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Witli 13 Illustratious by Selwyn Image. Crown Svo. 6s. THE WOELD'S DESIEE. By . H. Eider Haggard and Anuuew Lang. W itli 27 Illustratious. Crown Svo. 3s. 6(/. LONGMANS, GEEEN, & CO., 39 Paternoster Eow, London New York and Bombay. MODERN MYTHOLOGY BY ANDEEW ]r.ANG M.A., LL.D. St Andrews HONOK.VRY FELLOW OF MERTON COLLEGE, OXFORD SOMETIME GIFFOBD LECTURER IN THE UNHTIRSITY OF ST ANDREWS ^ OF THE UNIVERSITY LONGMANS, GEEEN, AND CO. 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON NEW YORK AND BOMBAY 1897 All rights reserved ■\ 'BL3IC ^■■^t DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OP JOHN FEEGUS McLENNAN INTEODUCTION It may well be doubted whether works of controversy serve any useful purpose. ' On an opponent,' as Mr. Matthew Arnold said, ' one never does make any impression,' though one may hope that controversy sometimes illuminates a topic in the eyes of impartial readers. The pages which follow cannot but seem wandering and desultory, for they are a reply to a book, Mr. Max MuUer's Contributions to the Science of Mythology, in which the attack is of a skirmishing character. Throughout more than eight hundred pages the learned author keeps up an irregular fire at the ideas and methods of the anthropological school of mythologists. The reply must follow the lines of attack. Criticism cannot dictate to an author how he shall write his own book. Yet anthropologists and folk-lorists, ' agriologists' and ' Hottentotic ' students, must regret that Mr. Max Mliller did not state their V general theory, as he understands it, fully and once for all. Adversaries rarely succeed in quite under- standing each other ; but had Mr. Max Mliller made such a statement, we could have cleared up anything in our position which might seem to him obscure. Vlll MODERN MYTHOLOGY y Our system is but one aspect of the theory oi ^\ devolution, or is but the appHcation of that theory to the topic of mythology. The archaeologist studies human life in its material remains ; he tracks progress (and occasional degeneration) from the rudely chipped flints in the ancient gravel beds^ to the polished stone weapon, and thence to the ages of bronze and iron. He is guided by material ' survivals ' — ancient arms, implements, and ornaments. The student of Institu- tions has a similar method. He finds his relics of the uncivilised past in agricultural usages, in archaic methods of allolTnent of land, in odd marriage customs, things rudimentary — fossil relics, as it were, of an early social and political condition. The archa3ologist and the student of Institutions compare these relics, material or customary, with the weapons, pottery, implements, or again with the habitual law and usage of existing savage or barbaric races, and demonstrate that our weapons and tools, and our laws and manners, have been slowly evolved out of ' lower conditions, even out of savage conditions. The anthropological method in mythology is the same. In civilised religion and myth we find rudimentary survivals, fossils of rite and creed, ideas absolutely incongruous with the environing morality, philosophy, and science of Greece and India. Parallels I to these things, so out of keeping with civilisation, Iwe recognise in the creeds and rites of the lower 'aces, even of cannibals ; but there the creeds and tites are not incongruous with their environment of inowledge and culture. There they are as natural, and inevitable as the flint-headed spear or marriage INTRODUCTION IX Iby capture. We argue, therefore, that rehgioiis and , miythical faiths and rituals which, among Greeks 1 and Indians, are inexphcably incongruous have Uved on from an age in which they were natural and inevitable, an age of savagery. That is our general position, and it would have been a benefit to us if Mr. Max Mliller had stated it in his own luminous way, if he wished to oppose us, and had sliown us wliere and how it fails to meet the requirements of scientific method. In place of doing this once for all, he often assails our evidence, yet never notices the defences of our evidence, which our school has been offering for over a hundred years. He attacks the excesses of which some sweet anthropological enthusiasts have been guilty or may be guilty, such as seeing totems wherever they find beasts in ancient religion, myth, or art. He asks for definitions (as of totemism), but never, I think, alludes to the authoritative definitions by Mr. McLennan and Mr. Frazer. He assails the theory of fetishism as if it stood now where De Brosses left it in a purely pioneer work — or, rather, where he understands De Brosses to have left i(. One might as well attack the atomic theory where Lucretius left it, or the theory of evolution where it was left by the elder Darwin. Thus Mr. Max Mliller really never comes to grips \ with his opponents, and his large volumes shine rather in erudition and style than in method and S3'stem. Anyone who attempts a reply must neces- / sarily follow Mr. Max Mliller up and down, collect- ( ing his scattered remarks on this or that point at vJ X jiODERN MYTHOLOGY issue, Hence my reply, much against my will, must seem desultory and rambling. But I have endeavoured to answer with some kind of method and system, and I even hope that this little book may be useful as a kind of supplement to Mr. Max Miiller's, for it contains exact references to certain works of which he takes the reader's knowledge for granted. The general problem at issue is apt to be lost sight of in this guerilla kind of warfare. It is perhaps more distinctly stated in the preface to Mr. Max Miiller's Chips from a German Workshop, vol. iv. (Longmans, 1895), than in his two recent volumes. The general pr oblem is this f Has lan- I guage — especially lanpfuage in a s tate of ' disease,' been the g reat source nf the Tnv tliolno-v of the world ? Or does mytholoo'y-| on thp wI^oIp.^ represent the survival of an old stage of thought — not caused by language — fr om which civilised men have slowl v ■E mancipated themse lves ? Mr. Max Miiller is of the former, anthropologists are of the latter, opinion. I Both, of course, agree thnt m yths f\TP. a. prn dnrt of I though t, of a kind of thought almost extinct in civilised races ; but Mr. Max Miiller holds that language caused that kind of thought. We, on the other hand, think that language only gave it one means of expressing itself. The essence of m yth, as of fairy tale, we^agree, the conception of the things in the world as all alike anim ated, personal, capable of endless inter- changes of form. Men may become beasts ; beasts may change into men ; gods may appear as human ( INTRODUCTION XI or bestial ; stones, plants, winds, water, may speak and act like human beings, and change shapes with them. Anthropologists demonstrate that the belief in this universal kinship, universal personality of things, which we find surviving only in the myths of civilised races, is even now to some degree part of the living creed of savages. Civilised myths, then, they urge, are survivals from a parallel state of belief once prevalent among the ancestors of even the Aryan race. But how did this m ental condi- tion^f his early sort of false metaphys ics^ome into existence ? We have no direct historical informa- Ition on the subject. If I were obliged to offer an . 'hypothesis, it would be that early men, conscious of personality, w ill, and life — conscious that force, when exerted by themselves, followed on a de- termination of will within them — extended that explanation t o all th e exhib itions of force whic h they beh eld without th em. Eivers run (early man thought), winds blow, fire burns, trees wave, as a result of their own will, the will of personal con- scious entities. Such vitality, and even power of ^ motion, early man attributed even to inorganic matter, as rocks and stones. All these thinsfs were ► . . . . , beings, like man himself. This does not appear to J me an unnatural kind of nascent, half-conscious meta- physics. ' Man never knows how much he anthropo"^' morphises.' He extended the only explanation of) i his own action which consciousness yielded to him, he extended it to explain every other sort of action in the sensil)le world. Early Greek philosophy re- 1 ^ Xll MODERN MYTHOL()(;V ^Y cognised the stars as living ])()dies ; all things had onee [seemed living and personal. From the beginning, man was eager causas cognoscere rerum. The only cause about which self- consciousness gave him any knowledge was his own personal will. He there- fore supposed all things to be animated with a like will and personality. His mythology is a philosophy of things, stated in stories based on the belief in universal personality. My theory of the origin of that belief is, of course, a mere guess ; we have never seen any race in the process of passing from a total lack of a hypothesis of causes into that hypothesis of universally dis- tributed personality which is the basis of mythology. But Mr. Max Miiller conceives that this belief in universally distributed personality (the word ' Animism ' is not very clear) was the result of an historical necessity — not of speculation, but of language. '■ Eo ots were all^i _oiMiearly allj^ expressive of action. . . . Hence a river could only be called or conceived as a runner, or a roarer, or a defender ; and in all these capacities always as something- active and animated, nay, as something masculine or feminine.' But why conceived as ' masculine or feminine ' ? This necessity for endowing inanimate though active things, such as rivers, with sex, is obviously a necessity of a stage of thought wholly unlike our own. We know that active inanimate things are sexless, are neuter ; ice feel no necessity to speak of them as male or female. How did the first speakers of the human race come to be obliged to "-../ INTRODUCTION XI 11 call lifeless things by names connoting sex, and therefore connoting, not only activity, but also life and personality ? We explain it by the theory that man called lifeless things male or female — by using ffender-terminations — as a result of his habit of regarding lifeless things as personal beings ; that habit, again, being the result of his consciousness of himself as a living will. Mr. Max Milller takes the opposite view. Man ? did not call lifeless things by names denoting sex f J, ' because he regarded them as persons ; he came to r^r^X regard them as persons because he had already given ej them names connoting sex. And why jiad he done that ? This is what Mr. Max Mliller does not explain. He says : ' In ancient languages every one of these words ' (sky, earth, sea, rain) ' had necessarily ' (why necessarily ?) * a termination expressive of gender, and this naturally produced in the mind the corresponding idea of sex, so that these names received not only an individual but a sexual character.' ^ It is curious that, in proof apparently of this, Mr. Max Midler cites a passage from the Printers Register, in which we read that to little children ' everything is alive. . . . The same instinct that prompts the child to personify everything remains unchecked in the savage, and grows up with him to manhood. Hence in all simple and early languages there are but two genders, masculine and feminine.' > Chips, iv. 62. XIV MODERN MYTHOLOGY The Printer s Register states our theory in its own words. First came the childlike and savage ^^^^elief in unive rsal ^ personality. Thence arose the genders, masculine and feminine, in early languages. These ideas are the precise reverse of Mr. Max Mtiller's ideas. In his opinion, genders in language caused the belief in the universal personality even of inanimate things. The Printers Register holds that the belief in universal personality, on the other hand, caused the genders. Yet for thirty years, since 1868, Mr. Max Mliller has been citing his direct adversary, in the Printers Register, as a supporter of his opinion ! We, then, hold that man thought all things animated, and expressed his belief in gender-terminations. Mr. Max Mliller holds that, because man used gender-terminations, therefore he thought all things animated, and so he became mythopoeic. In the passage cited, Mr. Max Mliller does not say ivhy ' in ancient languages every one of these words had necessarily terminations expressive of gender.' He merely quotes the hypothesis of the Printers Register. If he accepts that hypothesis, it destroys his own theory — that gender-terminations caused all things to be regarded as personal; for, ex hypothesi, it was just because they were regarded as personal that they received names with gender- terminations. Somewhere — I cannnot find the refer- ence — Mr. Max Mliller seems to admit that personal- ising thought caused gender-terminations, but these later ' reacted ' on thought, an hypothesis which multiplies causes prceter necessitatem. Here, then, at the very threshold of the science INTRODUCTION XV of mythology we find Mr. Max Miiller at once maintaining that a feature of language, gender-ter- minations, caused the mythopoeic state of thought, and quoting with approval the statement that the mytho- poeic state of thought caused gender-terminations. Mr. Max Miiller's whole system of mythology is based on reasoning analogous to this example. His 7not dordre, as Professor Tiele says, is ' a disease of language.' This theory implies universal human degradation. Man was once, for all we know, rational enough ; but his mysterious habit of using gender-terminations, and his perpetual misconcep- tions of the meaning of old words in his own lan- ofuaofe, reduced him to the irrational and often (as we now say) obscene and revolting absurdities of his myths. Here (as is later pointed out) the objection arises, that all languages must have taken the disease in the same way. A Maori myth is very like a Greek myth. If the Greek myth arose from a , disease of Greek, how did the wholly different Maori ispeech, and a score of others, come to have precisely ^ the same malady ? Mr. Max Miiller alludes to a Maori parallel to the myth of Cronos.^ ' We can only say that there is a rusty lock in New Zealand, and a rusty lock in Greece, and that, surely, is very small comfort.' He does not take the point. The point is that, as the people,' either of savage tribes or of the Euro- ^ ^^ J^ pean Folk, the unprogressive peasant class. The ^^_ , former, and to some extent the latter, still live in ?>«=>^* w^*^ the mythopoeic state of mind — regarding bees, for ^V/2. (l^ instance, as persons who must be told of a death hi z l^/i^f the family. Their myths are still not wholly out of ^ **V'r concord with their habitual view of a world in which -^'/^yx/' an old woman may become a hare. As soon as learned Jesuits like Pere Lafitau began to under- stand their savage flocks, they said, ' These men are living in Ovid's Metamorphoses.'' They found mytho- logy in situ ! Hence mythologists now study mytho- logy in situ — in savages and in peasants, who till very recently were still in the mythopoeic stage of thought. ||Mannhardt made this idea his basis. Mr. Max Miiller says," very naturally, that I have been * popularising the often difficult and complicated labours of Mannhardt and others.' In fact (as is said later), I published all my general conclusions before I had read Mannhardt. Quite independently I could not help seeing that among savages and peasants we had mythology, not in a literary hortus ^ Chips, iv. pp. vi, vii. * Ibid. iv. p. xv. XX MODERN MYTHOLOGY siccus, but ill situ. Mannliardt, though he appre- ciated Dr. Tylor, had made, I think, but few original researches among savage myths and customs. His province was European folklore. What he missed will be indicated in the chapter on ' The Fire-Walk ' — one example among many. But this kind of mythology m situ, in ' the unre- strained utterances of the people,' Mr. Max Mliller tells us, is no province of his. ' I saw it was hopeless for me to gain a knowledge at first hand of innumerable local legends and customs ; ' and it is to be supposed that he distrusted knowledge acquired by collectors : Grimm, Mannliardt, Campbell of Islay, and an army of others. ' A scholarlike knowledge of Maori or Hottentot mythology ' was also beyond him. We, on the contrary, take our Maori lore from a host of collectors : Taylor, White, Manning (' The Pakeha Maori'), Tregear, Polack, and many others. From them we flatter ourselves that we get — as from Grimm, Mannliardt, Islay, and the rest — mythology in situ. We compare it with the dry mythologic blossoms of the classical liortus siccus, and with Greek ritual and temple legend, and with Mdrchen in the scholiasts, and we think the comparisons very illuminating. They have thrown new light on Greek mythology, ritual, mysteries, and religion. This much we think we have already done, though we do not know Maori, and though each of us can hope to gatlier_biit few ^^cts from the mouths of living peasants. Examples of the results of our method will be found in the following pages. Thus, if the myth of the fire- stealer in Greece is explained by misunderstood Greek INTRODUCTION XXI or Sanskrit words in no way connected with robbery, we shall show that the myth of the theft of fire occurs where no Greek or Sanskrit words were ever spoken. There, we shall show, the myth arose from simple inevita ble human ideas. We shall therefore doubt whether in Greece a common human myth had a singular cause — in a 'disease of language.' It is with no enthusiasm that I take the opportunity of Mr. Max Miiller's reply to me ' by name.' Since Myth, Ritual, and Beligion (now out of print, but accessible in the French of M. Marillier) was pub- lished, ten years ago, I have left mythology alone. The general method there adopted has been applied in a much more erudite work by Mr. Frazer, The Golden Bough, by Mr. Farnell in Cidts of the Greek States, by Mr. Jevons in his Introduction to the History of Religion, by Miss Harris on in explanations of Greek ritual, by Mr. Hartland in The Legend of Perseus, and doubtless by many other writers. How much they excel me in erudition may be seen by comparing Mr. Farnell's passage on the Bear Artemis^ with the section on her in this volume. Mr. MaxMliller observes that ^annhardt 's mytho- logical researches have never been fashionable.' They are now very much in fashion ; they greatly inspire Mr. Frazer and Mr. Farnell. ' They seemed to me, and still seem to me, too exclusive,' says Mr. Max Muller.- Mamihardt in his second period was indeed chiefly concerned with myths connected, as he held, with agriculture and with tree-worship. Mr. » Cults of the Greek States, ii. 435-440. ^ ChijJS, iv. p. xiv. xxu MODERN MYTHOLOGY c / A" Max Miiller, too, has been thought ' exclusive ' — ' as teaching,' he complains, ' that the whole, of mythology is solar.' That reproach arose, he says, because ' some of my earliest contributions to com- parative mythology were devoted exclusively to the special subject of solar mj^ths.' ^ But Mr. Max Miiller also mentions his own complaints, of ' the omnipresent sun and the inevitable dawn appearing in ever so many disguises.' Did they really appear? Were the myths, say the myths of Daphne, really solar? That is pre- cisely what we hesitate to accept. In the same way Mannhardt's preoccupation with vegetable myths has tended, I think, to make many of his followers ascribe vegetable origins to myths and gods, where the real origin is perhaps for ever lost. The corn- spirit starts up in most unexpected places. Mr. Frazer, Mannhardt's disciple, is very severe on solar theories of Osiris, and connects that god with the corn-spirit. But Mannhardt did not go so far. Mannhardt thought that the myth of Osiris was solar. To my thinking, these resolutions of myt hs into this or that ori g inal ptmirpp^^s olar, nocturna l, vegetable, or what_ jiot — are often very perilous. A myth so extremely composite as that of (Osiris must l^e a stream flowing from ^nany springs) and, as in the case of certain rivers, it is difficult or im- possible to say which is the real fountain-head. One would respectfully recommend to young mythologists great reserve in their hypo theses of .o rigin s. All this, of cottrse, is the familiar thought ^ Chips, iv. p. xiii. INTRODUCTION XXlll of writers like Mr. Frazer and Mr. Farnell, but a tendency to seek for exclusively vegetable origins of gods is to be observed in some of the most recent speculations. I well know that I myself am apt to press a theory of totems too far, and in the follow- ing pages I suggest reserves, limitations, and alter- native hypotheses. II y a seiyent et serpent; a snake tribe may be a local tribe named from the Snake Eiver, not a totem kindred. The history of mythology is the history of rash, premature, and I exclusive theories. We are only beginning to learn caution. Even the prevalent anthropological theory of the ghost-origin of religion might, I think, be advanced with caution (as Mr. Jevons argues on other grounds) till we know a little more about ghosts and ^n_c rrpat rjp.al more ?^hnnt ps ych nlnrty/ We are too apt to argue as if the psychical con- dition of the earliest men were exactly like our own ; while we are just beginning to learn, from Prof. WiUiam James, that about even our own psychical condition we are only now realising our exhaustive ignorance. How often we men have thought certain problems settled for good ! How often we have been compelled humbly to return to our studies ! Philological comparative mythology seemed securely seated for a generation. Her throne is tottering : Our little systems have their day, They have their day and cease to be, They are but broken lights from Thee, And Thou, we trust, art more than they. But we need not hate each other for the sake of our little systems, like the grammarian who damned XXIV MODERN MYTHOLOGY his rival's soul for his ' theory of the irregular verbs.' Nothing, I hope, is said here inconsistent with the highest esteem for Mr. Max Mliller's vast erudition, his enviable style, his unequalled contri- butions to scholarship, and his awakening of that interest in mythological science without which his adversaries would probably never have existed. Most of Chapter XII. appeared in the ' Con- temporary Eeview,' and most of Chapter XIII. in the ' Princeton Review.' CONTENTS , PAGE J INTRODUCTION . ... . vii I. RECENT MYTHOLOGY ...,...! II. THE STORY OP DAPHNE ....... 9 III. THE QUESTION OP ALLIES 22 IV. MANNHARDT 41 V. PHILOLOGY AND DEMETER BRINNYS .... 65 V VI. TOTEMISM 70 V VII. THE VALIDITY OP ANTHROPOLOGICAL EVIDENCE . . 92 ^ y Vin. THE PHILOLOGICAL METHOD IN ANTHROPOLOGY . . 104 IX. CRITICISM OP FETISHISM . . . . . .112 X. THE RIDDLE THEORY 127 XI. ARTEMIS ... ..... 137 XII. THE PIRE-WALK 148 V XIII. THE ORIGIN OP DEATH 176 XIV. CONCLUSION 199 APPENDICES 201 INDEX , 203 \^ " or T (t snv OF MODERN MYTHOLOGY I REGENT MYTHOLOGY Mythology in 1860-1880 Between 1860 and 1880, roughly speaking, English people interested in early myths and religions found the mythological theories of Professor Max Miiller in possession of the field. These brilliant and attractive theories, taking them in the widest sense, were not, of course, peculiar to the Eight Hon. Professor. In France, in Germany, in America, in Italy, many scholars agreed in his opinion that the science of language is the most potent spell for opening the secret chamber of mythology. But while these scholars worked on the same general principle as Mr. Max MliUer, while they subjected the names of mythical beings — Zeus, Helen, Achilles, Athene — to philological analysis, and then explained the stories of gods and heroes by their interpretations of the meanings of their names, they arrived at all sorts of discordant results. Where Mr. Max Miiller found a myth of the Sun or of the Dawn, these scholars were apt to see a myth of the wind, of the lightning, of the thunder-cloud, of the crepuscule, of the upper air, of what each of them pleased. But B 2 MODERN MYTHOLOGY [i these ideas — the ideas of Kuhn, Wglcker, Curtius (when he appeared in the discussion), of Schwartz, of Lauer, of Breal, of many others — were very little known — if known at all — to the English public. Captivated by the graces of Mr. Max MuUer's manner, and by a style so pellucid that it accredited a logic perhaps not so clear, the public hardly knew of the divisions in the philological camp. They were unaware that, as Mannhardt says, the philo- logical school had won ' few sure gains,' and had discredited their method by a ' muster-roll of variegated' and discrepant 'hypotheses.' Now, in all sciences there are differences of opinion about details. In comparative mythology there was, with rare exceptions, no agreement at all about results beyond this point ; Gr eek and S anskrit, German and Slav onic myths were, in the imm ense majority of instances, to be^ regarded as mirror- pictures on ea rth, of celestial and meteorological phenomena. Thus even the story of the Earth Goddess, the Harvest Goddess, Demeter, was usually explained as a reflection in myth of one or another celestial phenomenon — dawn, storm-cloud, or some- thing else according to taste. Again, Greek or German myths were usually to be interpreted by comparison with myths in the Eig Veda. Their origin was to be ascertained by discovering the Aryan root and original signi- ficance of the names of gods and heroes, such as Saranyu-Erinnys, Daphne-Dahana, Athene-Ahana. The etymology and meaning of such names being ascertained, the origin and sense of the myths in which the names occur should be clear. Clear it was not. There were, in most cases. i] RECENT MYTHOLOGY 3 as many opinions as to the etj'^mology and meaning of each name and myth, as there were philologists engaged in the study. Mannhardt, who began, in 1858, as a member of the philological school, in his last public utterance (1877) described the method and results, including his own work of 1858, as ' mainly failures,' But, long ere that, the English cultivated public had, most naturally, accepted Mr. Max Mliller as the representative of the school which then held the field in comparative mythology. His German and other foreign brethren, with their discrepant results, were only known to the general, in England (I am not speaking of English scholars), by the references to them in the Oxford professor's own works. His theories jwere ma de part of the education of chil dren,^ ^and found their way into a kind of popular primers. For these reasons, anyone in England who was daring enough to doubt, or to deny, the validity of the philological system of mythology in general was obliged to choose Mr. Max Mliller as his adversary. He must strike, as it were, the shield of no Hospitaler of unsteady seat, but that of the Templar himself. And this is the cause of what seems to puzzle Mr. Max Mliller, namely the attacks on his S3^stem and his results in particular. An English critic, writing for English readers, had to do with the scholar who chiefly represented the philological school of mytho- logy in the eyes of England. Autobiographical Like other inquiring undergraduates in the sixties, I read such works on mythology as Mr. Max Mliller had then given to the world ; I read them with interest, B 2 4 MODERN MYTHOLOGY [i but without conviction. The argument, the logic, seemed to evade one ; it was purely, with me, a ques- tion of logic, for I was of course prepared to accept all of Mr. Max Muller's dicta on questions of etymo- logies. Even now I never venture to impugn them, only, as I observe that other scholars very frequently differ, toto ccelo, from him and from each other in essential questions, I preserve a just balance of doubt ; I wait till thes e gentlemen shall be at one among themselv es. After taking my degree in 1868, I had leisure to read a good deal of mythology in the legends of all races, and found my distrust of Mr. Max Muller's reasoning increase upon me. The main cause was that whereas Mr. Max Miiller explained Greek myths by etymologies of words in the Aryan languages, chiefly Greek, Latin, Slavonic, and Sanskrit, I kept finding myths very closely resembling those of Greece among Red Indians, Kaffirs, Eskimo, Samoyeds, Kamilaroi, Maoris, and Cahrocs. Now if Aryan myths arose from a ' disease ' of Aryan languages, it certainly did seem an odd thing that myths so similar to these abounded where non-Arj^an languages alone prevailed. Did a kind of linguistic measles affect all tongues alike, from Sanskrit to ChOctaw, and everywhere produce the same ugly scars in religion and myth ? The IJgly Sears The uglj^cars were the problem ! A civilised fancy is not puzzled for a moment by a beautiful beneficent Sun-god, or even by his beholding the daughters of men that they are fair. But a ^vilised fancy is puzzled when the beautiful Sun-god makes 1] RECENT MYTHOLOGY love in the shape of a dog.^ To me, and indeed to Mr. Max Miiller, the ugly scars were the problem. He has written — ' What makes mythology mytho- logical, in the true sense of the word, is what is utterly unintel ligible, a bsurd, strange, or mi raculous.' But he explained these blots on the mythology of Greece, for example, as the result practically of old words and popular sayings surviving in languages after the original, harmless, symbolical meanings of the words and sayings were lost. Wliat had been a poetical remark about an aspect of nature became an obscene, or brutal, or vulgar myth, a stumbling block to Greek piety and to Greek philosophy. To myself, on the other hand, it seemed that the ugly scars were remains of that kind of taste, fancy, customary law, and incoherent speculation which everywhere, as far as we know, prevails to various degrees in savagery and barbarism. Attached to the ' hideous idols,' as Mr. Max Miiller calls them, of early Greece, and implicated in a ritual which religious conservatism dared not abandon, the fables of perhaps neolithic ancestors of tlie Hellenes re- mained in the religion and the leo-ends known to Plato and Socrates. That this process of ' survival ' is a vera causa, illustrated in every phase of evolution, perhaps nobody denies. Thus the phenomena which the philological school 'of mythology explains by a disease of language w^ wo uld explain by survival^ from a savagfe state of society an d fro m the mental leculiarities observed ^among savagesin all ages and countries. Of course here is nothing new in this : I was delighted to discover the idea in Eusebius as in Fontenelle ; while, o Suidas, s.v. reX/iiio-o-ei/; he cites Dionysius of Chalcis, B.C. 200. .^/^^^ ^ yj\' X 6 MODERN MYTHOLOGY [i for general application to singular institutions, it was a commonplace of the last century.^ Moreover, the idea had been widely used by Dr. E. B. Tylor in Primitive Culture^ and by Mr. McLennan in his Primitive Marriage and essays on Totemism. My Criticism of Mr. Max Miiller This idea I set about applying to the re pulsive mjTths of civilised races, and to Mdrchen, or popular tales, at the same time combating the theories which held the field — the theories of the philological mythologists as applied to the same matter. In journalism I criticised Mr. Max Miiller, and I admit that, when comparing the mutually destructive competition of varying etymologies, I did not abstain from the weapons of irony and badinage. The opportunity was too tempting ! But, in the most sober seriousness, I examined Mr. Max Muller's general statement of his system, his hypothesis of certain successive stages of language, leading up to the mythopoeic confusion of thought. It was not a question of denying Mr. Max Muller's etymologies, but of askino- whether he established his historical theory by evidence, and whether his inferences from it were logically deduced. The results of my examination will be found in the article ' WTythology ' in the Encyclopaedia Britamiica, and in La Mytho- logie.'^ It did not appear to me that Mr. Max Muller's general theory was valid, logical, histori- cally demonstrated, or self-consistent. My other writings on the topic are chiefly Custom and Myth, Myth, Ritual, and Religion (with French and Dutch ^ See Goguet, and Millar of Glasgow, and Voltaire. '^ Translated by M. Parmentier. r] RECENT MYTHOLOGY 7 translations, both much improved and corrected by the translators), and an introduction to Mrs. Hunt's translation of Grimm's Mdrchen. Success of Anthropological Method During fifteen years the ideas which I advocated seem to have had some measure of success. This is, doubtless, due not to myself, but to the works of Mr. J. G. Frazer and of Professor Eobertson Smith. Both of these scholars descend intellectually from a man less scholarly than they, but, perhaps, more original and acute than any of us, my friend the late Mr. J. F. McLennan. To Mannhardt also niuch is owed, and, of course, above all, to Dr. Tylor. These writers, like Mr. Farnell and Mr. Jevons recently, seek for the ans wer to mvthological i^f^ <^ problems rathe r in the h phits anrl id pas of thft folk ^f^^-'" v^ a nd of savages and barbarians than in et ymolog ies la nd ' a disease of language.' There are differences of opinion in detail : I myself may think that ' vege- tation spirits,' the ' corn spirit,' and the rest occupy too much space in the systems of Mannhardt, and other moderns. Mr. Frazer, again, thinks less of the evidence for Totems among 'Aryans' than I was inclined to do.^ But it is not, perhaps, an overstatement to say that explanation of myths by analysis of names, and the lately overpowering predominance of the Dawn, and the Sun, and the Night in mythological hypothesis, have received a slight check. They do not hold the field with the superiority which was theirs in England between 1860 and 1880. This fact — a scarcely deniable fact — does not, of course, prove that the philological ' See ' Totemism,' infra. 8 MODERN MYTHOLOGY [i method is wrong, or that the Dawn is not as great a factor in myth as Mr. Max Miiller beUeves himself to have proved it to be. Science is inevitably sub- ject to shiftings of opinion, action, and reaction. Mr. Max Miiller's Reply In this state of things Mr. Max Miiller produces his Contributions to the Science of Mythology,^ which I propose to criticise as far as it is, or may seem to me to be, directed against myself, or against others who hold practically much the same views as mine. I say that I attempt to criticise the book ' as far as it is, or may seem to me to be, directed against ' us, because it is Mr. Max Miiller's occasional habit to argue (apparently) around rather than with his opponents. He says ' we are told this or that ' — something which he does not accept — but he often does not inform us as to who tells us, or where. Thus a reader does not know whom Mr. Max Miiller is opposing, or where he can find the adversary's own statement in his own words. Yet it is usual in such cases, and it is, I think, expedient, to give chapter and verse. Occasionally I find that Mr. Max Miiller is honouring me by alluding to observations of my own, but often no reference is given to an opponent's name or books, and we discover the passages in question by accident or research. This method will be found to cause certain inconveni- ences. ^ Longmans. II THE STOBY OF DAPHNE Mr. Max Miiller's Method in Controversy As an illustration of tlie author's controversial methods, take his observations on my alleged attempt to account for the metamorphosis of Daphne into a laurel tree. When I read these remarks (i. p. 4) I said, ' Mr. Max Miiller vanquishes me there,' for he gave no reference to my statement. I had forgotten all about the matter, I was not easily able to find the passage to which he alluded, and I supposed that I had said just what Mr. Max Miiller seemed to me to make me say — no more, and no less. Thus : ' Mr. Lang, as usual, has recourse to savages, most useful when they are really wanted. He quotes an illustration from the South Pacific that Tuna, the chief of the eels, fell in love with Ina and asked her to cut off his head. When his head had been cut off and buried, two cocoanut trees sprang up from the brain of Tuna. How is this, may I ask, to account for the story of Daphne ? Everybody knows that " stories of the growing of plants out of the scattered members of heroes may be found from ancient Egypt to the wigwams of the Algonquins," but these stories seem hardly applicable to Daphne, whose members, as far as I know, were never either severed or scattered.' I thought, perhaps hastily, that I must have lO MODERN MYTHOLOGY [it made the story of Tuna ' account for the story of Daphne.' Mr. Max Miiller does not actually say that I did so, but I understood him in that sense, and recognised my error. But, some guardian genius warning me, I actually hunted up my own observa- tions.^ Well, I had never said (as I conceived my critic to imply) that the story of Tuna 'accounts for the story of Daphne.' That was what I had not said. I had observed, ' As to interchange of shape between men and women and jjlants, our information, so far as the lower races are concerned, is less copious ' — than in the case of stones. I then spoke of plant totems of one kin with human beings, of plant-souls,^ of Indian and Egyptian plants animated by human souls, of a tree which became a young man and made love to a Yurucari girl, of metamorphosis into vegetables in Samoa,^ of an Ottawa myth in which a man became a plant of maize, and then of the story of Tuna.'^ Next I mentioned plants said to have sprung from dismembered gods and heroes. All this, I said, all of it, proves that savages mythi- cally regard human life as on a level with vegetable no less than with animal life. ' Turning to the mythology of Greece, we see that the same rule holds good. Metamorphosis into plants and flowers is extremely common,' and I, of course, attributed the original idea of such metamorphoses to ' the general savage habit of " levelling up," ' of regarding all things in nature as all capable of interchanging their identities. I gave, as classical examples. Daphne, Myrrha, Hyacinth, Narcissus, and the sisters of Phaethon. Next I criticised Mr. Max Miiller's theory 1 M. B. R. i. 155-160. ^ Tylor's Prim. Cult. i. 145. ^ Turner's Samoa, p. 219. * Gill's Myths and Songs, p. 79. ii] THE STORY OF DAPHNE I I of Daphne. But I never hinted that the isolated Mangaian story of Tuna, or the stories of plants sprung from mangled men, ' accounted,' by them- selves, ' for the story of Daphne.' Mr. Max Miiller is not content with giving a very elaborate and interesting account of how the story of Tuna arose (i. 5-7). He keeps Tuna in hand, and, at the peroration of his vast work (ii. 831), warns us that, before we compare myths in un- related languages, we need ' a very accurate know- ledge of their dialects ... to prevent accidents hke that of Tuna mentioned in the beginnino-.' What accident ? That I explained the myth of Daphne by the myth of Tuna ? But that is precisely what I did not do. I explained the Greek myth of Daphne (1) as a survival from the savage mental habit of regarding men as on a level with stones, beasts, and plants; or (2) as a tale 'moulded by poets on the same model.' ^ The latter is the more probable case, for we find Daphne late, in artificial or mythographic literature, in Ovid and Hyginus. In Ovid the river god, Pentheus, changes Daphne into a laurel. In Hyginus she is not changed at all ; the earth swallows her, and a laurel fills her place. Now I really did believe — perhaps any rapid reader would have believed — when I read Mr. Max Miiller, that I must have tried to account for the story of Daphne by the story of Tuna. I actually wrote in the first draft of this work that I had been in the wrong. Then I verified the reference which my critic did not give, with the result which the reader has perused. Never could a reader have found out what I did really say from my critic, for he • M. B. R. ii. 160. 12 MODERN MYTHOLOGY [ii does not usually when he deals with me give chapter and verse. This may avoid an air of personal bicker- ing, but how inconvenient it is ! Let me not be supposed to accuse Mr. Max MuUer of consciously misrepresenting me. Of that I need not ssiy that he is absolutely incapable. My argument merely took, in his consciousness, the form which is suggested in the passage cited from him. Tuna and Daphne To do justice to Mr. MaxMliller, I will here state fully his view of the story of Tuna, and then go on to the story of Daphne. For the sake of accuracy, I take the liberty of borrowing the whole of his state- ment (i. 4-7) : — ' I must dwell a little longer on this passage in order to show the real difference between the ethno- logical and the philological schools of comparative mythology. ' First of all, what has to be explained is not the growing up of a tree from one or the other member of a god or hero, but the total change of a human being or a heroine into a tree, and this under a certain provocation. These two classes of plant- legends must be carefully kept apart. Secondly, what does it help us to know that people in Mangaia believed in the change of human beings into trees, if we do not know the reason why ? This is what we want to know ; and without it the mere juxta- position of stories apparently similar is no more than the old trick of explaining ignotum per ignotius. It leads us to imagine that we have learnt something, when we really are as ignorant as before. ' If Mr. A. Lang had studied the Mangaian dialect. iij THE STORY OF DAPHNE I3 or consulted scholars like the Eev. W. W. Gill — it is from his " Myths and Songs from the South Pacific " that he quotes the story of Tuna — he would have seen that there is no similarity whatever between the stories of Daphne and of Tuna. The Tuna story belongs to a very well known class of setiological plant-stories, which are meant to explain a no longer intelligible name of a plant, such as Snakeshead, Stiefmiitterchen, &c. ; it is in fact a clear case of what I call disease of language, cured by the ordinary nostrum of folk-etymology. I have often been in communication with the Eev. W. W. Gill about these South Pacific mj^ths and their true meaning. The preface to his collection of Myths and Songs from the South Pacific was written by me in 1876 ; and if Mr. A. Lang had only read the whole chapter which treats of these Tree-Myths (p. 77 seq.), he would easily have perceived the real character of the Tuna story, and would not have placed it in the same class as the Daphne story ; he would have found that the white kernel of the cocoanut was, in Mangaia, called the " brains of Tuna," a name like many more such names which after a time require an explana- tion. ' Considering that " cocoanut " was used in Mangaia in the sense of head (testa), the kernel or flesh of it might well be called the brain. If then the white kernel had been called Tuna's brain, we have only to remember that in Mangaia there are two kinds of cocoanut trees, and we shall then have no difficulty in understanding why these twin cocoanut trees were said to have sprung from the two halves of Tuna's brain, one being red in stem, branches, and fruit, whilst the other was of a deep green. In proof of these trees being derived from the head of Tuna, we are told that we have only to break the 14 MODEKN MYTHOLOGY [n nut in order lu see m me spruuiing germ tlie two eyes and the mouth of Tuna, the great eel, the lover of Ina. For a full understanding of this very com- plicated myth more information has been supplied by Mr. Gill. Ina means moon ; Ina-mae-aitu, the heroine of our story, means Ina-who-had-a-divine (aita) lover, and she was the daughter of Kui, the blind. Tuna means eel, and in Mangaia it was unlawful for women to eat eels, so that even now, as Mr. Gill informs me, his converts turn away from this fish with the utmost disgust. From other stories about the origin of cocoanut trees, told in the same island, it would appear that the sprouts of the cocoa- nut were actually called eels' heads, while the skulls of warriors were called cocoanuts. ' Taking all these facts together, it is not difficult to imagine how the story of Tuna's brain grew up ; and I am afraid we shall have to confess that the legend of Tuna throws but little light on the legend of Daphne or on the etymology of her name. No one would have a word to say against the general principle that much that is irrational, absurd, or barbarous in the Yeida is a survival of a more primitive mythology anterior to the Veda. How could it be otherwise ? ' Criticism of Tuna and Daphne Now (1), as to Daphne, we are not invariably told that hers was a case of ' the total change of a heroine into a tree.' In Ovid ^ she is thus changed. In Hyginus, on the other hand, the earth swallows her, and a tree takes her place. All the authorities are late. Here I cannot but reflect on the scholarly method of Mannhardt, who would have exaijiined and ' Metam. i. 567. ii] THE STORY OF DAPHNE 1 5 criticised all the sources for the tale before trying to explain it. However, Daphne was not mangled ; a tree did not spring frcjm her severed head or scattered limbs. She was metamorphosed, or was buried in earth, a tree springing up from the place. (2) I think we do know ichy the people of Mangaia ' believe in the chans^e of human beings into trees.' It is one among many examples of the savage sense of the intercommunity of all nature. ' Antiquity made its division between man and the world in a very different sort than do the moderns.' ^ I illustrate this mental condition fully in M. R. E. i. 46-56. Why savages adopt the major premise, ' Human life is on a level with the life of all nature,' philosophers explain in various ways. Hume regards it as an extension to the universe of early man's own consciousness of life and personality. Dr. Tylor thinks that the opinion rests upon ' a broad philo- sophy of nature.' ^ M. Lefebure appeals to psj^chical phenomena as I show later (see ' Fetishism '). At all events, the existence of these savage metaphysics is a demonstrated fact. I established it ^ before invoking it as an explanation of savage belief in metamorphosis. (3) ' The Tuna story belongs to a very well known class of Eetiological plant-stories ' (retiological : assign- ing a cause for the plant, its peculiarities, its name, &c.), ' which are meant to explain a no longer intelligible name of a plant, &c.' I also say, ' these myths are nature-myths, so far as they attempt to account for a fact in nature — namelj^, for the * Grimm, cited by Liebrecht in Zui- Volkskunde, p. 17. - Primitive Culture, i. 285. ^ Op. cit. i. 46-81. 1 6 MODERN MYTHOLOGY' [u existence of ^„^lu.i:- ^liiiits, .v.... .^i their place in ritual.' ^ The reader has before him Mr. Max Mliller's view. The white kernel of the cocoanut was locally styled ' the brains of Tuna.' That name required explana- tion. Hence the story about the fate of Tuna. Cocoanut was used in Mangaia in the sense of ' head ' {testa). So it is now in England. See Bell's Life, passim, as ' The Chicken got home on the cocoanut.' The Explanation On the whole, either cocoanut kernels were called 'brains of Tuna' because ' cocoanut ' = ' head,' and a head has brains — and, well, somehow I fail to see why brains of Tuna in particular ! Or, there being a story to the effect that the first cocoanut grew out of the head of the metamorphosed Tuna, the kernel was called his brains. But why was the story told, and why of Tuna ? Tuna was an eel, and women may not eat eels ; and Ina was the moon, who, a Mangaian Selene, loved no Latmian shepherd, but an eel. Seriously, I fail to understand Mr. Max Mliller's explanation. Given the problem, to explain a no longer intelligible plant-name — brains of Tuna — (applied not to a plant but to the kernel of a nut), this name is explained by saying that the moon, Ina, loved an eel, cut off his head at his desire, and buried it. Thence sprang cocoanut trees, with a fanciful like- ness to a human face — face of Tuna — on the nut. But still, why Tuna ? How could the moon love an eel, except on my own general principle of savage 1 M. B. B. i. 160. ii] THE STORY OF DAPHNE 1 7 ' levelling up ' of all life in all nature ? In my opinion, the Mangaians wanted a fable to account for the resemblance of a cocoanut to the human head — a resemblance noted, as I show, in our own popular slang. The Mangaians also knew the moon, in her mythical aspect, as Ina ; and Tuna, whatever his name may mean (Mr. Max Mliller does not tell us), was an eel. Having the necessary savage major Ei-ratum Page 17, line 6, Tuna, whatever his name may mean (Mr. Max Mliller does not tell us), was an eel. This is erroneous. See Contributions, &c., vol. i. p. 6, where Mr. Max Miiller writes, ' Tuna means eel.' This shows why Tuna, i.e. Eel, is the hero. His connection, as an admirer, with the Moon, perhaps remains obscure. or on the etymology of her name.' I never hinted that the legend of Tuna threw light on the etymology of the name of Daphne. Mangaian and Greek are not allied languages. Nor did I give the Tuna story as an explanation of the Daphne story. I gave it as one in a mass of illus- trations of the savage mental propensity so copiously established ' by Dr. Tylor in Primitive Culture. The two alternative explanations which I gave of the Daphne story I have cited. No mention of Tuna occurs in either. Disease of Language and Folk-etymology The Tuna story is described as ' a clear case of disease of language cured by the ordinary nostrum of folk-etymology.' The ' disease ' showed itself, I *c 1 6 MODERN MYTHOLOGY [n existence of certain plants, and for their place in ritual.' 1 The reader has before him Mr. Max Miiller's view. The white kernel of the cocoanut was locally styled ' the brains of Tuna.' That name required explana- tion. Hence the story about the fate of Tuna. Cocoanut was used in Mangaia in the sense of ' head ' (testa). So it is now in England. out of the heaQ oi tiie xueLaiiiuipxivo^ijvx jLUiic*, ^xj.^ kernel was called his brains. But why was the story told, and why of Tuna ? Tuna was an eel, and women may not eat eels ; and Ina was the moon, who, a Mangaian Selene, loved no Latmian shepherd, but an eel. Seriously, I fail to understand Mr. Max Miiller's explanation. Given the problem, to explain a no longer intelligible plant-name — brains of Tuna — (applied not to a plant but to the kernel of a nut), this name is explained by saying that the moon, Ina, loved an eel, cut off his head at his desire, and buried it. Thence sprang cocoanut trees, with a fanciful like- ness to a human face — face of Tuna — on the nut. But still, why Tuna ? How could the moon love an eel, except on my own general principle of savage 1 M. B. R. i. 160. ii] THE STORY OF DAPHNE 1 7 ' levelling up ' of all life in all nature ? In my opinion, the Mangaians wanted a fable to account for the resemblance of a cocoanut to the human head — a resemblance noted, as I show, in our own popular slang. The Mangaians also knew the moon, in her mythical aspect, as Ina ; and Tuna, whatever his name may mean (Mr. Max Mliller does not tell us), was an eel. Having the necessary savage major premise in their minds, 'All life is on a level and interchangeable,' the Mangaians thought well to say that the head-like cocoanut sprang from the head of her lover, an eel, cut off by Ina. The myth accounts, I think, for the peculiarities of the cocoa- nut, rather than for the name ' brains of Tuna ; ' for we still ask, 'Why of Tuna in particular? Why Tuna more than Eangoa, or anyone else ? ' ' We shall have to confess that the legend of Tuna throws but little light on the legend of Daphne, or on the etymology of her name.' I never hinted that the legend of Tuna threw light on the etymology of the name of Daphne. Mangaian and Greek are not allied languages. Nor did I give the Tuna story as an explanation of the Daphne story. I gave it as one in a mass of illus- trations of the savage mental propensity so copiously established ' by Dr. Tylor in Primitive Culture. The two alternative explanations which I gave of the Daphne story I have cited. No mention of Tuna occurs in either. Disease of Language and Folk-etymology The Tuna story is described as ' a clear case of disease of language cured by the ordinary nostrum of folk-etymology.' The ' disease ' showed itself, I *c 1 8 MODERN MYTHOLOGY [ii suppose, in the presence of the Mangaian words for ' brain of Tuna.' But the story of Tuna gives no folk-etymology of the name Tuna. Now, to give an etymology of a name of forgotten meaning is the sole object of folk-etymology. The plant-name, ' snake's head,' given as an example by Mr. Max Miiller, needs no etymological explanation. A story may be told to explain why the plant is called snake's head, but a story to give an etymology of snake's head is superfluous. The Tuna story ex- plains why the cocoanut kernel is called ' brains of Tuna,' but it offers no etymology of Tuna's name. On the other hand, the story that marmalade (really marmalet) is so called because Queen Mary found comfort in marmalade when she was sea-sick — hence Marie-malade, hence marmalade — gives an etymo- logical explanation of the origin of the word marma- lade. Here is a real folk-etymology. We must never confuse such myths of folk-etymology with myths arising (on the philological hypothesis) from ' disease of language.' Thus, Daphne is a girl pur- sued by Apollo, and changed into a daphne plant or laurel, or a laurel springs from the earth where she was buried. On Mr. Max Miiller 's philological theory Daphne = Dahana, and meant ' the burning one.' Apollo may be derived from a Sanskrit form, *Apa-var-yan, or *Apa-val-yan (though how Greeks ever heard a Sanskrit word, if such a word as Apa- val-yan ever existed, we are not told), and may mean '^ one who opens the gate of the sky ' (ii. 692-696).^ 1 Phonetically there may be ' no possible objection to the deriva- tion of 'AttoXXcoi/ from a Sanskrit form, *Apa-var-yan, or *Apa-val- yan ' (ii. 692) ; but, historically, Greek is not derived from Sanskrit surely 1 li] THE STORY OF DAPHNE 1 9 At some unknown date the ancestors of the Greeks would say ' The opener of the gates of the sky (*Apa- val-yan, i.e. the sun) pursues the burning one (Dahana, i.e. the dawn).' The Greek language would retain this poetic saying in daily use till, in the changes of speech, *Apa-val-yan ceased to be understood, and became Apollo, while Dahana ceased to be understood, and became Daphne. But the verb being still understood, the phrase ran, ' Apollo pursues Daphne.' Now the Greeks had a plant, laurel, called daphne. They therefore blended plant, daphne, and heroine's name, Daphne, and decided that the phrase ' Apollo pursues Daphne ' meant that Apollo chased a nymph. Daphne, who, to escape his love, turned into a laurel. I cannot give Mr. Max Mliller's theory of the Daphne story more clearly. If I misunderstand it, that does not come from want of pains. In opposition to it we urge that (1) the etymo- logical equations, Daphne = Dahana, Apollo = *Apa- val-yan, are not generally accepted by other scholars. Schroder, in fact, derives Apollo ' from the Vedic Saparagenya, " worshipful," an epithet of Agni,' who is Fire (ii. 688), and so on. Daphne = Dahana is no less doubted. Of course a Greek simply cannot be ' derived ' from a Sanskrit word, as is stated, though both may have a common origin, just as French is not ' derived from ' Italian. (2) If the etymologies were accepted, no proof is offered to us of the actual existence, as a vera causa, of the process by which a saying, ' Apollo pursues Daphne,' remains in language, while the meaning of the words is forgotten. This process is essential, but c 2 20 MODERN MYTHOLOGY [n undemonstrated. See the chapter here on 'The Eiddle Theory.' (3) These processes, if demonstrated, which they are not, must be carefully discriminated from the actual demonstrable process of folk-etymology. The Marmalade legend gives the etymology of a word, marmalade ; the Daphne legend does not give an etymology. (4) The theory of Daphne is of the kind protested against by Mannhardt, where he warns us against looking in most myths for a ' mirror-picture ' on earth of celestial phenomena.^ For these reasons, among others, I am disinclined to accept Mr. Max Muller's attempt to explain the story of Daphne. Mannhardt on Daphne Since we shall presently find Mr. Max Miiller claiming the celebrated Mannhardt as a sometime deserter of philological comparative mythology, who ' returned to his old colours,' I observe with pleasure that Mannhardt is on my side and against the Ox- ford Professor. Mannhardt shows that the laurel [daphne) was regarded as a plant which, like our rowan tree, averts evil influences. ' Moreover, the laurel, like the Maibaum, was looked on as a being with a spirit. This is the safest result which myth analysis can extract from the story of Daphne, a nymph pursued by Apollo and changed into a laurel. It is a result of the use of the laurel in his ritual.' ^ In 1877, a year after Mannhardt is said by Mr. Max Miiller to have returned to his old colours, he repeats ' Mythologische Forscliungen, p. 275. 2 Baumkultus, T^. 291 . Berlin: 1875. n] THE STORY OF DAPHNE 21 this explanation.^ In the same work (p. 20) he says that ' there is no reason for accepting Max Miiller's explanation about the Sun-god and the Dawn, wo jedep thdtliche Anhalt dafilr fehlt! For this opinion we might also cite the Sanskrit scholars Whitney and Bergaigne.^ ^ Antike Wald- und FeldJculte, p. 257. Eeferring to Baumhuluis, p. 297. "^ Oriental and Linguistic Studies, second series, p. 160. La Religion Vedique, iii. 293. 22 MODERN MYTHOLOGY [iii III THE QUESTION OF ALLIES Athanasius Mk. Max Muller protests, most justly, against the statement thathe,like St. Athanasius, stands alone, con- tra mundum. If ever this phrase fell from my pen (in what connection I know not), it is as erroneous as the position of St. Athanasius is honourable. Mr. Max Miiller's ideas, in various modifications, are doubtless still the most prevalent of any. The anthropo- logical method has hardly touched, I think, the learned contributors to Eoscher's excellent mytho- logical Lexicon. Dr. Brinton, whose American re- searches are so useful, seems decidedly to be a member of the older school. While I do not exactly remember alluding to Athanasius, I fully and freely withdraw the phrase. But there remain questions of allies to be discussed. Italian Critics Mr. Max Mliller asks,^ ' What would Mr. Andrew Lang say if he read the words of Signor Canizzaro, in his " Genesi ed Evoluzione del Mito " (1893), "Lang has laid down his arms before his adversaries " ? ' Mr. Lang ' would smile.' And what would Mr. Max Mliller say if he read the words of Professor Enrico 1 1, viii. cf. i. 27. Ill] THE QUESTION OF ALLIES 23 Morselli, 'Lang gives no quarter to his adversaries, who, for the rest, have long been reduced to silence ' ? ^ The Right Hon. Professor also smiles, no doubt. We both smile. Solvuntur risu tahulce. A Dutch Defender The question of the precise attitude of Professor Tiele, the accomplished Gifibrd Lecturer in the University of Edinburgh (1897), is more important and more difficult. His remarks were made in 1885, in an essay on the Myth of Cronos, and were separ- ately reprinted, in 1886, from the ' Eevue de I'Histoire des Eeligions,' which I shall cite. Where they refer to myself they deal with Custom and Myth, not with Myth, Ritual, and Religion (1887). It seems best to quote, ipsissimis verbis, Mr. Max Miiller's comments on Professor Tiele's remarks. He writes (i. viii.) : 'Let us proceed next to Holland. Professor Tiele, who had actually been claimed as an ally of the victorious army, declares : — " Je dois m'elever, au nom de la science mythologique et de I'exacti- tude . . . contre une methode qui ne fait que glisser sur des problemes de premiere importance." (See further on, p. 35.) ' And again : ' " Ces braves gens qui, pour peu qu'ils aient lu un ou deux livres de mythologie et d'anthropologie, et un ou deux recits de voyages, ne manqueront pas de se mettre k comparer a tort et k travers, et pour tout resultat produiront la confusion." ' Again (i. 35) : ' Besides Signor Canizzaro and Mr. Horatio Hale, ^ Biv, Grit. Mensile. Geneva, iii. xiv. p. 2. 24 MODERN MYTHOLOGY [iii the veteran among comparative ethnologists, Pro- fessor Tiele, in his Le Mythe de Kronos (1886), has very strongly protested against the downright misrepresentations of what I and my friends have really written. ' Professor Tiele had been appealed to as an unimpeachable authority. He was even claimed as an ally by the ethnological students of customs and myths, but he strongly declined that honour (1. c, v-m-— ' " M.Lang m'a fait I'honneur de me citer," he writes, " comme un de ses allies, et j'ai lieu de croire que M. Gaidoz en fait en quelque mesure autant. Ces messieurs n'ont point entierement tort. Cependant je dois m'elever, au nom de la science mythologique et de I'exactitude dont elle ne pent pas plus se passer que les autres sciences, contre une methode qui ne fait que glisser sur des problemes de premiere im- portance," &c. ' Speaking of the whole method followed by those who actually claimed to have founded a new school of mythology, he says (p. 21) : — ' " Je crains toutefois que ce qui s'y trouve de vrai ne soit connu depuis longtemps, et que la nouvelle ecole ne peche par exclusionisme tout autant que les ainees qu'elle combat avec tant de conviction." ' That is exactly what 1 have always said. What is there new in comparing the customs and myths of the Greeks with those of the barbarians ? Has not even Plato done this ? Did anybod}^ doubt that the Greeks, nay even the Hindus, were uncivilised or savages, before they became civilised or tamed ? Was not this common-sense view, so strongly insisted on by Fontenelle and Vico in the eighteenth century, in] THE QUESTION OF ALLIES 25 carried even to excess by such men as De Brosses (1709-1771)? And have the lessons taught to De Brosses by his witty contemporaries been quite for- gotten ? Must his followers be told again and again that they ought to begin with a critical examination of the evidence put before them by casual travellers, and that mythology is as little made up of one and the same material as the crust of the earth of granite only ? ' Keply Professor Tiele wrote in 1885. I do not remember having claimed his alliance, though I made one or two very brief citations from his remarks on the dangers of etymology applied to old proper names. ^ To citations made by me later in 1887 Professor Tiele cannot be referring.^ Thus I find no proof of any claim of alliance put forward by me, but I do claim a right to quote the Professor's published words. These I now translate : — ^ ' What goes before shows adequately that I am an ally, much more than an adversary, of the new school, whether styled ethnological or anthropological. It is true that all the ideas advanced by its partisans are not so new as they seem. Some of us — I mean among those who, without being vassals of the old school, were formed by it — had not only remarked already the defects of the reigning method, but had perceived the direction in which researches should be made ; they had even begun to say so. This does not prevent the young school from enjoying the great merit of having first formulated with precision, and ' Custom and Myth, p. 3, citing Bevue de VHist. des Religions, ii. 136. 2 M. B. B. i. 24. ^ Bevue de VHist. des Religions, xii. 256. 26 MODERN MYTHOLOGY [in with the energy of conviction, that which had hitherto been but imperfectly pointed out. If henceforth mythological science marches with a firmer foot, and loses much of its hypothetical character, it will in part owe this to the stimulus of the new school.' ' Braves Gens ' Professor Tiele then bids us leave our cries of triumph to the servum imitatorum pecics, braves gens, and so forth, as in the passage which Mr. Max Mliller, unless I misunderstand him, regards as referring to the ' new school,' and, notably, to M. Gaidoz and myself, though such language ought not to apply to M. Gaidoz, because he is a scholar. I am left to uncovenanted mercies. Professor Tiele on Our Merits The merits of the new school Professor Tiele had already stated : — ^ ' If I were reduced to choose between this method and that of comparative philology, I would prefer the former without the slightest hesitation. This method alone enables us to explain the fact, such a frequent cause of surprise, that the Greeks like the Germans . . . could attribute to their gods all manner of cruel, cowardly and dissolute actions. This method alone reveals the cause of all the strange metamorphoses of gods into animals, plants, and even stones. ... In fact, this method teaches us to recognise in all these oddities the survivals of an age of barbarism long over-past, but lingering into later times, under the form of religious legends, the most persistent of all traditions. . . . This method, eii/ln, can alone help us to account for the genesis of myths, 1 Op. cit. p. 253. Ill] THE QUESTION OF ALLIES 27 because it devotes itself to studying them in their rudest and most primitive shape. . . .' Destruction and Construction Thus writes Professor Tiele about the constructive part of our work. As to the destructive — or would- be destructive — part, he condenses my arguments against the method of comparative philology, 'To resume, the whole house of comparative philological mythology is builded on the sand, and her method does not deserve confidence, since it ends in such divergent results.' That is Professor Tide's state- ment of my destructive conclusions, and he adds, ' So far, I have not a single objection to make. I can still range myself on Mr. Lang's side when he ' takes certain distinctions into which it is needless to go here.^ Allies or Not? These are several of the passages on which, in 1887, I relied as evidence of the Professor's approval, which, I should have added, is only partial. It is he who, unsolicited, professes himself 'much more our ally than our adversary.' It is he who proclaims that Mr. Max Mliller's central hypothesis is erroneous, and who makes ' no objection ' to my idea that it is ' builded on the sand.' It is he who assigns essential merits to our method, and I fail to find that he ' strongly declines the honour ' of our alliance. The passage about ' braves gens ' explicitly does not refer to us. Our Errors In 1887, I was not careful to quote what Pro- fessor Tiele had said against us. First, as to our want 1 Op. cit. xii. 250. 28 MODERN MYTHOLOGY [m of novelt}^ That merit, I think, I had never claimed. I was proud to point out that we had been anticipated by Eusebius of C^sarea, by Fontenelle, and doubtless by many others. We repose, as Professor Tiele justly says, on the researches of Dr. Tylor. At the same time it is Professor Tiele who constantly speaks of ' the new school,' while adding that he himself had freely opposed Mr. Max Miiller's central hypothesis, ' a disease of language,' in Dutch periodicals. The Professor also censures our ' exclusiveness,' our ' narrowness,' our ' songs of triumph,' our use of parody (M. Gaidoz republished an old one, not to my own taste ; I have also been guilty of ' The Great Gladstone Myth ') and our charge that our adversaries neglect ethnological material. On this I explain my- self later. ^ Uses of Philology Our method (says Professor Tiele) ' cannot answer all the questions which the science of mythology must solve, or, at least, must study.' Certainly it makes no such pretence. Professor Tiele then criticises Sir George Cox and Mr. Eobert Brown, junior, for their etymo- logies of Poseidon. Indiscreet followers are not confined to our army alone. Now, the use of philology, we learn, is to discourage such etymo- logical vagaries as those of Sir G. Cox.^ We also discourage them — severely. But we are warned that philology really has discovered ' some undeniably certain etj^mologies ' of divine names. Well, I also say, ' Philology alone can teU whether Zeus Asterios,or Adonis, or Zeus Labrandeus is originally a Semitic or ^ p. 104, infra. • Eevue de VHist. des Religions, xii. 259. hi] the question of allies 29 a Greek divine name ; here she is the Pythoness we must all consult.' ^ And is it my fault that, even in this matter, the Pythonesses utter such strangely discrepant oracles ? Is Athene from a Zend root (Benfey), a Greek root (Curtius), or to be interpreted by Sanskrit Ahand (Max Mliller)? Meanwhile Professor Tiele repeats that, in a search for the origin of myths, and, above all, of obscene and brutal myths, ' philology will lead us far from our aim.' Now, if the school of Mr. Max Mliller has a mot dordre, it is, says Professor Tiele, ' to call mythology a disease of language.' ^ But, adds Mr. Max Mliller's learned Dutch defender, mythologists, while using philology for certain purposes, ' must shake themselves free, of course, from the false hypothesis ' (Mr. Max Mliller's) ' which makes of mythology a mere maladie du Ian- gage.' This professor is rather a dangerous defender of Mr. Max Mliller ! He removes the very corner-stone of his edifice, which Tiele does not object to our describ- ing as founded on the sand. Mr. Max Mliller does not cite (as far as I observe) these passages in which Professor Tiele (in my view, and in fact) abandons (for certain uses) his system of mythology. Perhaps Pro- fessor Tiele has altered his mind, and, while keeping what Mr. Max Mliller quotes, braves gens, and so- on, has withdrawn what he said about ' the false hypo- thesis of a disease of language.' But my own last book about myths was written in 1886-1887, shortly after Professor Tide's remarks were published (1886) as I have cited them. ^ M. B. B. i. 25. ' Bev. xii. 247. 30 MODERN MYTHOLOGY [iii Personal Controversy All this matter of alliances may seem, and indeed is, of a personal character, and therefore unim- portant. Professor Tiele's position in 1885-86 is clearly defined. Whatever he may have published since, he then accepted the anthropological or ethnological method, as alone capable of doing the work in which we employ it. This method alone can discover the origin of ancient myths, and alone can account for the barbaric element, that old puzzle, in the myths of civilised races. This the philological method, useful for other purposes, can- not do, and its central hypothesis can only mislead us. I was not aware, I repeat, that I ever claimed Professor Tiele's ' alliance,' as he, followed by Mr. Max Mliller, declares. They cannot point, as a proof of an assertion made by Professor Tiele, 1885-86, to words of mine which did not see the light till 1887, in Myth, Ritual, and Religion, i. pp. 24, 43, 44. Not that I deny Professor Tiele's state- ment about my claim of his alliance before 1885-86. I merely ask for a reference to this claim. In 1887 ^ I cited his observations (already quoted) on the inadequate and misleading character of the philo- logical method, when we are seeking for ' the origin of a myth, or the physical explanation of the oldest myths, or trying to account for the rude and obscene element in the divine legends of civilised races.' I added the Professor's applause of the philological method as applied to other problems of mythology ; for example, ' the genealogical relations of myths. . . . The philological method alone can answer here,' 1 M. B. B. i. 24. Ill] THE QUESTION OF ALLIES 3 1 aided, doubtless, by historical and archaeological researches as to the inter-relations of races. This approval of the philological method, I cited ; the reader will find the whole passage in the Revue, vol. xii. p. 260. I remarked, however, that this will seem ' a very limited province,' though, in this province, 'Philology is the Pythoness we must all consult ; in this sphere she is supreme, when her high priests are of one mind.' Thus I did not omit to notice Professor Tide's comments on the merits of the philological method. To be sure, he him- self does not apply it when he comes to examine the Myth of Cronos. ' Are the God and his myth original or imported ? I have not approached this question because it does not seem to me ripe in this particular case.' ^ ' Mr. Lang has justly rejected the opinion of Welcker and Mr. Max Miiller, that Cronos is simply formed from Zeus's epithet, KpovtW.'^ This opinion, however, Mr. Max Miiller still thinks the 'most likely' (ii. 507). My other citation of Professor Tiele in 1887 says that our pretensions ' are not unacknowledged ' by him, and, after a long quotation of approving passages, I add ' the method is thus applauded by a most com- petent authority, and» it has been warmly accepted ' (pray note the distinction) by M. Gaidoz.^ 1 trust that what I have said is not unfair. Professor Tide's objec- tions, not so much to our method as to our manners, and to my own use of the method in a special case, have been stated, or will be stated later. Probably I should have put them forward in 1887 ; I now repair my error. My sole wish is to be fair ; if Mr. 1 Bev. xii. 277. - Bev. xii. 264. 2 M. B. B. i. 44, 45. 32 MODERN MYTHOLOGY [m Max Mliller has not wholly succeeded in giving the full drift of Professor Tide's remarks, I am certain that it is from no lack of candour. The Story of Cronos Professor Tiele now devotes fifteen pages to the story of Cronos, and to my essay on that theme. He admits that I was right in regarding the myth as ' extraordinarily old,' and that in Greece it must go back to a period when Greeks had not passed the New Zealand level of civilisation. [Now, the New Zealanders were cannibals !] But ' we are the victims of a great illusion if we think that a mere compari- son of a Maori and Greek myth explains the myth.' I only profess to explain the savagery of the myth by the fact (admitted) that it was composed by savages. The Maori story ' is a myth of the creation of light.' I, for my part, say, ' It is a myth of the severance of heaven and earth.' ^ And so it is ! No Being said, in Maori, ' Fiat lux ! ' Light is not here created. Heaven lay flat on Earth, all was dark, somebody kicked Heaven up, the already existing lio-ht came in. Here is no creation de la lumiere. I ask Professor Tiele, ' Do you, sir, create light when you open your window-shutters in the morning? No, you let light in ! ' The Maori tale is also ' un my the primitif de I'aurore,' a primitive dawn myth. Dawn, again ! Here I lose Professor Tiele. ' Has the myth of Cronos the same sense ? ' Probably not, as the Maori story, to my mind, has not got it either. But Professor Tiele says, ' The myth of Cronos has precisely the opposite sense.' ^ What is the myth of Cronos? Ouranos (Heaven) ^ Custom and Myth, p. 51. ^ Rev. xii. 262. of m] THE QUESTION OF ALLIES ■'"■ ^3 married Gaea fEarth). Ouranos ' hid his children from the light in the hollows of Earth ' (Hesiod). So, too, the New Zealand gods were hidden from light while Heaven (Eangi) lay flat on Papa (Earth). The children ' were concealed between the hollows of their parent's breasts.' They did not like it, for they dwelt in darkness. So Cronos took an iron sickle and mutilated Ouranos in such a way, enjln, as to divorce him a thoro. ' Thus,' I say, ' were Heaven and Earth practically divorced.' The Greek gods now came out of the hollows where they had been, like the New Zealand gods, ' hidden from the light.' Professor Tiele on Sunset Myths No, says Professor Tiele, ' the story of Cronos has precisely the opposite meaning.' The New Zealand myth is one of dawn, the Greek myth is one of sun- set. The mutilated part of poor Ouranos is le phallus du del, le soleil, which falls into ' the Cosmic ocean,' and then, of course, all is dark. Professor Tiele may be right here ; I am indifferent. All that I wanted to explain was the savage complexion of the myth, and Professor Tiele says that I have explained that, and (xii. 264) he rejects the etymological theory of Mr. Max Mliller. I say that, in my opinion, the second part of the Cronos myth (the child-swallowing performances of Cronos) ' was probably a world-wide Mdrchen, or tale, attracted into the cycle of which Cronos was the centre, without any particular reason beyond the law which makes detached myths crystallise round any celebrated name.' Professor Tiele says he does not grasp the mean- ing of, or believe in, any such law. Well, why is D 34 MODERN MYTHOLOGY [in the world-wide tale of the Cyclops told about Odysseus ? It is absolutely out of keeping, and it puzzles commentators. In fact, here was a hero and there was a tale, and the tale was attracted into the cycle of the hero ; the very last man to have behaved as Odysseus is made to do.^ But Cronos was an odious ruffian. The world-wide tale of swallowing and dis- fi-orging the children was attracted to his too notorious name ' by grace of congruity.' Does Professor Tiele now grasp my meaning [saisir) ? Our Lack of Scientific Exactness I do not here give at full length Professor Tide's explanation of the meaning of a myth which I do not profess to explain myself. Thus, drops of the blood of Ouranos falling on Earth begat the Melies, usually rendered 'Nymphs of the Ash-trees.' But Professor Tiele says the}^ were really hees (Hesychius, IxeXiaL = ixe\i(T(TaC) — ' that is to say, stars.' Every- body has observed that the stars rise up off the earth, like the bees sprung from the blood of Ouranos. In Myth, Ritual, and Religion (i. 299-315) I give the competing explanations of Mr. Max Midler, of Schwartz (Cronos = storm god), PreUer (Cronos = harvest god), of others who see the sun, or time, in Cronos ; while, with Professor Tiele, Cronos is the god of the upper air, and also of the under- world and harvest ; he ' doubles the part.' ' // est run et V autre ' — that is, ' le dieu qui fait murir le hie ' and also ' un dieu des lieux souterrains.'' ' 11 hahite les profondeurs sous la terre,' he is also le dieu du del nocturne. It may have been remarked that I declined 1 Odyssey, book ix. Ill] THE QUESTION OF ALLIES 35 to add to this interesting collection of plausible explanations of Cronos, A selection of such explana- tions I offer in tabular form : — Cronos was Ood of r I Time (?).... Max MuUer "^^^ Sun Sayce Midnight sky . . . Kuhn Under-world \ Midnight sky I . . . Tiele - Harvest j Harvest .... Preller Storm Schwartz Star-swallowing sky . . Canon Taylor Sun scorching spring . . Hartung Cronos was by Race Late Greek (?) . . . Max Miiller Semitic .... Bottiger Accadian (?). . . . Sayce Etymology of Cronos , Xpovos = Time (?) . . Max Miiller pd^A^^- Krana (Sanskrit) . . Kuhn Karnos (Horned) . . Brown Kpaivui (pf>vjL )' ' . Preller The pleased reader will also observe that the phallus of Ouranos is the sun (Tiele), that Cronos is the sun (Sayce), that Cronos mutilating Ouranos is the sun (Hartung), just as the sun is the mutilated part of Ouranos (Tiele) ; Or is, according to others, the stone which Cronos swallowed, and which acted as an emetic. My Lack of Explanation of Cronos Now, I have offered no explanation at all of who Cronos was, what he was god of, from what race he was borrowed, from what language his name was * D 2 36 MODERN MYTHOLOGY [iii derived. The fact is that I do not know the truth about these important debated questions. Therefore, after speaking so kindly of our method, and reject- ing the method of Mr. Max Mliller, Professor Tiele now writes thus (and this Mr. Max Muller does cite, as we have seen) : — ' Mr. Lang and M. Gaidoz are not entirely wrong in claiming me as an ally. But I must protest, in the name of mythological science, and of the exact- ness as necessary to her as to any of the other sciences, against a method which only glides over questions of the first importance ' (name, origin, province, race of Cronos), ' and which to most ques- tions can only reply, with a smile, Cest chercher raison oil il ny en a pas.' My Crime Now, what important questions was I gliding over ? In what questions did I not expect to find reason ? Why in this savage fatras about Cronos swallowing his children, about blood-drops becoming bees (Mr. Max Muller says ' Melian nymphs '), and bees being stars, and all the rest of a prehistoric Mdrchen worked over again and again by the later fancy of Greek poets and by Greek voyagers who recognised Cronos in Moloch. In all this I certainly saw no ' reason,' but I have given in tabular form the general, if inharmonious, conclusions of more exact and conscientious scholars, ' their variegated hypotheses,' as Mannhardt says in the case of Demeter. My error, rebuked by Professor Tiele, is the lack of that ' scientific exactitude ' exhibited by the explanations arranged in my tabular form. Ill] THE QUESTION OF ALLIES 2>1 My Reply to Professor Tiele I would reply that I am not engaged in a study of the Cult of Cronos, but of the revolting element in his Myth : his swallowing of his children, taking a stone emetic by mistake, and disgorging the swallowed children alive ; the stone being on view at Delphi long after the Christian era. Now, such stories of divine feats of swallowing and disgorging are very common, I show, in savage myth and popular Mdrchen. The bushmen have Kwai Hemm, who swallows the sacred Mantis insect. He is killed, and all the creatures whom he has swallowed return to light. Such stories occur among Australians, Kaffirs, Eed Men, in Guiana, in Greenland, and so on. In some cases, among savages, Night (conceived as a person), or one star which obscures another star, is said to ' swallow ' it. Therefore, I say, ' natural phenomena, explained on savage principles, might give the data of the swallowing myth, of Cronos ' ^ — that is, the myth of Cronos may be, probably is, originally a nature-myth. ' On this principle Cronos would be {ad hoc) the Night.' Professor Tiele does not allude to this effort at inter- pretation. But I come round to something like the view of Kuhn. Cronos (ad hoc) is the midnight [sky], which Professor Tiele also regards as one of his several aspects. It is not impossible, I think, that if the swallowing myth was originally a nature- myth, it was suggested by Night. But the question I tried to answer was, ' Why did the Greeks, of all people, teU such a disgusting story ? ' And I replied, with Professor Tiele's approval, that they inherited 1 C. and M. p. 56. ^S MODERN MYTHOLOGY [in it from an age to which such foUies were natural, an age when tlie ancestors of the Greeks were on (or under) the Maori stage of culture. Now, the Maoris, a noble race, with poems of great beauty and speculative power, were cannibals, like Cronos. To my mind, ' scientific exactitude ' is rather shown in confessing ignorance than in adding to the list of guesses. Conclusion as to Professor Tiele The learned Professor's remarks on being ' much more my ally than my opponent ' were published before my Myth, Ritual, and Religion, in which, (i. 24, 25) I cited his agreement with me in the opinion that ' the philological method ' (Mr. Max Mliller's) is ' inadequate and misleading, when it is a question of discovering the origin of a myth.' I also quoted his unhesitating preference of ours to Mr. Max Mliller's method (i. 43, 44). I did not cite a tithe of what he actually did say to our credit. But I omitted to quote what it was inexcusable not to add, that Professor Tiele thinks us ' too exclusive,' that he himself had already, before us, combated Mr. Max Mliller's method in Dutch periodicals, that he blamed our ' songs of triumph ' and our levities, that he thought we might have ignorant camp-followers, that I glided over important questions (bees, blood- drops, stars, Melian nyraplis, the phallus of Ouranos, &c.), and showed scientific inexactitude in declining chercher raison oil il ny en a pas. None the less, in Professor Tide's opinion, our method is new (or is not new), illuminating, success- ful, and alone successful, for the ends to which we apply it, and, finall}^, we have shown Mr. Max Mliller's Ill] THE QUESTION OF ALLIES 39 method to be a house builded on the sand. That is the gist of what Professor Tiele said. Mr. Max Miiller, Hke myself, quotes part and omits part. He quotes twice Professor Tiele's obser- vations on my deplorable habit of gliding over important questions. He twice says that we have ' actually ' claimed the Professor as ' an ally of the victorious army,' ' the ethnological students of custom and myth,' and once adds, ' but he strongly declined that honour.' He twice quotes the famous braves gens passage, excepting only M. Gaidoz, as a scholar, from a censure explicitly directed at our possible camp-followers as distinguished from our- selves. But if Mr. Max Miiller quotes Professor Tiele's re- marks proving that, in his opinion, the ' army ' is really victorious ; if he cites the acquiescence in my opinion that his mythological house is ' builded on the sands,' or Professor Tiele's preference for our method over his own, or Professor Tiele's volunteered remark that he is ' much more our ally than our adversary,' I have not detected the passao^es in Contributions to the Science of Mythology. The reader may decide as to the relative im- portance of what I left out, and of what Mr. Max Miiller omitted. He says, ' Professor Tiele and I differ on several points, but we perfectly understand each other, and when we have made a mistake we readily confess and correct it' (i. 37). The two scholars, I thought, differed greatly. Mr. Max Miiller's war-cry, slogan, mot dordre, is to Professor Tiele ' a false hypothesis.' Our method, which Mr. Max Miiller combats so bravely, is all that Professor Tiele has said of it. But, if all this is not * D 4 40 MODERN MYTHOLOGY [iii conspicuously apparent in our adversary's book, it does not become me to throw the first stone. We are all, in fact, inclined unconsciously to overlook what makes against our argument, I have done it ; and, to the best of my belief, Mr. Max Miiller has not avoided the same error. 41 IV MANNHABDT Mannhardt's Attitude Professor Tiele, it may appear, really 'fights for his own hand,' and is not a thorough partisan of either side. The celebrated Mannhardt, too, doubt- less the most original student of folk-lore since drimm, might, at different periods of his career, have been reckoned an ally, now by philologists, now by ' the new school.' He may be said, in fact, to have combined what is best in the methods of both parties. Both are anxious to secure such support as his works can lend. Moral Character Impeached Mr. Max Miiller avers that his moral character seems to be ' aimed at ' by critics who say that he has no right to quote Mannhardt or Oldenberg as his supporters (1. xvi.). Now, without making absurd imputations, I do not reckon Mannhardt a thorough partisan of Mr. Max Miiller. I could not put our theory so well as Mannhardt puts it. ' The study of the lower races is an invaluable instrument for the interpretation of the survivals from earlier stages, which we meet in the full civilisation of cultivated peoples, but which arose in the remotest fetishism and savagery.' Like Mr. Max Miiller, I do not care for the vague word ' fetishism,' otherwise Mannhardt's remark ex- actly represents my own position, the anthropological 42 MODERN MYTHOLOGY [iv position.^ Now, Mr. Max Miiller does not like that position. That position he assails. It was Mann- hardt's, however, when he wrote the book quoted, and, so far, Mannhardt was not absolutely one of Mr. Max Midler's ' supporters ' — unless I am one. ' I have even been accused,' says Mr. Max Midler, ' of intentionally ignoring or suppressing Mannhardt's labours. How charitable! ' (1. xvii.) I trust, from our author's use of the word todtschweigen, that this uncharitable charge was made in Germany. Mannhardt Mannhardt, for a time, says Mr. Max Midler, ' expressed his mistrust in some of the results of comparative mythology ' (1. xvii.). Indeed, I myself quote him to that very effect.^ Not only ' some of the results,' but the philological method itself was distrusted by Mannhardt, as by Curtius. ' The failure of the method in its practical work- ing lies in a lack of the historical sense,' says Mannhardt.^ Mr. Max Miiller may have, probably has, referred to these sayings of Mannhardt ; or, if he has not, no author is obliged to mention everybody who disagrees with him. Mannhardt's method was mainly that of folklore, not of philology. He examined peasant customs and rites as ' survivals ' of the oldest paganism. Mr. Frazer applies Mannhardt's rich lore to the explanation of Greek and other rites in The Golden Bough, that entrancing book. Such was Mannhardt's position (as I shall prove at large) when he was writing his most famous works. But he 'returned at last to his old colours ' (1. xvii.) in ' W. u. F. K. xxiii. ^ jjj ^^ ji i 23. =* W. u. F. K. xvii. iv] MANNIIAEDT 43 Die lettischen Somienmythen (1875). In 1880 Maiin- liardt died. Mr. Max Mliller does not say whether Mannhardt, before a decease deeply regretted, re- canted his heretical views about the philological method, and his expressed admiration of the study of the lower races as ' an invaluable instrument.' One would gladly read a recantation so important. But Mr. Max MuUer does tell us that ' if I did not refer to his work in my previous contributions to the science of mythology the reason was simple enough. It was not, as has been suggested, my wish to sup- press it (todtschweigen), but simply my want of know- ledge of the materials with which he dealt ' (German popular customs and traditions) ' and therefore the consciousness of my incompetence to sit in judg- ment on his labours.' Again, we are told that there was no need of criticism or praise of Mannhardt. He had Mr. Frazer as his prophet — but not till ten years after his death. Mannhardt's Letters ' Mannhardt's state of mind with regard to the general principles of comparative philology has been so exactly my own,' says Mr. Max Mliller, that he cites Mannhardt's letters to prove the fact. But as to the application to myth of the principles of comparative philology, Mannhardt speaks of ' the lack of the historical sense ' displayed in the practical emj)loy- ment of the method. This, at least, is ' not exactly ' Mr. Max Miiller's own view. Probably he refers to the later period when Mannhardt ' returned to his old colours.' The letters of Mannhardt, cited in proof of his exact agreement with Mr. Max Miiller about 44 MODERN MYTHOLOGY [iv comparative philology, do not, as far as quoted, mention the subject of comparative philology at all (1. xviii-xx.). Possibly ' philology' is here a slip of the pen, and ' mythology' may be meant, Mannhardt says to Mullenhoff (May 2, 1876) that he has been uneasy ' at the extent which sun myths threaten to assume in my comparisons.' He is opening ' a new point of view ; ' materials rush in, ' so that the sad danger seemed inevitable of every- thing becoming everything.' In Mr. Max Mliller's own words, written long ago, he expressed his dread, not of ' ever3'thing becoming everything ' (a truly Heraclitean state of affairs), but of the ' omni- present Sun and the inevitable Dawn appearing in ever so many disguises.' ' Have we not,' he asks, ' arrived both at the same conclusion ? ' Eeally, I do not know ! Had Mannhardt quite cashiered ' the corn- spirit,' who, perhaps, had previously threatened to * become everything ' ? He is still in great vigour, in Mr. Frazer's Golden Bough, and Mr. Frazer is Mann- hardt's disciple. But where, all this time, is there a reference by Mannhardt to ' the general principles of comparative philology ' P Where does he accept ' the omnipresent Sun and the inevitable Dawn ' ? Why, he says the reverse ; he says in this letter that he is inmieasurably removed from accepting them at all as Mr. Max Miiller accepts them ! ' I am very far from looking upon all myths as psychical reflections of physical phenomena, still less as of exclusively solar or meteorological phenomena, like Kuhn, Schwartz, Max Miiller and their school.' What a queer way of expressing his agreement with Mr. Max Miiller ! The Professor expostulates with Mannhardt iv] MANNIIARDT 45 (1. XX.) : — ' Where has any one of us ever done this ? ' Well, when Mannhardt said ' all myths,' he wrote colloquially. Shall we say that he meant 'most myths,' ' a good many myths,' ' a myth or two here and there ' ? Wliatever he meant, he meant that he was ' still more than very far removed from looking upon all myths ' as Mr. Max Mliller does. Mannhardt's next passage I quote entire and textually from Mr. Max MilUer's translation : — ' I have learnt to appreciate poetical and literary production as an essential element in the develop- ment of mythology, and to draw and utilise the consequences arising from this state of things. [Who has not ?] But, on the other hand, I hold it as quite certain that a portion of the older myths arose from nature poetry which is no longer directly intelligible to us, but has to be interpreted by means of analogies. Nor does it follow that these myths betray any historical identity ; they only testify to the same kind of conception and tendency prevailing on similar stages of development. Of these nature myths some have reference to the life and the cir- cumstances of the sun, and our first steps towards an understanding of them are helped on by such nature poetry as the Lettish, which has not yet been obscured by artistic and poetical reflexion. In that poetry mythical personalities confessedly belonging to a solar sphere are transferred to a large number of poetical representatives, of which the explanation must consequently be found in the same (solar) sphere of nature. My method here is just the same as that applied by me to the Tree- cult.' Mr. Max Mliller asks, ' Where is there any 46 MODERN MYTHOLOGY [iv difference between this, the latest and final system adopted by Mannhardt, and my own system which I put forward in 1856 ? ' (1. xxi.) How Mannhardt differs from Mr. Max Miiller I propose to show wherein the difference lies. Mannhardt says, ' My method is just the same as that applied by me to the Tree-cult.' What was that method ? Mannhardt, in the letter quoted by Mr. Max Miiller, goes on to describe it ; but Mr. Max Miiller omits the description, probably not realising its importance. For Mannhardt's method is the reverse of that practised under the old colours to which he is said to have returned. Mannhardt's Method 'My method is here the same as in the Tree- cult. I start from a given collection of facts, of which the central idea is distinct and generally admitted, and consequently offers a firm basis for explanation. I illustrate from this and from well- founded analogies. Continuing from these, I seek to elucidate darker things. I search out the simplest radical ideas and perceptions, the germ-cells from w^hose combined growth mythical tales form them- selves in very different ways.' Mr. Frazer gives us a similar description of Mannhardt's method, whether dealing with sun myths or tree myths.^ ' Mannhardt set himself systematically to collect, compare, and explain the living super- stitions of the peasantry.' Now Mr. Max Miiller has just confessed, as a reason for incompetence to criti- cise Mannhardt's labours, 'my want of knowledge 1 Golden Bough, 1. ix. iv] MANNHAIJDT 47 of the materials with which he dealt — the popular customs and traditions of Germany.' And yet he asks where there is any difference between his system and Mannhardt's. Mannhardt's is the study of rural survival, the system of folklore. Mr. Max Midler's is the system of comparative philology about which in this place Mannhardt does not say one single word. Mannhardt interprets some myths ' arising from nature poetry, no longer intelligible to us,' by analogies ; Mr. Max Miiller interprets them by etymologies. The difference is incalculable ; not that Mann- hardt always abstains from etymologising. Another Claim on Mannhardt While maintaining that ' all comparative mytho- logy must rest on comparison of names as its most certain basis ' (a system which Mannhardt declares explicitly to be so far ' a failure ' ), Mr. Max Miiller says, ' It is well known that in his last, nay posthu- mous essa}^, Mannhardt, no mean authority, returned to the same conviction.' I do not know which is Mannhardt's very last essay, but I shall prove that in the posthumous essays Mannhardt threw cold water on the whole method of philological comparative mythology. However, as proof of Mannhardt's return to Mr. Max Miiller's convictions, our author cites Mytho- logische Forschungen (pp. 86-113). What Mannhardt said In the passages here produced as proof of Mann- hardt's conversion, he is not investigating a myth at all, or a name which occurs in mythology. He is 48 MODERN MYTHOLOGY [it trying to discover the meaning of the practices of the Lupercalia at Eome. In February, says Dionysius of Hahcarnassus, the Eomans held a popular festival, and lads ran round naked, save for skins of victims, whipping the spectators. Mannhardt, in his usual way, collects all the facts first, and then analyses the name Luperci. This does not make him a philo- logical mythologist. To take a case in point, at Selkirk and Queensferry the bounds are ridden, or walked, by ' Burleymen ' or ' Burrymen.' ^ After examining the facts we examine the words, and ask, ' Why Burley or Burry men ? ' At Queensferry, by a folk etymology, one of the lads wears a coat stuck over with burrs. But ' Borough-men ' seems the probable etymology. As we examine the names Burley, or Burry men, so Mannhardt examines the name Luperci ; and if a true etymology can be dis- covered, it will illustrate the original intention of the Lupercalia (p. 86). He would like to explain the Lupercalia as a popular play, representing the spirits of vegetation opposing the spirits of infertility. ' But we do not forget that our whole theory of the development of the rite rests on a hypothesis which the lack of materials prevents us from demonstrating.' He would explain Luperci as Lupiherci — 'wolf-goats.' Over this we need not linger ; but how does all this prove Mannhardt to have returned to the method of com- paring Greek with Vedic divine names, and arriving thence at some celestial phenomenon as the basis of a terrestrial myth ? Yet he sometimes does this. ^ TTepiekQeiv Bpofj-m rfjv Kafir/v. Dionys. i. 80. iv] MANNHARDT 49 My Relations to Mannhardt If anything could touch and move an unawak- ened anthropologist it would be the conversion of Mannhardt. My own relations with his ideas have the interest of illustrating mental coincidences. His name does not occur, I think, in the essay, 'The Method of Folklore,' in the first edition of my Custom and Myth. In that essay I take, as an example of the method, the Scottish and Northumbrian Kernahahy, the puppet made out of the last gleanings of harvest. This I compared to the Greek Demeter of the harvest-home, with sheaves and poppies in her hands, in the immortal Seventh Idyll of Theocritus. Our Kernababy, I said, is a stunted survival of our older ' Maiden,' ' a reopular image of the harvest goddess,' and I compared KopT). Next I gave the parallel case from ancient Peru, and the odd accidental coincidence that there the maize was styled Mama Cora (ixrJTrjp Koprj !). In entire ignorance of Mannhardt's corn-spirit, or corn-mother, I was following Mannhardt's track. Indeed, Mr. Max Mliller has somewhere remarked that I popularise Mannhardt's ideas. Naturally he could not guess that the coincidence was accidental and also inevitable. Two men, unknown to each other, were using the same method on the same facts. Mannhardt's Retiirn to his old Colours If, then, Mannhardt was re-converted, it would be a potent argument for my conversion. But one is reminded of the re-conversion of Prince Charles. In 1750 he 'deserted the errors of the Church of Eome E 50 MODERN MYTHOLOGY [iv for those of the Church of England.' Later he returned, or affected to return, to the ancient faith. A certain Cardinal seemed contented therewith, and, as the historian remarks, ' was clearly a man not difficult to please.' Mr. Max Miiller reminds me of the good Cardinal. I do not feel so satisfied as he does of Mannhardt's reconversion. Mannhardt's Attitude to Philology We have heard Mannhardt, in a letter partly cited by Mr. Max Miiller, describe his own method. He begins with what is certain and intelligible, a mass of popular customs. These he explains by analogies. He passes from the known to the obscure. Philological mythologists begin with the unknown, the name of a god. This they analyse, extract a meaning, and (proceeding to the known) fit the facts of the god's legend into the sense of his name. The methods are each other's opposites, yet the letter in which Mannhardt illustrates this fact is cited as a proof of his return to his old colours. Irritating Conduct of Mannhardt Nothing irritates philological mythologists so much, nothing has injured them so much in the esteem of the public which 'goes into these things a little,' as the statement that their competing etymo- logies and discrepant interpretations of mythical names are mutually destructive. I have been told that this is ' a mean argument.' But if one chemical analyst found bismuth where another found iridium, and a third found argon, the public would begin to look on chemistry without enthusiasm ; still more so iv] 3IANNHARDT 5 1 if one cliemist rarely found anything but inevitable bismuth or omnipresent iridium. Now Mannhardt uses this ' mean argument.' Mannhardt on Demeter Erinnys In a posthumous work, Mythologische Forschungen (1884), the work from which Mr. Max Miiller cites the letter to Mlillenhoff, Mannhardt discusses Demeter Erinnys. She is the Arcadian goddess, who, in the form of a mare, became mother of Despoina and the horse Arion, by Poseidon.^ Her anger at the un- handsome behaviour of Poseidon caused Demeter to be called Erinnys — ' to be angry ' being ipivveiv in Arcadian — a folk-etymology, clearly. Mannhardt first dives deep into the sources for this fable. '^ Arion, he decides, is no mythological personification, but a poetical ideal {Bezeichnung) of the war-horse. Legend is ransacked for proof of this. Poseidon is the lord of wind and wave. Now, there are waves of corn, under the wind, as well as waves of the sea. When the Suabian rustic sees the wave running over the corn, he says, Da lauft das Pferd, and Greeks before Homer would say, in face of the billowing corn, 'EkeWl OeovcTi Ittttol, There run horses ! And Homer himself^ says that the horses of Erichthonius, children of Boreas, ran over cornfield and sea. We ourselves speak of sea-waves as ' white horses.' So, to be brief, Mannhardt explains the myth of Demeter Erinnys becoming, as a mare, a mother by Poseidon as a horse, thus, ' Poseidon Hippios, or Poseidon in horse's form, rushes through the growing grain and ' Pausanias, viii. 25. - Myth. Forsch. p. 244. =5 Iliad, XX. 226. E 2 52 MODERN MYTHOLOGY [iv weds Demeter,' and he cites peasant proverbs, such as Das Korn heirathet ; das Korn feiert Hochzeit (p. 264). ' This is the germ of the Arcadian Saga.' ' The Arcadian myth of Demeter Erinnys is un- deniably a blending of the epic tradition [of the ideal war-horse] with the local cult of Demeter. ... It is a probable hypothesis that the belief in the wed- ding of Demeter and Poseidon comes from the sight of the waves passing over the cornfield. . . .' ^ It is very neat ! But a certain myth of Loki in horse-form comes into memory, and makes me wonder how Mannhardt would have dealt with that too liberal narrative. Loki, as a mare (he being a male god), became, by the horse of a giant, the father of Sleipnir, Odin's eight-footed steed. Mr. W. A. Craigie supplies this note on Loki's analogy with Poseidon, as a horse, in the waves of corn : — 'In North Jutland, when the vapours are seen going with a wavy motion along the earth in the heat of summer, they say, " Loki is sowing oats to- day," or " Loki is driving his goats." ' N.B. — Oats in Danish are havre, which suggests O.N. hafrar, gosits. Modern Icelandic has hafrar =osits, but the word is not found in the old language.' Is Loki a corn-spirit ? Mannhardt's 'Mean Argument' Mannhardt now examines the explanations of Demeter Erinnys, and her legend, given by Preller, E. Curtius, 0. Mliller, A. Kuhn, W. Sonne, Max ' Myth. For sell. p. 265, iv] MANNHARDT 53 Mllller, E. Burnouf, de Gubernatis, Schwartz, and H. D. Mllller. ' Here,' he cries, ' is a variegated list of hypotheses ! ' Demeter is Storm-cloiid Sun Goddess Earth and Moon Goddess Datun Night. Poseidon is Despoina is Sea Storm God Cloud-hidden S^0l Bain God. Bain Thunder Moon. Arion, the horse, is Erinnys is Lightning Sun Thunder-horse. Storm-cloud Bed Baton. Mannhardt decides, after this exhibition of guesses, that the Demeter legends cannot be explained as refractions of any natural phenomena in the heavens (p. 275). He concludes that the myth of Demeter Erinnys, and the parallel Vedic story of Saranyu (who also had an amour as a mare), are ' incongruous,' and that neither sheds any light on the other. He protests against the whole tendency to find prototypes of all Aryan myths in the Veda, and to think that, with a few exceptions, all mythology is a terrestrial reflection of celestial phenomena (p. 280). He then goes into the con- 54 MODERN MYTHOLOGY [iv tending etymologies of Demeter, and decides (' for the man was mortal and had been a ' philologer) in favour of his own guess, ^etct Stj + iJ^riTiqp = ' Corn- mother' (p. 294). This essay on Demeter was written by Mannhardt in the summer of 1877, a year after the letter which is given as evidence that he had ' returned to his old colours.' The essay shows him using the philological string of ' variegated hypotheses ' as anything but an argument in favour of the philological method. On the other hand, he warns us against the habit, so common in the philological school, of looking for prototypes of all Aryan myths in the Veda, and of finding in most myths a reflection on earth of phenomena in the heavens, Erinnys being either Storm-cloud or Dawn, according to the taste and fancy of the inquirer. We also find Mannhardt, in 1877, starting from the known — ^legend and rural survival in phrase and custom — and so advancing to the unknown — the name Demeter. The philologists commence with the unknown, the old name, Demeter Erinnys, explain it to taste, and bring the legend into harmony with their explana- tion. I cannot say, then, that I share Mr. Max MuUer's impression. I do not feel sure that Mann- hardt did return to his old colours. Wliy Mannhardt is ThougM to have been Converted Mannhardt's friend, MlillenhofF, had an aversion to solar myths. He said : ^ ' I deeply mistrust all these combinations of the new so-called comparative mytho- logy.' Mannhardt was preparing to study Lithu- anian solar myths, based on Lithuanian and Lettish marriage songs. Miillenhoff and Scherer seem to have ' September 19, 1875. Myth. Forsch. xiv. iv] MANNHARDT 55 thought this work too solar for their taste. Mann- hardt therefore repHed to their objections in the letter quoted in part by Mr. Max Miiller. Mannhardt was not the man to neglect or suppress solar myths when he found them, merely because he did not believe that a great many other myths which had been claimed as celestial were solar. Like every sensible person, he knew that there are numerous real, obvious, confessed solar myths not derived from a disease of language. These arise from (1) the impulse to account for the doings of the Sun by telling a story about him as if he were a person ; (2) from the natural poetry of the human mind.^ What we think they are not shown to arise from is forgetfulness of meanings of old words, which, ex hypothesi, have become proper names. That is the theory of the philological school, and to that theory, to these colours, I see no proof (in the evidence given) that Mannhardt had returned. But ' the scalded child dreads cold water,' and Miillenhoff apparently dreaded even real solar myths. Mr. Max Miiller, on the other hand (if I do not misinterpret him), supposes that Mannhardt had returned to the philological method, partly because he was interested in real solar myths and in the natural poetry of illiterate races. Mannhardt's Final Confession Mannhardt's last work published in his hfe days was Antihe Wald- und Feldhidte (1877). In the pre- face, dated November 1, 1876 [after the famous letter of May 1876), he explains the growth of his views and criticises his predecessors. After doing justice * For undeniable solar myths see M. B. B. i. 124-135. 56 MODERN MYTHOLOGY [iv to Kuhn and his comparisons of European with Indian myths, he says that, in his opinion, compara- tive Indo-Germanic mythology has not yet borne the expected fruits. ' The assured gains shrink into very few divine names, such as Dyaus — Zeus — Tins, Parjany — ^Perkunas, Bhaga — ^Bug, Varuna — Uranus, &c.' I wish he had completed the list included in &c. Other equations, as Sarameya=Hermeias, Saranyu=Demeter Erinnys, he fears will not stand close criticism. He dreads that jeux d' esprit {geistvoUe Spiele des Witzes) may once more encroach on science. Then, after a lucid statement of Mr. Max Miiller's position, he says, ' Ich vermag dem von M. Milller aufgestellten Principe, wenn iiberhaupt eine, so doch nur eine sehr beschrankte Geltung zuzugestehen.' ' To the principle of Max Mliller I can only assign a very limited value, if any value at all.' ^ ' Taken all in all, I consider the greater part of the results hitherto obtained in the field of Indo-Ger- manic comparative mythology to be, as yet, a failure, premature or incomplete, my own efforts in German Myths (1858) included. That I do not, however, " throw out the babe with the bath," as the proverb goes, my essay on Lettish sun myths in Bastian-Hart- mann's Ethnological Journal will bear witness.' Such is Mannhardt's conclusion. Taken in con- nection with his still later essa}^ on Demeter, it really leaves no room for doubt. There, I think, he does ' throw out the child with the bath,' throw the knife after the handle. I do not suppose that Mr. Max Mliller ever did quote Mannhardt as one of his supporters, but such a claim, if really made, would obviously give room for criticism. ' Op. cit. p. XX. iv] MANNHARDT 57 Mannhardt on Solar Myths What the attitude of Mannhardt was, in 1877 and later, we have seen. He disbeheves in the philo- logical system of explaining myths by etymological conjectures. He disbelieves in the habit of finding, in myths of terrestrial occurrences, reflections of celestial phenomena. But earlier, in his long essay Die lettischen Sonnenmythen (in Zeitschrift fur Ethno- logie, 1875), he examines the Lettish popular songs about the Sun, the Sun's daughters, the god-sons, and so forth. Here, of course, he is dealing with popular songs explicitly devoted to solar phenomena, in their poetical aspect. In the Lettish Sun-songs and Sun-myths of the peasants we see, he says, a myth- world ' in process of becoming,' in an early state of development, as in the Veda (p. 325). But, we may reply, in the Veda, myths are already full-grown, or even decadent. Already there are unbelievers in the myths. Thus we w^ould say, in the Veda we have (1) myths of nature, formed in the remote past, and (2) poetical phrases about heavenly pheno- mena, which resemble the nature-poetry of the Letts, but which do not become full-grown myths. The Lett songs, also, have not developed into myths, of which (as in the Apollo and Daphne story, by Mr. Max Mtiller's hypothesis) the original meaning is lost. In the Lett songs we have a mass of nature-pictures — the boat and the apples of the Sun, the red cloak hung on the oak-tree, and so on ; pictures by which it is sought to make elemental phenomena intelligible, by comparison with familiar things. Behind the pheno- mena are, in popular belief, personages— mythical personages — the Sun as ' a magnified non-natural 58 MODERN MYTHOLOGY [iv man,' or woman ; the Sun's mother, daughters, and other heavenly people. Theh^ conduct is ' motived ' in a human way. Stories are told about them: the Sun kills the Moon, who revives. All this is perfectly familiar everywhere. Savages, in their fables, account for solar, lunar, and similar elemental processes, on the theory that the heavenly bodies are, and act like, human beings. The Eskimo myth of the spots on the Moon, marks of ashes thrown by the Sun in a love-quarrel, is an excellent example. But in all this there is no ' disease of language.' These are frank nature-myths, ' ^etiological,' giving a fabulous reason for facts of nature. Mannhardt on Marchen But Mannhardt goes farther. He not only recog- nises, as everyone must do, the Sun, as explicitly named, when he plays his part in myth, or popular tale {Marchen). He thinks that even when the Sun is not named, his presence, and reference to him, and derivation of the incidents in Marchen from solar myth, may sometimes be detected with great prob- ability (pp. 326, 327). But he adds, ' not that every Marchen contains a reference to Nature ; that I am far from asserting ' (p. 327). Now perhaps nobody will deny that some incidents in Marchen may have been originally suggested by nature-myths. The all-swallowing and all-disgorging beast, wolf, or ogre, may have been derived from a view of Night as the all- swallower. But to disengage natural phenomena, mythically stated, from the human tangle of Marchen^ to find natural phenomena in such a palimpsest as Perrault's courtly and artificial version of a French iv] MANNHARDT 59 popular tale, is a delicate and dangerous task. In many stories a girl lias three balls — one of silver, one of gold, one of diamond — which she offers, in succes- sion, as bribes. This is a perfectly natural invention. It is perilous to connect these balls, gifts of ascending value, with the solar apple of iron, silver, and gold (p. 103 and note 5). It is perilous, and it is quite unnecessary. Some one — Gubernatis, I think — has explained the naked sword of Aladdin, laid between him and the Sultan's daughter in bed, as the silver sickle of the Moon. Eeally the sword has an obvious purpose and meaning, and is used as a symbol in proxy-marriages. The blood shed by Achilles in his latest victories is elsewhere explained as red clouds round the setting Sun, which is conspicuously childish. Mannhardt leans, at least, in this direction. ' The Two Brothers ' Mannhardt takes the old Egyptian tale of ' The Two Brothers,' Bitiou and Anepou. This fable, as old, in actual written literature, as Moses, is a complex of half the Mdrchen plots and incidents in the world. It opens with the formula of Potiphar's Wife. The falsely accused brother flies, and secretes his life, or separable soul, in a flower of the mystic Vale of Acacias. This aflfair of the separable soul ma}^ be studied in Mr. Hartland's Perseus, and it animates, as we shall see, Mr. Frazer's theory of the Origin of Totemism. A golden lock of the wicked wife's hair is then "borne by the Nile to the king's palace in Egypt. He will insist on marrying the lady of the lock. Here we are in the Cinderella formula, en plem, which may be studied, in African and 6o MODERN MYTHOLOGY [iv Santhal shapes, in Miss Coxe's valuable Cinderella} Pliaraoli's wise men decide that the owner of the lock of hair is (like Egyptian royalty at large) a daughter of the Sun-god (p. 239). Here is the Sun, in all his glory ; but here we are dealing with a literary version of the Mdrchen, accommodated to royal tastes and Egyptian ideas of royalty by a royal scribe, the courtl}^ Perrault of the Egyptian Roi-Soleil. Who can say what he introduced ? — while we can say that the Sun-god is absent in South African and Santhal and other variants. The Sun may have slipped out here, may have been slipped in there ; the faintest glimmer of the historical sense prevents us from dogmatising. Wedded to Pharaoh, the wicked wife, pursuing her vengeance on Bitiou, cuts down his life- tree. Anepou, his brother, however, recovers his concealed heart (life), and puts it in water. Bitiou revives. He changes himself into the sacred Bull, Apis — a feature in the story which is practically possible in Egypt alone. The Bull tells the king his story, but the wicked wife has the Bull slain, as by Cambyses in Herodotus. Two of his blood-drops become two persea trees. One of them confesses the fact to the wicked wife. She has them cut down ; a chip flies into her mouth, she becomes a mother by the chip, the boy (Bitiou) again becomes king, and slays his mother, the wicked wife. In the tree, any tree, acacia or persea, Mannhardt wishes to recognise the Sun-tree of the Lett songs. The red blossoms of the persea tree are a symbol of the Sun-tree : of Horus. He compares features, not always very closely analogous, in European Miirchen. ' Folk Lore Society. iv] MANNHARDT 6 1 For example, a girl hides in a tree, like Charles II. at Boscobel. That is not really analogous with Bitiou's separable life in the acacia ! ' Anepou ' is like ' Anapu,' Anubis. The Bull is the Sun, is Osiris — dead in winter, Mr. Frazer, Mamihardt's disciple, protests a grands cris against these identifications when made by others than Mannhardt, who says, ' The Mdrchen is an old obscure solar myth ' (p. 242). To others the story of Bitiou seems an Egyptian literary complex, based on a popular set of tales illustrating furens quid femina possit, and illustrating the world-wide theory of the separable life, dragging in formulse from other Mdrchen^ and giving to all a thoroughly classical Egyptian colouring.^ Solar myths, we think, have not necessarily anything to make in the matter. The Golden Fleece Mannhardt reasons in much the same way about the Golden Fleece. This is a peculiarly Greek feature, interwoven with the world-wide Mdrchen of the Lad, the Giant's helpful daughter, her aid in accomplishing feats otherwise impossible, and the pursuit of the pair by the father. I have studied the story — as it occurs in Samoa, among Eed Indian tribes, and elsewhere — in ' A Far-travelled Tale.' - In our late Greek versions the Quest of the Fleece of Gold occurs, but in no other variants known to me. There is a lamb (a boy changed into a lamb) in Eomaic. His fleece is of no interest to anybody. Out of his body grows a tree with a golden apple. Sun-yarns occur in popular songs. ^ Von einem der vorziiglichsten SchriftgeleJirten, Annana, in Massischer Darstellung aufgezeichneten Marchens, p. 240. ^ Custom and Myth. 62 MODERN MYTHOLOGY [iv Mannhardt (pp. 282, 283) abounds in solar explana- tions of the Fleece of Gold, hanging on the oak-tree in the dark ^eean forest. Idyia, wife of the Colchian king, ' is clearly the Dawn.' Aia is the isle of the Sun. Helle=Surya, a Sanskrit Sun-goddess ; the golden ram off whose back she falls, while her brother keeps his seat, is the Sun. Her brother, Phrixus, may be the Daylight. The oak-tree in Colchis is the Sun-tree of the Lettish songs. Perseus is a hero of Light, born in the Dark Tower (Mght) from the shower of gold (Sun-rays). ' We can but say " it may be so," ' but who could explain all the complex Perseus-saga as a statement about elem.ental phenomena ? Or how can the Far- travelled Tale of the Lad and the Giant's Daughter be interpreted to the same effect, above all in the count- less examples where no Fleece of Gold occurs ? The Greek tale of Jason is made up of several Mdrchen^ as is the Odyssey, by epic poets. These Mdrchen have no necessary connection with each other ; they are tagged on to each other, and localisedin Greece and on the Euxine.^ A poetic popular view of the Sun may have lent the peculiar, and elsewhere absent, incident of the quest of the Fleece of Gold on the shores of the Black Sea. The old epic poets may have borrowed from populdr songs like the Lettish chants (p. 328). A similar dubious adhesion may be given by us in the case of Castor and Poly deuces (Morning and Evening Stars ?), and Helen (Dawn),- and the Hesperides (p. 234). The germs of the myths may be popular poetical views of elemental phenomena. But to insist on elemental allegories throuoh all the "&' ^ See Preface to Mrs. Hunt's translation of Grimm's Mdrchen. • P. 309. iv] MANNHARDT 63 legends of the Dioskouroi, and of the Trojan war, would be to strain a hypothesis beyond the breaking- point. Much, very much, is epic invention, unver- kennbar das werk der Dichter (p, 328). Mannhardt's Approach to Mr. Max Miiller In this essay on Lettish Sun-songs (1875) Mann- hardt comes nearest to Mr. Max Miiller. He cites passages from liim with approval (cf. pp. 814, 322). His explanations, by aid of Sun-songs, of certain features in Greek mythology are plausible, and may be correct. But we turn to Mannhardt's explicit later statement of his own position in 1877, and to his posthumous essays, published in 1884 ; and, on the whole, we find, in my opinion, much more difference from than agreement with the Oxford Professor, whose Dawn-Daphne and other equations Mannhardt dismisses, and to whose general results (in mythology) he assigns a value so restricted. It is a popular delusion that the anthropological mythologists deny the existence of solar myths, or of nature-myths in general. These are extremely common. What we demur to is the explanation of divine and heroic myths at large as solar or elemental, when the original sense has been lost by the ancient narrators, and when the elemental explanation rests on conjectural and conflicting etymologies and inter- pretations of old proper names — Athene, Hera, Ar- temis, and the rest. Nevertheless, while Mannhardt, in his works on Tree-cult, and on Field and Wood Cult, and on the ' Corn Demon,' has wandered far from ' his old colours ' — while in his posthumous essays he is even more of a deserter, his essay on Lettish Sun- 64 MODERN MYTHOLOGY [iv myths shows an undeniable tendency to return to Mr. Max Mliller's camp. This was what made his friends so anxious. It is probably wisest to form our opinion of his final attitude on his preface to his last book published in his life-time. In that the old colours are not exactly his chosen banner ; nor can the flag of the philological school be inscribed tandem triumphans. In brief, Mannhardt's return to his old colours (1875-76) seems to have been made in a mood from which he again later passed away. But either modern school of mythology may cite him as an ally in one or other of his phases of opinion. 6^ / "^^^"^ • , Of V PHILOLOGY AND DEMETEB EBINNYS Mr. Max Miiller on Demeter Erinnys. Like Mannhardt, our author in his new treatise discusses the strange old Arcadian myth of the horse-Demeter Erinnys (ii. 537). He tells the un- seemly tale, and asks why the Earth goddess became a mare ? Then he gives the analogous myth from the Eig-Veda/ which, as it stands, is ' quite unin- telligible.' But Yaska explains that Saranyu, daughter of Tvashtri, in the form of a mare, had twins by Vivasvat, in the shape of a stallion. Their offspring were the Asvins, who are more or less analogous in their helpful character to Castor and Pollux. Now, can it be by accident that Saranyu in the Veda is Erinnys in Greek ? To this ' equation,' as we saw, Mannhardt demurred in 1877. Who was Saranyu ? Yaska says ' the Night ; ' that was Y^ska's idea. Mr. Max Miiller adds, ' I think he is right,' and that Saranyu is ' the grey dawn ' (ii. 541). ' But,' the bewildered reader exclaims, ' Dawn is one thing and Night is quite another.' So Yaska himself was intelligent enough to observe, 'Night is the wife of Aditya ; she vanishes at sunrise.' However, Night in Mr. Max Mliller's system ' has just got to be ' Dawn, a position proved 1 X. 17. Cf. Muir, Sanskrit Texts, v. 277. F 66 MODERN MYTHOLOGY [v thus : ' Yaska makes this clear by saymg that the time of the Asvins, sons of Saranyu, is after midnight,' but that ' when darkness prevails over light, that is Madhyama ; when light prevails over darkness, that is Aditya,' both being Asvins. They (the Asvins) are, in fact, darkness and light ; and therefore^ I understand, Saranyu, who is Night, and not an Asvin at all, is Dawn ! To make this per- fectly clear, remember that the husband of Saranyu, whom she leaves at sunrise, is — T give you three guesses — is the Sun ! The Sun's wife leaves the Sun at sunrise.^ This is proved, for Aditya is Vivasvat = the Sun, and is the husband of Saranyu (ii. 541). These methods of proving Mght to be Dawn, while the substitute for both in the bed of the Sun ' may have been meant for the gloaming ' (ii. 542), do seem to be geistvolle Spiele des Witzes, ingenious jeux d'esprit, as Mannhardt says, rather than logical arguments. But we still do not know how the horse and mare came in, or why the statue of Demeter had a horse's head. ' This seems simply to be due to the fact that, quite apart from this myth, the sun had, in India at least, often been conceived as a horse .... and the dawn had been likened to a mare.' But how does this explain the problem? The Vedic poets cited (ii. 542) either referred to the myth which we have to explain, or they used a poetical expression, knowing perfectly well what they meant. As long as they knew what they meant, they could not make an unseemly fable out of a poetical phrase. Not till after the meaning was forgotten could the myth ^ As the Sun's wife is Dawn, and leaves him at dawn, she is not much of a bedfellow. As Night, however, she is a bedfellow of the nocturnal Sun. v] PHILOLOGY AND DEMETER ERINNYS 67 arise. But the myth existed already in the Veda ! And the unseemliness is precisely what we have to account for ; that is our enigma. Once more, Demeter is a goddess of Earth, not of Dawn. How, then, does the explanation of a hypo- thetical Dawn-myth apply to the Earth? Well, perhaps the story, the unseemly story, was first told of Erinnys (who also is ' the inevitable Dawn ') or of Deo, ' and this name of Deo, or Dyava, was mixed up with a hypokoristic form of Demeter, Deo, and thus led to the transference of her story to Demeter. I know this will sound very unlikely to Greek scholars, yet I see no other way out of our diffi- culties ' (ii. 545). Phonetic explanations follow. ' To my mind,' says our author, ' there is no chapter in mythology in which we can so clearly read the transition of an auroral myth of the Veda into an epic chapter of Greece as in the chapter of Saranyu (or Surama) and the Asvins, ending in the chapter of Helena and her brothers, the AuoaKopoL XevKOTTOiXoL ' (ii. 642). Here, as regards the Asvins and the Dioskouroi, Mannhardt may be regarded as Mr. Max MilUer's ally; but compare his note, A. F. u. W. K. p. XX. My Theory of the Horse Demeter Mannhardt, I think, ought to have tried at an explanation of myths so closely analogous as those two, one Indian, one Greek, in which a goddess, in the shape of a mare, becomes mother of twins by a god in the form of a stallion. As Mr. Max Mliller well says, ' If we look about for analogies we find nothing, as far as I know, corresponding to the 68 MODERN MYTHOLOGY [y well-marked features of this barbarous myth among any of the uncivilised tribes of the earth. If we did, how we should rejoice ! Why, then, should we not rejoice when we find the allusion in Eig Veda ? ' (X. 17, 1). ^ I do rejoice ! The * song of triumph,' as Pro- fessor Tiele says, will be found in M. R. R. ii. 266 (note), where I give the Yedic and other references. I even asked why Mr. Max Mliller did not produce this proof of the identity of Saranyu and Demeter Erinnys in his Selected Essays (pp. 401, 492). I cannot explain why this tale was told both of Erinnys and of Saranyu. Granting the certainty of the etymological equation, Saranyu = Erinnys (which Mannhardt doubted), the chances against fortuitous coincidence may be reckoned by algebra, and Mr. Edge worth's trillions of trillions feebly express it. Two goddesses, Indian and Greek, have, ea; hypothesis the same name, and both, as mares, are mothers of twins. Though the twins (in India the Asvins, in Greek an ideal war-horse and a girl) differ in cha- racter, still the coincidence is evidential. Explain it I cannot, and, clearly as the confession may prove my lack of scientific exactness, I make it candidly. If I must offer a guess, it is that Greeks, and Indians of India, inherited a very ordinary savage idea. The gods in savage myths are usually beasts. As beasts they beget anthropomorphic offspring. This is the regular rule in totemism. In savage myths we are not told ' a god ' (Apollo, or Zeus, or Poseidon) ' put on beast shape and begat human sons and daughters ' (Helen, the Telmisseis, and so on). The god in savage myths was a beast already, though he could, of course, shift shapes like any ' medicine- v] PHILOLOGY AND UEMETER ERINNYS 69 man,' or modern witch who becomes a hare. This is not the exception but the rule in savage mytho- logy. Anyone can consult my Myth, Ritual, and Religio7i, or Mr. Frazer's work Totemism, for abund- ance of evidence. To Loki, a male god, prosecuting his amours as a female horse, I have already alluded, and in M. R. R. give cases from the Satapatha Brahmana. The Saranyu-Erinnys myth dates, I presume, from this savage state of fancy ; but why the story occurred both in Greece and India, I protest that I cannot pretend to explain, except on the hypothesis that the ancestors of Greek and Vedic peoples once dwelt together, had a common stock of savage fables, and a common or kindred language. After their disper- sion, the fables admitted discrepancies, as stories in oral circulation occasionally do. This is the only conjecture which I feel justified in suggesting to account for the resemblances and incongruities between the myths of the mare Demeter-Erinnys and the mare Saranyu. 70 MODERN MYTHOLOGY [vi VI TOTEMISM Totemism To the strange and widely diffused institution of ' Totemism ' our author often returns. I shall deal here with his collected remarks on the theme, the more gladly as the treatment shows how very far Mr. Max Mtiller is from acting with a shadow of un- fairness when he does not refer to special passages in his opponent's books. He treats himself and his own earlier works in the same fashion, thereby, perhaps, weakening his argument, but also demon- strating his candour, were any such demonstration required. On totems he opens (i. 7) — 'When we come to special cases we must not imagine that much can be gained by using such general terms as Animism, Totemism, Fetishism, &c., as solvents of mythological problems. To my mind, all such general terms, not excluding even Darwinism or Puseyism, seem most objectionable, because they encourage vague thought, vague praise, or vague blame. ' It is, for instance, quite possible to place all worship of animal gods, all avoidance of certain kinds of animal food, all adoption of animal names as the names of men and families, under the wide vi] TOTEMISM 7 1 and capacious cover of totemism. All theriolatry would thus be traced back to totemism. I am not aware, however, that any Egyptologists have adopted such a view to account for the animal forms of the Egyptian gods. Sanskrit scholars would certainly hesitate before seeing in Indra a totem because he is called vrishabha, or bull, or before attempting to explain on this ground the abstaining from beef on the part of orthodox Hindus [i. 7].' Totemism Defined I think I have defined totemism,^ and the reader may consult Mr. Frazer's work on the subject, or Mr. MacLennan's essays, or ' Totemism ' in the Encyclo- paedia Britannica. However, I shall define totemism once more. It is a state of society and cult, found most fully developed in Australia and North America, in which sets of persons, believing themselves to be akin by blood, call each such set by the name of some plant, beast, or other class of objects in nature. One kin may be wolves, another bears, another cranes, and so on. Each kin derives its kin-name from its beast, plant, or what not ; pays to it more or less respect, usually abstains from killing, eating, or using it (except in occasional sacrifices) ; is apt to claim descent from or relation- ship with it, and sometimes uses its efiigy on memorial pillars, carved pillars outside huts, tattooed on the skin, and perhaps in other ways not known to me. In Australia and North America, where rules are strict, a man may not marry a woman of his own totem; and kinship is counted through mothers in many, but not in all, cases. Where all these notes 1 M. B. B. i. 58-81. 72 MODEEN MYTHOLOGY [vi are combined we have totemism. It is plain that two or three notes of it may survive where the others have perished ; may survive in ritual and sacrifice/ and in bestial or semi-bestial gods of certain nomes, or districts, in ancient Egypt ;- in Pictish names ;^ in claims of descent from beasts, or gods in the shape of beasts ; in the animals sacred to gods, as Apollo or Artemis, and so on. Such survivals are possible enough in evolution, but the evidence needs careful examination. Animal attributes and symbols and names in religion are not necessarily totemistic. Mr. Max MilUer asks if ' any Egyptologists have adop- ted ' the totem theory. He is apparently oblivious of Professor Sayce's reference to a prehistoric age, * when the religious creed of Egypt was still totemism.' Dr. Codrington is next cited for the apparent absence of totemism in the Solomon Islands and Polynesia, and Professor Oldenberg as denying that 'animal names of persons and clans [necessarily?] imply totemism.' Who says that they do ? ' Clan Chattan,' with its cat crest, may be based, not on a totem, but on a popular etymology. Animal names of individuals have nothing to do with totems. A man has no business to write on totemism if he does not know these facts. What a Totem is Though our adversary now abandons totems, he returns to them elsewhere (i. 198-202). ' Totem is the corruption of a term used by North American ^ See Robertson Smith on ' Semitic Eeligion.' '^ See Sayce's Herodotus, p. 344. ^ See Ehys' BJiind Lectures ; I am not convinced by the evidence. vi] TOTEMISM "J^ Indians in the sense of clan-mark or sign-board (" ododam ").' The totem was originally a rude emblem of an animal or other object ' placed by North American Indians in front of their settlements.' The Evidence for Sign-boards Our author's evidence for sign-boards is from an Ottawa Indian, and is published from his MS. by Mr. Hoskyns Abrahall.^ The testimony is of the greatest merit, for it appears to have first seen the light in a Canadian paper of 1858. Now in 1858 totems were only spoken of in Lafitau, Long, and such old wi'iters, and in Cooper's novels. They had not become subjects of scientific dispute, so the evidence is uncontaminated by theory. The Indians were, we learn, divided into [local?] tribes, and these ' into sections or families according to their ododams ' — devices, signs, in modern usage ' coats of arms.' [Perhaps ' crests ' would be a better word.] All people of one ododam (apparently under male kinship) Hved together in a special section of each village. At the entrance to the enclosure was the figure of an animal, or some other sign, set up on the top of one of the posts. Thus everybody knew what family dwelt in what section of the village. Some of the families were called after their ododam. But the family with the bear ododam were called Big Feet, not Bears. Sometimes parts of difierent animals were 'quartered' [my. suggestion], and one ododam was a small hawk and the fins of a sturgeon. We cannot tell, of course, on the evidence here, ' Academy, September 27, 1884. 74 MODERN MYTHOLOGY [vi whether ' Big Feet ' suggested ' Bear,' or vice versa, or neither. But Mr. Frazer has remarked that periphrases for sacred beasts, like ' Big Feet ' for Bear, are not uncommon. Nor can we tell ' what couple of ancestors ' a small hawk and a sturgeon's fins represent, unless, perhaps, a hawk and a sturgeon.^ For all this, Mr. Max Mliller suggests the explana- tion that people who marked their abode with crow or wolf might come to be called Wolves or Crows. ^ Again, people might borrow beast names from the pre- valent beast of their district, as Arkades,''.4/)K:rot, Bears, and so evolve the myth of descent from Callisto as a she-bear. ' All this, however, is only guesswork.' The Snake Indians worship no snake. [The Snake Indians are not a totem group, but a local tribe named from the Snake Eiver, as we say, ' An Ettrick man,'] Once more, the name-giving beast, say, ' Great Hare,' is explained by Dr. Brinton as ' the in- evitable Dawn.' ^ ' Hasty writers,' remarks Dr. Brinton, ' say that the Indians claim descent from different wild beasts.' For evidence I refer to that hasty writer, Mr. Frazer, and his book, Totemism. For a newly sprung up modern totem our author alludes to a boat, among the Mandans, ' their totem, or tutelary object of worship.' An object of worship, of course, is not necessarily a totem ! Nor is a totem by the definition (as a rule one of a class of objects) anything but a natural object. Mr. Max Mliller wishes that ' those who write about totems and totemism would tell us exactly what they mean by these words.' I have told him, and indicated ^ Anth. Bel. p. 405. '-' Plantagenet, Planta genista. — A. L. ^ See M. B. B. ii. 56, for a criticism of this theory. vi] T'OTEMISM 75 better sources. I apply the word totemism to the widely diffused savage institution which I have defined. More about Totems The origin of totemism is unknown to me, as to Mr. McLennan and Dr. Eobertson Smith, but Mr. Max Mliller knows this origin. ' A totem is a clan-mark, then a clan-name, then the name of the ancestor of a clan, and lastly the name of something worshipped by a clan ' (i. 201). ' All this applies in the first instance to Eed Indians only.' Yes, and ' clan ' applies in the first instance to the Scottish clans only ! When Mr. Max Mliller speaks of ' clans ' among the Eed Indians, he uses a word whose connotation differs from any- thing known to exist in America. But the analogy between a Scottish clan and an American totem-kin is close enough to justify Mr. Max Mliller in speaking of Eed Indian ' clans.' By parity of reasoning, the analogy between the Australian Kohong and the American totem is so complete that we may speak of ' Totemism ' in Australia. It would be childish to talk of ' Totemism ' in North America, ' Kobongism ' in Australia, ' Pacarissaism ' in the realm of the Incas : totems, kobongs, and pacarissas all amounting to the same thing, except in one point. I am not aware that Australian blacks erect, or that the subjects of the Incas, or that African and Indian and Asiatic totemists, erected ' sign-boards ' anywhere, as the Ottawa writer assures us that the Ottawas do, or used to do. And, if they don't, how do we know that kobongs and pacarissas were developed out of sign-boards ? 76 MODERN MYTHOLOGY [vi Heraldry and Totems The Ottawas are armigeri, are heraldic ; so are the natives of Vancouver's Island, who have wooden pillars with elaborate quarterings. Examples are in South Kensington Museum. But this savage heraldry is not nearly so common as the institution of totemism. Thus it is difficult to prove that the heraldry is the origin of totemism, which is just as likely, or more likely, to have been the origin of savage heraldic crests and quarterings. Mr. Max Mllller allows that there may be other origins. Gods and Totems Our author refers to unnamed writers who call Indra or Ammon a totem (i. 200). This is a foolish liberty with language. ' Why should not all the gods of Egypt with their heads of bulls and apes and cats be survivals of totem- isms ? ' Why not, indeed ? Professor Sayce remarks, ' They were the sacred animals of the clans,' survivals from an age ' when the religion of Egypt was totem- ism.' ' In Egypt the gods themselves are totem-deities, i.e. personifications or individual representations of the sacred character and attributes which in the purely totelli stage of religion were ascribed without distinction to all animals of the holy kind.' So says Dr. Eobertson Smith. He and Mr. Sayce are ' scholars,' not mere unscholarly anthropologists.^ ^ Beligion of the Semites, pp. 208, 209. vi] TOTEMISM "J^ An Objection Lastly (ii. 403), when totems infected ' even those who ought to have been proof against this infantile complaint ' (which is not even a ' disease of language ' of a respectable type), then ' the objection that a totem meant originally a clan-mark was treated as scholastic pedantry.' Alas, I fear with justice ! For if I call Mr. Arthur Balfour a Tory will Mr. Max Mliller refute my opinion by urging that ' a Tory meant originally an Irish rapparee,' or whatever the word did originally mean ? Mr. Max Mliller decides that 'we never find a religion consisting exclusively of a belief in fetishes, or totems, or ancestral spirits.' Here, at last, we are in absolute ao-reement. So much for totems and sign-boards. Only a weak fanatic will find a totem in every animal connected with gods, sacred names, and rehgious symbols. But totemism is a fact, whether ' totem ' originally meant a clan-mark or sign-board in America or not. And, like Mr. Sayce, Mr. Frazer, Mr. Ehys, Dr. Eobertson Smith, I believe that totemism has left marks in civilised myth, ritual, and religion, and that these survivals, not a ' disease of language,' explain certain odd elements in the old civilisations. A Weak Brother Our author's habit of omitting references to his opponents has here caused me infinite inconveni- ence. He speaks of some eccentric person who has averred that a ' fetish ' is a ' totem,' inhabited by ' an ancestral spirit.' To myself it seems that you might as well say ' Abracadabra is gas and gaiters.' 78 MODERN MYTHOLOGY [vi As no reference was offered, I invented ' a wild surmise ' that Mr. Max Milller had conceivably mis- apprehended Mr. Frazer's theory of the origin of totems. Had our author only treated himself fairly, he would have referred to his own Anthropological Religion (pp. 126 and 407), where the name of the eccentric definer is given as that of Herr Lippert.^ Then came into my mind the words of Professor Tiele, ' Beware of weak brethren ' — such as Herr Lippert seems, as far as this definition is concerned, to be. Nobody knows the origin of totemism. We find no race on its way to becoming totemistic, though we find several in the way of ceasing to be so. They are abandoning female kinship for paternity ; their rules of marriage and taboo are breaking down; perhaps various totem kindreds of different crests and names are blending into one local tribe, under the name, perhaps, of the most prosperous totem- kin. But we see no race on its way to becoming totemistic, so we have no historical evidence as to the origin of the institution. Mr. McLennan offered no conjecture, Professor Eobertson Smith offered none, nor have I displayed the spirit of scientific exactitude by a guess in the dark. To gratify Mr. Max Miiller by defining totemism as Mr. McLennan first used the term is all that I dare do. Here one may remark that if Mr. Max Miiller really wants ' an accurate definition ' of totemism, the works of McLennan, Frazer, Eobertson Smith, and myself are accessible, and contain our definitions. He does not produce these definitions, and criticise them ; he produces Dr. Lippert's and criticises that. An 1 Die Beligionen, p. 12. vi] TOTEMISM 79 argument should be met in its strongest and most authoritative form. ' Define what you mean by a totem,' says Professor Max Mliller in his Gifford Lectures of 1891 (p. 123). He had to look no further for a definition, an authoritative definition, than to ' totem ' in the Encyclopcedia Britannica, or to McLennan. Yet his large and intelligent Glasgow audience, and his readers, may very well be under the impression that a definition of ' totem ' is ' still to seek,' like Prince Charlie's religion. Controversy simply cannot be profitably conducted on these terms. ' The best representatives of anthropology are now engaged not so much in comparing as in dis- criminating.' ^ Why not refer, then, to the results of their discriminating efforts ? ' To treat all animal worship as due to totemism is a mistake.' Do we make it ? Mr. Frazer and Myself There is, or was, a difference of opinion between Mr. Frazer and myself as to the causes of the appear- ance of certain sacred animals in Greek relisfion. My notions were published in Myth, Ritual, and Religion (1887), Mr. Frazer's in The Golden Bough (1890). Necessarily I was unaware in 1887 of Mr. Frazer's stiU unpublished theory. Now that I have read it, he seems to me to have the better logic on his side ; and if I do not as yet wholly agree with him, it is because I am not yet certain that both of our theories may not have their proper place in Greek mythology. 1 Anth. Bel. p. 122. 8o MODERN MYTHOLOGY [ti Greek Totemism In C. and M. (p. 106) I describe the social aspects of totemism. I ask if there are traces of it in Greece. Suppose, for argument's sake, that in pre-historic Greece the mouse had been a totem, as it is anions the Oraons of Bengal.^ In that case (1) places might be named from a mouse tribe ; (2) mice might be held sacred per se; (3) the mouse name might be given locally to a god who superseded the mouse in pride of place ; (4) images of the mouse might be associated with that of the god, (5) and used as a local badge or mark ; (6) myths might be invented to explain the forgotten cause of this prominence of the mouse. If all these notes occur, they would raise a presumption in favour of totemism in the past of Greece. I then give evidence in detail, proving that all these six facts do occur among Greeks of the Troads and sporadically elsewhere. I add that, granting for the sake of argument that these traces may point to totemism in the remote past, the mouse, though originally a totem, ' need not have been an Aryan totem'' (p. 116). I offer a list of other animals closely connected with Apollo, giving him a beast's name (wolf, ram, dolphin), and associated with him in myth and art. In M. R. R. I apply similar arguments in the case of Artemis and the Bear, of Dionysus and the Bull, Demeter and the Pig, and so forth. Moreover, I account for the myths of descent of Greek human families from gods disguised as dogs, ants, serpents, bulls, and swans, on the hypothesis that kindreds who originally, in totemistic fashion, traced to beasts 1 Dalton. vi] TOTEMISM 8r sans phrase, later explained their own myth to them- selves by saying that the paternal beast was only a god in disguise and en bonne fortune. This hypothesis at least ' colligates the facts,' and brings them into intelligible relationship with widely- diffused savage institutions and myths. The Greek Mouse-totem? My theory connecting Apollo Smintheus and the place-names derived from mice with a possible pre- historic mouse-totem gave me, I confess, considerable satisfaction. But in Mr. Frazer's Golden Bough (ii. 129-132) is published a group of cases in which mice and other vermin are worshipped for prudential reasons — to get them to go away. In the Classical Review (vol. vi. 1892) Mr. Ward Fowler quotes Aristotle and JElian on plagues of mice, like the recent invasion of voles on the Border sheep-farms. He adopts the theory that the sacred mice were adored by way of propitiating them. Thus Apollo may be connected with mice, not as a god who superseded a mouse-totem, but as an expeller of mice, like the worm-killing Heracles, and the Locust- Heracles, and the Locust-Apollo.^ The locust is still painted red, salaamed to, and set free in India, by way of propitiating his companions.'^ Thus the Mouse-Apollo (Smintheus) would be merely a god noted for his usefulness in getting rid of mice, and any worship given to mice (feeding them, placing their images on altars, their stamp on coins, naming places after them, and so on) would be mere acts of propitiation. ^ Strabo, xiii. 613. Pausanias, i. 24, 8. ^ Crooke, Introduction to Popular Beligion of North India, p. 380. G 82 MODERN MYTHOLOGY [vi There would be no mouse-totem in the back- ground. I do not feel quite convinced — the mouse being a totem, and a sacred or tabooed animal, in India and Egypt. ^ But I am content to remain in a balance of opinion. That the Mouse is the Night ((jrubernatis), or the Lightning (Grohmann), I am dis- inclined to believe. Philologists are very apt to jump at contending meteorological explanations of mice and such small deer without real necessity, and an anthropologist is very apt to jump at an equally unnecessary and perhaps equally undemonstrated totem. Philological Theory Philological m37-thologists prefer to believe that the forgotten meaning of words produced the results ; that the wolf-born Apollo {AvKrjyevtj'i) originally meant ' Light-born Apollo,' ^ and that the wolf came in from a confusion between kvKr), ' Light,' and \vKo<5, a wolf. I make no doubt that philologists can explain Sminthian Apollo, the Dog- Apollo, and all the rest in the same wa}'", and account for all the other peculiarities of place-names, myths, works of art, local badges, and so forth. We must then, I suppose, infer that these six traits of the mouse, already enumerated, tally with the traces which actual totemism would or miocht leave surviving behind it, or which propitiation of mice might leave behind it, by a chance coincidence, determined by forgotten meaninofs of words. The Greek analoijv to totemistic facts would be explained, (1) either by asking for a definition of totemism, and not listening when it is ^ C. and M. p. 115. - Contributions, ii. 687. vil TOTEMISM 83 given ; or (2) by maintaining that savage totemism is also a result of a world-wide malady of language, which, in a hundred tongues, produced the same confusions of thought, and consequently the same practices and institutions. Nor do I for one moment doubt that the ingenuity of philologists could prove the name of every beast and plant, in every language under heaven, to be a name for the ' inevitable dawn ' (Max Mliller), or for the inevitable thunder, or storm, or lightning (Kuhn-Schwartz), But as names appear to yield storm, lightning, night, or dawn with equal ease and certainty, according as the scholar prefers dawn or storm, I confess that this demonstration would leave me sceptical. It lacks scientific exactitude. Mr. Frazer on Animals in Grreek Religion In TJie Golden Bough (ii. 37) Mr. Frazer, whose superior knowledge and acuteness I am pleased to confess, has a theory different from that which I (following McLennan) propounded before The Golden Bough appeared. Greece had a buU-shaped Dionysus.^ ' There is left no room to doubt that in rending and devouring a live bull at his festival, his worshippers believed that they were killing the god, eating his flesh, and drinking his blood.' '^ Mr. Frazer concludes that there are two possible explan- ations of Dionysus in his bull aspect. (1) This was an expression of his character as a deity of vegetation, ' especially as the bull is a common embodiment of 1 Evidence in G. B. i. 325, 326. - Compare Liebrecht, ' The Eaten God,' in Ziir VolTisliunde, p. 436. G 2^ 2^^'^ 84 MODERN MYTHOLOGY [vi the corn-spirit in Northern Europe.'^ (2) The other possible explanation ' appears to be the view taken by Mr. Lang, who suggests that the bull-formed Dion^'sus " had either been developed out of, or had succeeded to, the worship of n bull-totem." ' ^ Now, antliroj)ologists are generallj'' agreed, I think, that occasional sacrifices of and communion in the flesh of the totem or other sacred animals do occur among totemists.^ But Mr. Frazer and I both admit, and indeed are eager to state publicly, that the evidence for sacrifice of the totem, and com- munion in eating him, is very scanty. The fact is rather inferred from rites among peoples just emerg- ing from totemism (see the case of the Californian buzzard, in Bancroft) than derived from actual observation. On this head too much has been taken for granted by anthropologists. But I learn that direct evidence has been obtained, and is on the point of publication. The facts I may not anticipate here, but the evidence will be properly sifted, and bias of theory discounted. To return to my theory of the development of Dionysus into a totem, or of his inheritance of the rites of a totem, Mr. Frazer says, ' Of course this is possible, but it is not yet certain that Aryans ever had totemism.' ^ Now, in writing of the mouse, I had taken care to observe that, in origin, the mouse as a totem need not have been Aryan, but adopted. People who think that the Aryans did not pass through a stage of totemism, female kin, and so forth, can always fall back (to account for apparent sur- 1 Cf. G. B. ii. 17, for evidence. 2 M. R. B. ii. 232. ^ q^ _g^ ^j 90-113. * In Encyclop. Brit, lie thinks it ' very probable.' Yi] TOTEMISM 85 vivals of such things among Aryans) on ' Pre- Aryan conquered peoples,' such as the Picts. Aryans may be enticed by these bad races and become Pictis ipsis Pictiores. Aryan Totems (?) Generally speaking (and how delightfully char- acteristic of us all is this !), I see totems in Greek sacred beasts, where Mr. Frazer sees the corn-spirit embodied in a beast, and where Mr. Max Miiller sees (in the case of Indra, called the bull) ' words meaning simply male, manly, strong,' an ' animal simile.' ^ Here, of course, Mr. Max Miiller is wholly in the right, when a Vedic poet calls Indra ' strong bull,' or the like. Such poetic epithets do not afford the shadow of a presumption for Vedic totemism, even as a survival. Mr. Frazer agrees with me and Mr. Max Miiller in this certainty. I myself say, ' If in the shape of Indra there be traces of fur and feather, they are not very numerous nor very distinct, but we give them for what they may be worth.' I then give them.^ To prove that I do not force the evidence, I take the Vedic text.^ ' His mother, a cow, bore Indra, an unlicked calf.' I then give Say ana's explanation. Indra entered into the body of Dakshina, and was reborn of her. She also bore a cow. But this legend, I saj' , ' has rather the air of being an invention, apres coup, to account for the Vedic text of calf Indra, born from a cow, than of being a genuine ancient myth.' The Vedic myth of Indra's amours in shape of a ram, I say ' will doubt- ' i. 200. '^ M. B. li. ii. 142, 148-149. 3 B. V. iv. 18, 10. 86 MODERN MYTHOLOGY [vi less be explained away as metaphorical.' Nay, I will go further. It is perfectlj^ conceivable to me that in certain cases a poetic epithet applied by a poet to a god (say bull, ram, or snake) might be misconceived, and might give rise to the worship of a god as a bull, or snake, or ram. Further, if civilised ideas perished, and if a race retained a bull-god, born of their degradation and confusion of mind, they might eat him in a ritual sacrifice. But that all totemistic races are totemistic, because they all first meta- phorically applied animal names to gods, and then forgot what they had meant, and worshipped these animals, sans -phrase, appears to me to be, if not incredible, still greatly in want of evidence. Mr. Frazer and I It is plain that where a people claim no connec- tion by descent and blood from a sacred animal, are neither of his name nor kin, the essential feature of totemism is absent. I do not see that eaters of the bull Dionysus or cultivators of the pig Demeter ^ made any claim to kindred with either god. Their towns were not allied in name with pig or bull. If traces of such a belief existed, they have been sloughed off. Thus Mr. Frazer's explanation of Greek pigs and bulls and all their odd rites, as connected with the beast in which the corn-spirit is incarnate, holds its ground better than my totemistic sugges- tion. But I am not sure that the corn-spirit accounts for the Sminthian mouse in all his aspects, nor for the Arcadian and Attic bear-rites and myths of Artemis. Mouse and bear do appear in Mr. Frazer's J G. B. ii. 44-49. vi] TOTEMISM 87 catalogue of forms of the corn-spirits, taken from Mamiliardt.^ But the Arcadians, as we shall see, claimed descent from a bear, and the mouse place- names and badges of the Troad yield a hint of the same idea. The many Greek family claims to descent from gods as dogs, bulls, ants, serpents, and so on, rnay spring from gratitude to the corn- spirit. Does Mr. Frazer think so ? Nobody knows so well as he that similar claims of descent from dogs and snakes are made by many savage kindreds who have no agriculture, no corn, and, of course, no corn- spirits. These remarks, I trust, are not undiscriminat- ing, and naturally I yield the bull Dionysus and the pig Demeter to the corn-spirit, vice totem, superseded. But I do hanker after the Arcadian bear as, at least, a possible survival of totemism. The Scottish school inspector removed a picture of Behemoth, as a fabu- lous animal, from the wall of a school room. But, not being sure of the natural history of the unicorn, ' he just let him bide, and gave the puir beast the benefit o' the doubt.' Will Mr. Frazer give the Arcadian bear ' the benefit of the doubt ' ? I am not at all bigoted in the opinion that the Greeks may have once been totemists. The strongest presumption in favour of the hypothesis is the many claims of descent from a god disguised as a beast. But the institution, if ever it did exist among the ancestors of the Greeks, had died out very long before Homer. We cannot expect to find traces of the prohibition to marry a woman of the same totem. In Eome we do find traces of exogamy, as among totemists. 'Formerly they did not marry women 1 (?. £. ii. 33. 88 MODERN MYTHOLOGY [ti connected with them by blood.' ^ But we do not find, and M^ouhl not expect to find, that the ' blood ' was indicated by the common totem. Mr. Frazer on Origin of Totemism Mr. Frazer has introduced the term ' sex-totems,' in application to Australia. This is connected with his theory of the Origin of Totemism. I cannot quite approve of the term sex-totems. If in Australia each sex has a protecting animal — the men a bat, the women an owl — if the slaying of a bat by a woman menaces the death of a man, if the slaying of an owl by a woman may cause the decease of a man, all that is very unlike totemism in other countries. Therefore, I ask Mr. Frazer whether, in the interests of definite terminology, he had not better give some other name than ' totem ' to his Australian sex protecting animals ? He might take for a local fact, a local name, and say ' Sex-kobong.' Once more, for even we anthropologists have our bickerings, I w^ould ' hesitate dislike ' of this passage in Mr. Frazer 's work : - ' When a savage names himself after an animal, calls it his brother, and refuses to kill it, the animal is said to be his totem.' Distinguo ! A savage does not name Idmself after his totem, any more than Mr. Frazer named himself by his clan-name, originally Norman. It was not as when Miss Betty Amory named herself ' Blanche,' by her own will and fantasy. A savage inherits his totem name, usually through the mother's side. The special animal which protects ^ V\\\ia,vch.,QucBst.Rom.\\. McLennan, The Patriarchal Theory, p. 207, note 2. - G. B. ii. 337. vi] TOTEMISM 89 an individual savage (Zapotec, tona ; Guatemalan, nagual ; North America, Manitou, ' medicine ') is not that savage's totem.' The nagual, tona, or manitou is selected for each particular savage, at birth or puberty, in various ways : in America, North and Central, by a dream in a fast, or after a dream. (' Post-hypnotic suggestion.') But a savage is born to his kin-totem. A man is born a wolf of the Delawares, his totem is the wolf, he cannot help him- self. But after, or in, his medicine fast and sleep, he may choose a dormouse or a squirrel for his manitou {tona, nagual) or private protecting animal. These are quite separate from totems, as Mr. Max Mliller also points out. Of totems, I, for one, must always write in the sense of Mr. McLennan, who introduced totemism to science. Thus, to speak of ' sex-totems,' or to call the protecting animal of each individual a ' totem,' is, I fear, to bring in confusion, and to justify Mr. Max Mliller's hard opinion that * totemism ' is ill- defined. For myself, I use the term in the strict sense which I have given, and in no other. Mr. McLennan did not profess, as we saw, to know the origin of totems. He once made a guess in conversation with me, but he abandoned it. Pro- fessor Eobertson Smith did not know the origin of totems. ' The origin of totems is as much a problem as the origin of local gods.' ^ Mr. Max Milller knows the origin : sign-boards are the origin, or one origin. But what was the origin of sign-boards ? ' We carry the pictures of saints on our banners because we worship them ; we don't worship them because 1 See G. B. ii. 332-334. * Religion of the Semites, p. 118. 90 MODERN MYTHOLOGY [vi we carry them as banners,' says De Brosses, an acute man. Did the Indians worship totems because they carved them on sign-boards (if they all did so), or did they carve them on sign-boards because they worshipped them ? Mr. Frazer's Theory The Australian respects his ' sex-totem ' because the life of his sex is bound up in its life. He speaks of it as his brother, and calls himself (as distinguished by his sex) by its name. As a man he is a bat, as a woman his wife is an owl. As a meml^er of a given human kin he may be a kangaroo, perhaps his wife may be an emu. But Mr. Frazer derives totemism, all the world over, from the same origin as he assigns to ' sex-totems.' In these the life of each sex is bound up, therefore they are by each sex revered. There- fore totemism must have the same origin, substituting ' kin ' or ' tribe ' for sex. He gives examples from Australia, in which killing a man's totem killed the man.^ I would respectfully demur or suggest delay. Can we explain an American institution, a fairly world-wide institution, totemism, by the local peculiarities of belief in isolated Australia ? If, in America, to kill a wolf was to kill Uncas or Chin- gachgook, I would incline to agree with Mr. Frazer. But no such evidence is adduced. Nor does it help Mr. Frazer to plead that the killing of an American's nagual or of a Zulu's Jhlozi kills that Zulu or American. For a nagual^ as I have shown, is one thing and a totem is another ; nor am I aware that 1 G. B. ii. 337, 338. vi] TOTEMISM 9 1 Zulus are totemists. The argument of Mr. Frazer is based on analogy and on a special instance. That instance of the Australians is so archaic that it may show totemism in an early form. Mr. Frazer's may be a correct hypothesis, but it needs corroboration. However, Mr. Frazer concludes : ' The totem, if I am right, is simply the receptacle in which a man keeps his life.' Yet he never shows that a Choctaw does keep his life in his totem. Perhaps the Choctaw is afraid to let out so vital a secret. The less reticent Australian blurts it forth. Suppose the hypothesis correct. Men and women keep their lives in their naguals, private sacred beasts. But why, on this score, should a man be afraid to make love to a woman of the same nagual ? Have Eed Indian woinen any naguals ? I never heard of them. Since writing this I have read Miss Kingsley's Travels in West Africa. There the ' bush-souls ' which she mentions (p. 459) bear analogies to totems, being inherited sacred animals, connected with the life of members of families. The evidence, though vaguely stated, favours Mr. Frazer's hypothesis, to which Miss Kingsley makes no allusion. 92 moup:rn mythology VII THE VALIDITY OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL EVIDENCE Anthropological Evidence In all that we say of totemism, as, later, of fetishism, we rely on an enormous mass of evidence from geo- graphers, historians, travellers, settlers, missionaries, explorers, traders. Civil Servants, and European officers of native police in Australia and Burmah.. Our witnesses are of all ages, from Herodotus to our day, of many nations, of many creeds, of different theoretical opinions. This evidence, so world-wide, so diversified in source, so old, and so new, Mr. Max Miiller impugns. But, before meeting his case, let us clear up a personal question. ' Positions one never held ' 'It is not pleasant [writes our author] to have to defend positions which one never held, nor wishes to hold, and I am therefore all the more grateful to those who have pointed out the audacious misrepre- sentations of my real opinion in comparative mytho- logy, and have rebuked the flippant tone of some of my eager critics ' [i. 26, 27]. I must here confess to the belief that no gentle- man or honest man ever consciously misrepresents the ideas of an opponent. If it is not too flippant an illustration, I would say that no bowler ever throws vn] VALIDITY OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL EVIDENCE 93 consciously and wilfully ; his action, however, may unconsciously develop into a throw. There would be no pleasure in argument, cricket, or any other sport if we knowingly cheated. Thus it is always unconsciously that adversaries pervert, garble, and misrepresent each other's opinions ; unconsciously, not * audaciously.' If people would start from the major premise that misrepresentations, if such exist, are unconscious errors, much trouble would be spared. Positions which I never held Thus Mr. Max Mliller never dreamed of ' auda- ciously misrepresenting ' me when, in four lines, he made two statements about my opinions and my materials which are at the opposite pole from the accurate (i. 12) : ' When I speak of the Vedic Rishis as primitive, I do not mean what Mr. A. Lang means when he calls his savages primitive.' But I have stated again and again that I dont call my savages ' primitive.' Thus ' contemporary savages may be degraded, they certainly are not primitive.' ^ ' One thing about the past of [contemporary] savages we do know : it must have been a long past.' - ' We do not wish to call savages primitive.' ^ All this was written in reply to the very proper caution of Dr. Fairbairn that ' savages are not primitive.' Of course they are not ; that is of the essence of my theory. I regret the use of the word ' primitive ' even in Primitive Culture. Savages, as a rule, are earlier, more backward than civilised races, as, of course, Mr, Max Mliller admits, where lanofuacfe is 1 Custom and Myth, p. 235. ^ M. B. B. ii. 327. * 0:p. cit. ii. 329. 94 MODERN MYTHOLOGY [vii concerned.^ Now, after devoting several pages to showing in detail how very far from primitive even the Australian tribes are, might I (if I were ill- natured) not say that Mr, Max Mliller ' audaciously misrepresents ' me when he avers that I ' call my savages primitive ' ? But he never dreamed of mis- representing me ; he only happened not to understand my position. However, as he complains in his own case, ' it is not pleasant to have to defend positions which one never held ' (i. 26), and, indeed, I shall defend no such position. My adversary next says that my ' savages are of the nineteenth century.' It is of the essence of my theory that my savages are of many different cen- turies. Those described by Herodotus, Strabo, Dio Cassius, Christoval de Moluna, Sahagun, Cieza de Leon, Brebeuf, Garcilasso de la Vega, Lafitau, Nicholas Damascenus, Leo Africanus, and a hundred others, are 720t of the nineteenth century. This fact is essential, because the evidence of old writers, from Herodotus to Egede, corroborates the evidence of travellers, Indian Civil Servants, and missionaries of to-day, by what Dr. Tylor, when defending our materials, calls ' the test of recurrence.' Professor Millar used the same argument in his Origin of Rank, in the last century. Thus Mr. Max Mliller unconsciously misrepresents me (and my savages) when he says that my ' savages are of the nine- teenth century.' The fact is the reverse. They are of many centuries. These two unconscious misrepre- sentations occur in four consecutive lines. ^ Lectv/res on Science of Language, Second Series, p. 41. Til] VALIDITY OF ANTIIKOPOLOGICAL EVIDENCE 95 Anthropological Evidence In connection with this topic (the nature of anthropological evidence), Mr. Max Miiller (i. 205-207) repeats what he has often said before. Thus he cites Dr. Codrington's remarks, most valu- able remarks, on the difficulty of reporting correctly about the ideas and ways of savages. I had cited the same judicious writer to the same effect,^ and had compiled a number of instances in which the errors of travellers were exposed, and their habitual falla- cies were detected. Fifteen closely printed pages were devoted by me to a criterion of evidence, and a reply to Mr. Max Midler's oft-repeated objections. *When [I said] we find Dr. Codrington taking the same precautions in Melanesia as Mr. Sproat took among the Ahts, and when his account of Melanesian myths reads like a close copy of Mr. Sproat's account of Aht legends, and when both are corroborated [as to the existence of analogous savage myths] by the collections of Bleek, and Hahn, and Gill, and Castren, and Eink, in far different corners of the world ; while the modern testimony of these scholarly men is in harmony with that of the old Jesuit missionaries, and of untaught adventurers who have lived for many years with savages, surely it will be admitted that the difficulty of ascertaining savage opinion has been, to a great extent, overcome.' I also cited at length Dr. Tylor's masterly argu- ment to the same effect, an argument offered by him to ' a great historian,' apparently. 1 M. R. B. ii. 336. 96 MODERN MYTHOLOGY [vii Mr. Max Mliller's Method of Controversy Now no member of the reading public, perusing Mr. Max Mliller on anthropological evidence (i. 24-26, 205-207), could guess that his cautions about evidence are not absolutely new to us. He could not guess that Dr. Tylor replied to them ' before they were made ' by our present critic (I think), and that I did the same with great elabora- tion. Our defence of our evidence is not noticed by Mr. Max Mliller. He merely repeats what he has often said before on the subject, exactly as if anthropologists were ignorant of it, and had not carefully studied, assimilated, profited by it, and answered it. Our critic and monitor might have said, ' I have examined your test of recurrences, and what else you have to urge, and, for such and such reasons, I must reject it.' Then we could reconsider our position in this new light. But Mr. Max Mliller does not oblige us in this way. Mr. Max Mliller on our Evidence In an earlier work, The Gifford Lectures for 1891,^ our author had devoted more space to a criticism of our evidence. To this, then, we turn (pp. 169- 180, 413-436). Passing Mr. Max Mliller's own difficulties in understanding a Mohawk (which the Mohawk no doubt also felt in understanding Mr. Max Mliller), we reach (p. 172) the fables about godless savages. These, it is admitted, are exploded among scholars in anthropology. So we do, at least, examine evidence. Mr. Max Mliller now fixes on a ^ Anthropological Religion. vii] VALIDITY OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL EVIDENCE 97 flagrant case, some fables about the godless Min- copies of the Andaman Islands. But he relies on the evidence of Mr. Man. So do I, as far as it seems beyond doubt. ^ Mr. Man is ' a careful observer, a student of language, and perfectly trustworthy.' These are the reasons for which I trust him. But when Mr. Man says that the Mincopies have a god, Puluga, who inhabits ' a stone house in the sky,' I remark, ' Here the idea of the stone house is neces- sarily borrowed from our stone houses at Port Blair.' ^ When Mr. Man talks of Puluga's only-begotten son, ' a sort of archangel,' medium between Puluga and the angels, I ' hesitate a doubt.' Did not this idea reach the Mincopie mind from the same quarter as the stone house, especially as Puluga's wife is ' a green shrimp or an eel ' ? At all events, it is right to bear in mind that, as the stone house of the Mincopie heaven is almost undeniably of European origin, the only-begotten mediating son of Puluga and the green shrimp 7nay bear traces of Christian teaching. Caution is indicated. Does Mr. Max MilUer, so strict about evidence, boggle at the stone house, the only son, the shrimp ? Not he ; he never hints at the shrimp ! Does he point out that one anthropologist has asked for caution in weighing what the Mincopies told Mr. Man ? Very far from that, he complains that ' the old story is repeated again and again ' about the godless Anda- mans.^ The intelligent Glasgow audience could hardly guess that anthropologists were watchful, and knew pretty well what to believe about the Mincopies. Perhaps in Glasgow they do not read us anthropologists much. 1 M. R. B. i. 171-173. ^ Ihid. i. 172. ^ Anth. Bel. p. 180. H 98 MODERN MYTHOLOGY [vii On p. 413 our author returns to the charge. He observes (as I have also observed) the often contra- dictory nature of our evidence. Here I may offer an anecdote. The most celebrated of living English philosophers heard that I was at one time writing a book on the ' ghostly ' in history, anthropology, and society, old or new, savage or civilised. He kindly dictated a letter to me asking how I could give time and pains to any such marvels. For, he argued, the most unveracious fables were occasionally told about himself in newspapers and social gossip. If evidence cannot be trusted about a hving and distinguished British subject, how can it be accepted about halluci- nations ? I replied, with respect, that on this principle nothing could be investigated at all. History, justice, trade, everything would be impossible. We must weigh and criticise evidence. As my friendly adviser had written much on savage customs and creeds, he best knew that conflicting testimony, even on his own chosen theme, is not peculiar to ghost stories. In a world of conflicting testimony we live by criti- cising it. Thus, when Mr. Max Miiller says that I call my savages ' primitive,' and when I, on the other hand, quote passages in which I explicitly decline to do so, the evidence as to my views is contradictory. Yet the truth can be discovered by careful research. The application is obvious. We must not de- spair of truth ! As our monitor says, ' we ought to discard all evidence that does not come to us either from a man who was able himself to converse with native races, or who was at least an eye-witness of what he relates.' Precisely, that is our method. I, for one, do not take even a ghost story at second vii] VALIDITY OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL EVIDENCE 99 hand, much less anything so starthng as a savage rite. And we discount and allow for every bias and prejudice of our witnesses. I have made a list of these idola in M. R. R. ii. 334-344. Mr. Max Miiller now gives a list of inconsis- tencies in descriptions of A.ustralian Blacks. They are not Blacks, they have a dash of copper colour ! Well, I never said that they had ' the sooty tinge of the African negro.' Did anybody ? Mr. Eidley thinks that all natives are called ' Murri.' Mr. Curr says ' No.' Important. We must reserve our judgment. Missionaries say the Blacks are ' devoid of moral ideas.' What missionaries ? What anthropologist believes such nonsense? There are differences of opinion about landed property, communal or pri- vate. The difference rages among historians of civil- ised races. So, also, as to portable property. Mr. Curr (Mr. Max Mliller's witness) agrees here with those whose works I chiefly rely on. 'Mr. McLennan has built a whole social theory on the statement ' (a single statement) ' made by Sir George Grey, and contradicted by Mr. Curr.' Mr. McLennan would be, I think, rather surprised at this remark ; but what would he do ? Why, he would re-examine the whole question, decide by the balance of evidence, and reject, modify, or retain his theory accordingly. All sciences have to act in this way ; there- fore almost all scientific theories are fluctuating. Nothing here is peculiar to anthropolog5^ A single word, or two or three, will prove or disprove a theory of phonetic laws. Even phonetics are dis- putable ground. H 2 lOO MODERN MYTHOLOGY [vn In defence of my late friend Mr. McLennan, I must point out that if he built a whole social theory on a single statement of Sir George Grey's, and if Mr. Curr denies the truth of the statement, Mr. Frazer has produced six or seven witnesses to the truth of that very statement in other parts of the world than Australia.^ To this circumstance we may return. Mr. Max MllUer next produces Mr. Curr's opinions about the belief in a god and morality among Australians. 'Here he really contradicts himself.' The disputable evidence about Australian marriage laws is next shown to be disputable. That is pre- cisely why Dr. Tylor is applying to it his unrivalled diligence in accurate examination. We await his results. Finally, the contradictory evidence as to Tasmanian religion is exposed. We have no Cod- rington or Bleek for Tasmania. The Tasmanians are extinct, and Science should leave the evidence as to their religion out of her accounts. We cannot cross- examine defunct Tasmanians. From all this it follows that anthropologists must sift and winnow their evidence, like men employed in every other branch of science. And who denies it ? What anthropologist of mark accepts as gospel any casual traveller's tale ? The Test of Recurrences Even for travellers' tales we have a use, we can apply to them Dr. Tylor's ' Test of Eecurrences.' ' If two independent visitors to dilSferent coun- tries, say a mediaeval Mahommedan in Tartary and a modern Englishman in Dahomey, or a Jesuit ^ ' Totemism,' Encyclo]). Brit. vii] VALIDITY OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL EVIDENCE lOI missionary in Brazil and a Wesley an in the Fiji Islands, agree in describing some analogous art, or rite, or myth among the people they have visited, it becomes difficult or impossible to set down such correspondence to accident or wilful fraud. A story by a bushranger in Australia may perhaps be objected to as a mistake or an invention, but did a Methodist minister in Guinea conspire with him to cheat the public by telling the same story there ? ' The whole passage should be read : it was antici- pated by Professor Millar in his Origin of Rank, and has been restated by myself.^ Thus I wrote (in 1887) 'it is to be regretted that Mr. Max Mliller entirely omits to mention . . . the corroboration which is derived from the undesigned coincidence of independent testimony.' In 1891-1892 he still entirely omits to mention, to his Glasgow audience, the strength of his oppo- nents' case. He would serve us better if he would criticise the test of recurrences, and show us its weak points. Bias of Theory Yes, our critic may reply, ' but Mr. Curr thinks that there is a strong tendency in observers abroad, if they have become acquainted with a new and startling theory that has become popular at home, to see confirmations of it everywhere.' So I had explicitly stated in commenting on Dr. Tylor's test of recurrences.^ ' Travellers and missionaries have begun to read anthropological books, and their 1 M. B. E. ii. 333. ^ Ibid. ii. 335. I02 MODERN MYTHOLOGY [vil evidence is, therefore, much more Hkely to be biassed now by anthropological theories than it was of old,' So Mr. McLennan, in the very earliest of all writings on totemism, said : ' As the totem has not till now got itself mixed up with speculations the observers have been unbiassed.' Mr. McLennan finally de- clined to admit any evidence as to the savage marriage laws collected after his own theory, and other theories born from it, had begun to bias ob- servers of barbaric tribes. It does not quite seem to me that Mr. Max Mtiller makes his audience acquainted with these precautions of anthropologists, with their sedulous sifting of evidence, and watchfulness against the theoretical bias of observers. Thus he assails the faible, not the fort of our argument, and may even seem not to be aware that we have removed the faible by careful discrimination. What opinion must his readers, who know not Mr. McLennan's works, entertain about that acute and intrepid pioneer, a man of warm temper, I admit, a man who threw out his daringly original theory at a heat, using at first such untrustworthy materials as lay at hand, but a man whom disease could not daunt, and whom only death prevented from building a stately edifice on the soil which he was the first to explore ? Our author often returns to the weakness of the evidence of travellers and missionaries. Concerning Missionaries Here is an example of a vivacite in our censor. ' With regard to ghosts and spirits among the vii] VALIDITY OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL EVIDENCE 103 Melanesians, our authorities, whether missionaries, traders, or writers on ethnology, are troubled by no difficulties ' (i. 207). Yet on this very page Mr. Max Miiller has been citing the ' difficulties ' which do ' trouble ' a ' missionary,' Dr. Codrington. And, for my own part, when I want information about Melanesian beliefs, it is to Dr. Codrington's work that I go.^ The doctor, himself a missionary, ex hypothesi ' untroubled by difficulties,' has just been quoted by Mr. Max Miiller, and by myself, as a wit- ness to the difficulties which trouble himself and us. What can Mr. Max Miiller possibly mean ? Am I wrong ? Was Dr. Codrington not a missionary ? At all events, he is the authority on Melanesia, a ' high ' authority (i. 206), 1 M. B. B. I 96, 127 ; ii. 22, 336. I04 MODERN MYTHOLOGY [viii VIII THE PHILOLOGICAL METHOD IN ANTHROPOLOGY Mr. Max Miiller as Ethnologist Our author is apt to remonstrate with his anthropo- logical critics, and to assure them that he also has made studies in ethnology. ' I am not such a despairer of ethnology as some ethnologists would have me.' He refers us to the assistance which he lent in bringing out Dr. Hahn's Tsuni-Goam (1881), Mr. Gill's Myths and Songs from the South Pacific (1876), and probably other examples could be added. But my objection is, not that we should be ungrate- ful to Mr. Max Miiller for these and other valuable services to anthropology, but that, when he has got his anthropological material, he treats it in what I think the wrong way, or approves of its being so treated. Here, indeed, is the irreconcilable difference between two schools of mythological interpretation. Given Dr. Hahn's book, on Hottentot manners and religion : the anthropologist compares the Hottentot rites, beliefs, social habits, and general ideas with those of other races known to him, savage or civilised. A Hottentot custom, which has a meaning among Hottentots, may exist where its meaning is lost, among Greeks or other 'Aryans.' A story of a Hottentot god, quite a natural sort of tale for a Till] PHILOLOGICAL METHOD IN ANTHROPOLOGY 105 Hottentot to tell, may be told about a god in Greece, where it is contrary to the Greek spirit. We infer that the Greeks perhaps inherited it from savage ancestors, or borrowed it from savages. Names of Savage Gods This is the method, and if we can also get a scholar to analyse the names of Hottentot gods, we are all the luckier, that is, if his processes and inferences are logical. May we not decide on the logic of scholars ? But, just as Mr, Max Mliller points out to us the dangers attending our evidence, we point out to him the dangers attending his method. In Dr. Hahn's book, the doctor analyses the meaning of the name Tsuni-Goam and other names, discovers their original sense, and from that sense explains the myths about Hottentot divine beings. Here we anthropologists first ask Mr. Max Mliller, before accepting Dr. Hahn's etymologies, to listen to other scholars about the perils and difficulties of the philological analysis of divine names, even in Aryan languages. I have already quoted his ' de- fender,' Dr. Tiele. 'The philological method is inadequate and misleading, when it is a question of (1) discovering the origin of a myth, or (2) the physical explanation of the oldest myths, or (3) of accounting for the rude and obscene element in the divine legends of civilised races.' To the two former purposes Dr. Hahn applies the philological method in the case of Tsuni-Goam. Other scholars agree with Dr. Tiele. Mannhardt, as we said, held that Mr. Max Midler's favourite etymological ' equations,' Sarameya = Hermeias ; Saranyu = Demeter - Erinnys ; Kentauros = Gandharvas I06 MODERN MYTHOLOGY [viii and others, would not stand criticism. 'The method in its practical working shows a lack of the historical sense,' said Mannhardt. Cur tins — a scholar, as Mr. Max MllUer declares (i. 32) — says, 'It is especially difficult to conjecture the mean- ing of proper names, and above all of local and mythical names.' ^ I do not see that it is easier when these names are not Greek, but Hottentot, or Algonquin ! Thus Achilles may as easily mean ' holder of the people ' as ' holder of stones,' i.e. a Eiver-god ! Or does *^x suggest aqua, Achelous the Eiver ? Leto, mother of Apollo, cannot be from XaOeli^, as Mr. Max Mliller holds (ii. 514, 515), to which Mr. Max Miiller replies, perhaps not, as far as the phonetic rules go ' which determine the formation of appella- tive nouns. It, indeed, would be extraordinary if it were. . . .' The phonetic rules in Hottentot may also suggest difficulties to a South African Curtius ! Other scholars agree with Curtius — agree in thinking that the etymology of mythical names is a sandy foundation for the science of mythology. ' The difficult task of interpreting mythical names has, so far, produced few certain results,' says Otto Schrader.^ When Dr. Hahn applies the process in Hottentot, we urge with a friendly candour these cautions from scholars on Mr. Max Miiller. A Hottentot God In Custom and Myth (p. 207), I examine the logic by which Dr. Hahn proves Tsuni-Goam to be ' The ^ Greek Etyni. Engl, transl. i. 147. - Spraclivergleicliung und TJrgescliiclite, p. 431. viiij PHILOLOGICAL METHOD IN ANTHROPOLOGY I07 Eed Dawn.' One of his steps is to say that tsu means ' sore,' or ' wounded,' and that a wound is red, so he gets his ' red ' in Eed Dawn. But of tsu in the sense of ' red ' he gives not one example, while he does give another word for ' red,' or ' bloody.' This may be scholarly but it is not evidence, and this is only one of many perilous steps on ground extremely scahreux, got over by a series of logical leaps. As to our quarrel with Mr. Max Mliller about his friend's treat- ment of ethnological materials, it is this : we do not believe in the validity of the etymological method when applied to many old divine names in Greek, still less in Hottentot. Cause of our Seepticism Our scepticism is confirmed by the extraordinary diversity of opinion among scholars as to what the right analysis of old divine names is. Mr. Max Mliller writes (i. 18) : 'I have never been able to extract from my critics the title of a single book in which my etymologies and my mythological equa- tions had been seriously criticised by real scholars.' We might answer, 'Why tell you what you know very well? ' For (i. 50) you say that while Signor Canizzaro calls some of your ' equations ' ' irrefu- tably demonstrated,' ' other scholars declare these equations are futile and impossible.' Do these other scholars criticise your equations not ' seriously ' ? Or are you ignorant of the names of their works ? Another case. Our author says that ' many objections were raised' to his 'equation' of Athene = Ahana='Dawn' (ii. 378, 400, &c.). Have the objections ceased ? Here are a few scholars who do not, or did not, accept Athene = Ahana : Welcker, 108 MODERN MYTHOLOGY [viii Benfey, Curtius, Preller, Furtwangler, Schwartz, and now Bechtel (i. 378). Mr. Max MuUer thinks that he is right, but, till scholars agree, what can we do but wait ? Phonetic Bickerings The evidence turns on theories of phonetic laws as they worked in pre-Homeric Greece. But these laws, as they apply to common ordinary words, need not^ we are told, be applied so strictly to proper names, as of gods and heroes. These are a kind of comets, and their changes cannot be calculated like the changes of vulgar words, which answer to stars (i. 298). Mr. Max Mliller ' formerly agreed with Cur- tius that phonetic rules should be used against proper names with the same severity as against ordinary nouns and verbs.' Benfey and Welcker protested, so does Professor Victor Henry. ' It is not fair to de- mand from mythography the rigorous observation of phonetics ' (i. 387). ' This may be called backsliding,' our author confesses, and it does seem rather a ' go- as-you-please ' kind of method. Phonetic Rules Mr. Max Mliller argues at length (and, to my ignorance, persuasively) in favour of a genial laxity in the application of phonetic rules to old proper names. Do they apply to these as strictl}^ as to ordinary words ? ' This is a question that has often been asked . . . but it has never been boldly answered' (i. 297). Mr. Max Mliller cannot have forgotten that Curtius answered boldly — in the negative. 'Without such rigour all attempts at etymology are impossible. For this very reason Tin] PHILOLOGICAL METHOD IN ANTHROPOLOGY 1 09 ethnologists and mythologists should make them- selves acquainted with the simple principles of comparative philology.' ^ But it is not for us to settle such disputes of scholars. Meanwhile their evidence is derived from their private interpretations of old proper names, and they differ among themselves as to whether, in such interpretations, they should or should not be governed strictly by phonetic laws. Then what Mr. Max Mtiller calls ' the usual bickerings ' begin among scholars (i. 416). And Mr. Max Mtiller connects Ouranos with Yedic Varuna, while Wacker- nagel prefers to derive it from ovpov, urine, and this from ov/3eaj= Sk. Varshayami, to rain (ii. 416, 417), and so it goes on for years with a glorious uncer- tainty. If Mr. Max Mliller's equations are scientific- ally correct, the scholars who accept them not must all be unscientific. Or else, this is not science at all. Basis of a Science A science in its early stages, while the vaHdity of its working laws in application to essential cases is still undetermined, must, of course, expect 'bickerings.' But philological mythologists are actually trying to base one science. Mythology, on the still shifting and sandy foundations of another science. Phonetics. The philologists are quarrelling about their ' equations,' and about the apphcation of their phonetic laws to mythical proper names. On the basis of this shaking soil, they propose to build another science, Mythology ! Then, pleased with the scientific exactitude of their evidence, they object to the laxity of ours. 1 Gr. Ehjm. i. 150, I 1 MODERN MYTHOLOGY [viii Philology in Action — Indra As an example of the philological method with a Yedic god, take Indra. I do not think that science is ever likely to find out the whole origins of any god. Even if his name mean ' sky,' Dyaus, Zeus, we must ask what mode of conceiving ' sky ' is original. Was ' sky ' thought of as a person, and, if so, as a savage or as a civilised person ; as a god, sans phrase ; as the inanimate visible vault of heaven ; as a totem, or how ? Indra, like other gods, is apt to evade our observation, in his origins. Mr. Max Miiller asks, ' what should we gain if we called Indra ... a totem?' Who does? If we derive his name from the same root as ' ind-u,' raindrop, then 'his starting-point was the rain' (i. 131). Eoth preferred ' idh,' ' indh,' to kindle ; and later, his taste and fancy led him to ' ir,' or ' irv,' to have power over. He is variously regarded as god of 'bright firmament,' of air, of thunderstorm personified, and so forth. ^ His name is not detected among other Aryan gods, and his birth may be after the ' Aryan Separation' (ii. 752). But surely his name, even so, might have been carried to the Greeks ? This, at least, should not astonish Mr. Max Miiller. One had supposed that Dyaus and Zeus were separately developed, by peoples of India and Greece, from a common, pre-separation, Aryan root. One had not imagined that the Greeks borrowed divine names from Sanskrit and from India. But this, too, might happen! (ii. 506). Mr. Max Miiller asks, 'Why should not a cloud or air goddess of India, whether called Svara or Urvasi, have suj)plied the first germs ' M. B. B. ii. 142. Till] PHILOLOGICAL METHOD IN ANTHROPOLOGY III from which ^ocottl? ttotvicl "Hpr) descended ? ' Why not, indeed, if prehistoric Greeks were in touch with India ? I do not say they were not. Why should not a Vedic or Sanskrit goddess of India supply the first germs of a Greek goddess? (ii. p. 506). Wliy, because ' Greek gods have never been Vedic gods, but both Greek and Vedic gods have started from the same germs' (ii. 429). Our author has answered his own question, but he seems at inter- vals to suppose, contrary to his own principles, as I understand them, that Greek may be ' derived from ' Vedic divine names, or, at least, divine names in Sanskrit. All this is rather confusing. Obscuring the Veda If Indra is called ' bull,' that at first only meant 'strong' (ii. 209). Yet 'some very thoughtful scholars ' see traces of totemism in Indra ! ^ Mr. Max Muller thinks that this theory is ' obscuring the Veda by this kind of light from the Dark Continent ' (America, it seems). Indra is said to have been born from a cow, like the African Heitsi Eibib.^ There are unholy stories about Indra and rams. But I for one, as I have said already, would never deny that these may be part of the pleasant unconscious poetry of the Vedic hymnists. Indra's legend is rich in savage obscenities ; they may, or may not, be survivals from savagery. At all events one sees no reason why we should not freely compare parallel savageries, and why this should ' obscure ' the Veda. Comparisons are illuminating. 1 ii. 210. Cf. Oldenberg in Deutsche Bundschau, 1895, p. 205. 2 B. V. iv. 18, 10. I 1 2 MODERN MYTHOLOGY [ix IX CRITICISM OF FETISHISM Mischief of Comparisons in Comparative Mythology Not always are comparisons illuminating, it seems. Our author writes, ' It may be said — in fact, it has been said— that there can at all events be no harm in simply placing the myths and customs of savages side by side with the myths and customs of Hindus and Greeks.' (This, in fact, is the method of the science of institutions.) ' But experience shows that this is not so ' (i. 195). So we must not, should not, simply place the myths and customs of savages side by side with those of Hindus and Greeks. It is taboo. Dr. Oldenberg Now Dr. Oldenberg, it seems, uses such comparisons of savage and Aryan faiths. Dr. Oldenberg is (i. 209) one of several '■very thoughtful scholars'' who do so, who break Mr. Max Mtiller's prohibition. Yet (ii, 220) ''no true scholar would accept any com- parison ' between savage fables and the folklore of Homer and the Vedas ' as really authoritative until fully demonstrated on both sides' Well, it is 'fully demonstrated,' or ' a very thoughtful scholar ' (like Dr. Oldenberg) would not accept it. Or it is not demonstrated, and then Dr. Oldenberg, though ' a very thoughtful,' is not ' a true scholar.' ii] CRITICISM OF FETISHISM I 1 3 Comparisons, when odious Once more, Mr. Max Miiller deprecates the making of comparisons between savage and Vedic myths (i. 210), and then (i. 220) he deprecates the acceptance of these very comparisons ' as really authoritative until fully demonstrated.' Now, how is the validity of the comparisons to be ' fully demon- strated ' if we are forbidden to make them at all, because to do so is to ' obscure ' the Veda ' by light from the Dark Continent ' ? A Question of Logic I am not writing ' quips and cranks ; ' I am deal- ing quite gravely with the author's processes of reasoning. ' No true scholar ' does what ' very thoughtful scholars ' do. No comparisons of savage and Vedic myths should be made, but yet, ' when fully demonstrated,' ' true scholars would accept them ' (i. 209, 220). How can comparisons be de- monstrated before they are made ? And made they must not be ! • Scholars ' It would be useful if Mr. Max Mllller were to define ' scholar,' ' real scholar,' ' true scholar,' ' very thoughtful scholar.' The latter may err, and have erred — like General Councils, and like Dr. Oldenberg, who finds in the Veda 'remnants of the wildest and rawest essence of religion,' totemism, and the rest (i. 210). I was wont to think that ' scholar,' as used by our learned author, meant 'philological mythologist,' as distinguished from ' not-scholar,' that is, ' anthropological mythologist.' But now I 114 MODERN MYTHOLOGY [ix ' very tliouglitful scholars,' even Dr. Oldenberg, Mr. Eliys, Dr. Eobertson Smith, and so on, use the anthropological method, so ' scholar ' needs a fresh definition. The ' not-scholars,' the anthropologists, have, in fact, converted some very thoughtful scholars. If we could only catch the true scholar ! But that we cannot do till we fully demonstrate com- parisons which we may not make, for fear of first ' obscuring the Veda by this kind of light from the Dark Continent.' Anthropology and the Mysteries It is not my affair to defend Dr. Oldenberg, whose comparisons of Yedic with savage rites I have never read, I am sorry to say. One is only arguing that the method of making such comparisons is legitimate. Thus (i. 232) controversy, it seems, still rages among scholars as to ' the object of the Eleusinian Mysteries.' ' Does not the scholar's con- science warn us against accepting whatever in the myths and customs of the Zulus seems to suit our purpose ' — of explaining features in the Eleusinia ? If Zulu customs, and they alone, contained Eleusinian parallels, even the anthropologist's conscience would whisper caution. But this is not the case. North American, Australian, African, and other tribes have mysteries very closely and minutely resem- bling parts of the rites of the Eleusinia, Dionysia, and Thesmophoria. Thus Lobeck, a scholar, de- scribes the Rhomhos used in the Dionysiac mys- teries, citing Clemens Alexandrinus.^ Thanks to Dr. Tylor's researches I was able to show (what Lol)eck ^ Aglaophamus, i. 700. ix] CRITICISM OF FETISHISM II5 knew not) tliat the Rhombos (Australian turndun, ' Bull-roarer ' ) is also used in Australian, African, American, and other savage religious mysteries. Now should I have refrained from producing this well- attested matter of fact till I knew Australian, American, and African languages as well as I know Greek ? ' What century will it be when there will be scholars who know the dialects of the Australian blacks as well as we know the dialects of Greece ? ' (i. 232) asks our author. And what in the name of Eleusis have dialects to do with the circumstance that savages, like Greeks, use Rhombi in their mysteries ? There are abundant other material facts, visible palpable objects and practices, which savage mysteries have in common with the Greek mysteries.^ If observed by deaf men, when used by dumb men, instead of by scores of Europeans who could talk the native languages, these illuminating rites of savages would still be evidence. They have been seen and described often, not by ' a casual native informant ' (who, perhaps, casually invented Greek rites, and falsely attributed them to his tribesmen), but by educated Europeans. Abstract Ideas of Savages Mr. Max Miiller defends, with perfect justice, the existence of abstract ideas among contemporary savages. It appears that somebody or other has said — ' we have been told ' (i. 291) — ' that all this ' (the Mangaian theory of the universe)* ' must have come from missionaries.' The ideas are as likely to have come from Hegel as from a missionary ! » Custom and Mijth, i. 29-44. M. B. B. ii. 260-273. I 2 I 1 6 MODERN MYTHOLOGY [ix Therefore, ' instead of looking for idols, or for totems and fetishes, we must learn and accept what the savages themselves are able to tell us. . . .' Yes, we mustle?ii'n and accept it ; so I have always urged. But if the savages tell us about totems, are they not then ' casual native informants ' ? If a Maori tells you, as he does, of traditional hymns containing ideas worthy of Heraclitus, is that quite trustworthy ; whereas, if he tells you about his idols and taboos, that cannot possibly be worthy of attention ? Perception of the Infinite From these extraordinary examples of abstract thought in savages, our author goes on to say that his theory of ' the perception of the Infinite ' as the origin of religion was received ' with a storm of unfounded obloquy' (i. 292). I myself criticised the Hibhert Lectures, in Mind ; ^ on reading the essay over, I find no obloquy and no storm. I find, how- ever, that I deny, what our author says that I assert, the primitiveness of contemporary savages. In that essay, which, of course, our author had no reason to read, much was said about fetishism, a topic discussed by Mr. Max Miiller in his Hibhert Lectures. Fetishism is, as he says, an ill word, and has caused much confusion. Fetishism and Anthropological Method Throughout much of his work our author's object is to invalidate the anthropological method. That method sets side by side the customs, ideas, fables, myths, proverbs, riddles, rites, of different ' Custom and Myth, pp. 212-242. ix] CRITICISM OF FETISHISM I I 7 races. Of their languages it does not necessarily take account in this process. Nobody (as we shall see) knows the languages of all, or of most, of the races whose ideas he compares. Now the learned professor establishes the ' harm done ' by our method in a given instance. He seems to think that, if a method has been misapplied, therefore the method itself is necessarily erroneous. The case stands thus : De Brosses ^ first compared ' the so- called fetishes ' of the Gold Coast with Greek and Eoman amulets and other material objects of old religions. But he did this, we learn, without trying to find out why a negro made a fetish of a pebble, shell, or tiger's tail, and without endeavouring to discover whether the negro's motives really were the motives of his ' postulated fetish worship ' in Greece, Eome, or Palestine. Origin of Fetishes If so, tant pis pour monsieur le President. But how does the unscientific conduct attributed to De Brosses implicate the modern anthropologist? Do we not try to find out, and really succeed sometimes in finding out, lohy a savage cherishes this or that scrap as a ' fetish ' ? I give a string of explanations in Custom and Myth (pp. 229-230). Sometimes the so-called fetish had an accidental, which was taken to be a causal, connection with a stroke of good luck. Sometimes the thing — an odd-shaped stone, say — had a superficial resemblance to a desirable object, and so was thought likely to aid in the acquisition of such objects by ' sympathetic magic' ^ 1 Cidte lies Fetiches, 1760. ■•* Codrington, Journal Anthrop. Inst., Feb. 1881. Il8 MODERN MYTHOLOGY [ix Other ' fetishes ' are revealed in dreams, or by ghosts, or by spirits appearing in semblance of animals.^ * Telekinetic ' Origin of Fetishism As I write comes in Melusine, viii. 7, with an essay by M. Lefebure on Les Origines du Fetichisme. He derives some fetishistic practices from what the Melanesians call Mana, which, says Mr. Max Miiller, ' may often be rendered by supernatural or magic power, present in an individual, a stone, or in formulas or charms ' (i. 294). How, asks Mr. Lefebure, did men come to attribute this vis vivida to persons and things ? Because, in fact, he says, such an unexplored force does really exist and display itself. He then cites Mr. Crookes' observations on scientifically registered ' telekinetic ' performances by Daniel Dunglas Home, he cites Despine on Madame Schmitz-Baud,^ with examples from Dr. Tylor, P. de la Eissachere, Dr. Gibier,^ and other authorities, good or bad. Grouping, then, his facts under the dubious title of le magnetisms, M. Lefebure finds in savage observation of such facts ' the chief cause of fetishism.' Some of M. Lefebure's ' facts ' (of objects moving untouched) were certainly frauds, like the tricks of Eusapia. But, even if all the facts recorded were frauds, such impostures, performed by savage con- jurers, who certainly profess ^ to produce the pheno- mena, might originate, or help to originate, the respect paid to ' fetishes ' and the belief in Mana. But probably Major EUis's researches into the religion 1 C. and M. p. 230, note. * Rochas, Les Forces non definies, 1888, pp. 340-357, 411, 626. 3 Bevue Bleue, 1890, p. 867. * De Drosses, p. 16. ix] CRITICISM OF FETISHISM I 1 9 of the Tslii- speaking races throw most light on the real ideas of African fetishists. The subject is vast and complex. I am content to show that, whatever De Brosses did, we do not abandon a search for the motives of the savage fetishist. Indeed, De Brosses himself did seek and find at least one African motive, 'The conjurers (jongleurs) persuade them that little instruments in their possession are en- dowed with a living spirit.' So far, fetishism is spiritualism. Civilised ' Fetishism ' De Brosses did not look among civilised fetish- ists for the motives which he neglected among savages (i. 196). Tant pis pour monsieur le President. But we and our method no more stand or fall with De Brosses and his, than Mr. Max Miiller's etymo- logies stand or fall with those in the Cratylus of Plato. If, in a civilised people, ancient or modern, we find a practice vaguely styled ' fetishistic,' we exa- mine it in its details. While we have talismans, amuletSj gamblers' fetiches., I do not think that, ex- cept among some children, we have anything nearly analogous to Gold Coast fetishism as a whole. Some one seems to have called the palladium a fetish. I don't exactly know what the palladium (called a fetish by somebody) was. The hasta fetialis has been styled a fetish — an apparent abuse of language. As to the Holy Cross qua fetish, why discuss such free- thinking credulities ? Modern anthropologists — Tylor, Frazer, and the rest — are not under the censure appropriate to the illogical. I20 MODERN MYTHOLOGY [ix More Mischiefs of Comparison The 'Nemesis ' (i. 196) of De Brosses' errors did not stay in lier ravaging progress. Fetishism was represented as ' the very beginning of reHgion,' first among the negroes, then among all races. As I, for one, persistently proclaim that the beginning of religion is an inscrutable mystery, the Nemesis has somehow left me scatheless, propitiated by my piety. I said, long ago, ' the train of ideas which leads man to believe in and to treasure fetishes is one among the earliest springs of religious belief.'^ But from even this rather guarded statement I withdraw. ' No man can watch the idea of God in the making or in the beginning.' ^ Still more Nemesis The new Nemesis is really that which I have just put far from me — namely, that ' modern savages represent everywhere the Eocene stratum of religion.' They probably represent an early stage in religion, just as, teste Mr. Max Mliller, they represent an early stage in language. ' In savage languages we see what we can no longer expect to see even in the most ancient Sanskrit or Hebrew. We watch the child- hood of language, with all its childish pranks.'^ Now, if the tongues spoken by modern savages represent the 'childhood' and 'childish pranks' of language, why should the beliefs of modern savages not represent the childhood and childish pranks of religion ? I am not here averring that they do so, ' C. and M. p. 214. ^ j^^ ^_ _r_ i 327. ^ Lectures on the Science of Language, 2nd series, p. 41. jx] CRITICISM OF FETISHISX. CALlf9>-I2I nor even that Mr. Max Mtiller is right in liis remark on language. The Austrahan blacks have been men as long as the Prussian nobility. Their language has had time to outgrow ' childish pranks,' but apparently it has not made use of its opportunities, according to our critic. Does he know why ? One need not reply to the charge that anthropo- logists, if they are meant, regard modern savages ' as just evolved from the earth, or the sky,' or from monkeys (i. 197). 'Savages have afar-stretching unknown history behind them.' ' The past of savages, I say, must have been a long past.' ^ So, once more, the Nemesis of De Brosses fails to touch me — and, of course, to touch more learned anthropologists. There is yet another Nemesis — the postulate that Aryans and Semites, or rather their ancestors, must have passed through the savage state. Dr. Tylor writes : — ' So far as history is to be our criterion, progression is primary and degradation secondary. Culture must he gained before it can he lost.' Now a person who has not gained what Dr. Tylor calls ' culture ' [not in Mr. Arnold's sense) is a man without tools, instruments, or clothes. He is certainly, so far, like a savage ; is very much lower in ' culture ' than any race with which we are acquainted. As a matter of hypothesis, anyone may say that man was born ' with everything handsome about him.' He has then to account for the savage elements in Greek myth and rite. For Us or Against Us? We now hear that the worst and last penalty paid for De Brosses' audacious comparison of savage with ' M. B. B. ii. 327 and 329. 122 MODERN MYTHOLOGY [ix civilised superstitions is the postulate that Aryan and Semitic peoples have passed through a stage of savagery. ' However different the languages, customs and myths, the colour and the skulls of these modern savages might be from those of Aryan and Semitic people, the latter must once have passed through the same stage, must once have been what the negroes of the West Coast of Africa are to-day. This postulate has not been, and, according to its very nature, cannot be proved. But the mischief done by acting on such postulates is still going on, and in several cases it has come to this — that what in historical religions, such as our own, is known to be the most modern, the very last outcome, namely, the worship of relics or a belief in amulets, has been represented as the first necessary step in the evolution of all reli- gions ' (i. 197). I really do not know who says that the prehistoric ancestors of Aryans and Semites were once in the same stage as the ' negroes of the West Coast of Africa are to-day.' These honest fellows are well acquainted with coined money, with the use of firearms, and other resources of civilisation, and have been in touch with missionaries. Miss Kingsley, traders, and tourists. The ancestors of the Aryans and Semites enjoyed no such advantages. Mr. Max Miiller does not tell us who says that thej^ did. But that the ancestors of all mankind passed through a stage in which they had to develop for themselves tools, languages, clothes, and institutions, is assuredly the belief of anthropologists. A race without tools, language, clothes, pottery, and social institutions, or with these in the shape of undeveloped speech, stone knives, and 'possum or other skins, is what we call a ix] CRITICISM OF FETISHISM I 23 race of savages. Such we believe the ancestors of mankind to have been — at an}"- rate after the FaU. Now when Mr. Max Mliller began to write his book, he accepted this postulate of anthropology (i. 15). When he reached i. 197 he abandoned and denounced this postulate. I quote his acceptance of the postulate (i. 15) : — ' Even Mr, A. Lang has to admit that we have not got much beyond Fontenelle, when he wrote in the last century : ' " Why are the legends [myths] about men, beasts, and gods so wildly incredible and revolting ? , . . The answer is that the earliest men were in a state of almost inconceivable ignorance and savagery, and that the Greeks inherited their myths from people in the same savage stage {en un pareil etat de sauvagerie). Look at the Kaffirs and Iroquois if you want to know what the earliest men were like, and remember that the very Iroquois and Kaffirs have a long past behind them " ' — that is to say, are polite and cultivated com- pared to the earliest men of all. Here is an uncompromising statement by Fonte- nelle of the postulate that the Greeks (an Aryan people) must have passed through the same stage as modern savages — Kaffirs and Iroquois — now occupy. But (i. 15) Mr. Max Mliller eagerly ac- cepts the postulate : — ' There is not a word of FonteneUe's to which I should not gladly subscribe ; there is no advice of his which I have not tried to follow in all my attempts to explain the myths of India and Greece by an occasional reference to Polynesian or African folk- lore.' 124 MODERN MYTHOLOGY [ix Well, if Mr. Max MilUer ' gladly subscribes,' in p. 15, to the postulate of an original universal stage of savagery, whence civilised races inherit their incredibl}'' rej)ulsive myths, why, in pp. 197, 198, does he denounce that very postulate as not proven, not capable of being proved, very mischievous, and one of the evils resulting from our method of comparing savage and civilised rites and beliefs ? I must be permitted to complain that I do not know which is Mr. Max Miiller's real opinion — that given with such hearty conviction in p. 15, or that stated with no less earnestness in pp. 197, 198. I trust that I shall not be thought to magnify a mere slip of the pen. Both passages — though, as far as 1 can see, self- contradictor}^ — appear to be written with the same absence of levity. Fontenelle, I own, speaks of Greeks, not Semites, as being originally savages. But I pointed out ^ that he considered it safer to ' hedge ' by making an exception of the Israelites. There is really nothing in Genesis against the contention that the naked, tool-less, mean, and frivolous Adam was a savage. The Fallacy of ' Admits ' As the purpose of this essay is mainly logical, I may point out the existence of a fallacy not marked, I think, in handbooks of Logic. This is the fallacy of saying that an opponent ' admits ' what, on the con- trary, he has been the first to point out and proclaim. He is thus suo-crested into an attitude which is the reverse of his own. Some one — I am sorry to say that I forget who he was — showed me that Fonte- 1 M. B. B. ii. 324. Tx] CRITICISM OF FETISHISM - 1 25 nelle, in De rOrigine des Fables,^ briefly stated the anthropological theory of the origin of myths, or at least of that repulsive element in them which ' makes mythology mythological,' as Mr. Max Miiller says. I was glad to have a predecessor in a past less remote than that of Eusebius of C^sarea. ' A briefer and better system of mythology,' T wrote, * could not be devised ; but the Mr. Casaubons of this world have neglected it, and even now it is beyond their comprehension.' ^ To say this in this manner is not to ' admit that we have not got much beyond Fontenelle.' I do not want to get beyond Fontenelle. I want to go back to his ' for- gotten common-sense,' and to apply his ideas with method and criticism to a range of materials which he did not possess or did not investigate. Now, on p. 15, Mr. Max Miiller had got as far as accepting Fontenelle; on pp. 197, 198 he burns, as it were, that to which he had ' gladly subscribed.' Conclusion as to our Method All this discussion of fetishes arose out of our author's selection of the subject as an example of the viciousness of our method. He would not permit us ' simply to place side by side ' savage and Greek myths and customs, because it did harm (i. 195); and the harm done was proved by the Nemesis of De Brosses. Now, first, a method may be a good method, yet may be badly applied. Secondly, I have shown that the Nemesis does not attach to all of us modern anthropologists. Thirdly, I have proved (unless I am under some 1 Paris : (Euvres, 1758, iii. 270. - M. B. JR. ii. 324. 126 MODERN MYTHOLOGY [ix misapprehension, which I vainly attempt to detect, and for which, if it exists, I apologise humbly) that Mr. Max Mtlller, on p. 15, accepts the doctrine which he denounces on p. 197.^ Again, I am entirely at one with Mr. Max Miiller when he says (p. 210) ' we have as yet really no scientific treatment of Shamanism.' This is a pressing need, but probably a physician alone could do the work — a physician double with a psychologist. See, however, the excellent pages in Dr. Tylor's Primitive Culture, and in Mr. William James's Princijjles of Psychology , on ' Mediumship.' ^ I have no concern with his criticism of Mr. Herbert Spencer (p. 203), as I entirely disagree with that philosopher's theory. The defence of ' Animism ' I leave to Dr. Tvlor . 127 X THE RIDDLE THEORY Wliat the Philological Theory Needs The great desideratum of the philological method is a proof that the ' Disease of Language,' ex hypothesi the most fertile source of myths, is a vera causa. Do simple poetical phrases, descriptive of heavenly phenomena, remain current in the popular mouth after the meanings of appellatives (Bright One, Dark One, &c.) have been forgotten, so that these appella- tives become proper names — Apollo, Daphne, &c. ? Mr. Max Midler seems to think some proof of this process as a vera causa may be derived from ' Folk Eiddles.' The Riddle Theory We now come, therefore, to the author's treat- ment of popular riddles {devinettes), so common among savages and peasants. Their construction is simple : anything in Nature you please is described by a poetical periphrasis, and you are asked what it is. Thus Geistiblindr asks, What is the Dark One That goes over the earth, Swallows water and wood, But is afraid of the wind ? &c. Or we find, What is the gold spun from one window to another ? The answers, the obvious answers, are (1) 'mist' and (2) ' sunshine.' 128 MODERN MYTHOLOGY [x In Mr. Max Miiller's opinion these riddles ' could not but lead to what we call popular myths or legends.' Very probably ; but this does not aid us to accept the philological method. The very essence of that method is the presumed absolute loss of the meaninor of, e.q. ' the Dark One.' Before there can be a myth, ex hypothesi the words Dark One must have become hopelessly unintelligible, must have become a proper name. Thus suppose, for argument's sake only, that Cronos once meant Dark One, and was understood in that sense. People (as in the Norse riddle just cited) said, 'Cronos [i.e. the Dark One — meaning mist] swallows water and wood.' Then they forgot that Cronos was their old word for the Dark One, and was mist ; but they kept up, and understood, all the rest of the phrase about what mist does. The expression now ran, ' Cronos [whatever that may be] swallows water and wood.' But water comes from mist, and water nourishes wood, therefore ' Cronos swallows his children.' Such would be the development of a myth on Mr. Max Miiller's system. He would interpret ' Cronos swallows his children,' by finding, if he could, the original meaning of Cronos. Let us say that he did discover it to mean ' the Dark One.' Then he might think Cronos meant ' night ; ' ' mist ' he would hardly guess. That is all very clear, but the point is this — in devinettes, or riddles, the meaning of ' the Dark One ' is not lost : — ' Thy riddle is easy Blind Gest, To read ' — Heidrick answers. x] THE RIDDLE THEORY 1 29 What the philological method of mythology needs is to prove that such poetical statements about natural phenomena as the devinettes contain survived in the popular mouth, and were perfectly intelhgible except just the one mot d'enigme — say, ' the Dark One.' That (call it Cronos =' Dark One'), and that alone, became unintelligible in the changes of lan- guage, and so had to be accepted as a proper name, Cronos — a god who swallows things at large. Wliere is the proof of such endurance of intelligible phrases with just the one central necessary word ob- solete and changed into a mysterious proper name ? The world is full of proper names which have lost their meaning — Athene, Achilles, Artemis, and so on but we need proof that poetical sayings, or riddles, survive and are intelligible except one word, which, being unintelligible, becomes a proper name. Eiddles, of course, prove nothing of this kind : — Thy riddle is easy Blind Gest To read ! Yet Mr. Max Miiller offers the suggestion that the obscurity of many of these names of mythical gods and heroes ' may be due .... to the riddles to which they had given rise, and which would have ceased to be riddles if the names had been clear and intelligible, like those of Helios and Selene ' (i. 92). People, he thinks, in making riddles 'would avoid the ordinary appellatives, and the use of little-known names in most mythologies would thus find an intelligible explanation.' Again, ' we can see how essential it was that in such mythological riddles the principal agents should not be called by 130 MODERN MYTHOLOGY [x their regular names.' This last remark, indeed, is obvious. To return to the Norse riddle of the Dark One that swallows wood and water. It would never do in a riddle to call the Dark One by his ordinary- name, ' Mist.' You would not amuse a rural audience by asking ' What is the mist that swallows wood and water ? ' That would be even easier than Mr. Burnand's riddle for very hot weather : — My first is a boot, my second is a jack. Conceivably Mr. Max Mllller may mean that in riddles an almost obsolete word was used to desig- nate the object. Perhaps, instead of ' the Dark One,' a peasant would say, ' What is the Eooky One ? ' But as soon as nobody knew what ' the Eooky One * meant, the riddle would cease to exist — Eooky One and all. You cannot imagine several generations asking each other — "What is the Rooky One that swallows ? if nobody knew the answer. A man who kept boring people with a mere ' sell ' would be scouted ; and with the death of the answerless riddle the diffi- cult word ' Eooky ' would die. But Mr. Max Milller says, ' Eiddles would cease to be riddles if the names had been clear and intelligible.' The reverse is the fact. In the riddles he gives there are seldom any ' names ; ' but the epithets and descriptions are as clear as words can be : — Who are the mother and children in a house, all having bald heads ? — The moon and stars. Lanofuasre cannot be clearer. Yet the riddle has not ' ceased to be a riddle,' as Mr. Max Miiller thinks x] THE RIDDLE THEORY 131 it must do, though the words are ' clear and intel- ligible.' On the other hand, if the language is not clear and intelligible, the riddle would cease to exist. It would not amuse if nobody understood it. You might as well try to make yourself socially accept- able by putting conundrums in Etruscan as by asking riddles in words not clear and intelligible in themselves, though obscure in their reference. The difficulty of a riddle consists, not in the obscurity of words or names, but in the description of familiar things by terms, clear as terms, denoting their appearance and action. The mist is described as ' dark,' ' swallowing,' ' one that fears the wind,' and so forth. The words are pellucid. Thus 'ordinary appellatives' (i. 99) are not ' avoided ' in riddles, though names (sun, mist) can- not be used in the question because they give the answer to the riddle. For all these reasons ancient riddles cannot explain the obscurity of mythological names. As soon as the name was too obscure, the riddle and the name would be forgotten, would die together. So we know as little as ever of the purely hypo- thetical process by which a riddle, or popular poetical saying, remains intelligible in a language, while the 7not d'enigme, becoming unintelligible, turns into a proper name — say, Cronos. Yet the belief in this process as a vera causa is essential to our author's method. Here Mr. Max Miiller warns us that his riddle theory is not meant to explain ' the obscurities of all mythological names. This is a stratagem that should be stopped from the very first.' It were more grace- ful to have said ' a misapprehension.' K 2 132 MODERN MYTHOLOGY [x Another ' stratagem ' I myself must guard against. I do not say that no unintelhgible strings of obsolete words ma}' continue to live in the popular mouth. Old hymns, ritual speeches, and charms may and do survive, though unintelligible. They are reckoned all the more potent, because all the more mysterious. But an unintelligible riddle or poetical saying does not survive, so we cannot thus account for mythology as a disease of language. Mordvinian Mythology Still in the very natural and laudable pursuit of facts which will support the hypothesis of a disease of language, Mr. Max Mliller turns to Mordvinian mythology. ' We have the accounts of real scholars ' about Mordvinian prayers, charms, and proverbs (i. 235). The Mordvinians, Ugrian tribes, have the usual departmental Nature-gods — as Chkai', god of the sun (c/a'=sun). He ' lives in the sun, or is the sun ' (i. 236). His wife is the Earth or earth goddess, Vediava. They have a large family, given to incest. The morals of the Mordvinian gods are as lax as those of Mordvinian mortals. (Compare the myths and morals of Samos, and the Samian Hera.) Athwart the decent god Chkai comes the evil god Chaitan — obviously Shaitan, a Mahommedan con- tamination. There are plenty of minor gods, and spirits good and bad. Dawn was a Mordvinian girl ; in Australia she was a luhra addicted to lubricity. How does this help philological mythology ? Mr. Max Mliller is pleased to find solar and other elemental gods among the Mordvinians. But the discovery in no way aids his special theory. x] THE RIDDLE THEORY 1 33 Nobody has ever denied that gods who are the sun or live in the sun are familiar, and are the centres of myths among most races. I give examples in C. and M. (pp. 104, 133, New Zealand and North America) and in M. R. B. (i. 124-135, America, Africa, Australia, Aztec, Hervey Islands, Samoa, and so on). Such Nature-myths — of sun, sky, earth — are perhaps universal ; but they do not arise from disease of language. These myths deal with natural phenomena plainly and explicitly. The same is the case among the Mordvinians. ' The few names preserved to us are clearly the names of the agents behind the salient phenomena of Nature, in some cases quite intelligible, in others easily restored to their original meaning.' The meanings of the names not being forgotten, but obvious, there is no disease of language. AU this does not illustrate the case of Greek divine names by resemblance, but by difference. Eeal scholars know what Mordvinian divine names mean. They do not know what many Greek divine names mean — as Hera, Artemis, Apollo, Athene ; there is even much dispute about Demeter. No anthropologist, I hope, is denying that Nature-myths and Nature-gods exist. We are only fighting against the philological effort to get at the elemental phenomena which may be behind Hera, Artemis, Athene, Apollo, by means of contending etymological conjectures. We only oppose the philo- logical attempt to account for all the features in a god's myth as manifestations of the elemental qualities denoted by a name which may mean at pleasure dawn, storm, clear air, thunder, wind, twilight, water, or what you will. Granting Chkai to be the sun, does that explain why he punishes 134 MODERN MYTHOLOGY [i people who bake bread on Friday? (237.) Our opponent does not seem to understand the jjortee of our objections. The same remarks apply to the statement of Finnish mythology here given, and familiar in the Kalewala. Departmental divine beings of natural phenomena we find everywhere, or nearly everywhere, in company, of course, with other elements of belief — totemism, worship of spirits, perhaps with monotheism in the background. That is as much our opinion as Mr. Max Miiller's. What we are opposing is the theory of disease of language, and the attempt to explain, by philological conjectures, gods and heroes whose obscure names are the only sources of information. Helios is the sun-god ; he is, or lives in, the sun. Apollo may have been the sun-god too, but we still distrust the attempts to prove this by contending guesses at the origin of his name. Moreover, if all Greek gods could be certainly explained, by undis- puted etymologies, as originally elemental, we still object to such logic as that which turns Saranyu into * grey dawn.' We still object to the competing inter- pretations by which almost every detail of very composite myths is explained as a poetical descrip- tion of some elemental process or phenomenon. Apollo may once have been the sun, but why did he make love as a dog ? Lettish Mythology These remarks apply equally well to our author's dissertation on Lettish mythology (ii. 430 et seq.). The meaning of statements about the sun and sky ' is not to be mistaken in the mythology of the Letts.' So x] THE RIDDLE THEORY 1 35 here is no disease of language. The meaning is not to be mistaken. Sun and moon and so on are spoken of by their natural unmistakable names, or in equally unmistakable poetical periphrases, as in riddles. The daughter of the sun hung a red cloak on a great oak-tree. This ' can hardly have been meant for anything but the red of the evening or the setting sun, sometimes called her red cloak' (ii. 439). Exactly so, and the Australians of En- counter Bay also think that the sun is a woman. ' She has a lover among the dead, who has given her a red kangaroo skin, and in this she appears at her rising.' ^ This tale was told to Mr. Meyer in 1846, before Mr. Max Miiller's Dawn had become ' inevit- able,' as he says. The Lettish and Australian myths are folk-poetry ; they have nothing to do with a disease of language or forgotten meanings of words which become proper names. All this is surely distinct. We proclaim the abundance of poetical Nature-myths ; we ' disable ' the hypothesis that they arise from a disease of language. The Chances of Fancy One remark has to be added. Mannhardt re- garded many or most of the philological solutions of gods into dawn or sun, or thunder or cloud, as empty jeux cC esprit. And justly, for there is no name named among men which a philologist cannot easily prove to be a synonym or metaphorical term for wind or weather, dawn or sun. Whatever attribute any word connotes, it can be shown to connote some ^ Meyer, 1846, apud Brough Smyth, Aborigines of Victoria, i. 432. 136 MODERN MYTHOLOGY [x attribute of dawn or sun. Here parody comes in, and gives a not overstrained copy of the method, applying it to Mr. Gladstone, Dr. Nansen, or whom you please. And though a jest is not a refutation, a parody may plainly show the absolutely capricious character of the philological method. 137 XI ARTEMIS I DO not here examine our author's constructive work. I have often criticised its logical method before, and need not repeat myself. The etymologies, of course, I leave to be discussed by scholars. As we have seen, they are at odds on the subject of phonetic laws and their -application to mythological names. On the mosses and bogs of this Debatable Land some of them propose to erect the science of com- parative mythology. Meanwhile we look on, waiting till the mosses shall support a ponderous edifice. Our author's treatment of Artemis, however, has for me a peculiar interest (ii. 733-743). I really think that it is not mere vanity which makes me suppose that in this instance I am at least one of the authors whom Mr. Max MilUer is writing about without name or reference. If so, he here sharply distinguishes between me on the one hand and ' clas- sical scholars ' on the other, a point to which we shall return. He says — I cite textually (ii. 732) : — Artemis ' The last of the great Greek goddesses whom we have to consider is Artemis. Her name, we shall see, has received many interpretations, but none that can be considered as well established — none that, even if it were so, would help us much in dis- entangling the many myths told about her. Easy to 138 MODERN MYTHOLOGY [xi understand as lier character seems when we confine our attention to Homer, it becomes extremely com- pHcated when we take into account the numerous local forms of worship of which she was the object. ' We have here a good opportunity of comparing the interpretations put forward by those who think that a study of the myths and customs of uncivilised tribes can help us towards an understanding of Greek deities, a7id the views advocated by classical scholars ^ who draw their information, first of all, from Greek sources, and afterwards only from a comparison of the myths and customs of cognate races, more par- ticularly from what is preserved to us in ancient Vedic literature, before they plunge into the whirlpool of ill-defined and unintelligible Kafir folklore. The former undertake to explain Artemis by showing us the progress of human intelligence from the coarsest spontaneous and primitive ideas to the most beauti- ful and brilliant conception of poets and sculptors. They point out traces of hideous cruelties amounting almost to cannibalism, and of a savage cult of beasts in the earlier history of the goddess, who was cele- brated by dances of young girls disguised as bears or imitating the movements of bears, &c. She was represented as noXvjxao-Tos, and this idea, we are told, was borrowed from the East, which is a large term. We are told that her most ancient history is to be studied in Arkadia, where we can see the goddess still closely connected with the worship of animals, a characteristic feature of the lowest stage of religious worship among the lowest races of mankind. We are then told the old story of Lykaon, the King of Arkadia, who had a beautiful daughter called Kallisto. As Zeus fell in love with her, Hera from jealousy changed her into a bear, and Artemis killed ^ My italics. xi] ARTEMIS 139 her with one of her arrows. Her child, however, was saved by Hermes, at the command of Zeus ; and while Kallisto was changed to the constellation of the Ursa, her son Arkas became the ancestor of the Arkadians. Here, we are told, we have a clear instance of men being the descendants of animals, and of women being changed into wild beasts and stars — beliefs well known among the Cahrocs and the Kamilarois.' Here I recognise Mr. Max Miiller's version of my remarks on Artemis.^ Our author has just remarked in a footnote that Schwartz ' does not mention the title of the book where his evidence has been given.' It is an inconvenient practice, but with Mr. Max Mllller this reticence is by no means unusual. He ' does not mention the book where ' my ' evidence is given.' Anthropologists are here (unless I am mistaken) contrasted with ' classical scholars who draw their in- formation, first of all, from Greek sources.' I need not assure anyone who has looked into my imperfect works that I also drew my information about Artemis ' first of all from Greek sources,' in the original. Many of these sources, to the best of my knowledge, are not translated : one. Homer, I have translated myself, with Professor Butcher and Messrs. Leaf and Myers, my old friends. The idea and representation of Artemis as TToXu/xao-Tos (many-breasted), ' we are told, was borrowed from the East, a large term.' I say ' she is even blended in ritual with a monstrous many- breasted divinit)'' of Oriental religion.'- Is this 'large 1 M. B. B. ii. 208-221. 2 jj^^, ij. 209. I40 MODERN MYTHOLOGY [xi term ' too vague ? Then consider the Artemis of Ephesus and ' the alabaster statuette of the goddess ' in Eoscher's Lexikon, p. 558. Compare, for an Occi- dental parallel, the many-breasted goddess of the maguey plant, in Mexico.^ Our author writes, ' we are told that Artemis's most ancient history is to be studied in Arkadia.' My words are, ' The Attic and Arcadian legends of Artemis are confessedly among the oldest.' Why should ' Attic ' and the qualifying phrase be omitted ? Otfried Muller Mr. Max Muller goes on — citing, as I also do, Otfried Muller :— ' Otfried Muller in 1825 treated the same myth without availing himself of the light now to be derived from the Cahrocs and the Kamilarois. He quoted Pausanias as stating that the tumulus of Kallisto was near the sanctuary of Artemis Kalliste, and he simply took Kallisto for an epithet of Artemis, which, as in many other cases, had been taken for a separate personality.' Otfried also pointed out, as we both say, that at Brauron, in Attica, Artemis was served by young maidens called ap/croi (bears) ; and he concluded, ' This cannot possibly be a freak of chance, but the metamorphosis [of Kallisto] has its foundation in the fact that the animal [the bear] was sacred to the goddess.' Thus it is acknowledged that Artemis, under her name of Callisto, was changed into a she-bear, and had issue, Arkas — whence the Arcadians. Mr. Max Mliller proceeds (ii. 734) — ' He [Otfried] did not go so far as some modern mythologists who want us to 1 M. R. B. ii. 218. xi] ARTEMIS 1 4 1 believe that originally the animal, the she-bear, was- the goddess, and that a later worship had replaced the ancient worship of the animal jowr et simple.'' Did I, then, tell anybody that 'originally the she-bear was the goddess ' ? No, I gave my reader,, not a dogma, but the choice between two alternative hypotheses. I said, ' It will become probable that the she-bear actually was the goddess at an ex- tremely remote period, or at all events that the goddess succeeded to, and threw her protection over,, an ancient worship of the animal ' (ii. 212, 213). Mr, Max MilUer's error, it will be observed, con- sists in writing ' and ' where I wrote ' or.' To make such rather essential mistakes is human ; to give references is convenient, and not unscholarly. In fact, this is Mr. Max Miiller's own opinion, for he next reports his anonymous author (myself) as saying (' we are now told '), ' though without any refer- ence to Pausanias or any other Greek writers, that the young maidens, the dpKTOi, when dancing around Artemis, were clad in bearskins, and that this is a pretty frequent custom in the dances of totemic races. In support of this, however, we are not referred to really totemic races . . . but to the Hirpi of Italy, and to the Aios kcoScou in Egypt.' Of course I never said that the dpKTOL danced around Artemis ! I did say, after observing that they were described as ' playing the bear,' ' they even in archaic ages wore bear-skins,' for which I cited Glaus ^ and re- ferred to Suchier,^ including the reference in brackets [ ] to indicate that I borrowed it from a book ' De Diance Antiquissima ajmd Grcecos Natura, p. 76. Vratis- law, 1881. - De Diane Brauron, p. 33. Compare, for all the learning, Mr. Farnell, in Cults of the Greek States. 142 MODERN MYTHOLOGY [xi which I was unable to procure.^ I then gave refer- ences for the classical use of a saffron vest by the dpKTOL. Beast Dances For the use of beast-skins in such dances among totemists I cite Bancroft (iii. 168) and (M. R. R. ii. 107) Kobinson ^ (same authority). I may now also refer to Eobertson Smith : ^ ' the meaning of such a disguise [a fish-skin, among the Assyrians] is well known from many savage rituals ; it means that the worshipper presents himself as a fish,' as a bear, or what not."* Doubtless I might have referred more copiously to savage rituals, but really I thought that savage dances in beast-skins were familiar from Catlin's engravings of Mandan and Nootka wolf or buffalo dances. I add that the Brauronian rites ' point to a time when the goddess was herself a bear,' having suggested an alternative theory, and added confirma- tion.^ But I here confess that while beast-dances and wearing of skins of sacred beasts are common, to prove these sacred beasts to be totems is another matter. It is so far inferred rather than demon- strated. Next I said that the evolution of the bear into the classical Artemis ' almost escapes our inquiry. We find nothing more akin to it than the relation borne by the Samoan gods to the various totems in which they are supposed to be manifest.' This Mr. Max Mliller quotes (of course, without reference or marks of quotation) and adds, ' pace Dr. Codrington.' 1 M. B. B i. X. - Life in California, pp. 241, 303. ^ Beligion of tJie Semites, p. 274. * See also Mr. Frazer, Golden Bough, ii. 90-94 ; and Eobertson Smith, op. cit. pp. 416-418. [^ Apostolius, viii. 19 ; vii. 10.] xi] ARTEMIS 143 Have I incurred Dr. Codrington's feud ? He doubts or denies totems in Melanesia. Is Samoa in Melanesia, par exemple?^ Our author (i. 206) says that 'Dr. Codrington will have no totems in his islands.' But Samoa is not one of the doctor's fortunate isles. For Samoa I refer, not to Dr. Codrington, but to Mr. Turner.^ In Samoa the * clans ' revere each its own sacred animals, ' but combine with it the belief that the spiritual deity reveals itself in each separate animal.' ^ I expressly contrast the Samoan creed with * pure totemism.' ^ So much for our author's success in stating and criticising my ideas. If he pleases, I will not speak of Samoan totems, but of Samoan sacred animals. It is better and more exact. The View of Classical Scholars They (ii. 735) begin by pointing out Artemis's connection with Apollo and the moon. So do I ! * If Apollo soon disengages himself from the sun . . . Artemis retains as few traces of any connection with the moon.' ^ ' If Apollo was of solar origin,' asks the author (ii. 735), 'what could his sister Artemis have been, from the very beginning, if not some goddess connected with the moon ? ' Very likely ; quis negavit? Then our author, like myself {loc. cit.\ dilates on Artemis as ' sister of Apollo.' ' Her chapels,' I say, ' are in the wild wood ; she is the abbess of the forest nymphs,' ' chaste and fair, the maiden of the precise life.' How odd ! The classical scholar and I both say the same things ; and I add a sonnet to Artemis in this aspect, rendered by me from the 1 Melanesians, p. 32. - Samoa, p. 17. * M. E. B. ii. 33. * See also Frazer, Golden Bough, ii. 92. ^ M. B. B. ii. 208. 144 MODERN MYTHOLOGY [xi Hippolytus of Euripides. Could a classical scholar do more? Our author then says that the Greek sportsman ' surprised the beasts in their lairs ' by- night. Not very sportsmanlike ! I don't find it in Homer or in Xenophon. Oh for exact references ! The moon, the nocturnal sportswoman, is Artemis : here we have also the authority of Theodore de Banville [Diane court dans la noire fork). And the nocturnal hunt is Dian's ; so she is protectress of the chase. Exactly what I said ! ^ All this being granted by me beforehand (though possibly that might not be guessed from my critic), our author will explain Artemis's human sacrifice of a girl in a fawn-skin — bloodshed, bear and all — with no aid from Kamilarois, Cahrocs, and Samoans. Mr. Max Miiller's Explanation Greek races traced to Zeus — usually disguised, for amorous purposes, as a brute. The Arcadians had an eponymous heroic ancestor, ' Areas ; ' they also worshipped Artemis. Artemis, as a virgin, could not become a mother of Areas by Zeus, or by any- body. Callisto was also Artemis. Callisto was the mother of Areas. But, to save the character of Artemis, Callisto was now represented as one of her nymphs. Then, Areas reminding the Arcadians of dpKTo^ (a bear), while they knew the Bear constella- tion, ' what was more natural than that Callisto should be changed into an arktos, a she-bear . . . placed by Zeus, her lover, in the sky ' as the Bear ? Nothing could be more natural to a savage ; they all do it.^ But that an Aryan, a Greek, should talk 1 M. B. E. ii. 209. ~ Custom and Myth, ' Star Myths.' xi] ARTEMIS 145 such nonsense as to say that he was the descendant of a bear who was changed into a star, and all merely because ' Areas reminded the Arcadians of arktos,' seems to me an extreme test of belief, and a very unlikely thing to occur. Wider Application of the Theory Let US apply the explanation more widely. Say that a hundred animal names are represented in the known totem-kindreds of the world. Then had each such kin originally an eponymous hero whose name, like that of Areas in Arcady, accidentally ' reminded ' his successors of a beast, so that a hun- dred beasts came to be claimed as ancestors ? Per- haps this was what occurred ; the explanation, at all events, fits the wolf of the Delawares and the other ninety-nine as well as it fits the Arcades. By a curious coincidence all the names of eponymous heroes chanced to remind people of beasts. But whence come the names of eponymous heroes? From their tribes, of course — Ion from lonians, Dorus from Dorians, and so on. Therefore (in the hundred cases) the names of the tribes derive from names of animals. Indeed, the names of totem-kins are the names of animals — wolves, bears, cranes. 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