A Dutch Defender
The question of the precise attitude of Professor Tiele, the accomplished Gifford Lecturer in the University of Edinburgh (1897), is more important and more difficult. His remarks were made in 1885, in an essay on the Myth of Cronos, and were separately reprinted, in 1886, from the ‘Revue de l’Histoire des Religions,’ which I shall cite. Where they refer to myself they deal with Custom and Myth, not with Myth, Ritual, and Religion (1887). It seems best to quote, ipsissimis verbis, Mr. Max Müller’s comments on Professor Tiele’s remarks. He writes (i. viii.):
‘Let us proceed next to Holland. Professor Tiele, who had actually been claimed as an ally of the victorious army, declares:—“Je dois m’élever, au nom de la science mythologique et de l’exactitude . . . centre une méthode qui ne fait que glisser sur des problèmes de première importance.” (See further on, p. 35.)
‘And again:
‘“Ces braves gens qui, pour peu qu’ils aient lu un ou deux livres de mythologie et d’anthropologie, et un ou deux récits de voyages, ne manqueront pas de se mettre à comparer à tort et à travers, et pour tout résultat produiront la confusion.”’
Again (i. 35):
‘Besides Signer Canizzaro and Mr. Horatio Hale, the veteran among comparative ethnologists, Professor Tiele, in his Le Mythe de Kronos (1886), has very strongly protested against the downright misrepresentations of what I and my friends have really written.
‘Professor Tiele had been appealed to as an unimpeachable authority. He was even claimed as an ally by the ethnological students of customs and myths, but he strongly declined that honour (1. c., p. 31):-
‘“M. Lang m’a fait 1’honneur de me citer,” he writes, “comme un de ses alliés, et j’ai lieu de croire que M. Gaidoz en fait en quelque mesure autant. Ces messieurs n’ont point entièrement tort. Cependant je dois m’élever, au nom de la science mythologique et de 1’exactitude dont elle ne peut pas plus se passer que les autres sciences, contre une méthode qui ne fait que glisser sur des problèmes de première importance,” &c.
‘Speaking of the whole method followed by those who actually claimed to have founded a new school of mythology, he says (p. 21):—