It is the stage of mental development which is signalised by a remarkable fact in the history of language: viz., that an endless multitude of names, bestowed upon the phenomena and processes of nature, in virtue of various features of which there is a preponderating consciousness at the moment of perception, gradually lose their meaning; while some few features of the total phenomenon are retained, to represent all those particular factors and supply comprehensive general terms for their sum total. For example, the Sun has at first a countless number of designations. It is not merely that, in its various aspects, the Sun is treated as the subject of detached observation unrelated in thought to that of other aspects of the same Sun; but the very same aspect, on repeated notice, is regarded as something different every time, and is accordingly denoted by other names. In other words, borrowed from the terminology of modern psychology, no fusion (Verflechtung) has yet been effected. Long-continued observation of the same aspects gives consciousness of their identity under repetition, and makes possible the fusion of their ideas. Next, by a further advance in development, the psychological change emerges, through which the various features of the same phenomenon cease to be essential difference-marks in the idea, and, dropping into the background, give place to a general conception gained by their fusion, an aggregate of fusion (Verflechtungsmasse), the product of often-repeated fusion.[[105]] The effect on language of this psychological change is that, through its gradual operation, the meaning is lost from the great majority of those expressions which arose merely because the particular observations of the same aspect of a phenomenon, or the various features of the same phenomenal aggregate had not yet been brought into unity by the process of fusion or blending.
By the abandonment of the difference-marks, the sum total of all the aspects, now regarded as forming one unity, is given over to one single word, and a vast number of old designations, which stood in connexion with one particular aspect or one particular condition of observation, lose in the mind of the speaker all connexion with the physical phenomenon in question. The multiplicity of names becomes objectless, loses all psychological basis, and vanishes.[[106]] What vanishes, however, is only the consciousness of the connexion of the multifarious names with the physical phenomenon; in other words, the names cease in great part to be designations of the phenomena, yet remain in existence. But they have a very different value to the mind from their original one. They become Proper Names; and what the sentences in which these names figured as subjects and objects originally predicated of physical phenomena, they now say of persons and individuals. The transition is facilitated by the fact that the physical phenomena themselves, whose names they were in an earlier stage of intelligence, are conceived under the figure of human actions, as loving, fighting, persecuting, &c. We must here observe emphatically that from this process in the history of language the Semitic area was not excluded. In the course of the following expositions we shall have occasion to convince ourselves that mythological appellatives forfeited their appellative character just like those of the Aryan myths. The Hebrew said ‘he laughs,’ ‘he hides,’ ‘he trips up,’ ‘he increases,’ &c. in a strictly mythical sense; in later times the meaning of these assertions was forgotten, and a proper name took the place of each. What Max Müller says of Semitic speech, that ‘those who used the word were unable to forget its predicative meaning, and retained in most cases a distinct consciousness of its appellative power,’[[107]] is not true, at least of this portion of Semitism.
Now this is the very earliest step in the transformation of the myth. As we have seen, this transformation is conditioned only by a psychological operation, and is therefore common to every mythology. Some scholars are inclined to draw nothing that precedes this transformation into the domain of myths at all, and to say that these begin only when, as Max Müller says, the language (i.e. the living consciousness of the original signification of the multifarious names) dies. But we hold that there is every reason to regard the stage at which those expressions lived in the human mind with their original appellative sense, as one of the proper mythic stages. That event which Max Müller treats as the commencement of the development of the myth, indicates the first link in the long chain of transformations which make up the history of the myth. It is not a characteristic of the myth, that the speaker is no longer conscious of speaking of physical phenomena. As soon as ever he perceives physical phenomena as events in human life, he has at once made a myth; and every name by which he designates a physical phenomenon forms a myth. For if unintelligibility or obsoleteness of language were a condition of a myth’s existence, then there could be no myth when the Greek calls Hêlios the brother of Selênê, since both these names have been retained in their original sense, and the Greek knew that the former name meant Sun and the latter Moon, though of Hêraklês and Helenê he had no similar consciousness left. Similarly, it could not be a myth when the Roman said that Aurora opens the gates of the Sun and strews roses on his way, since every Roman knew that the name Aurora denoted the Dawn.
§ 2. It is easy to see that the first step in the formation of myths could not be a short and quickly passing stage. If it were so, the appellations of physical phenomena could not have become so firmly established as to prolong their existence even after a great majority of them had become linguistically meaningless, and to become objects of mythical transformation. The psychological process which brought about the identification of an object with itself must therefore have taken place late in the development of the human mind. Men had already expressed most various notions of the phenomena of nature and observed them in many phases, long before they attained to the power of identifying one such repeatedly occurring phenomenon with itself, notwithstanding the regularity of its appearance.
One other psychological consideration, however, demands our attention here—one among many; for a systematic presentation of all the psychological forces with which we have to reckon in investigating myths and the history of their growth belongs to a Philosophy of Mythology, which it is not our intention to give here.
Among the various categories, that of Space is the earliest to become an object of consciousness to the human soul, both in the genetic development of the individual mind and in that of the human race. The attachment of a notion to space is the earliest developed; indeed the notion of a thing without the notion of space is impossible. Even beasts distinguish things by their space. Hence L. Geiger correctly said that Language, the origin of which also marks the first phase of the power of thought, ‘springs from’ the organ of the discrimination of space, ‘the Eye and Light.’ With the category of Time it is otherwise. The discrimination of things in time is unfolded relatively later; it postulates a more delicate degree of observation. The notion of Space emanates from that sense, the use of which man acquires the earliest and the most easily of all except that of touch—the sense of Sight; the excitement of which also gives the first impulse to the formation of language. But the notion of Time demands more than a mere sensuous perception. We need not therefore be surprised if the notion of Space, both in the individual and in history, is older than that of Time, nor that, as language teaches, all the finer distinctions of opposite terms emanate from the notion of Space,[[108]] and the very distinctions of Time itself were originally conceived from the point of view of Space. To verify this, we only need to observe the expressions still in daily use, which can be applied to time, such as, before, after, thereafter, space of time, short or long time. The Semitic is very instructive on this point. The Hebrew shâm, originally used of place (there) is found applied to time (then); in Arabic these two significations are divided between thumma ‘then’ and thamma ‘there.’ Hebrew words, such as liphenê ‘before’ and acharê ‘after,’ ḳedem, ḳadmôn, ‘old, olden time,’ bring before our eyes a very clear view of the transition from local to temporal distinctions, when we take into consideration their original significations. The Arabic beyna yedeyy, or beyna eydî, is also especially instructive. This phrase signifies ‘between the hands,’ and is used very commonly for ‘before,’ of space. But even in early classical texts (e.g. in the Ḳorân) it passes over into the ‘before’ of time. ‘Between the hands of the Prophet,’ thus means either standing before him as to place, or preceding him in time. Now that which we meet thus at every step in the Semitic and Aryan, is found also in the third great stock of languages. The time-particles of the Anaric languages often go back to relations of space; and what the German Zeitraum ‘space of time,’ and the Arabic muddâ (properly ‘extension,’ but generally in the sense of a ‘period of time’) exemplify to us, we see also e.g. in the Finnish kausi, which is used to express a piece of time. It properly signifies a direction or way, in a local sense; and the related Esthonian word kaude is still used exclusively to denote local relations.[[109]]
In myths also we find the conception of Space and of motion in space predominant. A large group of names of the Dawn in the Aryan mythology is formed by composition of adjectives with εὐρυ and its etymological relatives, and yields variations on the notion ‘shining afar,’[[110]] always bearing witness to local extension and motion. And in the Hebrew myths a number of solar names designate the solar figures, as going, moving, &c.[[111]] Even in cases where rapid motion is spoken of, a great result of such motion is not treated as attained in a short time; but described rather by the space that has been passed through.
On the other hand, when we consider the notion of Time, and the question how far it is acknowledged in myths, we observe that at the earliest mythical stage the distinction of Time is only very feebly presented. We must demonstrate this at this place while treating of the method of mythology. The myth makes a distinction between the bright radiant sunny heaven and the dark heaven. Now as to this darkness, it is indifferent whether it is the darkness of night or that of the overclouded heaven by day. The myth notices only the phenomenon of the dark sky, darkness as a physical fact or state, considers only What is there? but does not distinguish the When?—the time in which this darkness occurs. Hence in the myth the nightly heaven and the stormy or cloudy heaven are synonymous, since it does not distinguish day and night as alternate periods of time, but only brightness and darkness as phenomena. Hence it comes that even in later poetry and language the notions of Rain and Night are so closely connected, that rain is more naturally thought of in union with night than with day; therefore it is said in Arabic, ‘more liberal than the rainy night’ (anda min al-leylâ al-mâṭirâ).[[112]] Not only the rain, but the Wind also, in contrast to the merry laughing sunshine, is conceived as closely connected with the night.[[113]] In the Mohammedan cosmogonic legend it is said that the rough Wind lives on the curtain of the Darkness.[[114]] Hence also we see that the myth does not distinguish between the Morning Glow and the Evening Glow, but denotes the phenomenon by itself, without caring whether it precedes or follows the night. In connexion with this stands the fact that, as Steinthal has recently briefly noted,[[115]] mythic thought did not attain to the category of Causality; for this category presupposes a clear consciousness of succession, or of one event following another in time. Only thus can we explain myths which speak of the Dawn now as the daughter, now as the mother of the Day. On the domain of language some phenomena in the semasiology of Arabic words can be explained from this fact of the development of conceptions, as e.g. when the lexicographers translate the verb safar II. IV. to ‘pasture early or late’: IV. V. ‘to come at the morning or evening glow’.[[116]] Except by the operation of the above-named psychological fact, the express combination of these two definitions of time in one word would seem to be impossible.
But the very fact just mentioned, that it is characteristic of mythical ideas to put one phenomenon into a family relation towards another, and to speak of mother, brother, son, daughter, &c., furnishes the first elements of and impulses towards the discrimination of Succession in time, though the discrimination itself may at the mythic stage not yet break forth into life. Phenomena occurring one after another or simultaneously are conceived in the light of the most primitive relations of the family; and when the myth-forming man speaks of father and child, the very use of these terms rouses and encourages in his mind a new category, that of Succession in time, or more definitely Causality.
Another point follows naturally from this, enabling us to fix the chronological position occupied by certain myths in relation to others. If in a myth we find the fact of the temporal succession of a phenomenon treated as important, or see that a following event is in its very name described as such in relation to what preceded it, then we can justly draw the conclusion that a myth of this form belongs to an advanced stage of development, and that in determining the time of its origin we must choose a later period than we should for myths in which no conscious notion of time is visible. We shall have occasion to insist on this inference when we come into the presence of such mythic expressions as Yiphtâch Jephthah, i.e. the ‘Opener,’ and Yaʿaḳobh Jacob, i.e. the ‘Follower.’