[161] See the discussion of the hypothesis in Gruppe, Griechishen Kulte und Mythen, pp. 79-184.
[162] See Meillet, Introduction à l'étude comparative des langues indo-européennes, p. 119.
[163] Oldenberg, Die Religion des Vedas, pp. 59 ff.; Meillet, Le dieu Iranien Mythra, in Journal Asiatique, X, No. 1, July-August, 1907, pp. 143 ff.
[164] In this category are a large number of the maxims of popular wisdom.
[165] It is true that this argument does not touch those who see in religion a code (especially of hygiene) whose provisions, though placed under the sanction of imaginary beings, are nevertheless well founded. But we shall not delay to discuss a conception so insupportable, and which has, in fact, never been sustained in a systematic manner by persons somewhat informed upon the history of religions. It is difficult to see what good the terrible practices of the initiation bring to the health which they threaten; what good the dietetic restrictions, which generally deal with perfectly clean animals, have hygienically; how sacrifices, which take place far from a house, make it more solid, etc. Undoubtedly there are religious precepts which at the same time have a practical utility; but they are lost in the mass of others, and even the services which they render are frequently not without some drawbacks. If there is a religiously enforced cleanliness, there is also a religious filthiness which is derived from these same principles. The rule which orders a corpse to be carried away from the camp because it is the seat of a dreaded spirit is undoubtedly useful. But the same belief requires the relatives to anoint themselves with the liquids which issue from a corpse in putrefaction, because they are supposed to have exceptional virtues.—From this point of view, magic has served a great deal more than religion.
[166] Contributions to the Science of Mythology, I, pp. 68 f.
[167] Lectures on the Science of Language, II, p. 456 ff.; Physic. Rel., pp. 276 ff.—Also Bréal, Mélanges, p. 6, "To bring the necessary clarity into this question of the origin of mythology, it is necessary to distinguish carefully the gods, which are the immediate product of the human intelligence, from the fables, which are its indirect and involuntary product."
[168] Max Müller recognized this. See Physic. Rel., p. 132, and Comparative Mythology, p. 58. "The gods are nomina and not numina, names without being and not beings without name."
[169] It is true that Max Müller held that for the Greeks, "Zeus was, and remained, in spite of all mythological obscurations, the name of the Supreme Deity" (Science of Language, II, p. 478). We shall not dispute this assertion, though it is historically contestable; but in any case, this conception of Zeus could never have been more than a glimmer in the midst of all the other religious beliefs of the Greeks.
Besides this, in a later work, Max Müller went so far as to make even the notion of god in general the product of a wholly verbal process and thus of a mythological elaboration (Physic. Rel., p. 138).