CHAPTER V.
THE MYTH AND THE MYTHICAL CYCLES.
Returning again to the definition of the elemental religious sentiment—“a Wish whose fruition depends upon unknown power”—it enables us to class all those notions, opinions and narratives, which constitute mythologies, creeds and dogmas, as theories respecting the nature and action of the unknown power. Of course they are not recognized as theories. They arise unconsciously or are received by tradition, oral or written, and always come with the stamp of divinity through inspiration and revelation. None but a god can tell the secrets of the gods.
Therefore they are the most sacred of all things, and they partake of the holiness and immutability which belong to the unknown power itself. To misplace a vowel point in copying the sacred books was esteemed a sin by the Rabbis, and a pious Mussulman will not employ the same pen to copy a verse of the Koran and an ordinary letter. There are many Christians who suppose the saying: “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My Words shall not pass away,” has reference to the words of the Old and New Testament. “What shall remain to us,” asked Ananda, the disciple of Buddha, “when thou shalt have gone hence into Nirvana?” “My Word (dharma),” replied the Master. Names thus came to be as holy as the objects to which they referred. So sacred was that of Jehovah to the Israelites that its original sound was finally lost. Such views are consistent enough to the Buddhist, who, assuming all existence to be but imaginary, justly infers that the name is full as much as the object.
The science of mythology has made long strides in the last half century. It has left far behind it the old euphemeristic view that the myth is a distorted historical tradition, as well as the theories not long since in vogue, that it was a system of natural philosophy, a device of shrewd rulers, or as Bacon thought, a series of “instructive fables.” The primitive form of the myth is now recognized to be made up from the notions which man gains of the manifestations of force in external nature, in their supposed relations to himself. In technical language it may be defined as the apperception of man and nature under synthetic conceptions.[156-1]
This primitive form undergoes numerous changes, to trace and illustrate which, has been the special task assumed by the many recent writers on mythology. In some instances these changes are owing to the blending of the myth with traditions of facts, forming a quasi-historical narrative, the saga; in others, elaborated by a poetic fancy and enriched by the imagination, it becomes a fairy tale, the märchen. Again, the myth being a product of creative thought, existing in words only, as language changes, it alters through forgetfulness of the earlier meanings of words, through similarities in sounds deceiving the ear, or through a confusion of the literal with the metaphorical signification of the same word. The character of languages also favors or retards such changes, pliable and easily modified ones, such as those of the American Indians, and in a less degree those of the Aryan nations, favoring a developed mythology, while rigid and monosyllabic ones, as the Chinese and Semitic types, offer fewer facilities to such variations. Furthermore, tribal or national history, the peculiar difficulties which retard the growth of a community, and the geographical and climatic character of its surroundings, give prominence to certain features in its mythology, and to the absence of others. Myths originally diverse are blended, either unconsciously, as that of the Roman Saturn with the Greek Cronus; or consciously, as when the medieval missionaries transferred the deeds of the German gods to Christian saints. Lastly, the prevailing temperament of a nation, its psychology, gives a strong color to its mythical conceptions, and imprints upon them the national peculiarities.
The judicious student of mythology must carefully weigh all these formative agents, and assign each its value. They are all present in every mythology, but in varying force. His object is accomplished when he can point out the causal relation between the various features of a myth and these governing agencies.
Such is the science of mythology. The philosophy of mythology undertakes to set forth the unities of form which exist in various myths, and putting aside whatever of this uniformity is explainable historically, proposes to illustrate from what remains the intellectual need myths were unconsciously framed to gratify, to measure their success in this attempt, and if they have not been wholly successful, to point out why and in what respect they have failed. In a study preliminary to the present one, I have attempted to apply the rules of mythological science to the limited area of the native American race; in the present chapter I shall deal mainly with the philosophy of mythology.
The objection may be urged at starting that there is no such unity of form in myths as the philosophy of mythology assumes; that if it appears, it is always explainable historically.
A little investigation sets this objection aside. Certain features must be common to all myths. A divinity must appear in them and his doings with men must be recorded. A reasonable being can hardly think at all without asking himself, “Whence come I, my fellows, and these things which I see? And what will become of us all?” So some myth is sure to be created at an early stage of thought which the parent can tell the child, the wise man his disciple, containing responses to such questions.
But this reasoning from probability is needless, for the similarity of mythical tales in very distant nations, where no hypothesis of ancient intercourse is justified, is one of the best ascertained and most striking discoveries of modern mythological investigation.[159-1] The general character of “solar myths” is familiar to most readers, and the persistency with which they have been applied to the explanation of generally received historical facts, as well as to the familiar fairy tales of childhood, has been pushed so far as to become the subject of satire and caricature. The myths of the Dawn have been so frequently brought to public notice in the popular writings of Professor Max Müller, that their general distribution may be taken as well known. The same may be said of the storm myths. Wilhelm von Humboldt, who thought deeply on the religious nature of man, said early in this century: “Wholly similar myths can very readily arise in different localities, each independent of the others.”[160-1]