Modern Mythology | Page 9

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 Muller 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 Muller 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
inconveniences.

THE STORY OF DAPHNE
Mr. Max Muller's Method in Controversy

As an illustration of the 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 Muller 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 Muller 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 made the story of Tuna
'account for the story of Daphne.' Mr. Max Muller 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 observations. {10a} 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 _plants_, 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, {10b} 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, {10c} of an
Ottawa myth in which a man became a plant of maize, and then of the
story of Tuna. {10d} Next I mentioned plants said to have sprung from
dismembered gods and heroes. All this, I said, all of it, proves that
savages mythically 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
Muller's theory of Daphne. But I never hinted that the isolated
Mangaian story of Tuna, or the stories of plants sprung from mangled
men, 'accounted,' by themselves, 'for the story of Daphne.'
Mr. Max Muller 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 unrelated languages, we need 'a very
accurate knowledge of their dialects . . . to prevent accidents like that of
Tuna mentioned in the beginning.' 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