[131] “Quoniam antiquitas proxime accedit ad deos.”—De Legibus, ii. 11.
[132] The adverse decision, in the matter of the ceremonies, did not, I apprehend, touch the question we are now considering, albeit the ceremonies had reference to deceased ancestors. This will be apparent, I think, from consideration of the grounds upon which the question was debated. The Jesuits relied upon the sense in which the ceremonies were regarded by the Mandarins and literary men whom they consulted, whilst their opponents supported their arguments by reference to the popular notions and the superstitious practices introduced by the Bonzes. (Vide Cretineau Joly’s “Hist. de la Com. de Jesus,” vol. v. chap. i.)
[133] “Notwithstanding his stature, beauty, hand, and voice, which constitute, taken together, a proud appearance, it seems as if Mars had stood lower in the mind of Homer than any Olympian deity who takes part in the Trojan war, except Venus only.”—Gladstone’s “Homer,” ii. 225.
[134] Vide infra, next [chap. ix].
[135] Mr Cox (“Mythology,” p. xiv.) says—“Mythology, as we call it now, is simply a collection of the sayings by which men, once upon a time, described whatever they saw or heard in the countries where they lived. This key, which has unlocked almost all the secrets of mythology, was placed in our hands by Professor Max Müller, who has done more than all other writers to bring out the exquisite and touching poetry which underlies those ancient legends. He has shown us that in this, their first shape, these sayings were all perfectly natural, and marvellously beautiful and true. We see the lovely evening twilight die out, &c.... They said that the beautiful Eurydice,” &c. (vide infra, [p. 173]). It would appear, however, from Mr Cox’s more extended work, “The Mythology of the Aryan Nations,” that the sayings of mankind in the mythic period did not extend to speculations as to their origin and destiny, or embrace the facts of their history, or the deeds of their ancestors, but that their whole converse was upon the sun and moon, and the phenomena of the outward world.
[136] Mr Max Müller makes the distinction between “primitive or organic legends;” (and it is to these I wish to limit the discussion) “and the second, those which were imported in later times from one literature to another.... The former represents one common ancient stratum of language and thought reaching from India to Europe; the latter consist of boulders of various strata carried along by natural and artificial means from one country to another;” (ii. 245).
It is clear that Mr Max Müller looks for harmony in his system—“We naturally look back to the scenes on which the curtain of the past has fallen, for we believe that there ought to be one thought pervading the whole drama of mankind. And here history steps in, and gives us the thread which connects the present with the past;” (p. 7). Why it was that harmony was not attained seems to be disclosed, if we read the passage in our sense and with a certain transposition of parts, at p. 3—“There were at Athens then, as there have been at all times and in all countries, men who had no sense for the miraculous and supernatural, and who, without having the moral courage to deny altogether what they could not bring themselves to believe, endeavoured to find some plausible explanation by which the sacred legends which tradition had handed down to them, and which had been hallowed by religious observances, and sanctioned by the authority of the law, might be brought into harmony with the dictates of reason and the laws of nature.” (Compare with infra, [p. 351], Maine.)
[137] Mr Max Müller, in his essay on “Semitic Monotheism,” when opposing M. Renan’s view that the monotheism of the Semitic race was instinctive, seems to say this still more explicitly—“He thunders and Dyaus thunders became synonymous expressions; and by the mere habit of speech He became Dyaus and Dyaus became He;” (“Chips,” i. 358). “At first the names of God, &c., were honest attempts at expressing or representing an idea which could never find adequate expression or representation.... If the Greeks had remembered that Zeus was but a name or symbol of the Deity, there would have been no more harm in calling God by that name than by any other;” (359). It must be remembered that after the name of “Zeus,” or “Dyaus,” = sky, had been adopted, they still retained the conception of the Divine nature and personality, as is evidenced in the words of the oracle of Dodona—“Ζεùς ἦν, Ζευς ἐστíν, Ζευς ἔσσεται ὦ μεγαλε Ζευ,—He was, He is, He will be, O great Zeus!;”
Also (ii. 15) in the Orphic lines—
“Zeus is the beginning, Zeus the middle;