Modern Mythology | Page 4

differ, men (and above all early men)
have the same kind of thoughts, desires, fancies, habits, institutions. It
is not that in which all races formally differ--their language--but that in
which all early races are astonishingly the same--their ideas, fancies,
habits, desires--that causes the amazing similarity of their myths.
Mythologists, then, who find in early human nature the living ideas
which express themselves in myths will hardily venture to compare the
analogous myths of all peoples. Mythologists, on the other hand, who
find the origin of myths in a necessity imposed upon thought by
misunderstood language will necessarily, and logically, compare only
myths current among races who speak languages of the same family.
Thus, throughout Mr. Max Muller's new book we constantly find him
protesting, on the whole and as a rule, against the system which
illustrates Aryan myths by savage parallels. Thus he maintains that it is
perilous to make comparative use of myths current in languages--say,
Maori or Samoyed--which the mythologists confessedly do not know.
To this we can only reply that we use the works of the best accessible
authorities, men who do know the languages--say, Dr. Codrington or
Bishop Callaway, or Castren or Egede. Now it is not maintained that
the myths, on the whole, are incorrectly translated. The danger which
we incur, it seems, is ignorance of the original sense of savage or
barbaric divine or heroic names--say, Maui, or Yehl, or

Huitzilopochhtli, or Heitsi Eibib, or Pundjel. By Mr. Max Muller's
system such names are old words, of meanings long ago generally lost
by the speakers of each language, but analysable by 'true scholars' into
their original significance. That will usually be found by the
philologists to indicate 'the inevitable Dawn,' or Sun, or Night, or the
like, according to the taste and fancy of the student.
To all this a reply is urged in the following pages. In agreement with
Curtius and many other scholars, we very sincerely doubt almost all
etymologies of old proper names, even in Greek or Sanskrit. We find
among philologists, as a rule, the widest discrepancies of interpretation.
Moreover, every name must mean something. Now, whatever the
meaning of a name (supposing it to be really ascertained), very little
ingenuity is needed to make it indicate one or other aspect of Dawn or
Night, of Lightning or Storm, just as the philologist pleases. Then he
explains the divine or heroic being denoted by the name--as Dawn or
Storm, or Fire or Night, or Twilight or Wind--in accordance with his
private taste, easily accommodating the facts of the myth, whatever
they may be, to his favourite solution. We rebel against this kind of
logic, and persist in studying the myth in itself and in comparison with
analogous myths in every accessible language. Certainly, if divine and
heroic names--Artemis or Pundjel--can be interpreted, so much is
gained. But the myth may be older than the name.
As Mr. Hogarth points out, Alexander has inherited in the remote East
the myths of early legendary heroes. We cannot explain these by the
analysis of the name of Alexander! Even if the heroic or divine name
can be shown to be the original one (which is practically impossible),
the meaning of the name helps us little. That Zeus means 'sky' cannot
conceivably explain scores of details in the very composite legend of
Zeus--say, the story of Zeus, Demeter, and the Ram. Moreover, we
decline to admit that, if a divine name means 'swift,' its bearer must be
the wind or the sunlight. Nor, if the name means 'white,' is it
necessarily a synonym of Dawn, or of Lightning, or of Clear Air, or
what not. But a mythologist who makes language and names the
fountain of myth will go on insisting that myths can only be studied by
people who know the language in which they are told. Mythologists
who believe that human nature is the source of myths will go on
comparing all myths that are accessible in translations by competent

collectors.
Mr. Max Muller says, 'We seldom find mythology, as it were, in
situ--as it lived in the minds and unrestrained utterances of the people.
We generally have to study it in the works of mythographers, or in the
poems of later generations, when it had long ceased to be living and
intelligible.' The myths of Greece and Rome, in Hyginus or Ovid, 'are
likely to be as misleading as a hortus siccus would be to a botanist if
debarred from his rambles through meadows and hedges.' {0c}
Nothing can be more true, or more admirably stated. These remarks are,
indeed, the charter, so to speak, of anthropological mythology and of
folklore. The old mythologists worked at a hortus siccus, at myths dried
and pressed in thoroughly literary books, Greek and Latin. But