Since the raison d’être of myths, as such, is a forgetfulness of the original sense of the words, we cannot hope to be able to explain all the mythological recitals; no one has more clearly stated the difficulty, nor expressed it with greater modesty, than he who has laid the most lasting foundation of comparative mythology. Grimm says: “I shall indeed interpret all that I can, but I cannot interpret all that I should like.”[49]
In examining these archives, which, if only on account of their antiquity, are very superior to any other evidence for our purpose, we learn that identification differs from comparison. It is only possible to identify two or more divinities by seeing if one name applies equally to all, and by showing that this name denotes the essence of each; this result is obtained when, for instance, we note a general resemblance between a god or a hero of the Veda, and a god or hero of Hesiod, and discover that though their names may be phonetically dissimilar, yet that they have one source. Uranus, in the language of Hesiod, is used as a name for the sky—“a firm place for the blessed gods”; and the poet says that Uranus covers everything, and that when he brings the night he is stretched out, everywhere embracing the earth. This sounds like a reproduction of the name of Varuna, which is derived from a root Var, to cover (the Sanscrit term varutra, overcoat, would prove this if need be). The name Uranus in the Greek apparently retains something of its primitive meaning, which is not the case with the name of Zeus and Apollo. Varuna and Uranus evidently both express the same mythological concept, that of the covering, enclosing sky; this may even be one of the most ancient discoveries of comparative mythology. In the same way we prove that Ushas, Eos, Daphne, Ahana, and Athene were five names of the dawn, and that they can be traced back to a time before Greek and Sanscrit were separated. Thus, whilst one legend becomes differentiated from another by its own peculiar form and attributes, the name of its original prototype remains etymologically the same, though taking varying forms amongst the various peoples who use the legend; it is in this immutable name that the continuity of ideas lies, which nothing obliterates, and which traverses the centuries, and connects the mythologies of countries as totally distinct as India, Greece, and Ireland. But we must remember that all that is taken for etymology is not always so; the explanations which Homer gives of the names of the divinities only proves that at his time the original meaning had been forgotten. To us who now know the true principles of mythology, it is clear that it represents a prehistoric period of language, and the light it throws on the times that followed, has the same importance with regard to the study of the human mind, that geology and paleontology have for the knowledge of the earth.
Sometimes we come upon difficulties of another kind when we seek to translate the language of the poets into our modern forms of thought and speech. In consequence of the absence of merely auxiliary words in mythological language, each word, whether noun or verb, had its full original power, it was heavy and unwieldy, it said more than it ought to say. Here is an example: Nyx (night), the mother of Moros (fate), of Ker (destruction), of Thanatos (death), of Hypnos (sleep), and of the Oneïroi (dreams), and these,—her progeny, Night is said, by the poet, to have borne without a father. She has also other children: Momos (blame), Oizys (woe), the Hesperides, which are the evening stars, Nemesis (vengeance), Apate (fraud), Philotes (lust), Geras (old age), and Eris (strife). Now let us use our modern expressions. “The stars are seen as the night approaches,” “we sleep, we dream, we die,” “we run into danger during night,” “nightly revels lead to strife, angry discussions, and woe,” “many nights bring old age, and at last death,” “an evil deed concealed at first by the darkness of night will at last be revealed by the day,” “night herself will be revenged on the criminal”; and we have translated the language of Hesiod, a language to a great extent understood by the people to whom it was addressed many hundreds of years ago, and it is made comprehensible to us by the addition of some auxiliary words. This is hardly mythological language, but rather a poetical and proverbial kind of expression known to all poets whether modern or ancient, and frequently to be found in the language of common people when it becomes proverbial.
“In Greece the mortal element, inherent in all gods, was eliminated to a great extent by the conception of heroes. Whatever was too human in the ancient legends told of Zeus and Apollo was transferred to so-called half gods or heroes, who were represented as the sons or favourites of the gods. The two-fold character of Herakles as a god and as a hero is acknowledged even by Herodotus, and some of his epithets would have been sufficient to indicate his solar and originally divine character. But in order to make some of the legends told of the solar deity possible or conceivable, it was necessary to represent Herakles as a more human being, and to make him rise to the seat of the immortals only after he had endured toils and sufferings incompatible with the dignity of an Olympian god.”[50] The divinities of a second and third order, who were sometimes solicited for special favours, were perhaps placed in the same category as some provincial or local saints, who were considered more accessible and more pitiful in certain places, just as some physicians make a practice of curing those ills only of which they had made a speciality.
There were also abstract divinities, representing certain virtues in the eyes of the people, which were highly esteemed and useful to possess; each of these qualities which were conceived separately, and considered in the superlative degree, were from that time raised to the rank of a divine person, thus altars and temples were dedicated to Courage, Strength, and Piety; Fame was likewise thus honoured. “Great Fame is never lost though scattered abroad,” said Hesiod, “it is in itself a divinity.”
The language of mythology was in use at a late period. History tells us that the Greek town of Cyrene in Libya was founded about the thirty-seventh Olympiad, the ruling race came from Thessaly; the foundation of the colony was due to the oracle of Apollo at Pytho. This simple historical fact has been thus rendered, from the habit of not recounting events as they happened. “The heroic maid Cyrene, who lived in Thessaly, was loved by Apollo, and carried off to Libya.”
The question has been often asked, what can be the origin of the fables which are identical in character and form, whether we find them on Indian, Greek, Italian, Persian, Slavonic, Celtic, or Teutonic soil. Was there a period of temporary insanity, through which the human mind had to pass, and was it a madness identically the same in the south of India and in the north of Ireland? The necessity of solving this problem became more imperative when collections of these ancient traditions were brought from countries which formerly were almost unknown to us; incredible tales came from all parts, from amongst the Hottentots, the Patagonians, Zulus, Esquimaux, and Mongols; in all cases we were able to recognise the fables with which we were already so well acquainted, from having seen them in Aryan literature. When Max Müller first published his essays on the Greek myths, the mythologists acknowledged generally that it was very natural he should devote so much time to the explanation of the Greek legends, since these same stories had been universally found in all parts of the globe, from the one pole to the other; stories of men and women turned into trees, trees transformed into men, men behaving as animals, animals talking as if they were men, men swallowed by gods and brought up again whole, as were the children of Kronos; in all places the same adventures were told of the sun and moon, also swallowed, but the swallower not known. The Greek myths—so it was asserted by the learned who did not care to abandon the old paths—form only one page of that vast mythology created by the disordered imagination of nations in their infancy; the epidemic was general, and it is useless to seek for a definite or peculiar meaning in such and such a local myth.
Nevertheless, in presence of these striking likenesses, impartial and clear-sighted science recognised that there must be something in the human mind that of necessity tended to mythology, nay, that there must be some reason in all the unreason that goes by the name of myth. That “something” Max Müller discovered to be language, in its natural progress from roots to words, up to definite and special names. Mythology has now been acknowledged to be an inevitable phase in the growth of language and thought; a form of expression which changes non-personal beings into personal, and all relationships into actions; it is a mental phenomenon so peculiar that it would be difficult to avoid the admission that it emanated from a distinct stratum, it is metaphoric language and thought; and it is the duty of the geologist of language to establish the authenticity of this epoch of organic life in humanity, which is contemporaneous with the most ancient forms of language.
If Hegel compares the discovery of the common origin of Greek and Sanscrit to that of a new world, the same may be said with regard to the common origin of all the mythologies, for already the science of Comparative Mythology has risen to the same importance as Comparative Philology.
The supposition that grammatical gender of nouns must necessarily be the cause of personification, and produce myths which had no previous existence at the time when this denotation of sex did not yet exist, has been proved incorrect. But the following fact, which concerns language more than mythology, is not so evident at first sight, viz., that however the various languages may differ externally, and however they may lack gender, yet they have without exception what is analogous to it, and takes its place; this is a system of fundamental classification to which all equally submit, and which each language supplies; the result is that at the foundation of thought common to all humanity, certain forms are found answering the purpose of gender. Each myth and each legend was at first the intelligible expression of an intelligible thought, and as the thought contained in each recital must evidently be the same wherever there were men to repeat it, the science of Comparative Mythology seeks to place its hand on the expression which best renders this one and the selfsame thought, under different aspects.