Modern Mythology | Page 6

really solar? That is precisely 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
myths into this or that original source--solar, nocturnal, vegetable, or
what not--are often very perilous. A myth so extremely composite as
that of Osiris must be a stream flowing from many springs, and, as in
the case of certain rivers, it is difficult or impossible to say which is the
real fountain-head.
One would respectfully recommend to young mythologists great
reserve in their hypotheses of origins. All this, of course, is the familiar
thought 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 following pages I suggest
reserves, limitations, and alternative hypotheses. Il y a serpent et
serpent; a snake tribe may be a local tribe named from the Snake River,
not a totem kindred. The history of mythology is the history of rash,
premature, and 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 a
great deal more about psychology. We are too apt to argue as if the
psychical condition of the earliest men were exactly like our own;

while we are just beginning to learn, from Prof. William 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 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 Muller's vast erudition, his enviable style,
his unequalled contributions 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 'Contemporary Review,' and most of

Chapter XIII
. in the 'Princeton Review.'

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 Muller in possession of the field. These brilliant and attractive
theories, taking them in the widest sense, were not, of course, peculiar
to the Right 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 Muller, 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 Muller 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 these ideas--the ideas of Kuhn, Welcker, 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 Muller'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 philological 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.