Chips from a German Workshop, Volume 5 / Miscellaneous Later Essays

by F. Max Müller

To those who look upon mythology as an ancient form of religion, such freedom of language as is here used by Xenophanes and Plato, must seem startling. If the Iliad were really the Bible of the Greeks, as it has not infrequently been called, such violent invectives would have been impossible. For let us bear in mind that Xenophanes, though he boldly denied the existence of all the mythological deities, and declared his belief in One God, “neither in form nor in thought like unto mortals,”[22] was not therefore considered a heretic. He never suffered for uttering his honest convictions: on the contrary, as far as we know, he was honored by the people among whom he lived and taught. Nor was Plato ever punished on account of his unbelief, and though he, as well as his master, Sokrates, became obnoxious to the dominant party at Athens, this was due to political far more than to theological motives. At all events, Plato, the pupil, the friend, the apologist of Sokrates, was allowed to teach at Athens to the end of his life, and few men commanded greater respect in the best ranks of Greek society.

But, although mythology was not religion in our sense of the word, and although the Iliad certainly never enjoyed among Greeks the authority either of the Bible, or even of the Veda among the Brahmans, or the Zend Avesta among the Parsis, yet I would not deny altogether that in a certain sense the mythology of the Greeks belonged to their religion. We must only be on our guard, here as everywhere else, against the misleading influence of words. The word [pg 062] Religion has, like most words, had its history; it has grown and changed with each century, and it cannot, therefore, have meant with the Greeks and Brahmans what it means with us. Religions have sometimes been divided into national or traditional, as distinguished from individual or statutable religion. The former are, like languages, home-grown, autochthonic, without an historical beginning, generally without any recognized founder, or even an authorized code; the latter have been founded by historical persons, generally in antagonism to traditional systems, and they always rest on the authority of a written code. I do not consider this division as very useful[23] for a scientific study of religion, because in many cases it is extremely difficult, and sometimes impossible, to draw a sharp line of demarcation, and to determine whether a given religion should be considered as the work of one man, or as the combined work of those who came before him, who lived with him, nay, even of those who came after him. For our present purpose, however, for showing at once the salient difference between what the Greeks and what we ourselves should mean by Religion, this division is very serviceable. The Greek religion was clearly a national and traditional religion, and, as such, it shared both the advantages and disadvantages of this form of religious belief; the Christian religion is an historical and, to a great extent, an individual religion, and it possesses the advantage of an authorized code and of a settled system of faith. Let it not be supposed, however, that between traditional and individual religions the advantages are all on one, the disadvantages on the other side. As long as the immemorial religions of [pg 063] the different branches of the human race remained in their natural state, and were not pressed into the service of political parties or an ambitious priesthood, they allowed great freedom of thought and a healthy growth of real piety, and they were seldom disgraced by an intolerant or persecuting spirit. They were generally either honestly believed, or, as we have just seen, honestly attacked, and a high tone of intellectual morality was preserved, untainted by hypocrisy, equivocation, or unreasoning dogmatism. The marvellous development of philosophy in Greece, particularly in ancient Greece, was chiefly due, I believe, to the absence of an established religion and an influential priesthood; and it is impossible to overrate the blessing which the fresh, pure, invigorating, and elevating air of that ancient Greek philosophy has conferred on all ages, not excepting our own. I shudder at the thought of what the world would have been without Plato and Aristotle, and I tremble at the idea that the youth of the future should ever be deprived of the teaching and the example of these true prophets of the absolute freedom of thought. Unfortunately, we know but little of the earliest fathers of Greek philosophy; we have but fragments, and those not always trustworthy, nor easily intelligible, of what they taught on the highest questions that can stir the heart of man. We have been accustomed to call the oracular sayings of men like Thales, Pythagoros, Xenophanes, or Herakleitos, philosophy, but there was in them as much of religion as in the songs of Homer and Hesiod. Homer and Hesiod were great powers, but their poems were not the only feeders of the religious life of Greece. The stream of ancient wisdom and philosophy flowed parallel with [pg 064] the stream of legend and poetry; and both were meant to support the religious cravings of the soul. We have only to attend without prejudice to the utterances of these ancient prophets, such as Xenophanes and Herakleitos, in order to convince ourselves that these men spoke with authority to the people,[24] that they considered themselves the equals of Homer and Hesiod, nay, their betters, and in no way fettered by the popular legends about gods and goddesses. While modern religions assume in general a hostile attitude towards philosophy, ancient religions have either included philosophy as an integral part, or they have at least tolerated its growth in the very precincts of their temples.

After we have thus seen what limitations we must place on the meaning of the word Religion, if we call mythology the religion of the ancient world, we may now advance another step.

We have glanced at the principal interpretations which have been proposed by the ancients themselves of the original purpose and meaning of mythology. But there is one question which none, either of the ancient or of the modern interpreters of mythology, has answered, or even asked, and on which, nevertheless, the whole problem of mythology seems to turn. If mythology is history changed into fable, why was it so changed? If it is fable represented as history, why were such fables invented? If it contains precepts of moral philosophy, whence their immoral disguise? If it is a picture of the great forms and forces of nature, the same question still returns, why were [pg 065] these forms and forces represented as heroes and heroines, as nymphs and shepherds, as gods and goddesses? It is easy enough to call the sun a god, or the dawn a goddess, after these predicates have once been framed. But how were these predicates framed? How did people come to know of gods and goddesses, heroes and nymphs, and what meaning did they originally connect with these terms? In fact, the real question which a philosophy of mythology has to answer is this—Is the whole of mythology an invention, the fanciful poetry of a Homer or Hesiod, or is it a growth? Or, to speak more definitely, Was mythology a mere accident, or was it inevitable? Was it only a false step, or was it a step that could not have been left out in the historical progress of the human mind?

The study of the history of language, which is only a part of the study of the history of thought, has enabled us to give a decisive answer to this question. Mythology is inevitable, it is natural, it is an inherent necessity of language, if we recognize in language the outward form and manifestation of thought: it is, in fact, the dark shadow which language throws on thought, and which can never disappear till language becomes altogether commensurate with thought, which it never will. Mythology, no doubt, breaks out more fiercely during the early periods of the history of human thought, but it never disappears altogether. Depend upon it, there is mythology now as there was in the time of Homer, only we do not perceive it, because we ourselves live in the very shadow of it, and because we all shrink from the full meridian light of truth. We are ready enough to see that if the ancients called their kings and heroes Διογενεῖς, [pg 066] sprung of Zeus, that expression, intended originally to convey the highest praise which man can bestow on man, was apt to lapse into mythology. We easily perceive how such a conception, compatible in its origin with the highest reverence for the gods, led almost inevitably to the growth of fables, which transferred to divine beings the incidents of human paternity and sonship. But we are not so ready to see that it is our fate, too, to move in allegories which illustrate things intellectual by visions exhibited to the fancy. In our religion, too, the conceptions of paternity and sonship have not always been free from all that is human, nor are we always aware that nearly every note that belongs to human paternity and sonship must be taken out of these terms, before they can be pronounced safe against mythological infection. Papal decisions on immaculate conception are of no avail against that mythology. The mind must become immaculate and rise superior to itself; or it must close its eyes and shut its lips in the presence of the Divine.

If then we want to understand mythology, in the ordinary and restricted sense of the word, we must discover the larger circle of mental phenomena to which it belongs. Greek mythology, is but a small segment of mythology; the religious mythologies of all the races of mankind are again but a small segment of mythology. Mythology, in the highest sense, is the power exercised by language on thought in every possible sphere of mental activity; and I do not hesitate to call the whole history of philosophy, from Thales down to Hegel, an uninterrupted battle against mythology, a constant protest of thought against language. This will require some explanation.

Ever since the time of Wilhelm von Humboldt, all who have seriously grappled with the highest problems of the Science of Language have come to the conviction that thought and language are inseparable, that language is as impossible without thought as thought is without language; that they stand to each other somewhat like soul and body, like power and function, like substance and form. The objections which have been raised against this view arise generally from a mere misunderstanding. If we speak of language as the outward realization of thought, we do not mean language as deposited in a dictionary, or sketched in a grammar; we mean language as an act, language as being spoken, language as living and dying with every word that is uttered. We might perhaps call this speech, as distinguished from language.

Secondly, though if we speak of language, we mean chiefly phonetic articulate language, we do not exclude the less perfect symbols of thought, such as gestures, signs, or pictures. They, too, are language in a certain sense, and they must be included in language before we are justified in saying that discursive thought can be realized in language only. One instance will make this clear. We hold that we cannot think without language. But can we not count without language? We certainly can. We can form the conception of three without any spoken word, by simply holding up three fingers. In the same manner, the hand might stand for five, both hands for ten, hands and feet for twenty.[25] This is how people who possessed no organs of speech would speak; this is how the deaf and dumb do speak. Three fingers [pg 068] are as good as three strokes, three strokes are as good as three clicks of the tongue, three clicks of the tongue are as good as the sound three, or trois, or drei, or shalosh in Hebrew, or san in Chinese. All these are signs, more or less perfect, but being signs, they fall under the category of language; and all we maintain is, that without some kind of sign, discursive thought is impossible, and that in that sense, language, or λόγος, is the only possible realization of human thought.

Another very common misunderstanding is this: people imagine that, if it be impossible to think, except in language, language and thought must be one and the same thing. But a true philosophy of language leads to the very opposite result. Every philosopher would say that matter cannot exist without form, nor form without matter, but no philosopher would say that therefore it is impossible to distinguish between form and matter. In the same way, though we maintain that thought cannot exist without language nor language without thought, we do distinguish between thought and language, between the inward and the outward λόγος, between the substance and the form. Nay, we go a step beyond. We admit that language necessarily reacts on thought, and we see in this reaction, in this refraction of the rays of language, the real solution of the old riddle of mythology.

You will now see why these somewhat abstruse disquisitions were necessary for our immediate purpose, and I can promise those who have hitherto followed me on this rather barren and rugged track, that they will now be able to rest, and command, from the point of view which we have reached, the whole panorama of the mythology of the human mind.