are respectively cults of the ivy, the apple, the mugwort, and the mandrake, of which plants the deities in question were personifications. Early Greek religion is thus evolved from the witch-doctor's garden, and, a fortiori, Olympus itself is a later development of the hortus siccus of the medicine-man. I will not attempt to advance any criticism of Dr Harris's thesis in this place, as I freely confess that his iconoclastic conclusions stun me. He triumphs in argument, and I live in fear and trembling that in his next book he may prove that Hephæstus was evolved from a tenpenny nail, or Poseidon from a lobster, As he is strong, let us beg him to be merciful also, for if he further depreciates our old mythological stock, those of us who are professional mythologists will be forced to dispose of it and begin life over again as his apprentices.

As proof of his masterly presentment of the astounding conclusions he has advanced, I quote the following summing-up from his Ascent of Olympus (p. 57):

"Let us refresh our memory as to the method we pursued and the results which we obtained in the case of the cults of Dionysos and Apollo. It will be remembered that we started from the sanctity of the oak as the animistic repository of the thunder, and in that sense the dwelling-place of Zeus; it was assumed that the oak was taboo and all that belonged to it; that the woodpecker who nested in it or hammered at its bark was none other than Zeus himself, and it may turn out that Athena, who sprang from the head of the thunder-oak, was the owl that lived in one of its hollows. Even the bees who lived underneath its bark were almost divine animals, and had duties to perform to Zeus himself. The question having been raised as to the sanctity of the creepers upon the oak, it was easy to show that the ivy (with the smilax and the vine) was a sacred plant, and that it was the original cult-symbol of Dionysos, who thus appeared as a lesser Zeus projected from the ivy, just as Zeus himself, in one point of view, was a projection from the oak. Dionysos, whose thunder-birth could be established by the well-known Greek tradition concerning Semele and Zeus, was the ivy on the oak, and after that became an ivy fire-stick in the ritual for the making of fire. From Dionysos to Apollo was the next step: it was suggested in the first instance by the remarkable confraternity of the two gods in question. They were shown to exchange titles, to share sanctuaries, and to have remarkable cult-parallelisms, such as the chewing of the sacred laurel by the Pythian priestess, and the chewing of the sacred ivy by the Mænads: and since it was discovered that the Delphic laurel was a surrogate for a previously existing oak, it was natural to inquire whether in any way Apollo, as well as Dionysos, was linked to the life of Zeus through the life of the oak. The inquiry was very fruitful in results: the undoubted solar elements in the Apolline cult were shown to be capable of explanation by an identification of Apollo with the mistletoe, and it was found that Apollo was actually worshipped at one centre in Rhodes as the Mistletoe Apollo, just as Dionysos was worshipped as the Ivy Dionysos at Acharnai. Further inquiry led to the conclusion that the sanctity of the oak had been transferred by the mistletoe from the oak to the apple tree, and that the cult betrayed a close connection between the god and the apple-tree, as, for instance, in the bestowal of sacred apples from the god's own garden upon the winners of the Pythian games. In this way it came to be seen that Apollo was really the mistletoe upon the apple-tree for the greater part of the development of the cult, just as Dionysos was the ivy, not detached as some had imagined, but actually upon the oak-tree. It was next discovered that the garden at Delphi was a reproduction of another Apolline garden in the far north, among the Hyperboreans, the garden to which Boreas had carried off Orithyia, and to which (or to another adjacent garden) at a later date the sons of Asklepios were transferred for the purpose of medical training.... Apollo came from the North as a medicine-man, a herbalist, and brought his simples with him. His character of a god of healing was due, in the first instance, to the fact that the mistletoe, which he represented, was the All-heal of antiquity.... An attempt was then made to show that the very name of Apollo was in its early form Apellon, a loan-word from the North, disguising in the thinnest way his connection with the apple-tree. The apple had come into Greece from the North, perhaps from Teutonic peoples, just as it appears to have come into Western Italy from either Teutons or Celts, giving its name in the one case to the great god of healing, and in the other to the city of Abella in Campania, through the Celtic word Aball."

PROFESSOR ELLIOT SMITH

Professor George Elliot Smith, of University College, London, has brought to the problems of archæology a mental freshness and originality of outlook that have placed him in the front rank of the science in a surprisingly short space of time. He is the chief supporter of the theory that by slow degrees the civilization of ancient Egypt spread itself over the habitable globe, even to far America. His sledge-hammer logic and array of excellent if rather limited illustrations are capable of daunting the most doughty opponent. In his recent book, The Evolution of the Dragon, he probes as deeply into the basic mysteries of mythology as Dr Rendel Harris, of whose work he says: "Our genial friend has been cultivating his garden on the slopes of Olympus, and has been plucking the rich fruits of his ripe scholarship and nimble wit. At the same time, with rougher implements and cruder methods, I have been burrowing in the depths of the earth, trying to recover information concerning the habits and thoughts of mankind many centuries before Dionysus and Apollo and Artemis and Aphrodite were dreamt of. In the course of these subterranean gropings no one was more surprised than I was to discover that I was getting entangled in the roots of the same plants whose golden fruit Dr Rendel Harris was gathering from his Olympian heights. But the contrast in our respective points of view was perhaps responsible for the different appearance the growths assumed. To drop the metaphor, while he was searching for the origins of the deities a few centuries before the Christian era began, I was finding their more or less larval forms flourishing more than twenty centuries before the commencement of his story. For the gods and goddesses of his narrative were only the thinly disguised representatives of much more ancient deities decked out in the sumptuous habiliments of Greek culture."

The Evolution of the Dragon contains three essays, "Incense and Libations," "Dragons and Rain-gods," and "The Birth of Aphrodite," all of which are of the first importance to students of mythic science, as illustrating the possibility of tracing evolved divine figures to their primitive forms. The first essay begins with Professor Smith's well-known hypothesis that the reasons for the adoption of custom are not "simple and obvious," and are not inspired by reason, but by tradition. Man is not an inventive animal, and two independent inventions of any custom, story, or article of utility are improbable. The part played by the ancient Egyptians in the development of certain arts and beliefs was a paramount one. The necessity for obtaining wood, spices, and gums for the mummification of the dead forced them to make long voyages; and consequently they became the missionary carriers of the religious customs and ideas they had evolved at home, disseminating these throughout the Mediterranean world. Professor Smith then traces the early idea of godhead to the apotheosized ruler or king, whose posthumous benevolence rendered the land fertile. He believes that animism received its definite form in Egypt, where it was fostered by the art of mummification, and spread thence broadcast. The development of animism was enormously complex. It received its first great impetus from an early Egyptian king who believed that he could restore the breath of life to the dead by means of the magic wand. Then the burning of incense before a body or statue was intended to convey to it the warmth, the sweat, and the colours of life. Mummification, indeed, "laid the foundation of the ideas which subsequently were built up into a theory of the soul: in fact, it was intimately connected with the birth of all those ideals and aspirations which are now included in the conception of religious belief and ritual." The development of animism, too, brought the supernatural idea of the properties and functions of water, an idea which had previously sprung up in connexion with agriculture, into a more definite form. It was a factor in the development of the paraphernalia of the gods and of current popular belief, of the temple and its ritual, and led to a definite formulation of the conception of deities.

The second essay, "Dragons and Rain-gods," is the longest of the three. The dragon legend, says Professor Smith, is the history of the search for the elixir of life. "The original dragon was a beneficent creature, the personification of water, and was identified with kings and gods." "The dragon myth, however, did not really begin to develop until an ageing king refused to be slain, and called upon the Great Mother as the giver of life to rejuvenate him. Her only elixir was human blood; and to obtain it she was compelled to make a human sacrifice. Her murderous act led to her being compared and ultimately identified with a man-slaying lioness or a cobra. The story of the slaying of the dragon is a much-distorted rumour of this incident; and in the process of elaboration the incidents were subjected to every kind of interpretation, and also confusion with the legendary account of the conflict between Horus and Set." Thus the Great Mother became confused with Horus as the avenger of the god, and legendary complications caused Horus to be regarded as her son. But the infamy of her deeds of destruction seems to have led to her being further confused with the rebellious followers of Set. "Thus an evil dragon emerged from this blend of the attributes of the Great Mother and Set."

It seems to me that this theory is much too complicated and multiplies difficulties, as will be seen if we ponder for a moment the history of the Mother-goddess in Mexico. In Mexican myth the earth is represented as a monster, Cipactli, the pictures of which suggest a crocodile, a swordfish, or a dragon, probably a dragon, that great earth-monster common to the mythologies of many races and most conveniently called the 'earth-dragon,' The sign 'Cipactli' became the first in the calendar, and with it are connected the creative deities and the Earth-Mother or Great Mother. Circumstances exist which lend colour to the idea that, as in other countries, the Mexican Mother was at one time regarded as forming the earth, the soil. At the terrible and picturesque festival of the Xalaquia ('She who is clothed with the soil') a sacrificed virgin enriched and recruited with her blood the frame of the worn-out goddess, who had been, says Seler, "merged in the popular imagination with the all-nourisher, the all-begetter, the earth." Perhaps the best evidence that the Earth-Mother was evolved from the earth-dragon is the colossal stone figure which once towered above the entrance to the temple of Uitzilopochtli in Mexico and is now housed in the museum of that city. In this figure, as in a similar though less massive statue from Tehuacan, the characteristics of the Cipactli animal are reproduced in a wealth of scale, claw, and tusk. The direct descent of the Great Mother from the earth-animal, the personification of the earth-beast as a divine being, explains her savage wantonness and spares us the necessity for the elaborate genealogy with which Professor Elliot Smith so ably dowers her. He cannot allege that Egypt had no earth-dragon, because Apep is alluded to in the Book of Overthrowing Apep as a crocodile and a serpent, and that he was developed from the earth-beast seems fairly clear. He might also say that the Mexican myth was a distorted echo of the Egyptian. But the evolutionary process is too apparent in Mexican art to permit of such an hypothesis.

The last paper, "The Birth of Aphrodite," traces that goddess, not to the mandrake, as Dr Harris does, but to the cowrie-shell. The cowrie was an amulet employed to increase the fertility of women, and in time came to be personified in statuettes. Hence arose the idea of a Great Mother, a giver of health, life, and good luck. "These beliefs," says the Professor, "had taken shape long before any definite ideas had been formulated as to the physiology of animal reproduction, and before agriculture was practised." It is impossible to quote more from the work of this most suggestive and stimulating of all modern writers on mythology, and I can only here warn my readers against the unwisdom of leaving his essays unread.

The great ability with which Professor Elliot Smith presents his thesis is as obvious as the probability of most of his ideas, but it seems to me that he regards them too much as proven facts, and that he fails to recognize the insecurity of hypotheses based upon the present inadequate data of early religious manifestations. These essays are the outcome of a brilliant mind impatient of the lumbering slowness of the mythological machine, and they show a kind of prophetic gift which pierces beyond proof, and may be accepted as infallible, if uncanny, or rejected as over-adventurous. For my part, I feel that Professor Smith is right in by far the greater number of his beliefs, but I can scarcely admit that he supplies me with sufficient proof. Rather would I say that his book affects me as a work of genuine theoretical inspiration and insight, and not as a cold catalogue of established facts. Professor Smith is the Galileo of mythology—a science which has brought forth many personalities of ponderous erudition, but few geniuses. This does not mean that he is illogical, or that his papers are not prepared with adequate and even meticulous care. It means that he is looking out of a casement through which he alone has the right of vision, and, seeing things so plainly as he does, he expects those who do not possess similar gifts to participate in his clairvoyance. His proofs, if few, are always apposite. The reviewer might wish that each of the essays occupied three portly volumes instead of a demy octavo book of 234 pages, and included a much larger number of confirmatory illustrations.

RECAPITULATION

The space allotted to this chapter would be greatly exceeded if we alluded to the numerous collectors of myth who have enriched the science with their labours. So far we have limited ourselves to the work of the great theorists, and we will now recapitulate their ideas, and draw therefrom our conclusions, accepting only what we believe to be correct and 'safe,' and adding our own inferences and deductions. Summarized, these ideas are as follows:

(1) The anthropological school showed that the identity between Aryan and savage myth could not be explained upon a linguistic basis.

(2) Tylor laid stress upon the value of the comparison of myth and the 'test of recurrence.' He did not entirely discount philological evidence, but denied the large place claimed for allegory.

(3) He showed that myth displayed a regularity of development not to be accounted for by motiveless fancy, but by laws of formation.

(4) The promulgation of the animistic hypothesis by Tylor is a landmark in mythic science.

(5) Robertson Smith showed that myth takes the place of dogma in primitive religions.

(6) Lang demonstrated the unsoundness of the 'disease of language' theory.

He laid stress on the irrational element in myth;

Indicated the complexity of mythic development; Showed how the evolutionary theory may be applied to myth;

Pointed out that the persistence of myth was accounted for by religious conservatism;

Laid it down that the occurrence of identical myths may be accounted for by the universal prevalence of similar mental habits (this, however, will not account for long and intricate plots).

(7) Jevons points out the reflection of myth by ritual.

(8) The present writer believes:

(i) That myth is for the most part sacred in character,

(ii) That it is prior in origin to ritual and is not derived from it, except in a secondary sense,

(iii) That mythic conditions are capable of a more or less exact classification.

Having indicated our own attitude toward myth, we will now proceed to examine the manner in which the idea of the gods was evolved.

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[1] It follows that neither is this a sketch of the history of the science of folklore. The Greeks of Pausanias' day may have possessed the elements of a folklore. He flourished before the State recognition of Christianity, but Greek myth in his day was breaking down. In any case, such questions are foreign to our inquiry, which deals with myth as defined by us and with that alone. The great students of folklore are alluded to in this sketch for what they have written on myth, and for nothing else. The present condition of the science demands explicit statement in this respect, and this must be our excuse in making it.

[2] Iris, daughter of Thaumas and the ocean nymph Electra, was the personification of the rainbow and messenger of the Greek gods, especially of Zeus and Hera.

[3] Müller, A Scientific System of Mythology, 1838.

[4] Cow. A 'shelly-coat cow' was, in Scots parlance, a bogy. It is thought that the shells on such an animal are a reminiscence of the scale armour of the vikings, whose memory was a terror to the Scottish peasantry. To 'cow' is, of course, much the same as to 'bully.'

[5] Grimace.

[6] That is, "These shall surround the bier."

[7] Thus, according to Müller, the name Athene, unintelligible in its Greek form, at once becomes explicable when compared with the Sanskrit Ahana, 'the dawn.'

[8] His views will be found stated in Selected Essays and Lectures upon Language.

[9] See his Comparative Grammar, English translation by Eastwick (3rd ed.), 1862.

[10] See "The Lesson of Jupiter," Nineteenth Century for October 1885: "To understand the origin and meaning of the names of the Greek gods and to enter into the original intention of the fables told of each, we must take into account the collateral evidence supplied by Latin, German, Sanskrit, and Zend philology." See also Lectures on Language,2nd ser., p. 406.

[11] See his Nebelsagen (1879) and Das Räthsel der Sphinx (1889).

[12] Apart from its philological efforts, the work of Müller his disciples is of permanent value, and his critics undoubtedly did a disservice to mythological science when they condemned it root and branch. The training of no student of mythology can be complete if it lacks a consideration of Müller's works, which, of course, must be perused in the light of the comparative failure of his linguistic hypotheses.

[13] Lang in Ency. Brit., (11th ed.), art. "Mythology."

[14] Ibid.

[15] Modern Mythology, pp. 55, 63.

[16] Primitive Culture(London, 1871), p. 282.

[17] Primitive Culture(London, 1871), pp. 283, 284.

[18] Ibid., p. 284.

[19] Primitive Culture (London, 1871), p. 320.

[20] Primitive Culture(London, 1871), p. 320.

[21] Ibid., pp. 415, 416.

[22] This appears to the author a suitable term for those bodies of myth which deal exclusively with the lives and adventures of the gods, and differ therefore so strikingly from all other classes of myth.

[23] It seems to me that a small proportion only of myth as we know it can owe its origin to the intention of the males to conceal matters from the women and boys. Most written myth is certainly the work of priesthoods, and as it often accompanies ritual, the immobile character of the latter is a guarantee of its genuineness. Again, it frequently appears as pseudo-history, and could therefore scarcely be designed to screen anything more esoteric. The myths enacted in Hellenic mystery plays do not appear to have differed much in plot from the stories of popular acceptance, and the same may be said concerning those American myths which are danced out in the secrecy of male mystic societies.

[24] Extensive correspondence with students of myth has helped to convince me of the partial breakdown of Lang's argument.

[25] For example, on America, like Frazer, he bungles sadly, and seems to have betaken himself for information to the wrong authority in almost every instance, and especially when he desires to illustrate an argument.

[26] Lang's 'All-Father' deities forcibly suggest evolution from the old 'sky-god,' if, indeed, they were not that deity without much alteration. The 'Sky-Father' in opposition, or at least in contradistinction, to the 'Earth-Mother' was merely the sky personalized as a 'magnified non-natural man.' Let us enumerate his attributes, given by Lang in the Encyclopædia Britannica:

(1) His home is in the sky.
(2) He is the maker of things.
(3) Mankind are his disobedient progeny, whom he casts out of heaven.

This specification can allude to no type other than sky-gods, which are wholly 'animistic' in origin. If Lang had chanced to think of this resemblance himself, he would probably have been the first to admit the correctness of such a statement. His The Making of Religion bears proof of its obviousness on every page. The 'All-Father' idea certainly evolves from the personalization of the sky. He quotes the Zuñi Indian god Awonawilona as an 'All-Father'; Awonawilona is a Sky-Father pure and simple, as his myth shows; and practically all his other examples may be traced back in the same manner.

[27] Magic and Religion, pp. 207 sqq.

[28] See review by Lewis Farnell in the Quarterly Review for April 1915.

[29] The implication is frivolous and crude. I observe, as a specialist in Mexican mythology, that Sir James habitually and most unfortunately makes use of the wrong authorities to substantiate his claims when dealing with this province of tradition; but that a scholar of his standing would descend to such depths there is not a shadow of proof. The science of tradition at the present time is in much the same state as was that of chemistry in the hands of the medieval alchemists—i.e., a large degree of experiment must enter into its composition—and where all are beginners who dare cast the first stone, especially if it be against a man who has rendered such services to mythology and folklore as must be remembered with gratitude and even affection by all the workers in our common vineyard? Has he not taught us

"To hope, till hope creates
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates"?

I differ from him in many points toto cœlo; but is not endeavour the most precious thing in a new science? May we not say in mythology as in literature, Fax mentis incendium gloria? The very circumstance that a man carries such a torch as is borne by Sir James entitles him to our highest esteem, even if, as in my own case, we only partially agree with his notions, or almost wholly dissent from them, as Mr Farnell seems to do.

[30] English translation by Elizabeth Frost, London, 1912.

[31] This deals an effective blow to more than one Teutonic claim to priority in this field.

[32] We have shown above that the conservatism of the savage, like that of the child, would not permit this.

[33] It must of course be clear to the 'meanest intelligence' that it is quite possible for myths to be created to explain ritual, but such myths must, almost of necessity; be late in origin and can only arise when the original myth which gave rise to the ritualistic practice has been lost. For what reason, it may be asked, is ritual invented and originated? Surely it presupposes a divine being, and if it does, it creates a myth; unless, of course, ritual was originally a magical act, an attempt to use some occult force, such as mana. One can understand that in the latter circumstances a myth may ultimately arise from ritual, otherwise I am unable to comprehend the contention, so often made in works dealing with mythology, that ritual is prior to myth. Nor do I consider magical ritual 'religious' but pseudo-scientific in nature, as magic is invariably pseudo-scientific and not religious at all.

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[CHAPTER III]