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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/14576-h.zip b/14576-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..5a9fd36 --- /dev/null +++ b/14576-h.zip diff --git a/14576-h/14576-h.htm b/14576-h/14576-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0791aa3 --- /dev/null +++ b/14576-h/14576-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,6352 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" /> +<title>Modern Mythology</title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + P { margin-top: .75em; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + H1, H2 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + } + H3, H4 { + text-align: left; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + BODY{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> +</head> +<body> +<h2> +<a href="#startoftext">Modern Mythology, by Andrew Lang</a> +</h2> +<pre> +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Modern Mythology, by Andrew Lang + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Modern Mythology + +Author: Andrew Lang + +Release Date: January 3, 2005 [eBook #14576] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MODERN MYTHOLOGY*** +</pre> +<p><a name="startoftext"></a></p> +<p>Transcribed from the 1897 Longmans, Green, and Co. edition by David +Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk</p> +<h1>MODERN MYTHOLOGY</h1> +<h2>DEDICATION</h2> +<p>Dedicated to the memory of John Fergus McLennan.</p> +<h2>INTRODUCTION</h2> +<p>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 Müller’s +<i>Contributions</i> <i>to</i> <i>the</i> <i>Science</i> <i>of</i> <i>Mythology</i>, +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.</p> +<p>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 Müller +did not state their general theory, as he understands it, fully and +once for all. Adversaries rarely succeed in quite understanding +each other; but had Mr. Max Müller made such a statement, we could +have cleared up anything in our position which might seem to him obscure.</p> +<p>Our system is but one aspect of the theory of evolution, or is but +the application of that theory to the topic of mythology. The +archæologist 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 Institutions has +a similar method. He finds his relics of the uncivilised past +in agricultural usages, in archaic methods of allotment of land, in +odd marriage customs, things rudimentary—fossil relics, as it +were, of an early social and political condition. The archæologist +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.</p> +<p>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 to these things, so +out of keeping with civilisation, we recognise in the creeds and rites +of the lower races, even of cannibals; but <i>there</i> the creeds and +rites are <i>not</i> incongruous with their environment of knowledge +and culture. There they are as natural and inevitable as the flint-headed +spear or marriage by capture. We argue, therefore, that religions +and mythical faiths and rituals which, among Greeks and Indians, are +inexplicably incongruous have lived on from an age in which they were +natural and inevitable, an age of savagery.</p> +<p>That is our general position, and it would have been a benefit to +us if Mr. Max Müller had stated it in his own luminous way, if +he wished to oppose us, and had shown us where 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 it. 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.</p> +<p>Thus Mr. Max Müller really never conies to grips with his opponents, +and his large volumes shine rather in erudition and style than in method +and system. Anyone who attempts a reply must necessarily follow +Mr. Max Müller up and down, collecting his scattered remarks on +this or that point at 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 Müller’s, +for it contains exact references to certain works of which he takes +the reader’s knowledge for granted.</p> +<p>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 Müller’s <i>Chips</i> <i>from</i> <i>a</i> <i>German</i> +<i>Workshop</i>, vol. iv. (Longmans, 1895), than in his two recent volumes. +The general problem is this: Has language—especially language +in a state of ‘disease,’ been the great source of the mythology +of the world? Or does mythology, on the whole, represent the survival +of an old stage of thought—not caused by language—from which +civilised men have slowly emancipated themselves? Mr. Max Müller +is of the former, anthropologists are of the latter, opinion. +Both, of course, agree that myths are a product of thought, of a kind +of thought almost extinct in civilised races; but Mr. Max Müller +holds that language caused that kind of thought. We, on the other +hand, think that language only gave it one means of expressing itself.</p> +<p>The essence of myth, as of fairy tale, we agree, is the conception +of the things in the world as all alike animated, personal, capable +of endless interchanges of form. Men may become beasts; beasts +may change into men; gods may appear as human or bestial; stones, plants, +winds, water, may speak and act like human beings, and change shapes +with them.</p> +<p>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 mental condition, this early +sort of false metaphysics, come into existence? We have no direct +historical information on the subject. If I were obliged to offer +an hypothesis, it would be that early men, conscious of personality, +will, and life—conscious that force, when exerted by themselves, +followed on a determination of will within them—extended that +explanation to all the exhibitions of force which they beheld without +them. Rivers run (early man thought), winds blow, fire burns, +trees wave, as a result of their own will, the will of personal conscious +entities. Such vitality, and even power of motion, early man attributed +even to inorganic matter, as rocks and stones. All these things +were beings, like man himself. This does not appear to me an unnatural +kind of nascent, half-conscious metaphysics. ‘Man never +knows how much he anthropomorphises.’ He extended the only +explanation of his own action which consciousness yielded to him, he +extended it to explain every other sort of action in the sensible world. +Early Greek philosophy recognised the stars as living bodies; all things +had once seemed living and personal. From the beginning, man was +eager <i>causas</i> <i>cognoscere</i> <i>rerum</i>. The only cause +about which self-consciousness gave him any knowledge was his own personal +will. He therefore 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.</p> +<p>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 distributed +personality which is the basis of mythology.</p> +<p>But Mr. Max Müller 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. ‘Roots were all, or nearly all, 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.’</p> +<p>But <i>why</i> 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. <i>We</i> know that active inanimate things are +sexless, are neuter; <i>we</i> 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 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 gender-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.</p> +<p>Mr. Max Müller takes the opposite view. Man did not call +lifeless things by names denoting sex because he regarded them as persons; +he came to regard them as persons because he had already given them +names connoting sex. And why had he done that? This is what +Mr. Max Müller does not explain. He says:</p> +<p>‘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.’ <a name="citation0a"></a><a href="#footnote0a">{0a}</a></p> +<p>It is curious that, in proof apparently of this, Mr. Max Müller +cites a passage from the <i>Printer’s</i> <i>Register</i>, in +which we read that to little children ‘<i>everything</i> is <i>alive</i>. +. . . 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.’</p> +<p>The <i>Printer’s</i> <i>Register</i> states our theory in its +own words. First came the childlike and savage belief in universal +personality. Thence arose the genders, masculine and feminine, +in early languages. These ideas are the precise reverse of Mr. +Max Müller’s ideas. In his opinion, genders in language +caused the belief in the universal personality even of inanimate things. +The <i>Printer’s</i> <i>Register</i> holds that the belief in +universal personality, on the other hand, caused the genders. +Yet for thirty years, since 1868, Mr. Max Müller has been citing +his direct adversary, in the <i>Printer’s</i> <i>Register</i>, +as a supporter of his opinion! We, then, hold that man thought +all things animated, and expressed his belief in gender-terminations. +Mr. Max Müller holds that, because man used gender-terminations, +therefore he thought all things animated, and so he became mythopœic. +In the passage cited, Mr. Max Müller does not say <i>why</i> ‘in +ancient languages every one of these words had <i>necessarily</i> terminations +expressive of gender.’ He merely quotes the hypothesis of +the <i>Printer’s</i> <i>Register</i>. If he accepts that +hypothesis, it destroys his own theory—that gender-terminations +caused all things to be regarded as personal; for, <i>ex</i> <i>hypothesi</i>, +it was just because they were regarded as personal that they received +names with gender-terminations. Somewhere—I cannot find +the reference—Mr. Max Müller seems to admit that personalising +thought caused gender-terminations, but these later ‘reacted’ +on thought, an hypothesis which multiplies causes <i>præter</i> +<i>necessitatem</i>.</p> +<p>Here, then, at the very threshold of the science of mythology we +find Mr. Max Müller at once maintaining that a feature of language, +gender-terminations, caused the mythopœic state of thought, and +quoting with approval the statement that the mythopœic state of +thought caused gender-terminations.</p> +<p>Mr. Max Müller’s whole system of mythology is based on +reasoning analogous to this example. His <i>mot</i> <i>d’ordre</i>, +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 misconceptions of the meaning +of old words in his own language, 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 speech, and a score of others, come +to have precisely the same malady?</p> +<p>Mr. Max Müller alludes to a Maori parallel to the myth of Cronos. +<a name="citation0b"></a><a href="#footnote0b">{0b}</a> ‘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 myth occurs +in two remote and absolutely unconnected languages, a theory of disease +of language cannot turn the wards of the rusty locks. The myth +is, in part at least, a nature-myth—an attempt to account for +the severance of Heaven and Earth (once united) by telling a story in +which natural phenomena are animated and personal. A disease of +language has nothing to do with this myth. It is cited as a proof +against the theory of disease of language.</p> +<p>The truth is, that while languages 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.</p> +<p>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 Müller’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 Müller’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.</p> +<p>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 <i>something</i>. 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—<i>can</i> +be interpreted, so much is gained. But the myth may be older than +the name.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>Mr. Max Müller says, ‘We seldom find mythology, as it +were, <i>in</i> <i>situ</i>—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 <i>hortus</i> <i>siccus</i> would be to a botanist if debarred +from his rambles through meadows and hedges.’ <a name="citation0c"></a><a href="#footnote0c">{0c}</a></p> +<p>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 <i>hortus</i> +<i>siccus</i>, at myths dried and pressed in thoroughly literary books, +Greek and Latin. But we now study myths ‘in the unrestrained +utterances of the people,’ either of savage tribes or of the European +Folk, the unprogressive peasant class. The former, and to some +extent the latter, still live in the mythopœic state of mind—regarding +bees, for instance, as persons who must be told of a death in the family. +Their myths are still not wholly out of concord with their habitual +view of a world in which an old woman may become a hare. As soon +as learned Jesuits like Père Lafitau began to understand their +savage flocks, they said, ‘These men are living in Ovid’s +<i>Metamorphoses</i>.’ They found mythology <i>in</i> <i>situ</i>! +Hence mythologists now study mythology <i>in</i> <i>situ</i>—in +savages and in peasants, who till very recently were still in the mythopœic +stage of thought. Mannhardt made this idea his basis. Mr. +Max Müller says, <a name="citation0d"></a><a href="#footnote0d">{0d}</a> +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 +<i>hortus</i> <i>siccus</i>, but <i>in</i> <i>situ</i>. Mannhardt, +though he appreciated 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.</p> +<p>But this kind of mythology <i>in</i> <i>situ</i>, in ‘the unrestrained +utterances of the people,’ Mr. Max Müller 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, Mannhardt, 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, Mannhardt, Islay, and the rest—mythology +<i>in</i> <i>situ</i>. We compare it with the dry mythologic blossoms +of the classical <i>hortus</i> <i>siccus</i>, and with Greek ritual +and temple legend, and with <i>Märchen</i> 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 gather but few facts from the mouths of +living peasants.</p> +<p>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 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. <i>There</i>, we shall show, +the myth arose from simple inevitable human ideas. We shall therefore +doubt whether in Greece a common human myth had a singular cause—in +a ‘disease of language.’</p> +<p>It is with no enthusiasm that I take the opportunity of Mr. Max Müller’s +reply to me ‘by name.’ Since <i>Myth</i>, <i>Ritual</i>, +<i>and</i> <i>Religion</i> (now out of print, but accessible in the +French of M. Marillier) was published, 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, <i>The</i> <i>Golden</i> <i>Bough</i>, +by Mr. Farnell in <i>Cults</i> <i>of</i> <i>the</i> <i>Greek</i> <i>States</i>, +by Mr. Jevons in his <i>Introduction</i> <i>to</i> <i>the</i> <i>History</i> +<i>of</i> <i>Religion</i>, by Miss Harrison in explanations of Greek +ritual, by Mr. Hartland in <i>The</i> <i>Legend</i> <i>of</i> <i>Perseus</i>, +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 <a name="citation0e"></a><a href="#footnote0e">{0e}</a> +with the section on her in this volume.</p> +<p>Mr. Max Müller observes that ‘Mannhardt’s mythological +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 Müller. <a name="citation0f"></a><a href="#footnote0f">{0f}</a> +Mannhardt in his second period was indeed chiefly concerned with myths +connected, as he held, with agriculture and with tree-worship. +Mr. Max Müller, 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 comparative mythology were devoted exclusively +to the special subject of solar myths.’ <a name="citation0g"></a><a href="#footnote0g">{0g}</a> +But Mr. Max Müller also mentions his own complaints, of ‘the +omnipresent sun and the inevitable dawn appearing in ever so many disguises.’</p> +<p>Did they really appear? Were the myths, say the myths of Daphne, +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.</p> +<p>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. <i>Il</i> +<i>y</i> <i>a</i> <i>serpent</i> <i>et</i> <i>serpent</i>; 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:</p> +<blockquote><p>Our little systems have their day,<br /> + They have their day and cease to be,<br /> + They are but broken lights from Thee,<br /> +And Thou, we trust, art more than they.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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 Müller’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.</p> +<p>Most of Chapter XII. appeared in the ‘Contemporary Review,’ +and most of Chapter XIII. in the ‘Princeton Review.’</p> +<h2>REGENT MYTHOLOGY</h2> +<h3>Mythology in 1860-1880</h3> +<p>Between 1860 and 1880, roughly speaking, English people interested +in early myths and religions found the mythological theories of Professor +Max Müller 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 Müller, while they subjected the names of +mythical beings—Zeus, Helen, Achilles, Athênê—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 Müller +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 <i>crépuscule</i>, +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 Bréal, of many others—were very +little known—if known at all—to the English public. +Captivated by the graces of Mr. Max Müller’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.’</p> +<p>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; Greek and Sanskrit, German and +Slavonic myths were, in the immense majority of instances, to be regarded +as mirror-pictures on earth, 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 something else according to taste.</p> +<p>Again, Greek or German myths were usually to be interpreted by comparison +with myths in the Rig Veda. Their origin was to be ascertained +by discovering the Aryan root and original significance of the names +of gods and heroes, such as Saranyu—Erinnys, Daphne—Dahanâ, +Athene—Ahanâ. The etymology and meaning of such names +being ascertained, the origin and sense of the myths in which the names +occur should be clear.</p> +<p>Clear it was not. There were, in most cases, as many opinions +as to the etymology 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.’</p> +<p>But, long ere that, the English cultivated public had, most naturally, +accepted Mr. Max Müller 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 were made part of the education of children, and found +their way into a kind of popular primers.</p> +<p>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 Müller 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 Müller, namely the attacks on <i>his</i> +system and <i>his</i> results in particular. An English critic, +writing for English readers, had to do with the scholar who chiefly +represented the philological school of mythology in the eyes of England.</p> +<h3>Autobiographical</h3> +<p>Like other inquiring undergraduates in the sixties, I read such works +on mythology as Mr. Max Müller had then given to the world; I read +them with interest, but without conviction. The argument, the +logic, seemed to evade one; it was purely, with me, a question of logic, +for I was of course prepared to accept all of Mr. Max Müller’s +dicta on questions of etymologies. Even now I never venture to +impugn them, only, as I observe that other scholars very frequently +differ, <i>toto</i> <i>cælo</i>, from him and from each other +in essential questions, I preserve a just balance of doubt; I wait till +these gentlemen shall be at one among themselves.</p> +<p>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 Müller’s reasoning increase upon me. The main cause +was that whereas Mr. Max Müller 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-Aryan 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?</p> +<h3>The Ugly Scars</h3> +<p>The ugly scars 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 civilised fancy +<i>is</i> puzzled when the beautiful Sun-god makes love in the shape +of a dog. <a name="citation5"></a><a href="#footnote5">{5}</a> +To me, and indeed to Mr. Max Müller, the ugly scars were the problem.</p> +<p>He has written—‘What makes mythology mythological, in +the true sense of the word, is what is utterly unintelligible, absurd, +strange, or miraculous.’ 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. +What 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.</p> +<p>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 Müller calls them, of early Greece, and +implicated in a ritual which religious conservatism dared not abandon, +the fables of perhaps neolithic ancestors of the Hellenes remained in +the religion and the legends known to Plato and Socrates. That +this process of ‘survival’ is a <i>vera</i> <i>causa</i>, +illustrated in every phase of evolution, perhaps nobody denies.</p> +<p>Thus the phenomena which the philological school of mythology explains +by a disease of language we would explain by survival from a savage +state of society and from the mental peculiarities observed among savages +in all ages and countries. Of course there is nothing new in this: +I was delighted to discover the idea in Eusebius as in Fontenelle; while, +for general application to singular institutions, it was a commonplace +of the last century. <a name="citation6a"></a><a href="#footnote6a">{6a}</a> +Moreover, the idea had been widely used by Dr. E. B. Tylor in <i>Primitive</i> +<i>Culture</i>, and by Mr. McLennan in his <i>Primitive</i> <i>Marriage</i> +and essays on Totemism.</p> +<h3>My Criticism of Mr. Max Müller</h3> +<p>This idea I set about applying to the repulsive myths of civilised +races, and to <i>Märchen</i>, 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 Müller, and I admit that, when comparing the +mutually destructive competition of varying etymologies, I did not abstain +from the weapons of irony and <i>badinage</i>. The opportunity +was too tempting! But, in the most sober seriousness, I examined +Mr. Max Müller’s general statement of his system, his hypothesis +of certain successive stages of language, leading up to the mythopœic +confusion of thought. It was not a question of denying Mr. Max +Müller’s etymologies, but of asking 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 ‘Mythology’ in the <i>Encyclopædia</i> +<i>Britannica</i>, and in <i>La</i> <i>Mythologie</i>. <a name="citation6b"></a><a href="#footnote6b">{6b}</a> +It did not appear to me that Mr. Max Müller’s general theory +was valid, logical, historically demonstrated, or self-consistent. +My other writings on the topic are chiefly <i>Custom</i> <i>and</i> +<i>Myth</i>, <i>Myth</i>, <i>Ritual</i>, <i>and</i> <i>Religion</i> +(with French and Dutch translations, both much improved and corrected +by the translators), and an introduction to Mrs. Hunt’s translation +of Grimm’s <i>Märchen</i>.</p> +<h3>Success of Anthropological Method</h3> +<p>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 Robertson 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 much is +owed, and, of course, above all, to Dr. Tylor. These writers, +like Mr. Farnell and Mr. Jevons recently, seek for the answer to mythological +problems rather in the habits and ideas of the folk and of savages and +barbarians than in etymologies and ‘a disease of language.’ +There are differences of opinion in detail: I myself may think that +‘vegetation 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. <a name="citation7"></a><a href="#footnote7">{7}</a> +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 method is wrong, or that the Dawn is not +as great a factor in myth as Mr. Max Müller believes himself to +have proved it to be. Science is inevitably subject to shiftings +of opinion, action, and reaction.</p> +<h3>Mr. Max Müller’s Reply</h3> +<p>In this state of things Mr. Max Müller produces his <i>Contributions</i> +<i>to</i> <i>the</i> <i>Science</i> <i>of</i> <i>Mythology</i>, <a name="citation8"></a><a href="#footnote8">{8}</a> +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 Müller’s occasional habit to argue +(apparently) <i>around</i> rather than <i>with</i> 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 <i>who</i> +tells us, or where. Thus a reader does not know whom Mr. Max Müller +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 Müller 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.</p> +<h2>THE STORY OF DAPHNE</h2> +<h3>Mr. Max Müller’s Method in Controversy</h3> +<p>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 Müller vanquishes me <i>there</i>,’ +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 Müller +seemed to me to make me say—no more, and no less. Thus:</p> +<blockquote><p>‘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.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>I thought, perhaps hastily, that I must have made the story of Tuna +‘account for the story of Daphne.’ Mr. Max Müller +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. <a name="citation10a"></a><a href="#footnote10a">{10a}</a> +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 <i>plants</i>, 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, <a name="citation10b"></a><a href="#footnote10b">{10b}</a> +of Indian and Egyptian plants animated by <i>human</i> souls, of a tree +which became a young man and made love to a Yurucari girl, of metamorphosis +into vegetables in Samoa, <a name="citation10c"></a><a href="#footnote10c">{10c}</a> +of an Ottawa myth in which a man became a plant of maize, and then of +the story of Tuna. <a name="citation10d"></a><a href="#footnote10d">{10d}</a> +Next I mentioned plants said to have sprung from dismembered gods and +heroes. <i>All</i> this, I said, <i>all</i> 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 Müller’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.’</p> +<p>Mr. Max Müller 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 level with stones, beasts, and plants; or (2) +as a tale ‘moulded by poets on the same model.’ <a name="citation11"></a><a href="#footnote11">{11}</a> +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.</p> +<p>Now I really did believe—perhaps any rapid reader would have +believed—when I read Mr. Max Müller, 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 does not usually +when he deals with me give chapter and verse. This may avoid an +air of personal bickering, but how inconvenient it is!</p> +<p>Let me not be supposed to accuse Mr. Max Müller of consciously +misrepresenting me. Of that I need not say that he is absolutely +incapable. My argument merely took, in his consciousness, the +form which is suggested in the passage cited from him.</p> +<h3>Tuna and Daphne</h3> +<p>To do justice to Mr. Max Müller, 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 statement (i. 4-7):—</p> +<p>‘I must dwell a little longer on this passage in order to show +the real difference between the ethnological and the philological schools +of comparative mythology.</p> +<p>‘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 juxtaposition 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.</p> +<p>‘If Mr. A. Lang had studied the Mangaian dialect, or consulted +scholars like the Rev. 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 ætiological plant-stories, which are +meant to explain a no longer intelligible name of a plant, such as Snakeshead, +Stiefmütterchen, &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 Rev. W. W. Gill about these +South Pacific myths 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 explanation.</p> +<p>‘Considering that “cocoanut” was used in Mangaia +in the sense of head (<i>testa</i>), 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 nut in order to see in the sprouting germ the two +eyes and the mouth of Tuna, the great eel, the lover of Ina. For +a full understanding of this very complicated 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 (<i>aitu</i>) 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 cocoanut were actually called eels’ heads, while the skulls +of warriors were called cocoanuts.</p> +<p>‘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 Veda is a survival of a more primitive mythology +anterior to the Veda. How could it be otherwise?’</p> +<h3>Criticism of Tuna and Daphne</h3> +<p>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 <a name="citation14"></a><a href="#footnote14">{14}</a> 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 examined and criticised all the sources for the tale before +trying to explain it. However, Daphne was not mangled; a tree +did not spring from her severed head or scattered limbs. She was +metamorphosed, or was buried in earth, a tree springing up from the +place.</p> +<p>(2) I think we do know <i>why</i> the people of Mangaia ‘believe +in the change 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.’ <a name="citation15a"></a><a href="#footnote15a">{15a}</a> +I illustrate this mental condition fully in <i>M</i>. <i>R</i>. <i>R</i>. +i. 46-56. <i>Why</i> 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 philosophy +of nature.’ <a name="citation15b"></a><a href="#footnote15b">{15b}</a> +M. Lefébure appeals to psychical phenomena as I show later (see +‘Fetishism’). At all events, the existence of these +savage metaphysics is a demonstrated fact. I established it <a name="citation15c"></a><a href="#footnote15c">{15c}</a> +before invoking it as an explanation of savage belief in metamorphosis.</p> +<p>(3) ‘The Tuna story belongs to a very well known class +of ætiological plant-stories’ (ætiological: assigning +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—namely, for the existence of certain +plants, and for their place in ritual.’ <a name="citation16"></a><a href="#footnote16">{16}</a></p> +<p>The reader has before him Mr. Max Müller’s view. +The white kernel of the cocoanut was locally styled ‘the brains +of Tuna.’ That name required explanation. Hence the +story about the fate of Tuna. Cocoanut was used in Mangaia in +the sense of ‘head’ (<i>testa</i>). So it is now in +England.</p> +<p>See <i>Bell’s</i> <i>Life</i>, <i>passim</i>, as ‘The +Chicken got home on the cocoanut.’</p> +<h3>The Explanation</h3> +<p>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 +<i>Tuna</i> 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 Müller’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 likeness 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 ‘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 Müller does not tell +us), was an eel. <a name="citation17"></a><a href="#footnote17">{17}</a> +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 cocoanut, rather than for the name ‘brains +of Tuna;’ for we still ask, ‘Why of Tuna in particular? +Why Tuna more than Rangoa, or anyone else?’</p> +<p>‘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.’</p> +<p>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 illustrations of the savage mental propensity +so copiously established by Dr. Tylor in <i>Primitive</i> <i>Culture</i>. +The two alternative explanations which I gave of the Daphne story I +have cited. No mention of Tuna occurs in either.</p> +<h3>Disease of Language and Folk-etymology</h3> +<p>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 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 Müller, 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 explains 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 <i>marmalet</i>) +is so called because Queen Mary found comfort in marmalade when she +was sea-sick—hence <i>Marie</i>-<i>malade</i>, hence <i>marmalade</i>—gives +an etymological explanation of the origin of the <i>word</i> marmalade. +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 +pursued by Apollo, and changed into a daphne plant or laurel, or a laurel +springs from the earth where she was buried. On Mr. Max Müller’s +philological theory Daphne=Dahanâ, 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). <a name="citation18"></a><a href="#footnote18">{18}</a> +At some unknown date the ancestors of the Greeks would say ‘The +opener of the gates of the sky (*Apa-val-yan, <i>i</i>.<i>e</i>. the +sun) pursues the burning one (Dahanâ, <i>i</i>.<i>e</i>. 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 Dahanâ 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 +<i>daphne</i>. 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 Müller’s theory +of the Daphne story more clearly. If I misunderstand it, that +does not come from want of pains.</p> +<p>In opposition to it we urge that (1) the etymological equations, +Daphne=Dahanâ, Apollo=*Apa-val-yan, are not generally accepted +by other scholars. Schröder, in fact, derives Apollo ‘from +the Vedic Saparagenya, “worshipful,” an epithet of Agni,’ +who is Fire (ii. 688), and so on. Daphne=Dahanâ 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.</p> +<p>(2) If the etymologies were accepted, no proof is offered to us of +the actual existence, as a <i>vera</i> <i>causa</i>, 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 undemonstrated. See the chapter here +on ‘The Riddle Theory.’</p> +<p>(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.</p> +<p>(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. <a name="citation20a"></a><a href="#footnote20a">{20a}</a> +For these reasons, among others, I am disinclined to accept Mr. Max +Müller’s attempt to explain the story of Daphne.</p> +<h3>Mannhardt on Daphne</h3> +<p>Since we shall presently find Mr. Max Müller 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 Oxford Professor. +Mannhardt shows that the laurel (<i>daphne</i>) was regarded as a plant +which, like our rowan tree, averts evil influences. ‘Moreover, +the laurel, like the <i>Maibaum</i>, 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.’ +<a name="citation20b"></a><a href="#footnote20b">{20b}</a> In +1877, a year after Mannhardt is said by Mr. Max Müller to have +returned to his old colours, he repeats this explanation. <a name="citation21a"></a><a href="#footnote21a">{21a}</a> +In the same work (p. 20) he says that ‘there is no reason for +accepting Max Müller’s explanation about the Sun-god and +the Dawn, <i>wo</i> <i>jeder</i> <i>thätliche</i> <i>Anhalt</i> +<i>dafür</i> <i>fehlt</i>.’ For this opinion we might +also cite the Sanskrit scholars Whitney and Bergaigne. <a name="citation21b"></a><a href="#footnote21b">{21b}</a></p> +<h2>THE QUESTION OF ALLIES</h2> +<h3>Athanasius</h3> +<p>Mr. Max Müller protests, most justly, against the statement +that he, like St. Athanasius, stands alone, <i>contra</i> <i>mundum</i>. +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 Müller’s ideas, in various modifications, are doubtless +still the most prevalent of any. The anthropological method has +hardly touched, I think, the learned contributors to Roscher’s +excellent mythological Lexicon. Dr. Brinton, whose American researches +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.</p> +<h3>Italian Critics</h3> +<p>Mr. Max Müller asks, <a name="citation22"></a><a href="#footnote22">{22}</a> +‘What would Mr. Andrew Lang say if he read the words of Signer +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 Müller +say if he read the words of Professor Enrico Morselli, ‘Lang gives +no quarter to his adversaries, who, for the rest, have long been reduced +to silence’? <a name="citation23"></a><a href="#footnote23">{23}</a> +The Right Hon. Professor also smiles, no doubt. We both smile. +<i>Solvuntur</i> <i>risu</i> <i>tabulæ</i>.</p> +<h3>A Dutch Defender</h3> +<p>The question of the precise attitude of Professor Tiele, the accomplished +Gifford 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 separately reprinted, in 1886, from +the ‘Revue de l’Histoire des Religions,’ which I shall +cite. Where they refer to myself they deal with <i>Custom</i> +<i>and</i> <i>Myth</i>, not with <i>Myth</i>, <i>Ritual</i>, <i>and</i> +<i>Religion</i> (1887). It seems best to quote, <i>ipsissimis</i> +<i>verbis</i>, Mr. Max Müller’s comments on Professor Tiele’s +remarks. He writes (i. viii.):</p> +<p>‘Let us proceed next to Holland. Professor Tiele, who +had actually been claimed as an ally of the victorious army, declares:—“Je +dois m’élever, au nom de la science mythologique et de +l’exactitude . . . centre une méthode qui ne fait que glisser +sur des problèmes de première importance.” +(See further on, p. 35.)</p> +<p>‘And again:</p> +<p>‘“Ces braves gens qui, pour peu qu’ils aient lu +un ou deux livres de mythologie et d’anthropologie, et un ou deux +récits de voyages, ne manqueront pas de se mettre à comparer +à tort et à travers, et pour tout résultat produiront +la confusion.”’</p> +<p>Again (i. 35):</p> +<p>‘Besides Signer Canizzaro and Mr. Horatio Hale, the veteran +among comparative ethnologists, Professor 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.</p> +<p>‘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., p. 31):-</p> +<p>‘“M. Lang m’a fait 1’honneur de me citer,” +he writes, “comme un de ses alliés, et j’ai lieu +de croire que M. Gaidoz en fait en quelque mesure autant. Ces +messieurs n’ont point entièrement tort. Cependant +je dois m’élever, au nom de la science mythologique et +de 1’exactitude dont elle ne peut pas plus se passer que les autres +sciences, contre une méthode qui ne fait que glisser sur des +problèmes de première importance,” &c.</p> +<p>‘Speaking of the whole method followed by those who actually +claimed to have founded a new school of mythology, he says (p. 21):—</p> +<p>‘“Je crains toutefois que ce qui s’y trouve de +vrai ne soit connu depuis longtemps, et que la nouvelle école +ne pèche par exclusionisme tout autant que les aînées +qu’elle combat avec tant de conviction.”</p> +<p>‘That is exactly what I 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 anybody 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, +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 forgotten? 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?’</p> +<h3>Reply</h3> +<p>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. <a name="citation25a"></a><a href="#footnote25a">{25a}</a> +To citations made by me later in 1887 Professor Tiele cannot be referring. +<a name="citation25b"></a><a href="#footnote25b">{25b}</a> 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:—<a name="citation25c"></a><a href="#footnote25c">{25c}</a></p> +<p>‘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 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.’</p> +<h3>‘Braves Gens’</h3> +<p>Professor Tiele then bids us leave our cries of triumph to the <i>servum</i> +<i>imitatorum</i> <i>pecus</i>, <i>braves</i> <i>gens</i>, and so forth, +as in the passage which Mr. Max Müller, 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.</p> +<h3>Professor Tiele on Our Merits</h3> +<p>The merits of the new school Professor Tiele had already stated:—<a name="citation26"></a><a href="#footnote26">{26}</a></p> +<p>‘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, <i>enfin</i>, can alone +help us to account for the genesis of myths, because it devotes itself +to studying them in their rudest and most primitive shape. . . . ’</p> +<h3>Destruction and Construction</h3> +<p>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 Tiele’s +statement 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. <a name="citation27"></a><a href="#footnote27">{27}</a></p> +<h3>Allies or Not?</h3> +<p>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 Midler’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.</p> +<h3>Our Errors</h3> +<p>In 1887, I was not careful to quote what Professor Tiele had said +against us. First, as to our want of novelty. That merit, +I think, I had never claimed. I was proud to point out that we +had been anticipated by Eusebius of Cæsarea, 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 Müller’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 myself later. <a name="citation28a"></a><a href="#footnote28a">{28a}</a></p> +<h3>Uses of Philology</h3> +<p>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.</p> +<p>Professor Tiele then criticises Sir George Cox and Mr. Robert Brown, +junior, for their etymologies of Poseidon. Indiscreet followers +are not confined to our army alone. Now, the use of philology, +we learn, is to discourage such etymological vagaries as those of Sir +G. Cox. <a name="citation28b"></a><a href="#footnote28b">{28b}</a> +<i>We</i> also discourage them—severely. But we are warned +that philology really has discovered ‘some undeniably certain +etymologies’ of divine names. Well, I also say, ‘Philology +alone can tell whether Zeus Asterios, or Adonis, or Zeus Labrandeus +is originally a Semitic or a Greek divine name; here she is the Pythoness +we must all consult.’ <a name="citation29a"></a><a href="#footnote29a">{29a}</a> +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 <i>Ahanâ</i> +(Max Müller)? 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 Müller has a <i>mot</i> <i>d’ordre</i>, +it is, says Professor Tiele, ‘to call mythology a disease of language.’ +<a name="citation29b"></a><a href="#footnote29b">{29b}</a> But, +adds Mr. Max Müller’s learned Dutch defender, mythologists, +while using philology for certain purposes, ‘must shake themselves +free, of course, from the false hypothesis’ (Mr. Max Müller’s) +‘which makes of mythology a mere <i>maladie</i> <i>du</i> <i>langage</i>.’ +This professor is rather a dangerous defender of Mr. Max Müller! +He removes the very corner-stone of his edifice, which Tiele does not +object to our describing as founded on the sand. Mr. Max Müller +does not cite (as far as I observe) these passages in which Professor +Tiele (in my view, and in fact) abandons (for certain uses) <i>his</i> +system of mythology. Perhaps Professor Tiele has altered his mind, +and, while keeping what Mr. Max Müller quotes, <i>braves</i> <i>gens</i>, +and so on, has withdrawn what he said about ‘the false hypothesis +of a disease of language.’ But my own last book about myths +was written in 1886-1887, shortly after Professor Tiele’s remarks +were published (1886) as I have cited them.</p> +<h3>Personal Controversy</h3> +<p>All this matter of alliances may seem, and indeed is, of a personal +character, and therefore unimportant. 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 <i>alone</i> 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, cannot 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 Müller, 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 +<i>Myth</i>, <i>Ritual</i>, <i>and</i> <i>Religion</i>, i. pp. 24, 43, +44. Not that I deny Professor Tiele’s statement about my +claim of his alliance before 1885-86. I merely ask for a reference +to this claim. In 1887 <a name="citation30"></a><a href="#footnote30">{30}</a> +I cited his observations (already quoted) on the inadequate and misleading +character of the philological 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,’ aided, doubtless, +by historical and archæological 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 <i>Revue</i>, 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 +Tiele’s comments on the <i>merits</i> of the philological method. +To be sure, he himself 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.’ <a name="citation31a"></a><a href="#footnote31a">{31a}</a> +‘Mr. Lang has justly rejected the opinion of Welcker and Mr. Max +Müller, that Cronos is simply formed from Zeus’s epithet, +κρονιων.’ <a name="citation31b"></a><a href="#footnote31b">{31b}</a> +This opinion, however, Mr. Max Müller still thinks the ‘most +likely’ (ii. 507).</p> +<p>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 <i>applauded</i> +by a most competent authority, and it has been <i>warmly</i> <i>accepted</i>’ +(pray note the distinction) by M. Gaidoz. <a name="citation31c"></a><a href="#footnote31c">{31c}</a> +I trust that what I have said is not unfair. Professor Tiele’s +objections, 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. Max Müller +has not wholly succeeded in giving the full drift of Professor Tiele’s +remarks, I am certain that it is from no lack of candour.</p> +<h3>The Story of Cronos</h3> +<p>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 comparison 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.’ <a name="citation32a"></a><a href="#footnote32a">{32a}</a> +And so it is! No Being said, in Maori, ‘Fiat lux!’ +Light is not here <i>created</i>. Heaven lay flat on Earth, all +was dark, somebody kicked Heaven up, the already existing light came +in. Here is no <i>création</i> <i>de</i> <i>la</i> <i>lumière</i>. +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 mythe primitif de l’aurore,’ +a primitive dawn myth. Dawn, again! Here I lose Professor +Tiele.</p> +<p>‘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.’ <a name="citation32b"></a><a href="#footnote32b">{32b}</a> +What is the myth of Cronos? Ouranos (Heaven) married Gaea (Earth). +Ouranos ‘hid his children from the light in the <i>hollows</i> +of Earth’ (Hesiod). So, too, the New Zealand gods were hidden +from light while Heaven (Rangi) lay flat on Papa (Earth). The +children ‘were concealed between the <i>hollows</i> 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, <i>enfin</i>, +as to divorce him <i>a</i> <i>thoro</i>. ‘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.’</p> +<h3>Professor Tiele on Sunset Myths</h3> +<p>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 sunset. The mutilated part of poor Ouranos +is <i>le</i> <i>phallus</i> <i>du</i> <i>ciel</i>, <i>le</i> <i>soleil</i>, +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 Müller.</p> +<p>I say that, in my opinion, the second part of the Cronos myth (the +child-swallowing performances of Cronos) ‘was probably a world-wide +<i>Märchen</i>, 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.’</p> +<p>Professor Tiele says he does not grasp the meaning of, or believe +in, any such law. Well, why is 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. <a name="citation34"></a><a href="#footnote34">{34}</a> +But Cronos was an odious ruffian. The world-wide tale of swallowing +and disgorging the children was attracted to <i>his</i> too notorious +name ‘by grace of congruity.’ Does Professor Tiele +now grasp my meaning (<i>saisir</i>)?</p> +<h3>Our Lack of Scientific Exactness</h3> +<p>I do not here give at full length Professor Tiele’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 <i>Mélies</i>, +usually rendered ‘Nymphs of the Ash-trees.’ But Professor +Tiele says they were really <i>bees</i> (Hesychius, μελιαι<i>=</i>μελισσαι)—‘that +is to say, stars.’ Everybody has observed that the stars +rise up off the earth, like the bees sprung from the blood of Ouranos. +In <i>Myth</i>, <i>Ritual</i>, <i>and</i> <i>Religion</i> (i. 299-315) +I give the competing explanations of Mr. Max Müller, of Schwartz +(Cronos=storm god), Preller (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 underworld and harvest; he +‘doubles the part.’ ‘<i>Il</i> <i>est</i> <i>l’un</i> +<i>et</i> <i>l’autre’</i>—that is, ‘<i>le</i> +<i>dieu</i> <i>qui</i> <i>fait</i> <i>mûrir</i> <i>le</i> <i>blé</i>’ +and also ‘<i>un</i> <i>dieu</i> <i>des</i> <i>lieux</i> <i>souterrains</i>.’ +‘<i>Il</i> <i>habite</i> <i>les</i> <i>profondeurs</i> <i>sous</i> +<i>la</i> <i>terre</i>,’ he is also <i>le</i> <i>dieu</i> <i>du</i> +<i>ciel</i> <i>nocturne</i>.</p> +<p>It may have been remarked that I declined to add to this interesting +collection of plausible explanations of Cronos. A selection of +such explanations I offer in tabular form:—</p> +<p><i>Cronos</i> <i>was</i> <i>God</i> <i>of</i></p> +<p>Time (?)—Max Müller<br /> +Sun—Sayce<br /> +Midnight sky—Kuhn</p> +<p>Under-world }<br /> +Midnight sky}—Tiele<br /> +Harvest }</p> +<p>Harvest—Preller<br /> +Storm—Schwartz<br /> +Star-swallowing sky—Canon Taylor<br /> +Sun scorching spring—Hartung</p> +<p><i>Cronos</i> <i>was</i> <i>by</i> <i>Race</i></p> +<p>Late Greek (?)—Max Müller<br /> +Semitic—Böttiger<br /> +Accadian (?)—Sayce</p> +<p><i>Etymology</i> <i>of</i> <i>Cronos</i></p> +<p>Χρονος=Time (?)—Max Müller<br /> +Krāna (Sanskrit)—Kuhn<br /> +Karnos (Horned)—Brown<br /> +κραινω—Preller</p> +<p>The pleased reader will also observe that the <i>phallus</i> 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); <i>Or</i> is, according to others, the stone which +Cronos swallowed, and which acted as an emetic.</p> +<h3>My Lack of Explanation of Cronos</h3> +<p>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 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 rejecting the method of Mr. Max Müller, +Professor Tiele now writes thus (and <i>this</i> Mr. Max Müller +does cite, as we have seen):—</p> +<blockquote><p>‘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 exactness 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 questions can only reply, with a smile, <i>C’est</i> +<i>chercher</i> <i>raison</i> <i>où</i> <i>il</i> <i>n’y</i> +<i>en</i> <i>a</i> <i>pas</i>.<i>’</i></p> +</blockquote> +<h3>My Crime</h3> +<p>Now, what important questions was I gliding over? In what questions +did I not expect to find reason? Why in this savage <i>fatras</i> +about Cronos swallowing his children, about blood-drops becoming bees +(Mr. Max Müller says ‘Melian nymphs’), and bees being +stars, and all the rest of a prehistoric <i>Märchen</i> 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.</p> +<h3>My Reply to Professor Tiele</h3> +<p>I would reply that I am not engaged in a study of the <i>Cult</i> +of Cronos, but of the revolting element in his <i>Myth</i>: 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 <i>Märchen</i>. +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, Red 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’ <a name="citation37"></a><a href="#footnote37">{37}</a>—that +is, the myth of Cronos may be, probably is, originally a nature-myth. +‘On this principle Cronos would be (<i>ad</i> <i>hoc</i>) the +Night.’ Professor Tiele does not allude to this effort at +interpretation. But I come round to something like the view of +Kuhn. Cronos (<i>ad</i> <i>hoc</i>) 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, tell such a +disgusting story?’ And I replied, with Professor Tiele’s +approval, that they inherited it from an age to which such follies were +natural, an age when the 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.</p> +<h3>Conclusion as to Professor Tiele</h3> +<p>The learned Professor’s remarks on being ‘much more my +ally than my opponent’ were published before my <i>Myth</i>, <i>Ritual</i>, +<i>and</i> <i>Religion</i>, in which (i. 24, 25) I cited his agreement +with me in the opinion that ‘the philological method’ (Mr. +Max Müller’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 Müller’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 Müller’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 +nymphs, the <i>phallus</i> of Ouranos, &c.), and showed scientific +inexactitude in declining <i>chercher</i> <i>raison</i> <i>où</i> +<i>il</i> <i>n’y</i> <i>en</i> <i>a</i> <i>pas</i>.</p> +<p>None the less, in Professor Tiele’s opinion, our method is +new (or is <i>not</i> new), illuminating, successful, and <i>alone</i> +successful, for the ends to which we apply it, and, finally, we have +shown Mr. Max Müller’s method to be a house builded on the +sand. That is the gist of what Professor Tiele said.</p> +<p>Mr. Max Müller, like myself, quotes part and omits part. +He quotes twice Professor Tiele’s observations 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 <i>braves</i> <i>gens</i> +passage, excepting only M. Gaidoz, as a scholar, from a censure explicitly +directed at our possible camp-followers as distinguished from ourselves.</p> +<p>But if Mr. Max Müller quotes Professor Tiele’s remarks +proving that, in his opinion, the ‘army’ <i>is</i> really +victorious; if he cites the acquiescence in my opinion that <i>his</i> +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 passages in <i>Contributions</i> <i>to</i> <i>the</i> +<i>Science</i> <i>of</i> <i>Mythology</i>.</p> +<p>The reader may decide as to the relative importance of what I left +out, and of what Mr. Max Müller 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).</p> +<p>The two scholars, I thought, differed greatly. Mr. Max Müller’s +war-cry, slogan, <i>mot</i> <i>d’ordre</i>, is to Professor Tiele +‘a false hypothesis.’ Our method, which Mr. Max Müller +combats so bravely, is all that Professor Tiele has said of it. +But, if all this is not 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 Müller has +not avoided the same error.</p> +<h2>MANNHARDT</h2> +<h3>Mannhardt’s Attitude</h3> +<p>Professor Tiele, it may appear, really ‘fights for his own +hand,’ and is not a thorough partisan of either side. The +celebrated Mannhardt, too, doubtless the most original student of folk-lore +since Grimm, 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.</p> +<h3>Moral Character Impeached</h3> +<p>Mr. Max Müller 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 Müller. I could not put <i>our</i> 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.’</p> +<p>Like Mr. Max Müller, I do not care for the vague word ‘fetishism,’ +otherwise Mannhardt’s remark exactly represents my own position, +the anthropological position. <a name="citation42a"></a><a href="#footnote42a">{42a}</a> +Now, Mr. Max Müller does not like that position. That position +he assails. It was Mannhardt’s, however, when he wrote the +book quoted, and, so far, Mannhardt was <i>not</i> absolutely one of +Mr. Max Müller’s ‘supporters’—unless I +am one. ‘I have even been accused,’ says Mr. Max Müller, +‘of intentionally ignoring or suppressing Mannhardt’s labours. +How charitable!’ (1. xvii.) I trust, from our author’s +use of the word <i>todtschweigen</i>, that this uncharitable charge +was made in Germany.</p> +<h3>Mannhardt</h3> +<p>Mannhardt, for a time, says Mr. Max Müller, ‘expressed +his mistrust in some of the results of comparative mythology’ +(1. xvii.). Indeed, I myself quote him to that very effect. <a name="citation42b"></a><a href="#footnote42b">{42b}</a> +Not only ‘<i>some</i> of the results,’ but the philological +method itself was distrusted by Mannhardt, as by Curtius. ‘The +failure of the method in its practical working lies in a lack of the +historical sense,’ says Mannhardt. <a name="citation42c"></a><a href="#footnote42c">{42c}</a> +Mr. Max Müller 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 <i>The</i> <i>Golden</i> <i>Bough</i>, 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 <i>Die</i> <i>lettischen</i> +<i>Sonnenmythen</i> (1875). In 1880 Mannhardt died. Mr. +Max Müller does not say whether Mannhardt, before a decease deeply +regretted, recanted 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 Müller 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 suppress it (<i>todtschweigen</i>), but simply +my want of knowledge of the materials with which he dealt’ (German +popular customs and traditions) ‘and therefore the consciousness +of my incompetence to sit in judgment 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.</p> +<h3>Mannhardt’s Letters</h3> +<p>‘Mannhardt’s state of mind with regard to the general +principles of comparative philology has been so exactly my own,’ +says Mr. Max Müller, that he cites Mannhardt’s letters to +prove the fact. But as to the <i>application</i> to myth of the +principles of comparative philology, Mannhardt speaks of ‘the +lack of the historical sense’ displayed in the practical employment +of the method. This, at least, is ‘not exactly’ Mr. +Max Müller’s own view. Probably he refers to the later +period when Mannhardt ‘returned to his old colours.’</p> +<p>The letters of Mannhardt, cited in proof of his exact agreement with +Mr. Max Müller about 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.</p> +<p>Mannhardt says to Müllenhoff (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 +everything becoming everything.’ In Mr. Max Müller’s +own words, written long ago, <i>he</i> expressed his dread, not of ‘everything +becoming everything’ (a truly Heraclitean state of affairs), but +of the ‘omnipresent Sun and the inevitable Dawn appearing in ever +so many disguises.’ ‘Have we not,’ he asks, +‘arrived both at the same conclusion?’ Really, 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 <i>Golden</i> <i>Bough</i>, +and Mr. Frazer is Mannhardt’s disciple. But where, all this +time, is there a reference by Mannhardt to ‘the general principles +of comparative philology’? Where does he accept ‘the +omnipresent Sun and the inevitable Dawn’? Why, he says the +reverse; he says in this letter that he is immeasurably removed from +accepting them at all as Mr. Max Müller accepts them!</p> +<p>‘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 Müller and their school.’ +What a queer way of expressing his agreement with Mr. Max Müller!</p> +<p>The Professor expostulates with Mannhardt (1. xx.):—‘Where +has any one of us ever done this?’ Well, when Mannhardt +said ‘<i>all</i> myths,’ he wrote colloquially. Shall +we say that he meant ‘most myths,’ ‘a good many myths,’ +‘a myth or two here and there’? Whatever he meant, +he meant that he was ‘still more than very far removed from looking +upon all myths’ as Mr. Max Müller does.</p> +<p>Mannhardt’s next passage I quote entire and textually from +Mr. Max Müller’s translation:—</p> +<blockquote><p>‘I have learnt to appreciate poetical and literary +production as an essential element in the development 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 circumstances +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.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Mr. Max Müller asks, ‘Where is there any difference between +this, the latest and final system adopted by Mannhardt, and my own system +which I put forward in 1856?’ (1. xxi.)</p> +<h3>How Mannhardt differs from Mr. Max Müller</h3> +<p>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 <i>that</i> method?</p> +<p>Mannhardt, in the letter quoted by Mr. Max Müller, goes on to +describe it; but Mr. Max Müller 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.</p> +<h3>Mannhardt’s Method</h3> +<p>‘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 whose combined +growth mythical tales form themselves in very different ways.’</p> +<p>Mr. Frazer gives us a similar description of Mannhardt’s method, +whether dealing with sun myths or tree myths. <a name="citation46"></a><a href="#footnote46">{46}</a> +‘Mannhardt set himself systematically to collect, compare, and +explain the living superstitions of the peasantry.’ Now +Mr. Max Müller has just confessed, as a reason for incompetence +to criticise Mannhardt’s labours, ‘my want of knowledge +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 Müller’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 <i>analogies</i>; Mr. Max Müller interprets them by <i>etymologies</i>.</p> +<p>The difference is incalculable; not that Mannhardt always abstains +from etymologising.</p> +<h3>Another Claim on Mannhardt</h3> +<p>While maintaining that ‘all comparative mythology 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 Müller says, ‘It is well known that in his last, +nay posthumous essay, 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.</p> +<p>However, as proof of Mannhardt’s return to Mr. Max Müller’s +convictions, our author cites <i>Mythologische</i> <i>Forschungen</i> +(pp. 86-113).</p> +<h3>What Mannhardt said</h3> +<p>In the passages here produced as proof of Mannhardt’s conversion, +he is not investigating a myth at all, or a name which occurs in mythology. +He is trying to discover the meaning of the practices of the Lupercalia +at Rome. In February, says Dionysius of Halicarnassus, the Romans +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 <i>Luperci</i>. +This does not make him a philological mythologist. To take a case +in point, at Selkirk and Queensferry the bounds are ridden, or walked, +by ‘Burleymen’ or ‘Burrymen.’ <a name="citation48"></a><a href="#footnote48">{48}</a> +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 <i>burrs</i>. But +‘Borough-men’ seems the probable etymology. As we +examine the names Burley, or Burry men, so Mannhardt examines the name +<i>Luperci</i>; and if a true etymology can be discovered, it will illustrate +the original intention of the Lupercalia (p. 86).</p> +<p>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 <i>Luperci</i> +as <i>Lupiherci</i>—‘wolf-goats.’ Over this +we need not linger; but how does all this prove Mannhardt to have returned +to the method of comparing Greek with Vedic divine names, and arriving +thence at some celestial phenomenon as the basis of a terrestrial myth? +Yet he sometimes does this.</p> +<h3>My Relations to Mannhardt</h3> +<p>If anything could touch and move an unawakened 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 <i>Custom</i> <i>and</i> <i>Myth</i>. +In that essay I take, as an example of the method, the Scottish and +Northumbrian <i>Kernababy</i>, 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 regular image of the harvest +goddess,’ and I compared κορη. Next +I gave the parallel case from ancient Peru, and the odd accidental coincidence +that <i>there</i> the maize was styled <i>Mama</i> <i>Cora</i> (μητηρ +κορη!).</p> +<p>In entire ignorance of Mannhardt’s corn-spirit, or corn-mother, +I was following Mannhardt’s track. Indeed, Mr. Max Müller +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.</p> +<h3>Mannhardt’s Return to his old Colours</h3> +<p>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 Rome for those of the Church of England.’ Later he returned, +or affected to return, to the ancient faith.</p> +<p>A certain Cardinal seemed contented therewith, and, as the historian +remarks, ‘was clearly a man not difficult to please.’ +Mr. Max Müller reminds me of the good Cardinal. I do not +feel so satisfied as he does of Mannhardt’s re-conversion.</p> +<h3>Mannhardt’s Attitude to Philology</h3> +<p>We have heard Mannhardt, in a letter partly cited by Mr. Max Müller, +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.</p> +<h3>Irritating Conduct of Mannhardt</h3> +<p>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 +etymologies 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 if one chemist rarely found anything +but inevitable bismuth or omnipresent iridium. Now Mannhardt uses +this ‘mean argument.’</p> +<h3>Mannhardt on Demeter Erinnys</h3> +<p>In a posthumous work, <i>Mythologische</i> <i>Forschungen</i> (1884), +the work from which Mr. Max Müller cites the letter to Müllenhoff, +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. <a name="citation51a"></a><a href="#footnote51a">{51a}</a> +Her anger at the unhandsome behaviour of Poseidon caused Demeter to +be called Erinnys—‘to be angry’ being ερινυειν +in Arcadian—a folk-etymology, clearly. Mannhardt first dives +deep into the sources for this fable. <a name="citation51b"></a><a href="#footnote51b">{51b}</a> +Arion, he decides, is no mythological personification, but a poetical +ideal (<i>Bezeichnung</i>) 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, <i>Da</i> <i>lauft</i> <i>das</i> <i>Pferd</i>, and Greeks +before Homer would say, in face of the billowing corn, ’Εκιθι +θεουσι ιπποι, +<i>There</i> <i>run</i> <i>horses</i>! And Homer himself <a name="citation51c"></a><a href="#footnote51c">{51c}</a> +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 Hippies, +or Poseidon in horse’s form, rushes through the growing grain +and weds Demeter,’ and he cites peasant proverbs, such as <i>Das</i> +<i>Korn</i> <i>heirathet</i>; <i>das</i> <i>Korn</i> <i>feiert</i> <i>Hochzeit</i> +(p. 264). ‘This is the germ of the Arcadian Saga.’</p> +<blockquote><p>‘The Arcadian myth of Demeter Erinnys is undeniably +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 wedding of Demeter and Poseidon comes from the sight of the waves +passing over the cornfield. . . .’ <a name="citation52"></a><a href="#footnote52">{52}</a></p> +</blockquote> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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:—</p> +<blockquote><p>‘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 today,” or “Loki is driving his +goats.”</p> +<p>‘N.B.—<i>Oats</i> in Danish are <i>havre</i>, which suggests +O.N. <i>hafrar</i>, goats. Modern Icelandic has <i>hafrar</i>=oats, +but the word is not found in the old language.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Is Loki a corn-spirit?</p> +<h3>Mannhardt’s ‘Mean Argument’</h3> +<p>Mannhardt now examines the explanations of Demeter Erinnys, and her +legend, given by Preller, E. Curtius, O. Müller, A. Kuhn, W. Sonne, +Max Müller, E. Burnouf, de Gubernatis, Schwartz, and H. D. Müller. +‘Here,’ he cries, ‘is a variegated list of hypotheses!’ +Demeter is</p> +<blockquote><p>Storm-cloud<br /> +Sun Goddess<br /> +Earth and Moon Goddess<br /> +Dawn<br /> +Night.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Poseidon is</p> +<blockquote><p>Sea<br /> +Storm God<br /> +Cloud-hidden Sun<br /> +Rain God.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Despoina is</p> +<blockquote><p>Rain<br /> +Thunder<br /> +Moon.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Arion, the horse, is</p> +<blockquote><p>Lightning<br /> +Sun<br /> +Thunder-horse.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Erinnys is</p> +<blockquote><p>Storm-cloud<br /> +Red Dawn.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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 contending etymologies +of Demeter, and decides (‘for the man was mortal and had been +a’ philologer) in favour of his own guess, Ζεια +δη+μητηρ<i>=</i>‘Corn-mother’ +(p. 294).</p> +<p>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 explanation. I cannot +say, then, that I share Mr. Max Müller’s impression. +I do not feel sure that Mannhardt did return to his old colours.</p> +<h3>Why Mannhardt is Thought to have been Converted</h3> +<p>Mannhardt’s friend, Müllenhoff, had an aversion to solar +myths. He said: <a name="citation54"></a><a href="#footnote54">{54}</a> +‘I deeply mistrust all these combinations of the new so-called +comparative mythology.’ Mannhardt was preparing to study +Lithuanian solar myths, based on Lithuanian and Lettish marriage songs. +Müllenhoff and Scherer seem to have thought this work too solar +for their taste. Mannhardt therefore replied to their objections +in the letter quoted in part by Mr. Max Müller. 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 <i>not</i> 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. <a name="citation55"></a><a href="#footnote55">{55}</a> +What we think they are <i>not</i> shown to arise from is forgetfulness +of meanings of old words, which, <i>ex</i> <i>hypothesi</i>, have become +proper names.</p> +<p>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 Müllenhoff apparently dreaded even real solar myths. +Mr. Max Müller, 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 <i>real</i> solar myths and in the natural +poetry of illiterate races.</p> +<h3>Mannhardt’s Final Confession</h3> +<p>Mannhardt’s last work published in his life days was <i>Antike</i> +<i>Wald</i>- <i>und</i> <i>Feldkulte</i> (1877). In the preface, +dated November 1, 1876 (<i>after</i> the famous letter of May 1876), +he explains the growth of his views and criticises his predecessors. +After doing justice to Kuhn and his comparisons of European with Indian +myths, he says that, in his opinion, comparative Indo-Germanic mythology +has not yet borne the expected fruits. ‘The <i>assured</i> +gains shrink into very few divine names, such as Dyaus—Zeus—Tius, +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 <i>jeux</i> <i>d’esprit</i> +(<i>geistvolle</i> <i>Spiele</i> <i>des</i> <i>Witzes</i>) may once +more encroach on science. Then, after a lucid statement of Mr. +Max Müller’s position, he says, ‘Ich vermag dem von +M. Müller aufgestellten Principe, wenn überhaupt eine, so +doch nur eine sehr beschrankte Geltung zuzugestehen.’</p> +<blockquote><p>‘To the principle of Max Müller I can only +assign a very limited value, if any value at all.’ <a name="citation56"></a><a href="#footnote56">{56}</a></p> +<p>‘Taken all in all, I consider the greater part of the results +hitherto obtained in the field of Indo-Germanic comparative mythology +to be, as yet, a failure, premature or incomplete, my own efforts in +<i>German</i> <i>Myths</i> (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-Hartmann’s <i>Ethnological</i> +<i>Journal</i> will bear witness.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Such is Mannhardt’s conclusion. Taken in connection with +his still later essay 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 +Müller ever did quote Mannhardt as one of his supporters, but such +a claim, if really made, would obviously give room for criticism.</p> +<h3>Mannhardt on Solar Myths</h3> +<p>What the attitude of Mannhardt was, in 1877 and later, we have seen. +He disbelieves in the philological 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 <i>Die</i> <i>lettischen</i> <i>Sonnenmythen</i> +(in <i>Zeitschrift</i> <i>für</i> <i>Ethnologie</i>, 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 <i>the</i> <i>Veda</i> (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 would say, in the Veda we have (1) myths of nature, formed in the +remote past, and (2) poetical phrases about heavenly phenomena, 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 Müller’s +hypothesis) <i>the</i> <i>original</i> <i>meaning</i> <i>is</i> <i>lost</i>.</p> +<p>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 phenomena are, +in popular belief, personages—mythical personages—the Sun +as ‘a magnified non-natural man,’ or woman; the Sun’s +mother, daughters, and other heavenly people. Their conduct is +‘motived’ in a human way. Stories are told about them: +the Sun kills the Moon, who revives.</p> +<p>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, ‘ætiological,’ giving a fabulous reason +for facts of nature.</p> +<h3>Mannhardt on Märchen.</h3> +<p>But Mannhardt goes farther. He not only recognises, as everyone +must do, the Sun, as explicitly named, when he plays his part in myth, +or popular tale (<i>Märchen</i>). He thinks that even when +the Sun is not named, his presence, and reference to him, and derivation +of the incidents in <i>Märchen</i> from solar myth, may sometimes +be detected with great probability (pp. 326, 327). But he adds, +‘not that every <i>Märchen</i> contains a reference to Nature; +that I am far from asserting’ (p. 327).</p> +<p>Now perhaps nobody will deny that some incidents in <i>Märchen</i> +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 <i>Märchen</i>, +to find natural phenomena in such a palimpsest as Perrault’s courtly +and artificial version of a French popular tale, is a delicate and dangerous +task. In many stories a girl has three balls—one of silver, +one of gold, one of diamond—which she offers, in succession, 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. Really 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.</p> +<h3>‘The Two Brothers’</h3> +<p>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 <i>Märchen</i> 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 affair of +the separable soul may be studied in Mr. Hartland’s <i>Perseus</i>, +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, <i>en</i> <i>plein</i>, which may be studied, in +African and Santhal shapes, in Miss Coxe’s valuable <i>Cinderella</i>. +<a name="citation60"></a><a href="#footnote60">{60}</a> Pharaoh’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 <i>Märchen</i>, accommodated to royal tastes and Egyptian +ideas of royalty by a royal scribe, the courtly Perrault of the Egyptian +<i>Roi</i>-<i>Soleil</i>. Who can say what he introduced?—while +we <i>can</i> 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>Märchen</i>. +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, +Mannhardt’s disciple, protests <i>à</i> <i>grands</i> <i>cris</i> +against these identifications when made by others than Mannhardt, who +says, ‘The <i>Märchen</i> 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 <i>furens</i> +<i>quid</i> <i>femina</i> <i>possit</i>, and illustrating the world-wide +theory of the separable life, dragging in formulas from other <i>Märchen</i>, +and giving to all a thoroughly classical Egyptian colouring. <a name="citation61a"></a><a href="#footnote61a">{61a}</a> +Solar myths, we think, have not necessarily anything to make in the +matter.</p> +<h3>The Golden Fleece</h3> +<p>Mannhardt reasons in much the same way about the Golden Fleece. +This is a peculiarly Greek feature, interwoven with the world-wide <i>Märchen</i> +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 Red Indian +tribes, and elsewhere—in ‘A Far-travelled Tale.’ <a name="citation61b"></a><a href="#footnote61b">{61b}</a> +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 Romaic. 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. Mannhardt (pp. 282, 283) abounds in solar explanations +of the Fleece of Gold, hanging on the oak-tree in the dark Ææan +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 (Night) from the shower of gold (Sun-rays).</p> +<p>‘We can but say “it may be so,”’ but who +could explain all the complex Perseus-saga as a statement about elemental +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 countless examples where no Fleece of Gold occurs? The +Greek tale of Jason is made up of several <i>Märchen</i>, as is +the Odyssey, by epic poets. These <i>Märchen</i> have no +necessary connection with each other; they are tagged on to each other, +and localised in Greece and on the Euxine. <a name="citation62a"></a><a href="#footnote62a">{62a}</a> +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 popular +songs like the Lettish chants (p. 328). A similar dubious adhesion +may be given by us in the case of Castor and Polydeuces (Morning and +Evening Stars?), and Helen (Dawn), <a name="citation62b"></a><a href="#footnote62b">{62b}</a> +and the Hesperides (p. 234). The germs of the myths <i>may</i> +be popular poetical views of elemental phenomena. But to insist +on elemental allegories through all the 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, <i>unverkennbar</i> <i>das</i> <i>werk</i> +<i>der</i> <i>Dichter</i> (p. 328).</p> +<h3>Mannhardt’s Approach to Mr. Max Müller</h3> +<p>In this essay on Lettish Sun-songs (1875) Mannhardt comes nearest +to Mr. Max Müller. He cites passages from him with approval +(<i>cf</i>. pp. 314, 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 interpretations of old proper names—Athene, +Hera, Artemis, 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-myths shows an undeniable tendency to return to Mr. Max +Müller’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 <i>tandem</i> <i>triumphans</i>.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<h2>PHILOLOGY AND DEMETER ERINNYS</h2> +<h3>Mr. Max Müller on Demeter Erinnys.</h3> +<p>Like Mannhardt, our author in his new treatise discusses the strange +old Arcadian myth of the horse-Demeter Erinnys (ii. 537). He tells +the unseemly tale, and asks why the Earth goddess became a mare? +Then he gives the analogous myth from the Rig-Veda, <a name="citation65"></a><a href="#footnote65">{65}</a> +which, as it stands, is ‘quite unintelligible.’ But +Yâska 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? +Yâska says ‘the Night;’ that was Yâska’s +idea. Mr. Max Müller adds, ‘I think he is right,’ +and that Saranyu is ‘the grey dawn’ (ii. 541).</p> +<p>‘But,’ the bewildered reader exclaims, ‘Dawn is +one thing and Night is quite another.’ So Yâska himself +was intelligent enough to observe, ‘Night is the wife of Aditya; +she vanishes at sunrise.’ However, Night in Mr. Max Müller’s +system ‘has just got to be’ Dawn, a position proved thus: +‘Yâska makes this clear by saying 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 <i>therefore</i>, I understand, Saranyu, +who is Night, and not an Asvin at all, is Dawn! To make this perfectly +clear, remember that the husband of Saranyu, whom she leaves at sunrise, +is—I give you three guesses—is the Sun! The Sun’s +wife leaves the Sun at sunrise. <a name="citation66"></a><a href="#footnote66">{66}</a> +This is proved, for Aditya is Vivasvat=the Sun, and is the husband of +Saranyu (ii. 541). These methods of proving Night 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 <i>geistvolle</i> +<i>Spiele</i> <i>des</i> <i>Witzes</i>, ingenious <i>jeux</i> <i>d’esprit</i>, +as Mannhardt says, rather than logical arguments.</p> +<p>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 +arise. But the myth existed already in the Veda! And the +unseemliness is precisely what we have to account for; that is our enigma.</p> +<p>Once more, Demeter is a goddess of Earth, not of Dawn. How, +then, does the explanation of a hypothetical 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 Dyâvâ, 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 difficulties’ +(ii. 545). Phonetic explanations follow.</p> +<p>‘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 Suramâ) and the Asvins, ending in the chapter of Helena +and her brothers, the Διοσκοροι +λευκοπωλοι’ +(ii. 642). Here, as regards the Asvins and the Dioskouroi, Mannhardt +may be regarded as Mr. Max Müller’s ally; but compare his +note, <i>A</i>. <i>F</i>. <i>u</i>. <i>W</i>. <i>K</i>. p. xx.</p> +<h3>My Theory of the Horse Demeter</h3> +<p>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 Müller well says, ‘If +we look about for analogies we find nothing, as far as I know, corresponding +to the 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 Rig Veda?’ +(x 17, 1).</p> +<p>I do rejoice! The ‘song of triumph,’ as Professor +Tiele says, will be found in <i>M</i>. <i>R</i>. <i>R</i>. ii. 266 (note), +where I give the Vedic and other references. I even asked why +Mr. Max Müller did not produce this proof of the identity of Saranyu +and Demeter Erinnys in his <i>Selected</i> <i>Essays</i> (pp. 401, 492).</p> +<p>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. Edgeworth’s trillions of trillions +feebly express it. Two goddesses, Indian and Greek, have, <i>ex</i> +<i>hypothesi</i>, 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 character, 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.</p> +<p>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-man,’ +or modern witch who becomes a hare. This is not the exception +but the rule in savage mythology. Anyone can consult my <i>Myth</i>, +<i>Ritual</i>, <i>and</i> <i>Religion</i>, or Mr. Frazer’s work +<i>Totemism</i>, for abundance of evidence. To Loki, a male god, +prosecuting his amours as a female horse, I have already alluded, and +in <i>M</i>. <i>R</i>. <i>R</i>. give cases from the <i>Satapatha</i> +<i>Brahmana</i>.</p> +<p>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 dispersion, 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.</p> +<h2>TOTEMISM</h2> +<h3>Totemism</h3> +<p>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 Müller is from acting with a shadow of unfairness 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 demonstrating his candour, +were any such demonstration required.</p> +<p>On totems he opens (i. 7)—</p> +<p>‘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.</p> +<p>‘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 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 v<i>ri</i>shabha, or bull, or +before attempting to explain on this ground the abstaining from beef +on the part of orthodox Hindus [i. 7].’</p> +<h3>Totemism Defined</h3> +<p>I think I have defined totemism, <a name="citation71"></a><a href="#footnote71">{71}</a> +and the reader may consult Mr. Frazer’s work on the subject, or +Mr. MacLennan’s essays, or ‘Totemism’ in the <i>Encyclopædia</i> +<i>Britannica</i>. 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 relationship with it, and +sometimes uses its effigy 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 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, +<a name="citation72a"></a><a href="#footnote72a">{72a}</a> and in bestial +or semi-bestial gods of certain nomes, or districts, in ancient Egypt; +<a name="citation72b"></a><a href="#footnote72b">{72b}</a> in Pictish +names; <a name="citation72c"></a><a href="#footnote72c">{72c}</a> 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 Müller asks if ‘any +Egyptologists have adopted’ 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.’</p> +<p>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 <i>individuals</i> have nothing to do with totems. +A man has no business to write on totemism if he does not know these +facts.</p> +<h3>What a Totem is</h3> +<p>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 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.’</p> +<h3>The Evidence for Sign-boards</h3> +<p>Our author’s evidence for sign-boards is from an Ottawa Indian, +and is published from his MS. by Mr. Hoskyns Abrahall. <a name="citation73"></a><a href="#footnote73">{73}</a> +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 writers, 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 <i>ododams</i>’—devices, +signs, in modern usage ‘coats of arms.’ [Perhaps ‘crests’ +would be a better word.] All people of one <i>ododam</i> (apparently +under male kinship) lived 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 <i>ododam</i>. But the family +with the bear <i>ododam</i> were called Big Feet, not Bears. Sometimes +parts of different animals were ‘quartered’ [my suggestion], +and one <i>ododam</i> was a small hawk and the fins of a sturgeon.</p> +<p>We cannot tell, of course, on the evidence here, whether ‘Big +Feet’ suggested ‘Bear,’ or <i>vice</i> <i>versa</i>, +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. <a name="citation74a"></a><a href="#footnote74a">{74a}</a></p> +<p>For all this, Mr. Max Müller suggests the explanation that people +who marked their abode with crow or wolf might come to be called Wolves +or Crows. <a name="citation74b"></a><a href="#footnote74b">{74b}</a> +Again, people might borrow beast names from the prevalent beast of their +district, as Arkades, Αρκτοι, 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 River, as we say, ‘An Ettrick +man.’] Once more, the name-giving beast, say, ‘Great +Hare,’ is explained by Dr. Brinton as ‘the inevitable Dawn.’ +<a name="citation74c"></a><a href="#footnote74c">{74c}</a> ‘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, <i>Totemism</i>. +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 <i>class</i> of objects) +anything but a <i>natural</i> object. Mr. Max Müller 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 better sources. I apply the word totemism to the +widely diffused savage institution which I have defined.</p> +<h3>More about Totems</h3> +<p>The origin of totemism is unknown to me, as to Mr. McLennan and Dr. +Robertson Smith, but Mr. Max Müller 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 Red +Indians only.’ Yes, and ‘clan’ applies in the +first instance to the Scottish clans only! When Mr. Max Müller +speaks of ‘clans’ among the Red Indians, he uses a word +whose connotation differs from anything known to exist in America. +But the analogy between a Scottish clan and an American totem-kin is +close enough to justify Mr. Max Müller in speaking of Red Indian +‘clans.’ By parity of reasoning, the analogy between +the Australian <i>Kobong</i> 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?</p> +<h3>Heraldry and Totems</h3> +<p>The Ottawas are <i>armigeri</i>, 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 Müller allows +that there may be other origins.</p> +<h3>Gods and Totems</h3> +<p>Our author refers to unnamed writers who call Indra or Ammon a totem +(i. 200).</p> +<p>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 totemisms?’ Why not, indeed? Professor +Sayce remarks, ‘They were the sacred animals of the clans,’ +survivals from an age ‘when the religion of Egypt was totemism.’ +‘In Egypt the gods themselves are totem-deities, <i>i</i>.<i>e</i>. +personifications or individual representations of the sacred character +and attributes which in the purely totem stage of religion were ascribed +without distinction to all animals of the holy kind.’ So +says Dr. Robertson Smith. He and Mr. Sayce are ‘scholars,’ +not mere unscholarly anthropologists. <a name="citation76"></a><a href="#footnote76">{76}</a></p> +<h3>An Objection</h3> +<p>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 Müller refute +my opinion by urging that ‘a Tory meant originally an Irish rapparee,’ +or whatever the word <i>did</i> originally mean?</p> +<p>Mr. Max Müller 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 agreement. +So much for totems and sign-boards. Only a weak fanatic will find +a totem in every animal connected with gods, sacred names, and religious +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. Rhys, Dr. Robertson 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.</p> +<h3>A Weak Brother</h3> +<p>Our author’s habit of omitting references to his opponents +has here caused me infinite inconvenience. 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.’ +As no reference was offered, I invented ‘a wild surmise’ +that Mr. Max Müller had conceivably misapprehended Mr. Frazer’s +theory of the origin of totems. Had our author only treated himself +fairly, he would have referred to his own <i>Anthropological</i> <i>Religion</i> +(pp. 126 and 407), where the name of the eccentric definer is given +as that of Herr Lippert. <a name="citation78"></a><a href="#footnote78">{78}</a> +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.</p> +<p>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 Robertson Smith offered none, nor have I displayed +the spirit of scientific exactitude by a guess in the dark. To +gratify Mr. Max Müller by defining totemism as Mr. McLennan first +used the term is all that I dare do. Here one may remark that +if Mr. Max Müller really wants ‘an accurate definition’ +of totemism, the works of McLennan, Frazer, Robertson 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 argument should be met in its strongest +and most authoritative form. ‘Define what you mean by a +totem,’ says Professor Max Müller in his <i>Gifford</i> <i>Lectures</i> +of 1891 (p. 123). He had to look no further for a definition, +an authoritative definition, than to ‘totem’ in the <i>Encyclopædia</i> +<i>Britannica</i>, 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.</p> +<p>‘The best representatives of anthropology are now engaged not +so much in comparing as in discriminating.’ <a name="citation79"></a><a href="#footnote79">{79}</a> +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?</p> +<h3>Mr. Frazer and Myself</h3> +<p>There is, or was, a difference of opinion between Mr. Frazer and +myself as to the causes of the appearance of certain sacred animals +in Greek religion. My notions were published in <i>Myth</i>, <i>Ritual</i>, +<i>and</i> <i>Religion</i> (1887), Mr. Frazer’s in <i>The</i> +<i>Golden</i> <i>Bough</i> (1890). Necessarily I was unaware in +1887 of Mr. Frazer’s still 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.</p> +<h3>Greek Totemism</h3> +<p>In <i>C</i>. <i>and</i> <i>M</i>. (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 prehistoric Greece the mouse +had been a totem, as it is among the Oraons of Bengal. <a name="citation80"></a><a href="#footnote80">{80}</a> +In that case (1) places might be named from a mouse tribe; (2) mice +might be held sacred <i>per</i> <i>se</i>; (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, ‘<i>need</i> <i>not</i> <i>have</i> <i>been</i> +<i>an</i> <i>Aryan</i> <i>totem</i>’ (p. 116).</p> +<p>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 <i>M</i>. <i>R</i>. <i>R</i>. 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 <i>sans</i> <i>phrase</i>, +later explained their own myth to themselves by saying that the paternal +beast was only a god in disguise and <i>en</i> <i>bonne</i> <i>fortune</i>.</p> +<p>This hypothesis at least ‘colligates the facts,’ and +brings them into intelligible relationship with widely-diffused savage +institutions and myths.</p> +<h3>The Greek Mouse-totem?</h3> +<p>My theory connecting Apollo Smintheus and the place-names derived +from mice with a possible prehistoric mouse-totem gave me, I confess, +considerable satisfaction. But in Mr. Frazer’s <i>Golden</i> +<i>Bough</i> (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 <i>Classical</i> <i>Review</i> (vol. vi. +1892) Mr. Ward Fowler quotes Aristotle and Ælian 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. <a name="citation81a"></a><a href="#footnote81a">{81a}</a> +The locust is still painted red, salaamed to, and set free in India, +by way of propitiating his companions. <a name="citation81b"></a><a href="#footnote81b">{81b}</a> +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.</p> +<p>There would be no mouse-totem in the background. I do not feel +quite convinced—the mouse being a totem, and a sacred or tabooed +animal, in India and Egypt. <a name="citation82a"></a><a href="#footnote82a">{82a}</a> +But I am content to remain in a balance of opinion. That the Mouse +is the Night (Gubernatis), or the Lightning (Grohmann), I am disinclined +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.</p> +<h3>Philological Theory</h3> +<p>Philological mythologists prefer to believe that the forgotten meaning +of words produced the results; that the wolf-born Apollo (Λυκηyενης) +originally meant ‘Light-born Apollo,’ <a name="citation82b"></a><a href="#footnote82b">{82b}</a> +and that the wolf came in from a confusion between λυκη, +‘Light,’ and λυκος, +a wolf. I make no doubt that philologists can explain Sminthian +Apollo, the Dog-Apollo, and all the rest in the same way, 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 might leave surviving behind it, or which +propitiation of mice might leave behind it, by a chance coincidence, +determined by forgotten meanings of words. The Greek analogy to +totemistic facts would be explained, (1) either by asking for a definition +of totemism, and not listening when it is 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 Müller), 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.</p> +<h3>Mr. Frazer on Animals in Greek Religion</h3> +<p>In <i>The</i> <i>Golden</i> <i>Bough</i> (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 <i>The</i> +<i>Golden</i> <i>Bough</i> appeared. Greece had a bull-shaped +Dionysus. <a name="citation83a"></a><a href="#footnote83a">{83a}</a> +‘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.’ <a name="citation83b"></a><a href="#footnote83b">{83b}</a> +Mr. Frazer concludes that there are two possible explanations 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 the corn-spirit in Northern Europe.’ <a name="citation84a"></a><a href="#footnote84a">{84a}</a> +(2) The other possible explanation ‘appears to be the view +taken by Mr. Lang, who suggests that the bull-formed Dionysus “had +either been developed out of, or had succeeded to, the worship of a +bull-totem.”’ <a name="citation84b"></a><a href="#footnote84b">{84b}</a></p> +<p>Now, anthropologists are generally agreed, I think, that occasional +sacrifices of and communion in the flesh of the totem or other sacred +animals do occur among totemists. <a name="citation84c"></a><a href="#footnote84c">{84c}</a> +But Mr. Frazer and I both admit, and indeed are eager to state publicly, +that the evidence for sacrifice of the totem, and communion in eating +him, is very scanty. The fact is rather inferred from rites among +peoples just emerging 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.</p> +<p>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.’ <a name="citation84d"></a><a href="#footnote84d">{84d}</a> +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 +survivals of such things among Aryans) on ‘Pre-Aryan conquered +peoples,’ such as the Picts. Aryans may be enticed by these +bad races and become <i>Pictis</i> <i>ipsis</i> <i>Pictiores</i>.</p> +<h3>Aryan Totems (?)</h3> +<p>Generally speaking (and how delightfully characteristic 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 Müller sees +(in the case of Indra, called the bull) ‘words meaning simply +male, manly, strong,’ an ‘animal simile.’ <a name="citation85a"></a><a href="#footnote85a">{85a}</a> +Here, of course, Mr. Max Müller 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 Müller 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. <a name="citation85b"></a><a href="#footnote85b">{85b}</a> +To prove that I do not force the evidence, I take the Vedic text. <a name="citation85c"></a><a href="#footnote85c">{85c}</a> +‘His mother, a cow, bore Indra, an unlicked calf.’ +I then give Sayana’s explanation. Indra entered into the +body of Dakshina, and was reborn of her. She also bore a cow. +But this legend, I say, ‘has rather the air of being an invention, +<i>après</i> <i>coup</i>, 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 +doubtless be explained away as metaphorical.’ Nay, I will +go further. It is perfectly conceivable to me that in certain +cases a poetic epithet applied by a poet to a god (say bull, ram, or +snake) <i>might</i> be misconceived, and <i>might</i> 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 <i>all</i> totemistic races are totemistic, because they all +first metaphorically applied animal names to gods, and then forgot what +they had meant, and worshipped these animals, <i>sans</i> <i>phrase</i>, +appears to me to be, if not incredible, still greatly in want of evidence.</p> +<h3>Mr. Frazer and I</h3> +<p>It is plain that where a people claim no connection 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 <a name="citation86"></a><a href="#footnote86">{86}</a> +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 suggestion. 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 catalogue of forms of the corn-spirits, taken +from Mannhardt. <a name="citation87"></a><a href="#footnote87">{87}</a> +But the Arcadians, as we shall see, <i>claimed</i> <i>descent</i> 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, <i>may</i> 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 undiscriminating, and naturally I yield the bull Dionysus and +the pig Demeter to the corn-spirit, <i>vice</i> 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 fabulous 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.’</p> +<p>Will Mr. Frazer give the Arcadian bear ‘the benefit of the +doubt’?</p> +<p>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 Rome we do find traces of exogamy, as among totemists. ‘Formerly +they did not marry women connected with them by blood.’ <a name="citation88a"></a><a href="#footnote88a">{88a}</a> +But we do not find, and would not expect to find, that the ‘blood’ +was indicated by the common totem.</p> +<h3>Mr. Frazer on Origin of Totemism</h3> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>local</i> +fact, a <i>local</i> name, and say ‘Sex-kobong.’</p> +<p>Once more, for even we anthropologists have our bickerings, I would +‘hesitate dislike’ of this passage in Mr. Frazer’s +work: <a name="citation88b"></a><a href="#footnote88b">{88b}</a></p> +<p>‘When a savage <i>names</i> <i>himself</i> after an animal, +calls it his brother, and refuses to kill it, the animal is said to +be his totem.’ <i>Distinguo</i>! A savage does not +name <i>himself</i> 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 <i>inherits</i> his totem name, usually +through the mother’s side. The special animal which protects +an individual savage (Zapotec, <i>tona</i>; Guatemalan, <i>nagual</i>; +North America, <i>Manitou</i>, ‘medicine’) is <i>not</i> +that savage’s totem. <a name="citation89a"></a><a href="#footnote89a">{89a}</a> +The <i>nagual</i>, <i>tona</i>, or <i>manitou</i> 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 himself. But after, or in, his medicine fast and sleep, he +may choose a dormouse or a squirrel for his manitou (<i>tona</i>, <i>nagual</i>) +or <i>private</i> protecting animal. These are quite separate +from totems, as Mr. Max Müller also points out.</p> +<p>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 Müller’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.</p> +<p>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. +Professor Robertson Smith did not know the origin of totems. ‘The +origin of totems is as much a problem as the origin of local gods.’ +<a name="citation89b"></a><a href="#footnote89b">{89b}</a> Mr. +Max Müller 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 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?</p> +<h3>Mr. Frazer’s Theory</h3> +<p>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 member +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. Therefore 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. +<a name="citation90"></a><a href="#footnote90">{90}</a></p> +<p>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 Chingachgook, 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 +<i>nagual</i> or of a Zulu’s <i>Ihlozi</i> kills that Zulu or +American. For a <i>nagual</i>, as I have shown, is one thing and +a totem is another; nor am I aware that 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 <i>may</i> 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 <i>does</i> +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 <i>naguals</i>, private sacred beasts. But +why, on this score, should a man be afraid to make love to a woman of +the same <i>nagual</i>? Have Red Indian <i>women</i> any <i>naguals</i>? +I never heard of them.</p> +<p>Since writing this I have read Miss Kingsley’s <i>Travels</i> +<i>in</i> <i>West</i> <i>Africa</i>. 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.</p> +<h2>THE VALIDITY OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL EVIDENCE</h2> +<h3>Anthropological Evidence</h3> +<p>In all that we say of totemism, as, later, of fetishism, we rely +on an enormous mass of evidence from geographers, 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 Müller impugns. +But, before meeting his case, let us clear up a personal question.</p> +<h3>‘Positions one never held’</h3> +<blockquote><p>‘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 misrepresentations of my real opinion in comparative mythology, +and have rebuked the flippant tone of some of my eager critics’ +[i. 26, 27].</p> +</blockquote> +<p>I must here confess to the belief that no gentleman or honest man +ever <i>consciously</i> misrepresents the ideas of an opponent. +If it is not too flippant an illustration, I would say that no bowler +ever throws 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 <i>unconsciously</i> 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.</p> +<h3>Positions which I never held</h3> +<p>Thus Mr. Max Müller never dreamed of ‘audaciously 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 <i>Rishis</i> 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 <i>don’t</i> call my +savages ‘primitive.’ Thus ‘contemporary savages +may be degraded, they certainly are not primitive.’ <a name="citation93a"></a><a href="#footnote93a">{93a}</a> +‘One thing about the past of [contemporary] savages we do know: +it must have been a long past.’ <a name="citation93b"></a><a href="#footnote93b">{93b}</a> +‘We do not wish to call savages primitive.’ <a name="citation93c"></a><a href="#footnote93c">{93c}</a> +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 <i>Primitive</i> <i>Culture</i>. +Savages, as a rule, are <i>earlier</i>, more backward than civilised +races, as, of course, Mr. Max Müller admits, where language is +concerned. <a name="citation94"></a><a href="#footnote94">{94}</a> +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 Müller ‘audaciously misrepresents’ +me when he avers that I ‘call my savages primitive’? +But he never dreamed of misrepresenting 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.</p> +<p>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 centuries. Those described by Herodotus, +Strabo, Dio Cassius, Christoval de Moluna, Sahagun, Cieza de Leon, Brébeuf, +Garoilasso de la Vega, Lafitau, Nicholas Damascenus, Leo Africanus, +and a hundred others, are <i>not</i> 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 today, by what Dr. Tylor, when defending our materials, +calls ‘the test of recurrence.’ Professor Millar used +the same argument in his <i>Origin</i> <i>of</i> <i>Rank</i>, in the +last century. Thus Mr. Max Müller unconsciously misrepresents +me (and my savages) when he says that my ‘savages are of the nineteenth +century.’ The fact is the reverse. They are of many +centuries. These two unconscious misrepresentations occur in four +consecutive lines.</p> +<h3>Anthropological Evidence</h3> +<p>In connection with this topic (the nature of anthropological evidence), +Mr. Max Müller (i. 205-207) repeats what he has often said before. +Thus he cites Dr. Codrington’s remarks, most valuable 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, +<a name="citation95"></a><a href="#footnote95">{95}</a> and had compiled +a number of instances in which the errors of travellers were exposed, +and their habitual fallacies were detected. Fifteen closely printed +pages were devoted by me to a criterion of evidence, and a reply to +Mr. Max Müller’s oft-repeated objections.</p> +<blockquote><p>‘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 Rink, 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.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>I also cited at length Dr. Tylor’s masterly argument to the +same effect, an argument offered by him to ‘a great historian,’ +apparently.</p> +<h3>Mr. Max Müller’s Method of Controversy</h3> +<p>Now no member of the reading public, perusing Mr. Max Müller +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 +elaboration. Our defence of our evidence is not noticed by Mr. +Max Müller. 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 <i>recurrences</i>, 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 Müller +does not oblige us in this way.</p> +<h3>Mr. Max Müller on our Evidence</h3> +<p>In an earlier work, <i>The</i> <i>Gifford</i> <i>Lectures</i> for +1891, <a name="citation96"></a><a href="#footnote96">{96}</a> 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 Müller’s +own difficulties in understanding a Mohawk (which the Mohawk no doubt +also felt in understanding Mr. Max Müller), 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 Müller now fixes on a flagrant case, some fables about +the godless Mincopies of the Andaman Islands. But <i>he</i> relies +on the evidence of Mr. Man. So do I, as far as it seems beyond +doubt. <a name="citation97a"></a><a href="#footnote97a">{97a}</a> +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 necessarily borrowed from our stone houses at +Port Blair.’ <a name="citation97b"></a><a href="#footnote97b">{97b}</a> +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 <i>may</i> bear traces of Christian +teaching. Caution is indicated.</p> +<p>Does Mr. Max Müller, 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 Andamans. <a name="citation97c"></a><a href="#footnote97c">{97c}</a> +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.</p> +<p>On p. 413 our author returns to the charge. He observes (as +I have also observed) the often contradictory 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 living and distinguished British +subject, how can it be accepted about hallucinations?</p> +<p>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 criticising it. Thus, when Mr. Max Müller 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.</p> +<p>The application is obvious. We must not despair 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 hand, much less anything so startling as a savage +rite. And we discount and allow for every bias and prejudice of +our witnesses. I have made a list of these <i>idola</i> in <i>M</i>. +<i>R</i>. <i>R</i>. ii. 334-344.</p> +<p>Mr. Max Müller now gives a list of inconsistencies in descriptions +of Australian Blacks. They are <i>not</i> Blacks, they have a +dash of copper colour! Well, I never said that they had ‘the +sooty tinge of the African negro.’ Did anybody?</p> +<p>Mr. Ridley thinks that all natives are called ‘Murri.’ +Mr. Curr says ‘No.’ Important. We must reserve +our judgment.</p> +<p>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 +private. The difference rages among historians of civilised races. +So, also, as to portable property. Mr. Curr (Mr. Max Müller’s +witness) agrees here with those whose works I chiefly rely on.</p> +<p>‘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.</p> +<p>All sciences have to act in this way; therefore almost all scientific +theories are fluctuating. Nothing here is peculiar to anthropology. +A single word, or two or three, will prove or disprove a theory of phonetic +laws. Even phonetics are disputable ground.</p> +<p>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. <a name="citation100"></a><a href="#footnote100">{100}</a> +To this circumstance we may return.</p> +<p>Mr. Max Müller 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 precisely 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 Codrington 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.</p> +<p>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?</p> +<h3>The Test of Recurrences</h3> +<p>Even for travellers’ tales we have a use, we can apply to them +Dr. Tylor’s ‘Test of Recurrences.’</p> +<blockquote><p>‘If two independent visitors to different countries, +say a mediæval Mahommedan in Tartary and a modern Englishman in +Dahomey, or a Jesuit 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?’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The whole passage should be read: it was anticipated by Professor +Millar in his <i>Origin</i> <i>of</i> <i>Rank</i>, and has been restated +by myself. <a name="citation101a"></a><a href="#footnote101a">{101a}</a> +Thus I wrote (in 1887) ‘it is to be regretted that Mr. Max Müller +entirely omits to mention . . . the corroboration which is derived from +the undesigned coincidence of independent testimony.’</p> +<p>In 1891-1892 he still entirely omits to mention, to his Glasgow audience, +the strength of his opponents’ case. He would serve us better +if he would criticise the test of recurrences, and show us its weak +points.</p> +<h3>Bias of Theory</h3> +<p>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. <a name="citation101b"></a><a href="#footnote101b">{101b}</a> +‘Travellers and missionaries have begun to read anthropological +books, and their evidence is, therefore, much more likely 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 +declined 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 observers of barbaric tribes.</p> +<p>It does not quite seem to me that Mr. Max Müller 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 <i>faible</i>, not the <i>fort</i> +of our argument, and may even seem not to be aware that we have removed +the <i>faible</i> by careful discrimination.</p> +<p>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?</p> +<p>Our author often returns to the weakness of the evidence of travellers +and missionaries.</p> +<h3>Concerning Missionaries</h3> +<p>Here is an example of a <i>vivacité</i> in our censor. +‘With regard to ghosts and spirits among the Melanesians, our +authorities, whether missionaries, traders, or writers on ethnology, +are troubled by no difficulties’ (i. 207). Yet on this very +page Mr. Max Müller has been citing the ‘difficulties’ +which <i>do</i> ‘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. +<a name="citation103"></a><a href="#footnote103">{103}</a> The +doctor, himself a missionary, <i>ex</i> <i>hypothesi</i> ‘untroubled +by difficulties,’ has just been quoted by Mr. Max Müller, +and by myself, as a witness to the difficulties which trouble himself +and us. What can Mr. Max Müller possibly mean? Am I +wrong? Was Dr. Codrington <i>not</i> a missionary? At all +events, he is the authority on Melanesia, a ‘high’ authority +(i. 206).</p> +<h2>THE PHILOLOGICAL METHOD IN ANTHROPOLOGY</h2> +<h3>Mr. Max Müller as Ethnologist</h3> +<p>Our author is apt to remonstrate with his anthropological 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 <i>Tsuni</i>-<i>Goam</i> (1881), Mr. Gill’s +<i>Myths</i> <i>and</i> <i>Songs</i> <i>from</i> <i>the</i> <i>South</i> +<i>Pacific</i> (1876), and probably other examples could be added. +But my objection is, not that we should be ungrateful to Mr. Max Müller +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.</p> +<p>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 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.</p> +<h3>Names of Savage Gods</h3> +<p>This is the method, and if we can also get a scholar to analyse the +<i>names</i> of Hottentot gods, we are all the luckier, that is, if +his processes and inferences are <i>logical</i>. May we not decide +on the <i>logic</i> of scholars? But, just as Mr. Max Müller +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.</p> +<p>Here we anthropologists first ask Mr. Max Müller, 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 ‘defender,’ +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.’</p> +<p>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 Müller’s favourite +etymological ‘equations,’ Sarameya=Hermeias; Saranyu=Demeter-Erinnys; +Kentauros=Gandharvas and others, would not stand criticism. ‘The +method in its practical working shows a lack of the historical sense,’ +said Mannhardt. Curtius—a scholar, as Mr. Max Müller +declares (i. 32)—says, ‘It is especially difficult to conjecture +the meaning of proper names, and above all of local and mythical names.’ +<a name="citation106a"></a><a href="#footnote106a">{106a}</a> +I do not see that it is easier when these names are not Greek, but Hottentot, +or Algonquin!</p> +<p>Thus Achilles may as easily mean ‘holder of the people’ +as ‘holder of stones,’ <i>i</i>.<i>e</i>. a River-god! +Or does Αχ suggest <i>aqua</i>, Achelous the River? +Leto, mother of Apollo, cannot be from λαθειν, +as Mr. Max Müller holds (ii. 514, 515), to which Mr. Max Müller +replies, perhaps not, as far as the phonetic rules go ‘which determine +the formation of appellative nouns. It, indeed, would be extraordinary +if it were. . . .’ The phonetic rules in Hottentot may also +suggest difficulties to a South African Curtius!</p> +<p>Other scholars agree with Curtius—agree in thinking that the +etymology of mythical names is a sandy foundation for the science of +mythology.</p> +<p>‘The difficult task of interpreting mythical names has, so +far, produced few certain results,’ says Otto Schrader. <a name="citation106b"></a><a href="#footnote106b">{106b}</a></p> +<p>When Dr. Hahn applies the process in Hottentot, we urge with a friendly +candour these cautions from scholars on Mr. Max Müller.</p> +<h3>A Hottentot God</h3> +<p>In <i>Custom</i> <i>and</i> <i>Myth</i> (p. 207), I examine the logic +by which Dr. Hahn proves Tsuni-Goam to be ‘The Red Dawn.’ +One of his steps is to say that few means ‘sore,’ or ‘wounded,’ +and that a wound is <i>red</i>, so he gets his ‘red’ in +Red Dawn. But of <i>tsu</i> 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 <i>scabreux</i>, +got over by a series of logical leaps. As to our quarrel with +Mr. Max Müller about his friend’s treatment 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.</p> +<h3>Cause of our Scepticism</h3> +<p>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 Müller 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 equations 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 Signer Canizzaro +calls some of your ‘equations’ ‘irrefutably 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?</p> +<p>Another case. Our author says that ‘many objections were +raised’ to his ‘equation’ of Athênê=Ahanâ=‘Dawn’ +(ii. 378, 400, &c.). Have the objections ceased? Here +are a few scholars who do not, or did not, accept Athênê=Ahanâ: +Welcker, Benfey, Curtius, Preller, Furtwängler, Schwartz, and now +Bechtel (i. 378). Mr. Max Müller thinks that he is right, +but, till scholars agree, what can we do but wait?</p> +<h3>Phonetic Bickerings</h3> +<p>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 <i>not</i>, 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 Müller ‘formerly +agreed with Curtius 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 demand from mythography the rigorous observation +of phonetics’ (i. 387). ‘This may be called backsliding,’ +our author confesses, and it <i>does</i> seem rather a ‘go-as-you-please’ +kind of method.</p> +<h3>Phonetic Rules</h3> +<p>Mr. Max Müller 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 strictly as to ordinary +words? ‘This is a question that has often been asked . . +. but it has never been boldly answered’ (i. 297). Mr. Max +Müller cannot have forgotten that Curtius answered boldly—in +the negative. ‘Without such rigour all attempts at etymology +are impossible. For this very reason ethnologists and mythologists +should make themselves acquainted with the simple principles of comparative +philology.’ <a name="citation109"></a><a href="#footnote109">{109}</a></p> +<p>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 Müller calls ‘the usual bickerings’ +begin among scholars (i. 416). And Mr. Max Müller connects +Ouranos with Vedic Varuna, while Wackernagel prefers to derive it from +ουρον, urine, and this from ουρεω=Sk. +Varshayâmi, to rain (ii. 416, 417), and so it goes on for years +with a glorious uncertainty. If Mr. Max Müller’s equations +are scientifically correct, the scholars who accept them not must all +be unscientific. Or else, this is not science at all.</p> +<h3>Basis of a Science</h3> +<p>A science in its early stages, while the validity 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 application +of their phonetic laws to mythical proper names. On the basis +of this shaking soil, they propose to build <i>another</i> science, +Mythology! Then, pleased with the scientific exactitude of their +evidence, they object to the laxity of ours.</p> +<h3>Philology in Action—Indra</h3> +<p>As an example of the philological method with a Vedic 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, <i>sans</i> <i>phrase</i>; 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 Müller 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,’ <i>raindrop</i>, then ‘his +starting-point was the rain’ (i. 131). Roth preferred ‘idh,’ +‘indh,’ <i>to</i> <i>kindle</i>; and later, his taste and +fancy led him to ‘ir,’ or ‘irv,’ <i>to</i> <i>have</i> +<i>power</i> <i>over</i>. He is variously regarded as god of ‘bright +firmament,’ of air, of thunderstorm personified, and so forth. +<a name="citation110"></a><a href="#footnote110">{110}</a> His +name is not detected among other Aryan gods, and his birth may be <i>after</i> +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 Müller. 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 <i>borrowed</i> divine names from Sanskrit and from +India. But this, too, might happen! (ii. 506). Mr. Max Müller +asks, ‘Why should not a cloud or air goddess <i>of</i> <i>India</i>, +whether called Svârâ or Urvasî, have supplied the +first germs from which Βοωπις ποτνια +Ηρη 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). Why, 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 intervals to suppose, contrary to +his own principles, as I understand them, that Greek <i>may</i> be ‘derived +from’ Vedic divine names, or, at least, divine names in Sanskrit. +All this is rather confusing.</p> +<h3>Obscuring the Veda</h3> +<p>If Indra is called ‘bull,’ that at first only meant ‘strong’ +(ii. 209). Yet ‘some very thoughtful scholars’ see +traces of totemism in Indra! <a name="citation111a"></a><a href="#footnote111a">{111a}</a> +Mr. Max Müller 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. <a name="citation111b"></a><a href="#footnote111b">{111b}</a> +There are unholy stories about Indra and rams. But I for one, +as I have said already, would never deny that these <i>may</i> 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.</p> +<h2>CRITICISM OF FETISHISM</h2> +<h3>Mischief of Comparisons in Comparative Mythology</h3> +<p>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.)</p> +<p>‘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.</p> +<h3>Dr. Oldenberg</h3> +<p>Now Dr. Oldenberg, it seems, uses such comparisons of savage and +Aryan faiths. Dr. Oldenberg is (i. 209) one of several ‘<i>very</i> +<i>thoughtful</i> <i>scholars</i>’ who do so, who break Mr. Max +Müller’s prohibition. Yet (ii. 220) ‘<i>no</i> +<i>true</i> <i>scholar</i> would accept any comparison’ between +savage fables and the folklore of Homer and the Vedas ‘as really +authoritative <i>until</i> <i>fully</i> <i>demonstrated</i> <i>on</i> +<i>both</i> <i>sides</i>.’ Well, it <i>is</i> ‘fully +demonstrated,’ or ‘a very thoughtful scholar’ (like +Dr. Oldenberg) would not accept it. Or it is <i>not</i> demonstrated, +and then Dr. Oldenberg, though ‘a very thoughtful,’ is not +‘a true scholar.’</p> +<h3>Comparisons, when odious</h3> +<p>Once more, Mr. Max Müller deprecates the making of comparisons +between savage and Vedic myths (i. 210), and then (i. 220) he deprecates +the <i>acceptance</i> of these very comparisons ‘as really authoritative +until fully demonstrated.’ Now, how is the validity of the +comparisons to be ‘fully demonstrated’ if we are forbidden +to make them at all, because to do so is to ‘obscure’ the +Veda ‘by light from the Dark Continent’?</p> +<h3>A Question of Logic</h3> +<p>I am not writing ‘quips and cranks;’ I am dealing 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 demonstrated +before they are made? And made they must not be!</p> +<h3>‘Scholars’</h3> +<p>It would be useful if Mr. Max Müller 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 ‘very thoughtful scholars,’ +even Dr. Oldenberg, Mr. Rhys, Dr. Robertson 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 <i>true</i> scholar! But that we cannot do till we fully demonstrate +comparisons which we may not make, for fear of first ‘obscuring +the Veda by this kind of light from the Dark Continent.’</p> +<h3>Anthropology and the Mysteries</h3> +<p>It is not my affair to defend Dr. Oldenberg, whose comparisons of +Vedic with savage rites I have never read, I am sorry to say. +One is only arguing that the <i>method</i> 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 conscience 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 resembling parts of the rites of the Eleusinia, +Dionysia, and Thesmophoria. Thus Lobeck, a scholar, describes +the <i>Rhombos</i> used in the Dionysiac mysteries, citing Clemens Alexandrinus. +<a name="citation114"></a><a href="#footnote114">{114}</a> Thanks +to Dr. Tylor’s researches I was able to show (what Lobeck knew +not) that the <i>Rhombos</i> (Australian <i>turndun</i>, ‘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 <i>Rhombi</i> in their mysteries? +There are abundant other material facts, visible palpable objects and +practices, which savage mysteries have in common with the Greek mysteries. +<a name="citation115"></a><a href="#footnote115">{115}</a> 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.</p> +<h3>Abstract Ideas of Savages</h3> +<p>Mr. Max Müller 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! 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 <i>must</i> learn 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 <i>that</i> quite trustworthy; whereas, if he tells you about his +idols and taboos, <i>that</i> cannot possibly be worthy of attention?</p> +<h3>Perception of the Infinite</h3> +<p>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 <i>Hibbert</i> <i>Lectures</i>, in <i>Mind</i>; <a name="citation116"></a><a href="#footnote116">{116}</a> +on reading the essay over, I find no obloquy and no storm. I find, +however, that I deny, what our author says that I assert, the primitiveness +of contemporary savages.</p> +<p>In that essay, which, of course, our author had no reason to read, +much was said about fetishism, a topic discussed by Mr. Max Müller +in his <i>Hibbert</i> <i>Lectures</i>. Fetishism is, as he says, +an ill word, and has caused much confusion.</p> +<h3>Fetishism and Anthropological Method</h3> +<p>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 +races. Of their <i>languages</i> 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 <a name="citation117a"></a><a href="#footnote117a">{117a}</a> +first compared ‘the so-called fetishes’ of the Gold Coast +with Greek and Roman amulets and other material objects of old religions. +But he did this, we learn, without trying to find out <i>why</i> 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, +Rome, or Palestine.</p> +<h3>Origin of Fetishes</h3> +<p>If so, <i>tant</i> <i>pis</i> <i>pour</i> <i>monsieur</i> <i>le</i> +<i>President</i>. But how does the unscientific conduct attributed +to De Brosses implicate the modern anthropologist? Do <i>we</i> +not try to find out, and really succeed sometimes in finding out, <i>why</i> +a savage cherishes this or that scrap as a ‘fetish’? +I give a string of explanations in <i>Custom</i> <i>and</i> <i>Myth</i> +(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.’ +<a name="citation117b"></a><a href="#footnote117b">{117b}</a></p> +<p>Other ‘fetishes’ are revealed in dreams, or by ghosts, +or by spirits appearing in semblance of animals. <a name="citation118a"></a><a href="#footnote118a">{118a}</a></p> +<h3>‘Telekinetic’ Origin of Fetishism</h3> +<p>As I write comes in <i>Mélusine</i>, viii. 7, with an essay +by M. Lefébure on <i>Les</i> <i>Origines</i> <i>du</i> <i>Fétichisme</i>. +He derives some fetishistic practices from what the Melanesians call +<i>Mana</i>, which, says Mr. Max Müller, ‘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. Lefébure, +did men come to attribute this <i>vis</i> <i>vivida</i> 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, +<a name="citation118b"></a><a href="#footnote118b">{118b}</a> with examples +from Dr. Tylor, P. de la Rissachère, Dr. Gibier, <a name="citation118c"></a><a href="#footnote118c">{118c}</a> +and other authorities, good or bad. Grouping, then, his facts +under the dubious title of <i>le</i> <i>magnétisme</i>, M. Lefébure +finds in savage observation of such facts ‘the chief cause of +fetishism.’</p> +<p>Some of M. Lefébure’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 conjurers, who certainly profess <a name="citation118d"></a><a href="#footnote118d">{118d}</a> +to produce the phenomena, might originate, or help to originate, the +respect paid to ‘fetishes’ and the belief in <i>Mana</i>. +But probably Major Ellis’s researches into the religion of the +Tshi-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, <i>we</i> 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 (<i>jongleurs</i>) +persuade them that little instruments in their possession are endowed +with a living spirit.’ So far, fetishism is spiritualism.</p> +<h3>Civilised ‘Fetishism’</h3> +<p>De Brosses did not look among civilised fetishists for the motives +which he neglected among savages (i. 196). <i>Tant</i> <i>pis</i> +<i>pour</i> <i>monsieur</i> <i>le</i> <i>Président</i>. +But we and our method no more stand or fall with De Brosses and his, +than Mr. Max Müller’s etymologies stand or fall with those +in the <i>Cratylus</i> of Plato. If, in a civilised people, ancient +or modern, we find a practice vaguely styled ‘fetishistic,’ +we examine it in its details. While we have talismans, amulets, +gamblers’ <i>fétiches</i>, I do not think that, except +among some children, we have anything nearly analogous to Gold Coast +fetishism as a whole. Some one seems to have called the <i>palladium</i> +a fetish. I don’t exactly know what the <i>palladium</i> +(called a fetish by somebody) was. The <i>hasta</i> <i>fetialis</i> +has been styled a fetish—an apparent abuse of language. +As to the Holy Cross <i>qua</i> fetish, why discuss such free-thinking +credulities?</p> +<p>Modern anthropologists—Tylor, Frazer, and the rest—are +not under the censure appropriate to the illogical.</p> +<h3>More Mischiefs of Comparison</h3> +<p>The ‘Nemesis’ (i. 196) of De Brosses’ errors did +not stay in her ravaging progress. Fetishism was represented as +‘the very beginning of religion,’ 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 <i>one</i> <i>among</i> <i>the</i> <i>earliest</i> +<i>springs</i> of religious belief.’ <a name="citation120a"></a><a href="#footnote120a">{120a}</a> +But from even this rather guarded statement I withdraw. ‘No +man can watch the idea of GOD in the making or in the beginning.’ +<a name="citation120b"></a><a href="#footnote120b">{120b}</a></p> +<h3>Still more Nemesis</h3> +<p>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 <i>probably</i> represent an <i>early</i> +stage in religion, just as, <i>teste</i>. Mr. Max Müller, +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 childhood of language, with all +its childish pranks.’ <a name="citation120c"></a><a href="#footnote120c">{120c}</a></p> +<p>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, nor even that +Mr. Max Müller is right in <i>his</i> remark on language. +The Australian 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?</p> +<p>One need not reply to the charge that anthropologists, if they are +meant, regard modern savages ‘as just evolved from the earth, +or the sky,’ or from monkeys (i. 197). ‘Savages have +a far-stretching unknown history behind them.’ ‘The +past of savages, I say, must have been a long past.’ <a name="citation121"></a><a href="#footnote121">{121}</a> +So, once more, the Nemesis of De Brosses fails to touch me—and, +of course, to touch more learned anthropologists.</p> +<p>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. +<i>Culture</i> <i>must</i> <i>be</i> <i>gained</i> <i>before</i> <i>it</i> +<i>can</i> <i>be</i> <i>lost</i>.’ Now a person who has +not gained what Dr. Tylor calls ‘culture’ (<i>not</i> 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.</p> +<h3>For Us or Against Us?</h3> +<p>We now hear that the worst and last penalty paid for De Brosses’ +audacious comparison of savage with 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 religions’ (i. 197).</p> +<p>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 Müller does +not tell us who says that they 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 race of savages. Such we believe the ancestors +of mankind to have been—at any rate after the Fall.</p> +<p>Now when Mr. Max Müller began to write his book, he accepted +this postulate of anthropology (i. 15). When he reached i. 197 +he abandoned and denounced this postulate.</p> +<p>I quote his acceptance of the postulate (i. 15):—</p> +<blockquote><p>‘Even Mr. A. Lang has to admit that we have not +got much beyond Fontenelle, when he wrote in the last century:</p> +<p>‘“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 (<i>en</i> <i>un</i> <i>pareil</i> <i>état</i> +<i>de</i> <i>sauvagerie</i>). 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 compared to the earliest men of +all.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Here is an uncompromising statement by Fontenelle 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 Müller eagerly accepts the postulate:—</p> +<blockquote><p>‘There is not a word of Fontenelle’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 folklore.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Well, if Mr. Max Müller ‘gladly subscribes,’ in +p. 15, to the postulate of an original universal stage of savagery, +whence civilised races inherit their incredibly repulsive 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 Müller’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 +I can see, self-contradictory—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 <a name="citation124"></a><a href="#footnote124">{124}</a> +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.</p> +<h3>The Fallacy of ‘Admits’</h3> +<p>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 contrary, he has been the first to point out and proclaim. +He is thus suggested 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 Fontenelle, in <i>De</i> <i>l’Origine</i> <i>des</i> <i>Fables</i>, +<a name="citation125a"></a><a href="#footnote125a">{125a}</a> 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 Müller says. I was glad to have a predecessor +in a past less remote than that of Eusebius of Cæsarea. +‘A briefer and better system of mythology,’ I wrote, ‘could +not be devised; but the Mr. Casaubons of this world have neglected it, +and even now it is beyond their comprehension.’ <a name="citation125b"></a><a href="#footnote125b">{125b}</a> +To say this in this manner is not to ‘<i>admit</i> that we have +not got much beyond Fontenelle.’ I do not want to get beyond +Fontenelle. I want to go back to his ‘forgotten 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.</p> +<p>Now, on p. 15, Mr. Max Müller had got as far as accepting Fontenelle; +on pp. 197, 198 he burns, as it were, that to which he had ‘gladly +subscribed.’</p> +<h3>Conclusion as to our Method</h3> +<p>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 misapprehension, which +I vainly attempt to detect, and for which, if it exists, I apologise +humbly) that Mr. Max Müller, on p. 15, accepts the doctrine which +he denounces on p. 197. <a name="citation126"></a><a href="#footnote126">{126}</a> +Again, I am entirely at one with Mr. Max Müller 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 <i>doublé</i> with a psychologist. +See, however, the excellent pages in Dr. Tylor’s <i>Primitive</i> +<i>Culture</i>, and in Mr. William James’s <i>Principles</i> <i>of</i> +<i>Psychology</i>, on ‘Mediumship.’</p> +<h2>THE RIDDLE THEORY</h2> +<h3>What the Philological Theory Needs</h3> +<p>The great desideratum of the philological method is a proof that +the ‘Disease of Language,’ <i>ex</i> <i>hypothesi</i> the +most fertile source of myths, is a <i>vera</i> <i>causa</i>. 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 appellatives become +proper names—Apollo, Daphne, &c.? Mr. Max Müller +seems to think some proof of this process as a <i>vera</i> <i>causa</i> +may be derived from ‘Folk Riddles.’</p> +<h3>The Riddle Theory</h3> +<p>We now come, therefore, to the author’s treatment of popular +riddles (<i>devinettes</i>), 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,</p> +<blockquote><p>What is the Dark One<br /> +That goes over the earth,<br /> +Swallows water and wood,<br /> +But is afraid of the wind? &c.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Or we find,</p> +<blockquote><p>What is the gold spun from one window to another?</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The answers, the obvious answers, are (1) ‘mist’ and +(2) ‘sunshine.’</p> +<p>In Mr. Max Müller’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 +meaning of, <i>e</i>.<i>g</i>. ‘the Dark One.’ Before +there can be a myth, <i>ex</i> <i>hypothesi</i> the words <i>Dark</i> +<i>One</i> must have become hopelessly unintelligible, must have become +a proper name. Thus suppose, for argument’s sake only, that +Cronos once meant <i>Dark</i> <i>One</i>, and was understood in that +sense. People (as in the Norse riddle just cited) said, ‘Cronos +[<i>i</i>.<i>e</i>. the <i>Dark</i> <i>One</i>—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 Müller’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.</p> +<p>That is all very clear, but the point is this—in <i>devinettes</i>, +or riddles, the meaning of ‘the Dark One’ is <i>not</i> +lost:—</p> +<blockquote><p>‘Thy riddle is <i>easy</i><br /> +Blind Gest,<br /> +To read’—</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Heidrick answers.</p> +<p>What the philological method of mythology needs is to prove that +such poetical statements about natural phenomena as the <i>devinettes</i> +contain survived in the popular mouth, and were perfectly intelligible +except just the one <i>mot</i> <i>d’énigme</i>—say, +‘the Dark One.’ That (call it Cronos=‘Dark One’), +and that alone, became unintelligible in the changes of language, and +so had to be accepted as a proper name, Cronos—a god who swallows +things at large.</p> +<p>Where is the proof of such endurance of intelligible phrases with +just the one central necessary word obsolete 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. +Riddles, of course, prove nothing of this kind:—</p> +<blockquote><p>Thy riddle is easy<br /> +Blind Gest<br /> +To read!</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Yet Mr. Max Müller 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 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:—</p> +<blockquote><p>My first is a boot, my second is a jack.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Conceivably Mr. Max Müller may mean that in riddles an almost +obsolete word was used to designate the object. Perhaps, instead +of ‘the Dark One,’ a peasant would say, ‘What is the +Rooky One?’ But as soon as nobody knew what ‘the Rooky +One’ meant, the riddle would cease to exist—Rooky One and +all. You cannot imagine several generations asking each other—</p> +<blockquote><p>What is the Rooky One that swallows?</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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 difficult word ‘Rooky’ would die. +But Mr. Max Müller says, ‘Riddles 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:—</p> +<blockquote><p>Who are the mother and children in a house, all having +bald heads?—The moon and stars.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Language cannot be clearer. Yet the riddle has not ‘ceased +to be a riddle,’ as Mr. Max Müller thinks it must do, though +the words are ‘clear and intelligible.’ On the other +hand, if the language is <i>not</i> 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 acceptable +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 <i>words</i> are pellucid.</p> +<p>Thus ‘ordinary appellatives’ (i. 99) are <i>not</i> ‘avoided’ +in riddles, though <i>names</i> (sun, mist) cannot be used in the question +because they give the answer to the riddle.</p> +<p>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 hypothetical process by which +a riddle, or popular poetical saying, remains intelligible in a language, +while the <i>mot</i> <i>d’énigme</i>, becoming unintelligible, +turns into a proper name—say, Cronos. Yet the belief in +this process as a <i>vera</i> <i>causa</i> is essential to our author’s +method.</p> +<p>Here Mr. Max Müller warns us that his riddle theory is not meant +to explain ‘the obscurities of <i>all</i> mythological names. +This is a stratagem that should be stopped from the very first.’ +It were more graceful to have said ‘a misapprehension.’</p> +<p>Another ‘stratagem’ I myself must guard against. +I do not say that <i>no</i> unintelligible strings of obsolete words +may 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.</p> +<h3>Mordvinian Mythology</h3> +<p>Still in the very natural and laudable pursuit of facts which will +support the hypothesis of a disease of language, Mr. Max Müller +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 Chkaï, god of the sun (<i>chi</i>=sun). +He ‘lives in the sun, or is the sun’ (i. 236). His +wife is the Earth or earth goddess, Védiava. 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 Chkaï comes the evil god Chaitan—obviously Shaitan, a +Mahommedan contamination. There are plenty of minor gods, and +spirits good and bad. Dawn was a Mordvinian girl; in Australia +she was a <i>lubra</i> addicted to lubricity.</p> +<p><i>How</i> <i>does</i> <i>this</i> <i>help</i> <i>philological</i> +<i>mythology</i>?</p> +<p>Mr. Max Müller is pleased to find solar and other elemental +gods among the Mordvinians. But the discovery in no way aids his +special theory. 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 <i>C</i>. <i>and</i> <i>M</i>. +(pp. 104, 133, New Zealand and North America) and in <i>M</i>. <i>R</i>. +<i>R</i>. (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. +All this does not illustrate the case of Greek divine names by resemblance, +but by difference. Real 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.</p> +<p>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 philological 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 Chkaï to +be the sun, does that explain why he punishes people who bake bread +on Friday? (237.) Our opponent does not seem to understand the +<i>portée</i> of our objections. The same remarks apply +to the statement of Finnish mythology here given, and familiar in the +<i>Kalewala</i>. 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 Müller’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 <i>names</i> are the only +sources of information.</p> +<p>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 undisputed etymologies, +as originally elemental, we still object to such logic as that which +turns Saranyu into ‘grey dawn.’ We still object to +the competing interpretations by which almost every detail of very composite +myths is explained as a poetical description of some elemental process +or phenomenon. Apollo <i>may</i> once have been the sun, but why +did he make love as a dog?</p> +<h3>Lettish Mythology</h3> +<p>These remarks apply equally well to our author’s dissertation +on Lettish mythology (ii. 430 <i>et</i> <i>seq</i>.). The meaning +of statements about the sun and sky ‘is not to be mistaken in +the mythology of the Letts.’ So 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 Encounter 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.’ <a name="citation135"></a><a href="#footnote135">{135}</a> +This tale was told to Mr. Meyer in 1846, before Mr. Max Müller’s +<i>Dawn</i> had become ‘inevitable,’ as he says.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<h3>The Chances of Fancy</h3> +<p>One remark has to be added. Mannhardt regarded many or most +of the philological solutions of gods into dawn or sun, or thunder or +cloud, as empty <i>jeux</i> <i>d’esprit</i>. 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 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.</p> +<h2>ARTEMIS</h2> +<p>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 comparative mythology. Meanwhile we look on, waiting +till the mosses shall support a ponderous edifice.</p> +<p>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 Müller is writing <i>about</i> without name +or reference. If so, he here sharply distinguishes between me +on the one hand and ‘classical scholars’ on the other, a +point to which we shall return. He says—I cite textually +(ii. 732):—</p> +<h3>Artemis</h3> +<p>‘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 disentangling the many myths +told about her. Easy to understand as her character seems when +we confine our attention to Homer, it becomes extremely complicated +when we take into account the numerous local forms of worship of which +she was the object.</p> +<p>‘We have here a good opportunity of comparing the interpretations +put forward by <i>those</i> <i>who</i> <i>think</i> <i>that</i> <i>a</i> +<i>study</i> <i>of</i> <i>the</i> <i>myths</i> <i>and</i> <i>customs</i> +<i>of</i> <i>uncivilised</i> <i>tribes</i> <i>can</i> <i>help</i> <i>us</i> +<i>towards</i> <i>an</i> <i>understanding</i> <i>of</i> <i>Greek</i> +<i>deities</i>, <i>and</i> <i>the</i> <i>views</i> <i>advocated</i> +<i>by</i> <i>classical</i> <i>scholars</i> <a name="citation138"></a><a href="#footnote138">{138}</a> +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 +particularly 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 beautiful 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 celebrated by dances of young +girls disguised as bears or imitating the movements of bears, &c. +She was represented as πολυμαστος, +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 Lykâon, the King of Arkadia, who had +a beautiful daughter called Kallisto. As Zeus fell in love with +her, Hêra from jealousy changed her into a bear, and Artemis killed +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.’</p> +<p>* * * * *</p> +<p>Here I recognise Mr. Max Müller’s version of my remarks +on Artemis. <a name="citation139a"></a><a href="#footnote139a">{139a}</a> +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 <i>is</i> an inconvenient practice, but with Mr. Max Müller +this reticence is by no means unusual. <i>He</i> ‘does not +mention the book where ‘my ‘evidence is given.’</p> +<p>Anthropologists are here (unless I am mistaken) contrasted with ‘classical +scholars who draw their information, 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.</p> +<p>The idea and representation of Artemis as πολυμαστος +(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 divinity of Oriental religion.’ <a name="citation139b"></a><a href="#footnote139b">{139b}</a> +Is this ‘large term’ too vague? Then consider the +Artemis of Ephesus and ‘the alabaster statuette of the goddess’ +in Roscher’s <i>Lexikon</i>, p. 558. Compare, for an Occidental +parallel, the many-breasted goddess of the maguey plant, in Mexico. +<a name="citation140"></a><a href="#footnote140">{140}</a> Our +author writes, ‘we are told that Artemis’s most ancient +history is to be studied in Arkadia.’ My words are, ‘The +<i>Attic</i> and Arcadian legends of Artemis are confessedly <i>among</i> +<i>the</i> <i>oldest</i>.’ Why should ‘Attic’ +and the qualifying phrase be omitted?</p> +<h3>Otfried Müller</h3> +<p>Mr. Max Müller goes on—citing, as I also do, Otfried Müller:—‘Otfried +Müller 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 Kallistê, 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 αρκτοι (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.’</p> +<p>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 Müller proceeds (ii. 734)—‘He [Otfried] did +not go so far as some modern mythologists who want us to believe that +originally the animal, the she-bear, was the goddess, and that a later +worship had replaced the ancient worship of the animal <i>pur</i> <i>et</i> +<i>simple</i>.’</p> +<p>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 <i>was</i> the goddess at +an extremely 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).</p> +<p>Mr. Max Müller’s error, it will be observed, consists +in writing ‘and’ where I wrote ‘or.’ To +make such rather essential mistakes is human; to give references is +convenient, and not unscholarly.</p> +<p>In fact, this is Mr. Max Müller’s own opinion, for he +next reports his anonymous author (myself) as saying (‘we are +now told’), ‘though without any reference to Pausanias or +any other Greek writers, that the young maidens, the αρκτοι, +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 Διος +κωδων in Egypt.’ Of course I +never said that the αρκτοι 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 Claus <a name="citation141a"></a><a href="#footnote141a">{141a}</a> +and referred to Suchier, <a name="citation141b"></a><a href="#footnote141b">{141b}</a> +including the reference in brackets [ ] to indicate that I borrowed +it from a book which I was unable to procure. <a name="citation142a"></a><a href="#footnote142a">{142a}</a> +I then gave references for the classical use of a saffron vest by the +αρκτοι.</p> +<h3>Beast Dances</h3> +<p>For the use of beast-skins in such dances among totemists I cite +Bancroft (iii. 168) and (<i>M</i>. <i>R</i>. <i>R</i>. ii. 107) Robinson +<a name="citation142b"></a><a href="#footnote142b">{142b}</a> (same +authority). I may now also refer to Robertson Smith: <a name="citation142c"></a><a href="#footnote142c">{142c}</a> +‘the meaning of such a disguise [a fish-skin, among the Assyrians] +<i>is</i> <i>well</i> <i>known</i> <i>from</i> <i>many</i> <i>savage</i> +<i>rituals</i>; it means that the worshipper presents himself as a fish,’ +as a bear, or what not. <a name="citation142d"></a><a href="#footnote142d">{142d}</a> +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 confirmation. <a name="citation142e"></a><a href="#footnote142e">{142e}</a> +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 demonstrated. +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 +Müller quotes (of course, without reference or marks of quotation) +and adds, ‘<i>pace</i> Dr. Codrington.’ Have I incurred +Dr. Codrington’s feud? He doubts or denies totems in Melanesia. +Is Samoa in Melanesia, <i>par</i> <i>exemple</i>? <a name="citation143a"></a><a href="#footnote143a">{143a}</a> +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. <a name="citation143b"></a><a href="#footnote143b">{143b}</a> +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.’ <a name="citation143c"></a><a href="#footnote143c">{143c}</a> +I expressly contrast the Samoan creed with ‘pure totemism.’ +<a name="citation143d"></a><a href="#footnote143d">{143d}</a></p> +<p>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.</p> +<h3>The View of Classical Scholars</h3> +<p>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.’ <a name="citation143e"></a><a href="#footnote143e">{143e}</a> +‘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; +<i>quis</i> <i>negavit</i>? Then our author, like myself (<i>loc</i>. +<i>cit</i>.), 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 <i>Hippolytus</i> 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 Théodore de Banville (<i>Diane</i> <i>court</i> <i>dans</i> +<i>la</i> <i>noire</i> <i>forêt</i>). And the nocturnal +hunt <i>is</i> <i>Dian’s</i>; so she is protectress of the chase. +Exactly what I said! <a name="citation144a"></a><a href="#footnote144a">{144a}</a></p> +<p>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.</p> +<h3>Mr. Max Müller’s Explanation</h3> +<p>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 anybody. 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 αρκτος +(a bear), while they knew the Bear constellation, ‘what was more +natural than that Callisto should be changed into an <i>arktos</i>, +a she-bear . . . placed by Zeus, her lover, in the sky’ as the +Bear?</p> +<p>Nothing could be more natural to a savage; they all do it. <a name="citation144b"></a><a href="#footnote144b">{144b}</a> +But that an Aryan, a Greek, should talk 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 <i>arktos</i>,’ +seems to me an extreme test of belief, and a very unlikely thing to +occur.</p> +<h3>Wider Application of the Theory</h3> +<p>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 hundred beasts came to be claimed as ancestors? +Perhaps 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 <i>whence</i> <i>come</i> +<i>the</i> <i>names</i> <i>of</i> <i>eponymous</i> <i>heroes</i>? +From their tribes, of course—Ion from Ionians, Dorus from Dorians, +and so on. Therefore (in the hundred cases) the names of the <i>tribes</i> +derive from names of animals. Indeed, the names of totem-kins +<i>are</i> the names of animals—wolves, bears, cranes. Mr. +Max Müller remarks that the name ‘Arcades’ <i>may</i> +come from αρκτος, a bear (i. 738); +so the Arcadians (Proselenoi, the oldest of races, ‘men before +the moon’) may be—Bears. So, of course (in this case), +they would necessarily be Bears <i>before</i> they invented Areas, an +eponymous hero whose name is derived from the pre-existing tribal name. +His name, then, could not, before they invented it, remind them of a +bear. It was from their name Αρκτοι +(Bears) that they developed <i>his</i> name Areas, as in all such cases +of eponymous heroes. I slightly incline to hold that this is exactly +what occurred. A bear-kin claimed descent from a bear, and later, +developing an eponymous hero, Areas, regarded him as son of a bear. +Philologically ‘it is possible;’ I say no more.</p> +<h3>The Bear Dance</h3> +<p>‘The dances of the maidens called αρκτοι, +would receive an easy interpretation. They were Arkades, and why +not αρκτοι (bears)?’ And +if αρκτοι, why not clad in bear-skins, +and all the rest? (ii. 738). This is our author’s explanation; +it is also my own conjecture. The Arcadians were bears, knew it, +and possibly danced a bear dance, as Mandans or Nootkas dance a buffalo +dance or a wolf dance. But all such dances are not totemistic. +They have often other aims. One only names such dances totemistic +when performed by people who call themselves by the name of the animal +represented, and claim descent from him. Our author says genially, +‘if anybody prefers to say that the <i>arctos</i> was something +like a totem of the Arcadians . . . why not?’ But, if the +<i>arctos</i> was a totem, that fact explains the Callisto story and +Attic bear dance, while the philological theory—Mr. Max Müller’s +theory—does not explain it. What is oddest of all, Mr. Max +Müller, as we have seen, says that the bear-dancing girls were +‘Arkades.’ Now we hear of no bear dances in Arcadia. +The dancers were <i>Athenian</i> girls. This, indeed, is the point. +We have a bear Callisto (Artemis) in Arcady, where a folk etymology +might explain it by stretching a point. But no etymology will +explain bear dances to Artemis in Attica. So we find bears doubly +connected with Artemis. The Athenians were not Arcadians.</p> +<p>As to the meaning and derivation of Artemis, or Artamis, our author +knows nothing (ii. 741). I say, ‘even Αρκτεμις +(αρκτος, bear) has occurred to inventive +men.’ Possibly I invented it myself, though not addicted +to etymological conjecture.</p> +<h2>THE FIRE-WALK</h2> +<h3>The Method of Psychical Research</h3> +<p>As a rule, mythology asks for no aid from Psychical Research. +But there are problems in religious rite and custom where the services +of the Cendrillon of the sciences, the despised youngest sister, may +be of use. As an example I take the famous mysterious old Fire-rite +of the Hirpi, or wolf-kin, of Mount Soracte. I shall first, following +Mannhardt, and making use of my own trifling researches in ancient literature, +describe the rite itself.</p> +<h3>Mount Soracte</h3> +<p>Everyone has heard of Mount Soracte, white with shining snow, the +peak whose distant cold gave zest to the blazing logs on the hearth +of Horace. Within sight of his windows was practised, by men calling +themselves ‘wolves’ (<i>Hirpi</i>), a rite of extreme antiquity +and enigmatic character. On a peak of Soracte, now Monte di Silvestre, +stood the ancient temple of Soranus, a Sabine sun-god. <a name="citation148a"></a><a href="#footnote148a">{148a}</a> +Virgil <a name="citation148b"></a><a href="#footnote148b">{148b}</a> +identifies Soranus with Apollo. At the foot of the cliff was the +precinct of <i>Feronia</i>, a Sabine goddess. Mr. Max Müller +says that Feronia corresponds to the Vedic <i>Bhuranyu</i>, a name of +Agni, the Vedic fire-god (ii. 800). Mannhardt prefers, of course, +a derivation from <i>far</i> (grain), as in <i>confarreatio</i>, the +ancient Roman bride-cake form of marriage. <i>Feronia</i> <i>Mater=</i>Sanskrit +<i>bharsani</i> <i>mata</i>, <i>Getreide</i> <i>Mutter</i>. <a name="citation149a"></a><a href="#footnote149a">{149a}</a> +It is a pity that philologists so rarely agree in their etymologies. +In Greek the goddess is called <i>Anthephorus</i>, <i>Philostephanus</i>, +and even <i>Persephone</i>—probably the Persephone of flowers +and garlands. <a name="citation149b"></a><a href="#footnote149b">{149b}</a></p> +<h3>Hirpi Sorani</h3> +<p>Once a year a <i>fête</i> of Soranus and Feronia was held, +in the precinct of the goddess at Soracte. The ministrants were +members of certain local families called Hirpi (wolves). Pliny +says, <a name="citation149c"></a><a href="#footnote149c">{149c}</a> +‘A few families, styled Hirpi, at a yearly sacrifice, walk over +a burnt pile of wood, yet are not scorched. On this account they +have a perpetual exemption, by decree of the Senate, from military and +all other services.’ Virgil makes Aruns say, <a name="citation149d"></a><a href="#footnote149d">{149d}</a> +‘Highest of gods, Apollo, guardian of Soracte, thou of whom we +are the foremost worshippers, thou for whom the burning pile of pinewood +is fed, while we, strong in faith, walk through the midst of the fire, +and press our footsteps in the glowing mass. . . .’ Strabo +gives the same facts. Servius, the old commentator on Virgil, +confuses the Hirpi, not unnaturally, with the Sabine ‘clan,’ +the Hirpini. He says, <a name="citation149e"></a><a href="#footnote149e">{149e}</a> +‘Varro, always an enemy of religious belief, writes that the Hirpini, +when about to walk the fire, smear the soles of their feet with a drug’ +(<i>medicamentum</i>). Silius Italicus (v. 175) speaks of the +ancient rite, when ‘the holy bearer of the bow (Apollo) rejoices +in the kindled pyres, and the ministrant thrice gladly bears entrails +to the god through the harmless flames.’ Servius gives an +ætiological myth to account for the practice. ‘Wolves +came and carried off the entrails from the fire; shepherds, following +them, were killed by mortal vapours from a cave; thence ensued a pestilence, +because they had followed the wolves. An oracle bade them “play +the wolf,” <i>i</i>.<i>e</i>. live on plunder, whence they were +called <i>Hirpi</i>, wolves,’ an attempt to account for a wolf +clan-name. There is also a story that, when the grave of Feronia +seemed all on fire, and the people were about carrying off the statue, +it suddenly grew green again. <a name="citation150a"></a><a href="#footnote150a">{150a}</a></p> +<p>Mannhardt decides that the so-called wolves leaped through the sun-god’s +fire, in the interest of the health of the community. He elucidates +this by a singular French popular custom, held on St. John’s Eve, +at Jumièges. The Brethren of the Green Wolf select a leader +called Green Wolf, there is an ecclesiastical procession, <i>curé</i> +and all, a <i>souper</i> <i>maigre</i>, the lighting of the usual St. +John’s fire, a dance round the fire, the capture of next year’s +Green Wolf, a mimicry of throwing him into the fire, a revel, and next +day a loaf of <i>pain</i> <i>bénit</i>, above a pile of green +leaves, is carried about. <a name="citation150b"></a><a href="#footnote150b">{150b}</a></p> +<p>The wolf, thinks Mannhardt, is the Vegetation-spirit in animal form. +Many examples of the ‘Corn-wolf’ in popular custom are given +by Mr. Frazer in <i>The</i> <i>Golden</i> <i>Bough</i> (ii. 3-6). +The Hirpi of Soracte, then, are so called because they play the part +of Corn-wolves, or <i>Korndämonen</i> in wolf shape. But +Mannhardt adds, ‘this <i>seems</i>, at least, to be the explanation.’ +He then combats Kuhn’s theory of Feronia as lightning goddess. +<a name="citation151a"></a><a href="#footnote151a">{151a}</a> +He next compares the strange Arcadian cannibal rites on Mount Lycæus. +<a name="citation151b"></a><a href="#footnote151b">{151b}</a></p> +<h3>Mannhardt’s Deficiency</h3> +<p>In all this ingenious reasoning, Mannhardt misses a point. +What the Hirpi did was <i>not</i> merely to leap through light embers, +as in the Roman <i>Palilia</i>, and the parallel doings in Scotland, +England, France, and elsewhere, at Midsummer (St. John’s Eve). +The Hirpi would not be freed from military service and all other State +imposts for merely doing what any set of peasants do yearly for nothing. +Nor would Varro have found it necessary to explain so easy and common +a feat by the use of a drug with which the feet were smeared. +Mannhardt, as Mr. Max Müller says, ventured himself little ‘among +red skins and black skins.’ He read Dr. Tylor, and appreciated +the method of illustrating ancient rites and beliefs from the living +ways of living savages. <a name="citation151c"></a><a href="#footnote151c">{151c}</a> +But, in practice, he mainly confined himself to illustrating ancient +rites and beliefs by survival in modern rural folk-lore. I therefore +supplement Mannhardt’s evidence from European folk-lore by evidence +from savage life, and by a folk-lore case which Mannhardt did not know.</p> +<h3>The Fire-walk</h3> +<p>A modern student is struck by the cool way in which the ancient poets, +geographers, and commentators mention a startling circumstance, the +Fire-walk. The only hint of explanation is the statement that +the drug or juice of herbs preserved the Hirpi from harm. That +theory may be kept in mind, and applied if it is found useful. +Virgil’s theory that the ministrants walk, <i>pietate</i> <i>freti</i>, +corresponds to Mrs. Wesley’s belief, when, after praying, she +‘waded the flames’ to rescue her children from the burning +parsonage at Epworth. The hypothesis of Iamblichus, when he writes +about the ecstatic or ‘possessed’ persons who cannot be +injured by fire, is like that of modern spiritualists—the ‘spirit’ +or ‘dæmon’ preserves them unharmed.</p> +<p>I intentionally omit cases which are vaguely analogous to that of +the Hirpi. In Icelandic sagas, in the <i>Relations</i> of the +old Jesuit missionaries, in the Travels of Pallas and Gmelin, we hear +of medicine-men and Berserks who take liberties with red-hot metal, +live coals, and burning wood. Thus in the Icelandic <i>Flatey</i> +<i>Book</i> (vol. i. p. 425) we read about the fighting evangelist of +Iceland, a story of Thangbrandr and the foreign Berserkir. ‘The +Berserkir said: “I can walk through the burning fire with my bare +feet.” Then a great fire was made, which Thangbrandr hallowed, +and the Berserkir went into it without fear, and burned his feet’—the +Christian spell of Thangbrandr being stronger than the heathen spell +of the Berserkir. What the saga says is not evidence, and some +of the other tales are merely traditional. Others may be explained, +perhaps, by conjuring. The mediæval ordeal by fire may also +be left on one side. In 1826 Lockhart published a translation +of the Church Service for the Ordeal by Fire, a document given, he says, +by Büsching in <i>Die</i> <i>Vorzeit</i> for 1817. The accused +communicates before carrying the red-hot iron bar, or walking on the +red-hot ploughshare. The consecrated wafer is supposed to preserve +him from injury, if he be guiltless. He carries the iron for nine +yards, after which his hands are sealed up in a linen cloth and examined +at the end of three days. ‘If he be found clear of scorch +or scar, glory to God.’ Lockhart calls the service ‘one +of the most extraordinary records of the craft, the audacity, and the +weakness of mankind.’ <a name="citation153"></a><a href="#footnote153">{153}</a></p> +<p>The fraud is more likely to have lain in the pretended failure to +find scorch or scar than in any method of substituting cold for hot +iron, or of preventing the metal from injuring the subject of the ordeal. +The rite did not long satisfy the theologians and jurists of the Middle +Ages. It has been discussed by Lingard in his <i>History</i> <i>of</i> +<i>England</i>, and by Dr. E. B. Tylor in <i>Primitive</i> <i>Culture</i>.</p> +<p>For the purpose of the present inquiry I also omit all the rites +of leaping sportfully, and of driving cattle through light fires. +Of these cases, from the Roman <i>Palilia</i>, or <i>Parilia</i>, downwards, +there is a useful collection in Brand’s <i>Popular</i> <i>Antiquities</i> +under the heading ‘Midsummer Eve.’ One exception must +be made for a passage from Torreblanca’s <i>Demonologia</i> (p. +106). People are said ‘pyras circumire et transilire in +futuri mali averruncatione’—to ‘go round about and +leap over lighted pyres for the purpose of averting future evils,’ +as in Mannhardt’s theory of the Hirpi. This may be connected +with the Bulgarian rite, to be described later, but, as a rule, in all +these instances, the fire is a light one of straw, and no sort of immunity +is claimed by the people who do not walk through, but leap across it.</p> +<p>These kinds of analogous examples, then, it suffices merely to mention. +For the others, in all affairs of this sort, the wide diffusion of a +tale of miracle is easily explained. The fancy craves for miracles, +and the universal mode of inventing a miracle is to deny the working, +on a given occasion, of a law of Nature. Gravitation was suspended, +men floated in air, inanimate bodies became agile, or fire did not burn. +No less natural than the invention of the myth is the attempt to feign +it by conjuring or by the use of some natural secret. But in the +following modern instances the miracle of passing through the fire uninjured +is apparently feigned with considerable skill, or is performed by the +aid of some secret of Nature not known to modern chemistry. The +evidence is decidedly good enough to prove that in Europe, India, and +Polynesia the ancient rite of the Hirpi of Soracte is still a part of +religious or customary ceremony.</p> +<h3>Fijian Fire-walk</h3> +<p>The case which originally drew my attention to this topic is that +given by Mr. Basil Thomson in his <i>South</i> <i>Sea</i> <i>Yarns</i> +(p. 195). Mr. Thomson informs me that he wrote his description +on the day after he witnessed the ceremony, a precaution which left +no room for illusions of memory. Of course, in describing a conjuring +trick, one who is not an expert records, not what actually occurred, +but what he was able to see, and the chances are that he did not see, +and therefore omits, an essential circumstance, while he misstates other +circumstances. I am informed by Mrs. Steel, the author of <i>The</i> +<i>Potter’s</i> <i>Thumb</i> and other stories of Indian life, +that, in watching an Indian conjurer, she generally, or frequently, +detects his method. She says that the conjurer often begins by +whirling rapidly before the eyes of the spectators a small polished +skull of a monkey, and she is inclined to think that the spectators +who look at this are, in some way, more easily deluded. These +facts are mentioned that I may not seem unaware of what can be said +to impugn the accuracy of the descriptions of the Fire Rite, as given +by Mr. Thomson and other witnesses.</p> +<p>Mr. Thomson says that the Wesleyan missionaries have nearly made +a clean sweep of all heathen ceremonial in Fiji. ‘But in +one corner of Fiji, the island of Nbengga, a curious observance of mythological +origin has escaped the general destruction, probably because the worthy +iconoclasts had never heard of it.’ The myth tells how the +ancestor of the clan received the gift of fire-walking from a god, and +the existence of the myth raises a presumption in favour of the antiquity +of the observance.</p> +<p>* * * * *</p> +<p>‘Once every year the <i>masáwe</i>, a dracæna +that grows in profusion on the grassy hillsides of the island, becomes +fit to yield the sugar of which its fibrous root is full. To render +it fit to eat, the roots must be baked among hot stones for four days. +A great pit is dug, and filled with large stones and blazing logs, and +when these have burned down, and the stones are at white heat, the oven +is ready for the <i>masáwe</i>. It is at this stage that +the clan Na Ivilankata, favoured of the gods, is called on to “leap +into the oven” (<i>rikata</i> <i>na</i> <i>lovo</i>), and walk +unharmed upon the hot stones that would scorch and wither the feet of +any but the descendants of the dauntless Tui Nkualita. Twice only +had Europeans been fortunate enough to see the <i>masáwe</i> +cooked, and so marvellous had been the tales they told, and so cynical +the scepticism with which they had been received, that nothing short +of another performance before witnesses and the photographic camera +would have satisfied the average “old hand.”</p> +<p>‘As we steamed up to the chiefs village of Waisoma, a cloud +of blue smoke rolling up among the palms told us that the fire was newly +lighted. We found a shallow pit, nineteen feet wide, dug in the +sandy soil, a stone’s throw from high-water mark, in a small clearing +among the cocoanuts between the beach and the dense forest. The +pit was piled high with great blazing logs and round stones the size +of a man’s head. Mingled with the crackling roar of the +fire were loud reports as splinters flew off from the stones, warning +us to guard our eyes. A number of men were dragging up more logs +and rolling them into the blaze, while, above all, on the very brink +of the fiery pit, stood Jonathan Dambea, directing the proceedings with +an air of noble calm. As the stones would not be hot enough for +four hours, there was ample time to hear the tradition that warrants +the observance of the strange ceremony we were to see.</p> +<p>‘When we were at last summoned, the fire had been burning for +more than four hours. The pit was filled with a white-hot mass +shooting out little tongues of white flame, and throwing out a heat +beside which the scorching sun was a pleasant relief. A number +of men were engaged, with long poles to which a loop of thick vine had +been attached, in noosing the pieces of unburnt wood by twisting the +pole, like a horse’s twitch, until the loop was tight, and dragging +the log out by main force. When the wood was all out there remained +a conical pile of glowing stones in the middle of the pit. Ten +men now drove the butts of green saplings into the base of the pile, +and held the upper end while a stout vine was passed behind the row +of saplings. A dozen men grasped each end of the vine, and with +loud shouts hauled with all their might. The saplings, like the +teeth of an enormous rake, tore through the pile of stones, flattening +them out towards the opposite edge of the pit. The saplings were +then driven in on the other side and the stones raked in the opposite +direction, then sideways, until the bottom of the pit was covered with +an even layer of hot stones. This process had taken fully half +an hour, but any doubt as to the heat of the stones at the end was set +at rest by the tongues of flame that played continually among them. +The cameras were hard at work, and a large crowd of people pressed inwards +towards the pit as the moment drew near. They were all excited +except Jonathan, who preserved, even in the supreme moment, the air +of holy calm that never leaves his face. All eyes are fixed expectant +on the dense bush behind the clearing, whence the Shadrachs, Meshachs +and Abednegos of the Pacific are to emerge. There is a cry of +“<i>Vutu</i>! <i>Vutu</i>!” and forth from the bush, +two and two, march fifteen men, dressed in garlands and fringes. +They tramp straight to the brink of the pit. The leading pair +show something like fear in their faces, but do not pause, perhaps because +the rest would force them to move forward. They step down upon +the stones and continue their march round the pit, planting their feet +squarely and firmly on each stone. The cameras snap, the crowd +surges forward, the bystanders fling in great bundles of green leaves. +But the bundles strike the last man of the procession and cut him off +from his fellows; so he stays where he is, trampling down the leaves +as they are thrown to line the pit, in a dense cloud of steam from the +boiling sap. The rest leap back to his assistance, shouting and +trampling, and the pit turns into the mouth of an Inferno, filled with +dusky frenzied fiends, half seen through the dense volume that rolls +up to heaven and darkens the sunlight. After the leaves, palm-leaf +baskets of the dracæna root are flung to them, more leaves, and +then bystanders and every one join in shovelling earth over all till +the pit is gone, and a smoking mound of fresh earth takes its place. +This will keep hot for four days, and then the <i>masáwe</i> +will be cooked.</p> +<p>‘As the procession had filed up to the pit, by a preconcerted +arrangement with the noble Jonathan, a large stone had been hooked out +of the pit to the feet of one of the party, who poised a pocket-handkerchief +over it, and dropped it lightly upon the stone when the first man leapt +into the oven, and snatched what remained of it up as the last left +the stones. During the fifteen or twenty seconds it lay there +every fold that touched the stone was charred, and the rest of it scorched +yellow. So the stones were not cool. We caught four or five +of the performers as they came out, and closely examined their feet. +They were cool, and showed no trace of scorching, nor were their anklets +of dried tree-fern leaf burnt. This, Jonathan explained, is part +of the miracle; for dried tree-fern is as combustible as tinder, and +there were flames shooting out among the stones. Sceptics had +affirmed that the skin of a Fijian’s foot being a quarter of an +inch thick, he would not feel a burn. Whether this be true or +not of the ball and heel, the instep is covered with skin no thicker +than our own, and we saw the men plant their insteps fairly on the stone.’</p> +<p>* * * * *</p> +<p>Mr. Thomson’s friend, Jonathan, said that young men had been +selected because they would look better in a photograph, and, being +inexperienced, they were afraid. A stranger would share the gift +if he went in with one of the tribe. Some years ago a man fell +and burned his shoulders. ‘Any trick?’ ‘Here +Jonathan’s ample face shrunk smaller, and a shadow passed over +his candid eye.’ Mr. Thomson concludes: ‘Perhaps the +Na Ivilankata clan have no secret, and there is nothing wonderful in +their performance; but, miracle or not, I am very glad I saw it.’ +The handkerchief dropped on the stone is ‘alive to testify to +it.’ Mr. Thomson’s photograph of the scene is ill-developed, +and the fumes of steam somewhat interfere with the effect. A rough +copy is published in <i>Folk</i>-<i>Lore</i> for September, 1895, but +the piece could only be reproduced by a delicate drawing with the brush.</p> +<p>The parallel to the rite of the Hirpi is complete, except that red-hot +stones, not the pyre of pine-embers, is used in Fiji. Mr. Thomson +has heard of a similar ceremony in the Cook group of islands. +As in ancient Italy, so in Fiji, a certain <i>clan</i> have the privilege +of fire-walking. It is far enough from Fiji to Southern India, +as it is far enough from Mount Soracte to Fiji. But in Southern +India the Klings practise the rite of the Hirpi and the Na Ivilankata. +I give my informant’s letter exactly as it reached me, though +it has been published before in <i>Longman’s</i> <i>Magazine</i>:</p> +<h3>Kling Fire-walk</h3> +<p>‘Dear Sir,—Observing from your note in <i>Longman’s</i> +<i>Magazine</i> that you have mislaid my notes <i>re</i> fire-walking, +I herewith repeat them. I have more than once seen it done by +the “Klings,” as the low-caste Tamil-speaking Hindus from +Malabar are called, in the Straits Settlements. On one occasion +I was present at a “fire-walking” held in a large tapioca +plantation in Province Wellesley, before many hundreds of spectators, +all the Hindu coolies from the surrounding estates being mustered. +A trench had been dug about twenty yards long by six feet wide and two +deep. This was piled with faggots and small wood four or five +feet high. This was lighted at midday, and by four p.m. the trench +was a bed of red-hot ashes, the heat from which was so intense that +the men who raked and levelled it with long poles could not stand it +for more than a minute at a time. A few yards from the end of +the trench a large hole had been dug and filled with water. When +all was ready, six men, ordinary coolies, dressed only in their “dholis,” +or loin-cloths, stepped out of the crowd, and, amidst tremendous excitement +and a horrible noise of conches and drums, passed over the burning trench +from end to end, in single file, at a quick walk, plunging one after +the other into the water. Not one of them showed the least sign +of injury. They had undergone some course of preparation by their +priest, not a Brahman, but some kind of devil-doctor or medicine-man, +and, as I understood it, they took on themselves and expiated the sins +of the Kling community for the past year (a big job, if thieving and +lying count; probably not). They are not, however, always so lucky, +for I heard that on the next occasion one of the men fell and was terribly +burnt, thus destroying the whole effect of the ceremony. I do +not think this to be any part of the Brahmanical religion, though the +ordeal by fire as a test of guilt is, or was, in use all over India. +The fact is that the races of Southern India, where the Aryan element +is very small, have kept all their savage customs and devil-worship +under the form of Brahmanism.</p> +<p>‘Another curious feat I saw performed at Labuan Deli, in Sumatra, +on the Chinese New Year. A Chinaman of the coolie class was squatted +stark naked on the roadside, holding on his knees a brass pan the size +of a wash-hand basin, piled a foot high with red-hot charcoal. +The heat reached one’s face at two yards, but if it had been a +tray of ices the man couldn’t have been more unconcerned. +There was a crowd of Chinese round him, all eagerly asking questions, +and a pile of coppers accumulating beside him. A Chinese shopkeeper +told me that the man “told fortunes,” but from the circumstance +of a gambling-house being close by, I concluded that his customers were +getting tips on a system.</p> +<p>‘Hoping these notes may be of service to you,<br /> +‘I remain,<br /> +‘Yours truly,<br /> +‘STEPHEN PONDER.’</p> +<p>* * * * *</p> +<p>In this rite the fire-pit is thrice as long (at a rough estimate) +as that of the Fijians. The fire is of wooden embers, not heated +stones. As in Fiji, a man who falls is burned, clearly suggesting +that the feet and legs, <i>but</i> <i>not</i> <i>the</i> <i>whole</i> +<i>body</i>, are in some way prepared to resist the fire. As we +shall find to be the practice in Bulgaria, the celebrants place their +feet afterwards in water. As in Bulgaria, drums are beaten to +stimulate the fire-walkers. Neither here nor in Fiji are the performers +said to be entranced, like the Bulgarian <i>Nistinares</i>. <a name="citation161"></a><a href="#footnote161">{161}</a> +On the whole, the Kling rite (which the Klings, I am informed, also +practise in the islands whither they are carried as coolies) so closely +resembles the Fijian and the Tongan that one would explain the likeness +by transmission, were the ceremony not almost as like the rite of the +Hirpi. For the Tongan fire-ritual, the source is <i>The</i> <i>Polynesian</i> +<i>Society’s</i> <i>Journal</i>, vol. ii. No. 2. pp. 105-108. +My attention was drawn to this by Mr. Laing, writing from New Zealand. +The article is by Miss Tenira Henry, of Honolulu, a young lady of the +island. The Council of the Society, not having seen the rite, +‘do not guarantee the truth of the story, but willingly publish +it for the sake of the incantation.’ Miss Henry begins with +a description of the <i>ti</i>-plant (<i>Dracæna</i> <i>terminalis</i>), +which ‘requires to be well baked before being eaten.’ +She proceeds thus:</p> +<p>‘The <i>ti</i>-ovens are frequently thirty feet in diameter, +and the large stones, heaped upon small logs of wood, take about twenty-four +hours to get properly heated. Then they are flattened down, by +means of long green poles, and the trunks of a few banana-trees are +stripped up and strewn over them to cause steam. The <i>ti</i>-roots +are then thrown in whole, accompanied by short pieces of <i>apé</i>-<i>root</i> +(<i>Arum</i> <i>costatum</i>), that are not quite so thick as the <i>ti</i>, +but grow to the length of six feet and more. The oven is then +covered over with large leaves and soil, and left so for about three +days, when the <i>ti</i> and the <i>apé</i> are taken out well +cooked, and of a rich, light-brown colour. The <i>apé</i> +prevents the <i>ti</i> from getting too dry in the oven.</p> +<p>‘There is a strange ceremony connected with the Uum Ti (or +<i>ti</i>-oven), that used to be practised by the heathen priests at +Raiatea, but can now be performed by only two individuals (Tupua and +Taero), both descendants of priests. This ceremony consisted in +causing people to walk in procession through the hot oven when flattened +down, before anything had been placed in it, and without any preparation +whatever, bare-footed or shod, and on their emergence not even smelling +of fire. The manner of doing this was told by Tupua, who heads +the procession in the picture, to Monsieur Morné, Lieutenant +de Vaisseau, who also took the photograph <a name="citation163"></a><a href="#footnote163">{163}</a> +of it, about two years ago, at Uturoa, Raiatea, which, being on bad +paper, was copied off by Mr. Barnfield, of Honolulu. All the white +residents of the place, as well as the French officers, were present +to see the ceremony, which is rarely performed nowadays.</p> +<p>‘No one has yet been able to solve the mystery of this surprising +feat, but it is to be hoped that scientists will endeavour to do so +while those men who practise it still live.</p> +<h3>Tupua’s Incantation used in Walking Over the Uum-Ti.—Translation</h3> +<p>‘Hold the leaves of the <i>ti</i>-plant before picking them, +and say: “O hosts of gods! awake, arise! You and I are going +to the <i>ti</i>-oven to-morrow.”</p> +<p>‘If they float in the air, they are gods, but if their feet +touch the ground they are human beings. Then break the <i>ti</i>-leaves +off and look towards the direction of the oven, and say: “O hosts +of gods! go to-night, and to-morrow you and I shall go.” +Then wrap the <i>ti</i>-leaves up in <i>han</i> (<i>Hibiscus</i>) leaves, +and put them to sleep in the <i>marae</i>, where they must remain until +morning, and say in leaving:</p> +<p>‘“Arise! awake! O hosts of gods! Let your +feet take you to the <i>ti</i>-oven; fresh water and salt water come +also. Let the dark earth-worm and the light earth-worm go to the +oven. Let the redness and the shades of fire all go. You +will go; you will go to-night, and to-morrow it will be you and I; we +shall go to the Uum-Ti.” (This is for the night.)</p> +<p>‘When the <i>ti</i>-leaves are brought away, they must be tied +up in a wand and carried straight to the oven, and opened when all are +ready to pass through; then hold the wand forward and say:</p> +<p>‘“O men (spirits) who heated the oven! let it die out! +O dark earth-worms! O light earthworms! fresh water and salt water, +heat of the oven and redness of the oven, hold up the footsteps of the +walkers, and fan the heat of the bed. O cold beings, let us lie +in the midst of the oven! O Great-Woman-who-set-fire-to-the-skies! +hold the fan, and let us go into the oven for a little while!” +Then, when all are ready to walk in, we say:</p> +<blockquote><p>“Holder of the first footstep!<br /> +Holder of the second footstep!<br /> +Holder of the third footstep!<br /> +Holder of the fourth footstep!<br /> +Holder of the fifth footstep!<br /> +Holder of the sixth footstep!<br /> +Holder of the seventh footstep!<br /> +Holder of the eighth footstep!<br /> +Holder of the ninth footstep!<br /> +Holder of the tenth footstep!<br /> +“O Great-Woman-who-set-fire-to-the-skies! all is covered!”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>‘Then everybody walks through without hurt, into the middle +and around the oven, following the leader, with the wand beating from +side to side.</p> +<p>‘The Great-Woman-who-set-fire-to-the-skies was a high-born +woman in olden times, who made herself respected by the oppressive men +when they placed women under so many restrictions. She is said +to have had the lightning at her command, and struck men with it when +they encroached on her rights.</p> +<p>‘All the above is expressed in old Tahitian, and when quickly +spoken is not easily understood by the modern listener. Many of +the words, though found in the dictionary, are now obsolete, and the +arrangement of others is changed. <i>Oe</i> and <i>tana</i> are +never used now in place of the plural <i>outou</i> and <i>tatou</i>; +but in old folk-lore it is the classical style of addressing the gods +in the collective sense. <i>Tahutahu</i> means sorcery, and also +to kindle a fire.’</p> +<p>* * * * *</p> +<p>So far Miss Henry, on this occasion, and the archaic nature of the +hymn, with the reference to a mythical leader of the revolt of women, +deserves the attention of anthropologists, apart from the singular character +of the rite described. In the third number of the <i>Journal</i> +(vol. ii.) the following editorial note is published:</p> +<blockquote><p>‘Miss Tenira Henry authorises us to say that her +sister and her sister’s little child were some of those who joined +in the Uum-Ti ceremony referred to in vol. ii. p. 108, and in the preceding +note, and actually walked over the red-hot stones. The illustration +of the performance given in the last number of the <i>Journal</i>, it +appears, is actually from a photograph taken by Lieutenant Morné, +the original of which Miss Henry has sent us for inspection.—EDITOR.’</p> +</blockquote> +<h3>Corroborative Evidence</h3> +<p>The following corroborative account is given in the <i>Journal</i>, +from a source vaguely described as ‘a pamphlet published in San +Francisco, by Mr. Hastwell:’</p> +<p>‘The natives of Raiatea have some performances so entirely +out of the ordinary course of events as to institute (<i>sic</i>) inquiry +relative to a proper solution.</p> +<p>‘On September 20, 1885, I witnessed the wonderful, and to me +inexplicable, performance of passing through the “fiery furnace.”</p> +<p>‘The furnace that I saw was an excavation of three or four +feet in the ground, in a circular form (sloping upwards), and about +thirty feet across. The excavation was filled with logs and wood, +and then covered with large stones. A fire was built underneath, +and kept burning for a day. When I witnessed it, on the second +day, the flames were pouring up through the interstices of the rocks, +which were heated to a red and white heat. When everything was +in readiness, and the furnace still pouring out its intense heat, the +natives marched up with bare feet to the edge of the furnace, where +they halted for a moment, and after a few passes of the wand made of +the branches of the <i>ti</i>-plant by the leader, who repeated a few +words in the native language, they stepped down on the rocks and walked +leisurely across to the other side, stepping from stone to stone. +This was repeated five times, without any preparation whatever on their +feet, and without injury or discomfort from the heated stones. +There was not even the smell of fire on their garments.’</p> +<p>* * * * *</p> +<p>Mr. N. J. Tone, in the same periodical (ii. 3,193), says that he +arrived just too late to see the same rite at Bukit Mestajam, in Province +Wellesley, Straits Settlements; he did see the pit and the fire, and +examined the naked feet, quite uninjured, of the performers. He +publishes an extract to this effect from his diary. The performers, +I believe, were Klings. Nothing is said to indicate any condition +of trance, or other abnormal state, in the fire-walkers.</p> +<h3>The Fire-walk in Trinidad.</h3> +<p>Mr. Henry E. St. Clair, writing on September 14. 1896, says: ‘In +Trinidad, British West Indies, the rite is performed annually about +this time of the year among the Indian coolie immigrants resident in +the small village of Peru, a mile or so from Port of Spain. I +have personally witnessed the passing, and the description given by +Mr. Ponder tallies with what I saw, except that, so far as I can remember, +the number of those who took part in the rite was greater than six. +In addition, there is this circumstance, which was not mentioned by +that gentleman: each of the “passers” carried one or two +lemons, which they dropped into the fire as they went along. These +lemons were afterwards eagerly scrambled for by the bystanders, who, +so far as I can recollect, attributed a healing influence to them.’</p> +<h3>Bulgarian Fire-walk</h3> +<p>As to the Bulgarian rite, Dr. Schischmanof writes to me:</p> +<blockquote><p>‘I am sure the observance will surprise you; I +am even afraid that you will think it rather fantastic, but you may +rely on my information. The <i>danse</i> <i>de</i> <i>feu</i> +was described long ago in a Bulgarian periodical by one of our best +known writers. What you are about to read only confirms his account. +What I send you is from the <i>Recueil</i> <i>de</i> <i>Folk</i> <i>Lore</i>, +<i>de</i> <i>Littérature</i> <i>et</i> <i>de</i> <i>Science</i> +(vol. vi. p. 224), edited, with my aid and that of my colleague, Mastov, +by the Minister of Public Instruction. How will you explain these +<i>hauts</i> <i>faits</i> <i>de</i> <i>l’extase</i> <i>religieuse</i>? +I cannot imagine! For my part, I think of the self-mutilations +and tortures of Dervishes and Fakirs, and wonder if we have not here +something analogous.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The article in the Bulgarian serial is called ‘The Nistinares.’ +The word is not Bulgarian; possibly it is Romaic.</p> +<p>The scene is in certain villages in Turkey, on the Bulgarian frontier, +and not far from the town of Bourgas, on the Euxine, in the department +of Lozen Grad. The ministrants (<i>Nistinares</i>) have the gift +of fire-walking as a hereditary talent; they are specially <i>just</i>, +and the gift is attributed as to a god in Fiji, in Bulgaria to St. Constantine +and St. Helena.</p> +<blockquote><p>‘These <i>just</i> <i>ones</i> feel a desire to +dance in the flames during the month of May; they are filled at the +same time with some unknown force, which enables them to predict the +future. The best <i>Nistinare</i> is he who can dance longest +in the live flame, and utter the most truthful prophecies.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The <i>Nistinares</i> may be of either sex.</p> +<p>On May 1 the <i>Nistinares</i> hold a kind of religious festival +at the house of one of their number. Salutations are exchanged, +and presents of food and <i>raki</i> are made to the chief <i>Nistinare</i>. +The holy <i>icones</i> of saints are wreathed with flowers, and perfumed +with incense. Arrangements are made for purifying the holy wells +and springs.</p> +<p>On May 21, the day of St. Helena and St. Constantine, the parish +priest says Mass in the grey of dawn. At sunrise all the village +meets in festal array; the youngest <i>Nistinare</i> brings from the +church the <i>icones</i> of the two saints, and drums are carried behind +them in procession. They reach the sacred well in the wood, which +the priest blesses. This is parallel to the priestly benediction +on ‘Fountain Sunday’ of the well beneath the Fairy Tree +at Domremy, where Jeanne d’Arc was accused of meeting the Good +Ladies. <a name="citation169"></a><a href="#footnote169">{169}</a> +Everyone drinks of the water, and there is a sacrifice of rams, ewes, +and oxen. A festival follows, as was the use of Domremy in the +days of the Maid; then all return to the village. The holy drum, +which hangs all the year before St. Helena in the church, is played +upon. A mock combat between the <i>icones</i> which have visited +the various holy wells is held.</p> +<p>Meanwhile, in each village, pyres of dry wood, amounting to thirty, +fifty, or even a hundred cartloads, have been piled up. The wood +is set on fire before the procession goes forth to the hallowing of +the fountains. On returning, the crowd dances a <i>horo</i> (round +dance) about the glowing logs. Heaps of embers (<i>Pineus</i> +<i>acervus</i>) are made, and water is thrown on the ground. The +musicians play the tune called ‘L’Air Nistinar.’ +A <i>Nistinare</i> breaks through the dance, <i>turns</i> <i>blue</i>, +trembles like a leaf, and glares wildly with his eyes. The dance +ends, and everybody goes to the best point of view. Then the wildest +<i>Nistinare</i> seizes the <i>icon</i>, turns it to the crowd, and +with naked feet climbs the pyre of glowing embers. The music plays, +and the <i>Nistinare</i> dances to the tune in the fire. If he +is so disposed he utters prophecies. He dances till his face resumes +its ordinary expression; then he begins to feel the burning; he leaves +the pyre, and places his feet in the mud made by the libations of water +already described. The second <i>Nistinare</i> then dances in +the fire, and so on. The predictions apply to villages and persons; +sometimes sinners are denounced, or repairs of the church are demanded +in this queer parish council. All through the month of May the +<i>Nistinares</i> call out for fire when they hear the <i>Nistinare</i> +music playing. They are very temperate men and women. Except +in May they do not clamour for fire, and cannot dance in it.</p> +<p>In this remarkable case the alleged gift is hereditary, is of saintly +origin, and is only exercised when the <i>Nistinare</i> is excited, +and (apparently) entranced by music and the dance, as is the manner +also of medicine-men among savages. The rite, with its sacrifices +of sheep and oxen, is manifestly of heathen origin. They ‘pass +through the fire’ to St. Constantine, but the observance must +be far older than Bulgarian Christianity. The report says nothing +as to the state of the feet of the <i>Nistinares</i> after the fire-dance. +Medical inspection is desirable, and the photographic camera should +be used to catch a picture of the wild scene. My account is abridged +from the French version of the Bulgarian report sent by Dr. Schischmanof.</p> +<h3>Indian Fire-walk</h3> +<p>Since these lines were written the kindness of Mr. Tawney, librarian +at the India Office, has added to my stock of examples. Thus, +Mr. Stokes printed in the <i>Indian</i> <i>Antiquary</i> (ii. p. 190) +notes of evidence taken at an inquest on a boy of fourteen, who fell +during the fire-walk, was burned, and died on that day. The rite +had been forbidden, but was secretly practised in the village of Periyângridi. +The fire-pit was 27 feet long by 7½ feet broad and a span in +depth. Thirteen persons walked through the hot wood embers, which, +in Mr. Stokes’s opinion (who did not see the performance), ‘would +hardly injure the tough skin of the sole of a labourer’s foot,’ +yet killed a boy. The treading was usually done by men under vows, +perhaps vows made during illness. One, at least, walked ‘because +it is my duty as Pûjâri.’ Another says, ‘I +got down into the fire at the east end, meditating on Draupatî, +walked through to the west, and up the bank.’ Draupatî +is a goddess, wife of the Pândavas. Mr. Stokes reports that, +according to the incredulous, experienced fire-walkers smear their feet +with oil of the green frog. No report is made as to the condition +of their feet when they emerge from the fire.</p> +<p>Another case occurs in Oppert’s work, <i>The</i> <i>Original</i> +<i>Inhabitants</i> <i>of</i> <i>India</i> (p. 480). As usual, +a pit is dug, filled with faggots. When these have burned down +‘a little,’ and ‘while the heat is still unbearable +in the neighbourhood of the ditch, those persons who have made the vow +. . . walk . . . on the embers in the pit, without doing themselves +as a rule much harm.’</p> +<p>Again, in a case where butter is poured over the embers to make a +blaze, ‘one of the tribal priests, in a state of religious afflatus, +walks through the fire. It is said that the sacred fire is harmless, +but some admit that a certain preservative ointment is used by the performers.’ +A chant used at Mirzapur (as in Fiji) is cited. <a name="citation171"></a><a href="#footnote171">{171}</a></p> +<p>In these examples the statements are rather vague. No evidence +is adduced as to the actual effect of the fire on the feet of the ministrants. +We hear casually of ointments which protect the feet, and of the thickness +of the skins of the fire-walkers, and of the unapproachable heat, but +we have nothing exact, no trace of scientific precision. The Government +‘puts down,’ but does not really investigate the rite.</p> +<h3>Psychical Parallels</h3> +<p>I now very briefly, and ‘under all reserves,’ allude +to the only modern parallel in our country with which I am acquainted. +We have seen that Iamblichus includes insensibility to fire among the +privileges of Græco-Egyptian ‘mediums.’ <a name="citation172"></a><a href="#footnote172">{172}</a> +The same gift was claimed by Daniel Dunglas Home, the notorious American +spiritualist. I am well aware that as Eusapia Paladino was detected +in giving a false impression that her hands were held by her neighbours +in the dark, therefore, when Mr. Crookes asserts that he saw Home handle +fire in the light, his testimony on this point can have no weight with +a logical public. Consequently it is not as evidence to the <i>fact</i> +that I cite Mr. Crookes, but for another purpose. Mr. Crookes’s +remarks I heard, and I can produce plenty of living witnesses to the +same experiences with <i>D</i>. <i>D</i>. <i>Home</i>:</p> +<blockquote><p>‘I several times saw the fire test, both at my +own and at other houses. On one occasion he called me to him when +he went to the fire, and told me to watch carefully. He certainly +put his hand in the grate and handled the red-hot coals in a manner +which would have been impossible for me to have imitated without being +severely burnt. I once saw him go to a bright wood fire, and, +taking a large piece of red-hot charcoal, put it in the hollow of one +hand, and, covering it with the other, blow into the extempore furnace +till the coal was white hot, and the flames licked round his fingers. +No sign of burning could be seen then or afterwards on his hands.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>On these occasions Home was, or was understood to be, ‘entranced,’ +like the Bulgarian Nistinares. Among other phenomena, the white +handkerchief on which Home laid a red-hot coal was not scorched, nor, +on analysis, did it show any signs of chemical preparation. Home +could also (like the Fijians) communicate his alleged immunity to others +present; for example, to Mr. S. C. Hall. But it burned and marked +a man I know. Home, entranced, and handling a red-hot coal, passed +it to a gentleman of my acquaintance, whose hand still bears the scar +of the scorching endured in 1867. Immunity was not <i>always</i> +secured by experimenters.</p> +<p>I only mention these circumstances because Mr. Crookes has stated +that he knows no chemical preparation which would avert the ordinary +action of heat. Mr. Clodd (on the authority of Sir B. W. Richardson) +has suggested diluted sulphuric acid (so familiar to Klings, Hirpi, +Tongans, and Fijians). But Mr. Clodd produced no examples of successful +or unsuccessful experiment. <a name="citation173"></a><a href="#footnote173">{173}</a> +The nescience of Mr. Crookes may be taken to cover these valuable properties +of diluted sulphuric acid, unless Mr. Clodd succeeds in an experiment +which, if made on his own person, I would very willingly witness.</p> +<p>Merely for completeness, I mention Dr. Dozous’s statement, +<a name="citation174"></a><a href="#footnote174">{174}</a> that he timed +by his watch Bernadette, the seer of Lourdes, while, for fifteen minutes, +she, in an ecstatic condition, held her hands in the flame of a candle. +He then examined her hands, which were not scorched or in any way affected +by the fire. This is called, at Lourdes, the <i>Miracle</i> <i>du</i> +<i>Cierge</i>.</p> +<p>Here ends my list of examples, in modern and ancient times, of a +rite which deserves, though it probably will not receive, the attention +of science. The widely diffused religious character of the performance +will, perhaps, be admitted as demonstrated. As to the method by +which the results are attained, whether by a chemical preparation, or +by the influence of a certain mental condition, or by thickness of skin, +or whether all the witnesses fable with a singular unanimity (shared +by photographic cameras), I am unable even to guess. On May 21, +in Bulgaria, a scientific observer might come to a conclusion. +At present I think it possible that the Jewish ‘Passing through +the Fire’ may have been a harmless rite.</p> +<h3>Conclusion as to Fire-walk</h3> +<p>In all these cases, and others as to which I have first-hand evidence, +there are decided parallels to the Rite of the Hirpi, and to Biblical +and ecclesiastical miracles. The savage examples are <i>rites</i>, +and appear intended to secure good results in food supplies (Fiji), +or general well-being, perhaps by expiation for sins, as in the Attic +Thargelia. The Bulgarian rite also aims at propitiating general +good luck.</p> +<h3>Psychical Research</h3> +<p>But how is the Fire-walk done? That remains a mystery, and +perhaps no philologist, folk-lorist, anthropologist, or physiologist, +has seriously asked the question. The <i>medicamentum</i> of Varro, +the green frog fat of India, the diluted sulphuric acid of Mr. Clodd, +are guesses in the air, and Mr. Clodd has made no experiment. +The possibility of plunging the hand, unhurt, in molten metal, is easily +accounted for, and is not to the point. In this difficulty Psychical +Research registers, and no more, the well-attested performances of D. +D. Home (entranced, like the Nistinares); the well observed and timed +<i>Miracle</i> <i>du</i> <i>Cierge</i> at Lourdes—Bernadette being +in an ecstatic condition; the Biblical story of Shadrach, Meshach, and +Abednego in the fiery furnace; the researches of Iamblichus; the case +of Madame Shchapoff, carefully reported, <a name="citation175"></a><a href="#footnote175">{175}</a> +and other examples. There is no harm in collecting examples, and +the question remains, are all those rites, from those of Virgil’s +Hirpi to Bulgaria of to-day, based on some actual but obscure and scientifically +neglected fact in nature? At all events, for the Soranus-Feronia +rite philology only supplies her competing etymologies, folk-lore her +modern rural parallels, anthropology her savage examples, psychical +research her ‘cases’ at first-hand. Anthropology had +neglected the collection of these, perhaps because the Fire-walk is +‘impossible.’</p> +<h2>THE ORIGIN OF DEATH</h2> +<h3>Yama</h3> +<p>This excursus on ‘The Fire-walk’ has been introduced, +as an occasion arose, less because of controversy about a neglected +theme than for the purpose of giving something positive in a controversial +treatise. For the same reason I take advantage of Mr. Max Müller’s +remarks on Yama, ‘the first who died,’ to offer a set of +notes on myths of the Origin of Death. Yama, in our author’s +opinion, is ‘the setting sun’ (i. 45; ii. 563). Agni +(Fire) is ‘the first who was born;’ as the other twin, Yama, +he was also the first who died (ii. 568). As ‘the setting +sun he was the first instance of death.’ Kuhn and others, +judging from a passage in the <i>Atharva</i> <i>Veda</i> (xviii. 3, +13), have, however, inferred that Yama ‘was really a human being +and the first of mortals.’ He is described in the <i>Atharva</i> +as ‘the gatherer of men, who died the first of mortals, who went +forward the first to that world.’ In the <i>Atharva</i> +we read of ‘reverence to Yama, to Death, who first approached +the precipice, finding out the path for many.’ ‘The +myth of Yama is perfectly intelligible, if we trace its roots back to +the sun of evening’ (ii. 573). Mr. Max Müller then +proposes on this head ‘to consult the traditions of real <i>Naturvölker’</i> +(savages). The Harvey Islanders speak of dying as ‘following +the sun’s track.’ The Maoris talk of ‘going +down with the sun’ (ii. 574). No more is said here about +savage myths of ‘the first who died.’ I therefore +offer some additions to the two instances in which savages use a poetical +phrase connecting the sun’s decline with man’s death.</p> +<h3>The Origin of Death</h3> +<p>Civilised man in a scientific age would never invent a myth to account +for ‘God’s great ordinance of death.’ He regards +it as a fact, obvious and necessarily universal; but his own children +have not attained to his belief in death. The certainty and universality +of death do not enter into the thoughts of our little ones.</p> +<blockquote><p>For in the thought of immortality<br /> +Do children play about the flowery meads.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Now, there are still many childlike tribes of men who practically +disbelieve in death. To them death is always a surprise and an +accident—an unnecessary, irrelevant intrusion on the living world. +‘Natural deaths are by many tribes regarded as supernatural,’ +says Dr. Tylor. These tribes have no conception of death as the +inevitable, eventual obstruction and cessation of the powers of the +bodily machine; the stopping of the pulses and processes of life by +violence or decay or disease. To persons who regard Death thus, +<i>his</i> intrusion into the world (for Death, of course, is thought +to be a person) stands in great need of explanation. That explanation, +as usual, is given in myths.</p> +<h3>Death, regarded as Unnatural</h3> +<p>But before studying these widely different myths, let us first establish +the fact that death really is regarded as something non-natural and +intrusive. The modern savage readily believes in and accounts +in a scientific way for <i>violent</i> deaths. The spear or club +breaks or crushes a hole in a man, and his soul flies out. But +the deaths he disbelieves in are <i>natural</i> deaths. These +he is obliged to explain as produced by some supernatural cause, generally +the action of malevolent spirits impelled by witches. Thus the +savage holds that, violence apart and the action of witches apart, man +would even now be immortal. ‘There are rude races of Australia +and South America,’ writes Dr. Tylor, <a name="citation178"></a><a href="#footnote178">{178}</a> +‘whose intense belief in witchcraft has led them to declare that +if men were never bewitched, and never killed by violence, <i>they</i> +<i>would</i> <i>never</i> <i>die</i> <i>at</i> <i>all</i>. Like +the Australians, the Africans will inquire of their dead “what +sorcerer slew them by his wicked arts.”’ ‘The +natives,’ says Sir George Grey, speaking of the Australians, ‘do +not believe that there is such a thing as death from natural causes.’ +On the death of an Australian native from disease, a kind of magical +coroner’s inquest is held by the conjurers of the tribe, and the +direction in which the wizard lives who slew the dead man is ascertained +by the movements of worms and insects. The process is described +at full length by Mr. Brough Smyth in his <i>Aborigines</i> <i>of</i> +<i>Victoria</i> (i. 98-102). Turning from Australia to Hindustan, +we find that the Puwarrees (according to Heber’s narrative) attribute +all natural deaths to a supernatural cause—namely, witchcraft. +That is, the Puwarrees do not yet believe in the universality and necessity +of Death. He is an intruder brought by magic arts into our living +world. Again, in his <i>Ethnology</i> <i>of</i> <i>Bengal</i> +(pp. 199, 200), Dalton tells us that the Hos (an aboriginal non-Aryan +race) are of the same opinion as the Puwarrees. ‘They hold +that all disease in men or animals is attributable to one of two causes: +the wrath of some evil spirit or the spell of some witch or sorcerer. +These superstitions are common to all classes of the population of this +province.’ In the New Hebrides disease and death are caused, +as Mr. Codrington found, by <i>tamates</i>, or ghosts. <a name="citation179"></a><a href="#footnote179">{179}</a> +In New Caledonia, according to Erskine, death is the result of witchcraft +practised by members of a hostile tribe, for who would be so wicked +as to bewitch his fellow-tribesman? The Andaman Islanders attribute +all natural deaths to the supernatural influence of <i>e</i> <i>rem</i> +<i>chaugala</i>, or to <i>jurn</i>-<i>win</i>, two spirits of the jungle +and the sea. The death is avenged by the nearest relation of the +deceased, who shoots arrows at the invisible enemy. The negroes +of Central Africa entertain precisely similar ideas about the non-naturalness +of death. Mr. Duff Macdonald, in <i>Africana</i>, writes: ‘Every +man who dies what we call a natural death is really killed by witches.’ +It is a far cry from the Blantyre Mission in Africa to the Eskimo of +the frozen North; but so uniform is human nature in the lower races +that the Eskimo precisely agree, as far as theories of death go, with +the Africans, the aborigines of India, the Andaman Islanders, the Australians, +and the rest. Dr. Rink <a name="citation180a"></a><a href="#footnote180a">{180a}</a> +found that ‘sickness or death coming about in an accidental manner +was always attributed to witchcraft, and it remains a question whether +death on the whole was not originally accounted for as resulting from +magic.’ Père Paul le Jeune, writing from Quebec in +1637, says of the Red Men: ‘Je n’en voy mourir quasi aucun, +qui ne pense estre ensorcelé.’ <a name="citation180b"></a><a href="#footnote180b">{180b}</a> +It is needless to show how these ideas survived into civilisation. +Bishop Jewell, denouncing witches before Queen Elizabeth, was, so far, +mentally on a level with the Eskimo and the Australian. The familiar +and voluminous records of trials for witchcraft, whether at Salem or +at Edinburgh, prove that all abnormal and unwonted deaths and diseases, +in animals or in men, were explained by our ancestors as the results +of supernatural mischief.</p> +<p>It has been made plain (and the proof might be enlarged to any extent) +that the savage does not regard death as ‘God’s great ordinance,’ +universal and inevitable and natural. But, being curious and inquisitive, +he cannot help asking himself, ‘How did this terrible invader +first enter a world where he now appears so often?’ This +is, properly speaking, a scientific question; but the savage answers +it, not by collecting facts and generalising from them, but by inventing +a myth. That is his invariable habit. Does he want to know +why this tree has red berries, why that animal has brown stripes, why +this bird utters its peculiar cry, where fire came from, why a constellation +is grouped in one way or another, why his race of men differs from the +whites—in all these, and in all other intellectual perplexities, +the savage invents a story to solve the problem. Stories about +the Origin of Death are, therefore, among the commonest fruits of the +savage imagination. As those legends have been produced to meet +the same want by persons in a very similar mental condition, it inevitably +follows that they all resemble each other with considerable closeness. +We need not conclude that all the myths we are about to examine came +from a single original source, or were handed about—with flint +arrow-heads, seeds, shells, beads, and weapons—in the course of +savage commerce. Borrowing of this sort may—or, rather, +must—explain many difficulties as to the diffusion of some myths. +But the myths with which we are concerned now, the myths of the Origin +of Death, might easily have been separately developed by simple and +ignorant men seeking to discover an answer to the same problem.</p> +<h3>Why Men are Mortal</h3> +<p>The myths of the Origin of Death fall into a few categories. +In many legends of the lower races men are said to have become subject +to mortality because they infringed some mystic prohibition or <i>taboo</i> +of the sort which is common among untutored peoples. The apparently +untrammelled Polynesian, or Australian, or African, is really the slave +of countless traditions, which forbid him to eat this object or to touch +that, or to speak to such and such a person, or to utter this or that +word. Races in this curious state of ceremonial subjection often +account for death as the punishment imposed for breaking some <i>taboo</i>. +In other cases, death is said to have been caused by a sin of omission, +not of commission. People who have a complicated and minute ritual +(like so many of the lower races) persuade themselves that Death burst +on the world when some passage of the ritual was first omitted, or when +some custom was first infringed. Yet again, Death is fabled to +have first claimed us for his victims in consequence of the erroneous +delivery of a favourable message from some powerful supernatural being, +or because of the failure of some enterprise which would have resulted +in the overthrow of Death, or by virtue of a pact or covenant between +Death and the gods. Thus it will be seen that death is often (though +by no means invariably) the penalty of infringing a command, or of indulging +in a culpable curiosity. But there are cases, as we shall see, +in which death, as a tolerably general law, follows on a mere accident. +Some one is accidentally killed, and this ‘gives Death a lead’ +(as they say in the hunting-field) over the fence which had hitherto +severed him from the world of living men. It is to be observed +in this connection that the first of men who died is usually regarded +as the discoverer of a hitherto ‘unknown country,’ the land +beyond the grave, to which all future men must follow him. Bin +dir Woor, among the Australians, was the first man who suffered death, +and he (like Yama in the Vedic myth) became the Columbus of the new +world of the dead.</p> +<h3>Savage Death-Myths</h3> +<p>Let us now examine in detail a few of the savage stories of the Origin +of Death. That told by the Australians may be regarded with suspicion, +as a refraction from a careless hearing of the narrative in Genesis. +The legend printed by Mr. Brough Smyth <a name="citation183a"></a><a href="#footnote183a">{183a}</a> +was told to Mr. Bulwer by ‘a black fellow far from sharp,’ +and this black fellow may conceivably have distorted what his tribe +had heard from a missionary. This sort of refraction is not uncommon, +and we must always guard ourselves against being deceived by a savage +corruption of a Biblical narrative. Here is the myth, such as +it is:—‘The first created man and woman were told’ +(by whom we do not learn) ‘not to go near a certain tree in which +a bat lived. The bat was not to be disturbed. One day, however, +the woman was gathering firewood, and she went near the tree. +The bat flew away, and after that came Death.’ More evidently +genuine is the following legend of how Death ‘got a lead’ +into the Australian world. ‘The child of the first man was +wounded. If his parents could heal him, Death would never enter +the world. They failed. Death came.’ The wound +in this legend was inflicted by a supernatural being. Here Death +acts on the principle <i>ce</i> <i>n’est</i> <i>que</i> <i>le</i> +<i>premier</i> <i>pas</i> <i>qui</i> <i>coûte</i>, and the <i>premier</i> +<i>pas</i> was made easy for him. We may continue to examine the +stories which account for death as the result of breaking a <i>taboo</i>. +The Ningphos of Bengal say they were originally immortal. <a name="citation183b"></a><a href="#footnote183b">{183b}</a> +They were forbidden to bathe in a certain pool of water. Some +one, greatly daring, bathed, and ever since Ningphos have been subject +to death. The infringement, not of a <i>taboo</i>, but of a custom, +caused death in one of the many Melanesian myths on this subject. +Men and women had been practically deathless because they cast their +old skins at certain intervals; but a grandmother had a favourite grandchild +who failed to recognise her when she appeared as a young woman in her +new skin. With fatal good-nature the grandmother put on her old +skin again, and instantly men lost the art of skin-shifting, and Death +finally seized them. <a name="citation184"></a><a href="#footnote184">{184}</a></p> +<h3>The Greek Myth</h3> +<p>The Greek myth of the Origin of Death is the most important of those +which turn on the breaking of a prohibition. The story has unfortunately +become greatly confused in the various poetical forms which have reached +us. As far as can be ascertained, death was regarded in one early +Greek myth as the punishment of indulgence in forbidden curiosity. +Men appear to have been free from death before the quarrel between Zeus +and Prometheus. In consequence of this quarrel Hephæstus +fashioned a woman out of earth and water, and gave her to Epimetheus, +the brother of the Titan. Prometheus had forbidden his brother +to accept any gift from the gods, but the bride was welcomed nevertheless. +She brought her tabooed coffer: this was opened; and men—who, +according to Hesiod, had hitherto lived exempt from ‘maladies +that bring down Fate’—were overwhelmed with the ‘diseases +that stalk abroad by night and day.’ Now, in Hesiod (<i>Works</i> +<i>and</i> <i>Days</i>, 70-100) there is nothing said about unholy curiosity. +Pandora simply opened her casket and scattered its fatal contents. +But Philodemus assures us that, according to a variant of the myth, +it was Epimetheus who opened the forbidden coffer, whence came Death.</p> +<p>Leaving the myths which turn on the breaking of a <i>taboo</i>, and +reserving for consideration the New Zealand story, in which the Origin +of Death is the neglect of a ritual process, let us look at some African +myths of the Origin of Death. It is to be observed that in these +(as in all the myths of the most backward races) many of the characters +are not gods, but animals.</p> +<p>The Bushman story lacks the beginning. The mother of the little +Hare was lying dead, but we do not know how she came to die. The +Moon then struck the little Hare on the lip, cutting it open, and saying, +‘Cry loudly, for your mother will not return, as <i>I</i> do, +but is quite dead.’ In another version the Moon promises +that the old Hare shall return to life, but the little Hare is sceptical, +and is hit in the mouth as before. The Hottentot myth makes the +Moon send the Hare to men with the message that they will revive as +he (the Moon) does. But the Hare ‘loses his memory as he +runs’ (to quote the French proverb, which may be based on a form +of this very tale), and the messenger brings the tidings that men shall +surely die and never revive. The angry Moon then burns a hole +in the Hare’s mouth. In yet another Hottentot version the +Hare’s failure to deliver the message correctly caused the death +of the Moon’s mother (Bleek, <i>Bushman</i> <i>Folklore</i>). +<a name="citation185"></a><a href="#footnote185">{185}</a> Compare +Sir James Alexander’s <i>Expedition</i>, ii. 250, where the Namaquas +tell this tale. The Fijians say that the Moon wished men to die +and be born again, like herself. The Rat said, ‘No, let +them die, like rats;’ and they do. <a name="citation186"></a><a href="#footnote186">{186}</a></p> +<h3>The Serpent</h3> +<p>In this last variant we have death as the result of a failure or +transgression. Among the more backward natives of South India +(Lewin’s <i>Wild</i> <i>Races</i> <i>of</i> <i>South</i> <i>India</i>) +the serpent is concerned, in a suspicious way, with the Origin of Death. +The following legend might so easily arise from a confused understanding +of the Mohammedan or Biblical narrative that it is of little value for +our purpose. At the same time, even if it is only an adaptation, +it shows the characteristics of the adapting mind:—God had made +the world, trees, and reptiles, and then set to work to make man out +of clay. A serpent came and devoured the still inanimate clay +images while God slept. The serpent still comes and bites us all, +and the end is death. If God never slept, there would be no death. +The snake carries us off while God is asleep. But the oddest part +of this myth remains. Not being able always to keep awake, God +made a dog to drive away the snake by barking. And that is why +dogs always howl when men are at the point of death. Here we have +our own rural superstition about howling dogs twisted into a South Indian +myth of the Origin of Death. The introduction of Death by a pure +accident recurs in a myth of Central Africa reported by Mr. Duff Macdonald. +There was a time when the man blessed by Sancho Panza had not yet ‘invented +sleep.’ A woman it was who came and offered to instruct +two men in the still novel art of sleeping. ‘She held the +nostrils of one, and he never awoke at all,’ and since then the +art of dying has been facile.</p> +<h3>Dualistic Myths</h3> +<p>A not unnatural theory of the Origin of Death is illustrated by a +myth from Pentecost Island and a Red Indian myth. In the legends +of very many races we find the attempt to account for the Origin of +Death and Evil by a simple dualistic myth. There were two brothers +who made things; one made things well, the other made them ill. +In Pentecost Island it was Tagar who made things well, and he appointed +that men should die for five days only, and live again. But the +malevolent Suque caused men ‘to die right out.’ <a name="citation187"></a><a href="#footnote187">{187}</a> +The Red Indian legend of the same character is printed in the <i>Annual</i> +<i>Report</i> <i>of</i> <i>the</i> <i>Bureau</i> <i>of</i> <i>Ethnology</i> +(1879-80), p. 45. The younger of the Cin-au-av brothers, who were +wolves, said, ‘When a man dies, send him back in the morning and +let all his friends rejoice.’ ‘Not so,’ said +the elder; ‘the dead shall return no more.’ So the +younger brother slew the child of the elder, and this was the beginning +of death.</p> +<h3>Economic Myth</h3> +<p>There is another and a very quaint myth of the Origin of Death in +Banks Island. At first, in Banks Island, as elsewhere, men were +immortal. The economical results were just what might have been +expected. Property became concentrated in the hands of the few—that +is, of the first generations—while all the younger people were +practically paupers. To heal the disastrous social malady, Qat +(the maker of things, who was more or less a spider) sent for Mate—that +is, Death. Death lived near a volcanic crater of a mountain, where +there is now a by-way into Hades—or Panoi, as the Melanesians +call it. Death came, and went through the empty forms of a funeral +feast for himself. Tangaro the Fool was sent to watch Mate, and +to see by what way he returned to Hades, that men might avoid that path +in future. Now when Mate fled to his own place, this great fool +Tangaro noticed the path, but forgot which it was, and pointed it out +to men under the impression that it was the road to the <i>upper</i>, +not to the <i>under</i>, world. Ever since that day men have been +constrained to follow Mate’s path to Panoi and the dead. <a name="citation188"></a><a href="#footnote188">{188}</a> +Another myth is somewhat different, but, like this one, attributes death +to the imbecility of Tangaro the Fool.</p> +<h3>Maui and Yama</h3> +<p>The New Zealand myth of the Origin of Death is pretty well known, +as Dr. Tylor has seen in it the remnants of a solar myth, and has given +it a ‘solar’ explanation. It is an audacious thing +to differ from so cautious and learned an anthropologist as Dr. Tylor, +but I venture to give my reasons for dissenting in this case from the +view of the author of <i>Primitive</i> <i>Culture</i> (i. 335). +Maui is the great hero of Maori mythology. He was not precisely +a god, still less was he one of the early elemental gods, yet we can +scarcely regard him as a man. He rather answers to one of the +race of Titans, and especially to Prometheus, the son of a Titan. +Maui was prematurely born, and his mother thought the child would be +no credit to her already numerous and promising family. She therefore +(as native women too often did in the South-Sea Islands) tied him up +in her long tresses and tossed him out to sea. The gales brought +him back to shore: one of his grandparents carried him home, and he +became much the most illustrious and successful of his household. +So far Maui had the luck which so commonly attends the youngest and +least-considered child in folklore and mythology. This feature +in his myth may be a result of the very widespread custom of <i>jüngsten</i> +<i>Recht</i> (Borough English), by which the youngest child is heir +at least of the family hearth. Now, unluckily, at the baptism +of Maui (for a pagan form of baptism is a Maori ceremony) his father +omitted some of the Karakias, or ritual utterances proper to be used +on such occasions. This was the fatal original mistake whence +came man’s liability to death, for hitherto men had been immortal. +So far, what is there ‘solar’ about Maui? Who are +the sun’s brethren?—and Maui had many. How could the +sun catch the sun in a snare, and beat him so as to make him lame? +This was one of Maui’s feats, for he meant to prevent the sun +from running too fast through the sky. Maui brought fire, indeed, +from the under-world, as Prometheus stole it from the upper-world; but +many men and many beasts do as much as the myths of the world, and it +is hard to see how the exploit gives Maui ‘a solar character.’ +Maui invented barbs for hooks, and other appurtenances of early civilisation, +with which the sun has no more to do than with patent safety-matches. +His last feat was to attempt to secure human immortality for ever. +There are various legends on this subject.</p> +<h3>Maui Myths</h3> +<p>Some say Maui noticed that the sun and moon rose again from their +daily death, by virtue of a fountain in Hades (Hine-nui-te-po) where +they bathed. Others say he wished to kill Hine-nui-te-po (conceived +of as a woman) and to carry off her heart. Whatever the reason, +Maui was to be swallowed up in the giant frame of Hades, or Night, and, +if he escaped alive, Death would never have power over men. He +made the desperate adventure, and would have succeeded but for the folly +of one of the birds which accompanied him. This little bird, which +sings at sunset, burst out laughing inopportunely, wakened Hine-nui-te-po, +and she crushed to death Maui and all hopes of earthly immortality. +Had he only come forth alive, men would have been deathless. Now, +except that the bird which laughed sings at sunset, what is there ‘solar’ +in all this? <i>The</i> <i>sun</i> <i>does</i> <i>daily</i> <i>what</i> +<i>Maui</i> <i>failed</i> <i>to</i> <i>do</i>, <a name="citation190a"></a><a href="#footnote190a">{190a}</a> +passes through darkness and death back into light and life. Not +only does the sun daily succeed where Maui failed, but it was his observation +of this fact which encouraged Maui to risk the adventure. If Maui +were the sun, we should all be immortal, for Maui’s ordeal is +daily achieved by the sun. But Dr. Tylor says: <a name="citation190b"></a><a href="#footnote190b">{190b}</a> +‘It is seldom that solar characteristics are more distinctly marked +in the several details of a myth than they are here.’ To +us the characteristics seem to be precisely the reverse of solar. +Throughout the cycle of Maui he is constantly set in direct opposition +to the sun, and the very point of the final legend is that what the +sun could do Maui could not. Literally the one common point between +Maui and the sun is that the little bird, the <i>tiwakawaka</i>, which +sings at the daily death of day, sang at the eternal death of Maui.</p> +<p>Without pausing to consider the Tongan myth of the Origin of Death, +we may go on to investigate the legends of the Aryan races. According +to the <i>Satapatha</i> <i>Brahmana</i>, Death was made, like the gods +and other creatures, by a being named Prajapati. Now of Prajapati, +half was mortal, half was immortal. With his mortal half he feared +Death, and concealed himself from Death in earth and water. Death +said to the gods, ‘What hath become of him who created us?’ +They answered, ‘Fearing thee, hath he entered the earth.’ +The gods and Prajapati now freed themselves from the dominion of Death +by celebrating an enormous number of sacrifices. Death was chagrined +by their escape from the ‘nets and clubs’ which he carries +in the <i>Aitareya</i> <i>Brahmana</i>. ‘As you have escaped +me, so will men also escape,’ he grumbled. The gods appeased +him by the promise that, <i>in</i> <i>the</i> <i>body</i>, no man henceforth +for ever should evade Death. ‘Every one who is to become +immortal shall do so by first parting with his body.’</p> +<h3>Yama</h3> +<p>Among the Aryans of India, as we have already seen, Death has a protomartyr, +Tama, ‘the first of men who reached the river, spying out a path +for many.’ In spying the path Yama corresponds to Tangaro +the Fool, in the myth of the Solomon Islands. But Yama is not +regarded as a maleficent being, like Tangaro. The <i>Rig</i> <i>Veda</i> +(x. 14) speaks of him as ‘King Yama, who departed to the mighty +streams and sought out a road for many;’ and again, the <i>Atharva</i> +<i>Veda</i> names him ‘the first of men who died, and the first +who departed to the celestial world.’ With him the Blessed +Fathers dwell for ever in happiness. Mr. Max Müller, as we +said, takes Yama to be ‘a character suggested by the setting sun’—a +claim which is also put forward, as we have seen, for the Maori hero +Maui. It is Yama, according to the <i>Rig</i> <i>Veda</i>, who +sends the birds—a pigeon is one of his messengers (compare the +White Bird of the Oxenhams)—as warnings of approaching death. +Among the Iranian race, Yima appears to have been the counterpart of +the Vedic Yama. He is now King of the Blessed; originally he was +the first of men over whom Death won his earliest victory.</p> +<h3>Inferences</h3> +<p>That Yama is mixed up with the sun, in the <i>Rig</i> <i>Veda</i>, +seems certain enough. Most phenomena, most gods, shade into each +other in the Vedic hymns. But it is plain that the conception +of a ‘first man who died’ is as common to many races as +it is natural. Death was regarded as unnatural, yet here it is +among us. How did it come? By somebody dying first, and +establishing a bad precedent. But need that somebody have been +originally the sun, as Mr. Max Müller and Dr. Tylor think in the +cases of Yama and Maui? This is a point on which we may remain +in doubt, for death in itself was certain to challenge inquiry among +savage philosophers, and to be explained by a human rather than by a +solar myth. Human, too, rather than a result of ‘disease +of language’ is, probably, the myth of the Fire-stealer.</p> +<h3>The Stealing of Fire</h3> +<p>The world-wide myth explaining how man first became possessed of +fire—namely, by <i>stealing</i> it—might well serve as a +touchstone of the philological and anthropological methods. To +Mr. Max Müller the interest of the story will certainly consist +in discovering connections between Greek and Sanskrit names of fire-gods +and of fire bringing heroes. He will not compare the fire-myths +of other races all over the world, nor will he even try to explain why—in +almost all of these myths we find a thief of fire, a Fire-stealer. +This does not seem satisfactory to the anthropologist, whose first curiosity +is to know why fire is everywhere said to have been obtained for men +by sly theft or ‘flat burglary.’ Of course it is obvious +that a myth found in Australia and America cannot possibly be the result +of disease of Aryan languages not spoken in those two continents. +The myth of fire-stealing must necessarily have some other origin.</p> +<h3>‘Fire Totems’</h3> +<p>Mr. Max Müller, after a treatise on Agni and other fire-gods, +consecrates two pages to ‘Fire Totems.’ ‘If +we are assured that there are some dark points left, and that these +might be illustrated and rendered more intelligible by what are called +fire totems among the Red Indians of North America, let us have as much +light as we can get’ (ii. 804). Alas! I never heard +of fire totems before. Probably some one has been writing about +them, somewhere, unless we owe them to Mr. Max Müller’s own +researches. Of course, he cites no authority for his fire totems. +‘The fire totem, we are told, would thus naturally have become +the god of the Indians.’ ‘We are told’—where, +and by whom? Not a hint is given on the subject, so we must leave +the doctrine of fire totems to its mysterious discoverer. ‘If +others prefer to call Prometheus a fire totem, no one would object, +if only it would help us to a better understanding of Prometheus’ +(ii. 810). Who are the ‘others’ who speak of a Greek +‘culture-hero’ by the impossibly fantastic name of ‘a +fire totem’?</p> +<h3>Prometheus</h3> +<p>Mr. Max Müller ‘follows Kuhn’ in his explanation +of Prometheus, the Fire-stealer, but he does not follow him all the +way. Kuhn tried to account for the myth that Prometheus <i>stole</i> +fire, and Mr. Max Müller does not try. <a name="citation194"></a><a href="#footnote194">{194}</a> +Kuhn connects <i>Prometheus</i> with the Sanskrit <i>pramantha</i>, +the stick used in producing fire by drilling a pointed into a flat piece +of wood. The Greeks, of course, made Prometheus mean ‘foresighted,’ +<i>providens</i>; but let it be granted that the Germans know better. +<i>Pramantha</i> next is associated with the verb <i>mathnami</i>, ‘to +rub <i>or</i> grind;’ and that, again, with Greek μανθανω, +‘to learn.’ We too talk of a student as a ‘grinder,’ +by a coincidence. The root <i>manth</i> likewise means ‘to +rob;’ and we can see in English how a fire-stick, a ‘fire-rubber,’ +might become a ‘fire-robber,’ a stealer of fire. A +somewhat similar confusion in old Aryan languages converted the fire-stick +into a person, the thief of fire, Prometheus; while a Greek misunderstanding +gave to Prometheus (<i>pramantha</i>, ‘fire-stick’) the +meaning of ‘foresighted,’ with the word for prudent foresight, +προμηθεια. This, +roughly stated, is the view of Kuhn. <a name="citation195a"></a><a href="#footnote195a">{195a}</a> +Mr. Max Müller concludes that Prometheus, the producer of fire, +is also the fire-god, a representative of Agni, and necessarily ‘of +the inevitable Dawn’—‘of Agni as the <i>deus</i> <i>matutinus</i>, +a frequent character of the Vedic Agni, the <i>Agni</i> <i>aushasa</i>, +or the daybreak’ (ii. 813).</p> +<p>But Mr. Max Müller does not say one word about Prometheus as +the Fire-stealer. Now, that he <i>stole</i> fire is of the essence +of his myth; and this myth of the original procuring of fire by theft +occurs all over the world. As Australian and American savages +cannot conceivably have derived the myth of fire-stealing from the root +<i>manth</i> and its double sense of stealing and rubbing, there must +be some other explanation. But this fact could not occur to comparative +mythologists who did not compare, probably did not even know, similar +myths wherever found.</p> +<h3>Savage Myths of Fire-stealing</h3> +<p>In <i>La</i> <i>Mythologie</i> (pp. 185-195) I have put together +a small collection of savage myths of the theft of fire. <a name="citation195b"></a><a href="#footnote195b">{195b}</a> +Our text is the line of Hesiod (<i>Theogony</i>, 566), ‘Prometheus +<i>stole</i> the far-seen ray of unwearied fire in a hollow stalk of +fennel.’ The same stalk is still used in the Greek isles +for carrying fire, as it was of old—whence no doubt this feature +of the myth. <a name="citation195c"></a><a href="#footnote195c">{195c}</a> +How did Prometheus steal fire? Some say from the altar of Zeus, +others that he lit his rod at the sun. <a name="citation196a"></a><a href="#footnote196a">{196a}</a> +The Australians have the same fable; fire was obtained by a black fellow +who climbed by a rope to the sun. Again, in Australia fire was +the possession of two women alone. A man induced them to turn +their backs, and stole fire. A very curious version of the myth +occurs in an excellent book by Mrs. Langloh Parker. <a name="citation196b"></a><a href="#footnote196b">{196b}</a> +There was no fire when Rootoolgar, the crane, married Gooner, the kangaroo +rat. Rootoolgar, idly rubbing two sticks together, discovered +the art of fire-making. ‘This we will keep secret,’ +they said, ‘from all the tribes.’ A fire-stick they +carried about in their <i>comebee</i>. The tribes of the Bush +discovered the secret, and the fire-stick was stolen by Reeargar, the +hawk. We shall be told, of course, that the hawk is the lightning, +or the Dawn. But in this savage Jungle Book all the characters +are animals, and Reeargar is no more the Dawn than is the kangaroo rat. +In savage myths animals, not men, play the leading <i>rôles</i>, +and the fire-stealing bird or beast is found among many widely scattered +races. In Normandy the wren is the fire-bringer. <a name="citation196c"></a><a href="#footnote196c">{196c}</a> +A bird brings fire in the Andaman Isles. <a name="citation196d"></a><a href="#footnote196d">{196d}</a> +Among the Ahts a fish owned fire; other beasts stole it. The raven +hero of the Thlinkeets, Yehl, stole fire. Among the Cahrocs two +old women possessed it, and it was stolen by the coyote. Are these +theftuous birds and beasts to be explained as Fire-gods? Probably +not. Will any philologist aver that in Cahroc, Thlinkeet. +Australian, Andaman, and so forth, the word for ‘rub’ resembled +the word for ‘rob,’ and so produced by ‘a disease +of language’ the myth of the Fire-stealer?</p> +<h3>Origin of the Myth of Fire-stealing</h3> +<p>The myth arose from the nature of savage ideas, not from unconscious +puns. Even in a race so civilised as the Homeric Greeks, to make +fire was no easy task. Homer speaks of a man, in a lonely upland +hut, who carefully keeps the embers alive, that he may not have to go +far afield in search of the seed of fire. <a name="citation197"></a><a href="#footnote197">{197}</a> +Obviously he had no ready means of striking a light. Suppose, +then, that an early savage loses his seed of fire. His nearest +neighbours, far enough off, may be hostile. If he wants fire, +as they will not give it, he must <i>steal</i> it, just as he must steal +a wife. People in this condition would readily believe, like the +Australian blacks, that the original discoverers or possessors of a +secret so valuable as fire would not give it away, that others who wanted +it would be obliged to get it by theft. In Greece, in a civilised +race, this very natural old idea survives, though fire is not the possession +of a crane, or of an old woman, but of the gods, and is stolen, not +by a hawk or a coyote, but by Prometheus, the culture-hero and demiurge. +Whether his name ‘Foresighted’ is a mistaken folk-etymology +from the root <i>manth</i>, or not, we have, in the ancient inevitable +idea, that the original patentees of fire would not willingly part with +their treasure, the obvious origin of the myth of the Fire-stealer. +And this theory does not leave the analogous savage myths of fire-stealing +unexplained and out in the cold, as does the philological hypothesis. +<a name="citation198"></a><a href="#footnote198">{198}</a> In +this last instance, as in others, the origin of a world-wide myth is +found, not in a ‘disease of language,’ but in a form of +thought still natural. If a foreign power wants what answers among +us to the exclusive possession of fire, or wants the secret of its rival’s +new explosive, it has to <i>steal</i> it.</p> +<h2>CONCLUSION</h2> +<p>Here ends this ‘Gentle and Joyous Passage of Arms.’ +I showed, first, why anthropological students of mythology, finding +the philological school occupying the ground, were obliged in England +to challenge Mr. Max Müller. I then discoursed of some inconveniences +attending his method in controversy. Next, I gave a practical +example, the affair of Tuna and Daphne. This led to a comparison +of the philological and the anthropological ways of treating the Daphne +myth. The question of our allies then coming up, I stated my reasons +for regarding Prof. Tiele ‘rather as an ally than an adversary,’ +the reason being his own statement. Presently, I replied to Prof. +Tiele’s criticism of my treatment of the myth of Cronos. +After a skirmish on Italian fields, I gave my reasons for disagreeing +with Mr. Max Müller’s view of Mannhardt’s position. +His theory of Demeter Erinnys was contrasted with that of Mr. Max Müller. +Totemism occupied us next, and the views of Mr. Max Müller and +Mr. J. G. Frazer were criticised. Then I defended anthropological +and criticised philological evidence. Our method of universal +comparison was next justified in the matter of Fetishism. The +Riddle Theory of Mr. Max Müller was presently discussed. +Then followed a review of our contending methods in the explanation +of Artemis, of the Fire-walk, of Death Myths, and of the Fire-stealer. +Thus a number of points in mythological interpretation have been tested +on typical examples.</p> +<p>Much more might be said on a book of nearly 900 pages. Many +points might be taken, much praise (were mine worth anything) might +be given; but I have had but one object, to defend the method of anthropology +from a running or dropping fire of criticism which breaks out in many +points all along the line, through <i>Contributions</i> <i>to</i> <i>the</i> +<i>Science</i> <i>of</i> <i>Mythology</i>. If my answer be desultory +and wandering, remember the sporadic sharpshooting of the adversary! +For adversary we must consider Mr. Max Müller, so long as we use +different theories to different results. If I am right, if he +is wrong, in our attempts to untie this old Gordian knot, he loses little +indeed. That fame of his, the most steady and brilliant light +of all which crown the brows of contemporary scholars, is the well-earned +reward, not of mythological lore nor of cunning fence in controversy, +but of wide learning and exquisitely luminous style.</p> +<p>I trust that I have imputed no unfairness, made no charge of conscious +misrepresentation (to accidents of exposition we are all liable), have +struck no foul blow, hazarded no discourteous phrase. If I have +done so, I am thereby, even more than in my smattering of unscholarly +learning, an opponent more absolutely unworthy of the Right Hon. Professor +than I would fain believe myself.</p> +<h2>APPENDIX A: The Fire-walk in Spain</h2> +<p>One study occasionally illustrates another. In examining the +history of the Earl Marischal, who was exiled after the rising of 1715, +I found, in a letter of a correspondent of d’Alembert, that the +Earl met a form of the fire-walk in Spain. There then existed +in the Peninsula a hereditary class of men who, by dint of ‘charms’ +permitted by the Inquisition, could enter fire unharmed. The Earl +Marischal said that he would believe in their powers if he were allowed +first to light the fire, and then to look on. But the fire-walkers +would not gratify him, as not knowing what kind of fire a heretic might +kindle.</p> +<h2>APPENDIX B: Mr. Macdonell on Vedic Mythology</h2> +<p>Too late for use here came <i>Vedic</i> <i>Mythology</i>, from <i>Grundriss</i> +<i>der</i> <i>indo</i>-<i>arischen</i> <i>Philologie</i>, <a name="citation201"></a><a href="#footnote201">{201}</a> +by Mr. A. Macdonell, the representative of the historic house of Lochgarry. +This even a non-scholar can perceive to be a most careful and learned +work. As to philological ‘equations’ between names +of Greek and Vedic gods, Mr. Macdonell writes: ‘Dyaus=Ζευς +is the only one which can be said to be beyond the range of doubt.’ +As to the connection of Prometheus with Sanskrit Pramantha, he says: +‘Προμηθευς +has every appearance of being a purely Greek formation, while the Indian +verb <i>math</i>, to twirl, is found compounded only with <i>nis</i>, +never with <i>pra</i>, to express the art of producing fire by friction.’ +(See above, p. 194.) If Mr. Macdonell is right here, the Greek +myth of the fire-stealer cannot have arisen from ‘a disease of +language.’ But scholars must be left to reconcile this last +typical example of their ceaseless differences in the matter of etymology +of names.</p> +<h2>FOOTNOTES</h2> +<p><a name="footnote0a"></a><a href="#citation0a">{0a}</a> <i>Chips</i>, +iv. 62.</p> +<p><a name="footnote0b"></a><a href="#citation0b">{0b}</a> <i>Chips</i>, +iv. p. xxxv.</p> +<p><a name="footnote0c"></a><a href="#citation0c">{0c}</a> <i>Chips</i>, +iv. pp. vi. vii.</p> +<p><a name="footnote0d"></a><a href="#citation0d">{0d}</a> <i>Ibid</i>. +iv. p. xv.</p> +<p><a name="footnote0e"></a><a href="#citation0e">{0e}</a> <i>Cults</i> +<i>of</i> <i>the</i> <i>Greek</i> <i>States</i>, ii. 435-440.</p> +<p><a name="footnote0f"></a><a href="#citation0f">{0f}</a> <i>Chips</i>, +iv. p. xiv.</p> +<p><a name="footnote0g"></a><a href="#citation0g">{0g}</a> <i>Chips</i>, +iv. p. xiii.</p> +<p><a name="footnote5"></a><a href="#citation5">{5}</a> Suidas, +<i>s</i>.<i>v</i>. τελμισσεις; +he cites Dionysius of Chalcis, B.C. 200.</p> +<p><a name="footnote6a"></a><a href="#citation6a">{6a}</a> See +Goguet, and Millar of Glasgow, and Voltaire.</p> +<p><a name="footnote6b"></a><a href="#citation6b">{6b}</a> Translated +by M. Parmentier.</p> +<p><a name="footnote7"></a><a href="#citation7">{7}</a> See ‘Totemism,’ +<i>infra</i>.</p> +<p><a name="footnote8"></a><a href="#citation8">{8}</a> Longmans.</p> +<p><a name="footnote10a"></a><a href="#citation10a">{10a}</a> +<i>M</i>. <i>R</i>. <i>R</i>. i. 155-160.</p> +<p><a name="footnote10b"></a><a href="#citation10b">{10b}</a> +Tylor’s <i>Prim</i>. <i>Cult</i>. i. 145.</p> +<p><a name="footnote10c"></a><a href="#citation10c">{10c}</a> +Turner’s <i>Samoa</i>, p. 219.</p> +<p><a name="footnote10d"></a><a href="#citation10d">{10d}</a> +Gill’s <i>Myths</i> <i>and</i> <i>Songs</i>, p. 79.</p> +<p><a name="footnote11"></a><a href="#citation11">{11}</a> <i>M</i>. +<i>R</i>. <i>R</i>. ii. 160.</p> +<p><a name="footnote14"></a><a href="#citation14">{14}</a> <i>Metam</i>. +i. 567.</p> +<p><a name="footnote15a"></a><a href="#citation15a">{15a}</a> +Grimm, cited by Liebrecht in <i>Zur</i> <i>Volkskunde</i>, p. 17.</p> +<p><a name="footnote15b"></a><a href="#citation15b">{15b}</a> +<i>Primitive</i> <i>Culture</i>, i. 285.</p> +<p><a name="footnote15c"></a><a href="#citation15c">{15c}</a> +<i>Op</i>. <i>cit</i>. i. 46-81.</p> +<p><a name="footnote16"></a><a href="#citation16">{16}</a> <i>M</i>. +<i>R</i>. <i>R</i>. i. 160.</p> +<p><a name="footnote17"></a><a href="#citation17">{17}</a> Erratum: +This is erroneous. See <i>Contributions</i>, &c., vol. i. +p. 6, where Mr. Max Müller writes, ‘Tuna means eel.’ +This shows why Tuna, <i>i</i>.<i>e</i>. Eel, is the hero. His +connection, as an admirer, with the Moon, perhaps remains obscure.</p> +<p><a name="footnote18"></a><a href="#citation18">{18}</a> Phonetically +there may be ‘no possible objection to the derivation of Απολλων +from a Sanskrit form, *Apa-var-yan, or *Apa-val-yan’ (ii. 692); +but, historically, Greek is not derived from Sanskrit surely!</p> +<p><a name="footnote20a"></a><a href="#citation20a">{20a}</a> +<i>Mythologische</i> <i>Forschungen</i>, p. 275.</p> +<p><a name="footnote20b"></a><a href="#citation20b">{20b}</a> +<i>Baumkultus</i>, p. 297. Berlin: 1875.</p> +<p><a name="footnote21a"></a><a href="#citation21a">{21a}</a> +<i>Antike</i> <i>Wald</i>- <i>und</i> <i>Feldkulte</i>, p. 257. +Referring to <i>Baumkultus</i>, p. 297.</p> +<p><a name="footnote21b"></a><a href="#citation21b">{21b}</a> +<i>Oriental</i> <i>and</i> <i>Linguistic</i> <i>Studies</i>, second +series, p. 160. <i>La</i> <i>Religion</i> <i>Védique</i>, +iii. 293.</p> +<p><a name="footnote22"></a><a href="#citation22">{22}</a> 1, +viii. <i>cf</i>. i. 27.</p> +<p><a name="footnote23"></a><a href="#citation23">{23}</a> <i>Riv</i>. +<i>Crit</i>. <i>Mensile</i>. Geneva, iii. xiv. p. 2.</p> +<p><a name="footnote25a"></a><a href="#citation25a">{25a}</a> +<i>Custom</i> <i>and</i> <i>Myth</i>, p. 3, citing <i>Revue</i> <i>de</i> +<i>l’Hist</i>. <i>des</i> <i>Religions</i>, ii. 136.</p> +<p><a name="footnote25b"></a><a href="#citation25b">{25b}</a> +<i>M</i>. <i>R</i>. <i>R</i>. i. 24.</p> +<p><a name="footnote25c"></a><a href="#citation25c">{25c}</a> +<i>Revue</i> <i>de</i> <i>l’Hist</i>. <i>des</i> <i>Religions</i>, +xii. 256.</p> +<p><a name="footnote26"></a><a href="#citation26">{26}</a> <i>Op</i>. +<i>cit</i>. p. 253.</p> +<p><a name="footnote27"></a><a href="#citation27">{27}</a> <i>Op</i>. +<i>cit</i>. xii. 250.</p> +<p><a name="footnote28a"></a><a href="#citation28a">{28a}</a> +P. 104, <i>infra</i>.</p> +<p><a name="footnote28b"></a><a href="#citation28b">{28b}</a> +<i>Revue</i> <i>de</i> <i>l’Hist</i>. <i>des</i> <i>Religions</i>, +xii. 259.</p> +<p><a name="footnote29a"></a><a href="#citation29a">{29a}</a> +<i>M</i>. <i>R</i>. <i>R</i>. i. 25.</p> +<p><a name="footnote29b"></a><a href="#citation29b">{29b}</a> +<i>Rev</i>. xii. 247.</p> +<p><a name="footnote30"></a><a href="#citation30">{30}</a> <i>M</i>. +<i>R</i>. <i>R</i>. i. 24.</p> +<p><a name="footnote31a"></a><a href="#citation31a">{31a}</a> +<i>Rev</i>. xii. 277.</p> +<p><a name="footnote31b"></a><a href="#citation31b">{31b}</a> +<i>Rev</i>. xii. 264.</p> +<p><a name="footnote31c"></a><a href="#citation31c">{31c}</a> +<i>M</i>. <i>R</i>. <i>R</i>. i. 44, 45.</p> +<p><a name="footnote32a"></a><a href="#citation32a">{32a}</a> +<i>Custom</i> <i>and</i> <i>Myth</i>, p. 51.</p> +<p><a name="footnote32b"></a><a href="#citation32b">{32b}</a> +<i>Rev</i>. xii. 262.</p> +<p><a name="footnote34"></a><a href="#citation34">{34}</a> <i>Odyssey</i>, +book ix.</p> +<p><a name="footnote37"></a><a href="#citation37">{37}</a> <i>C</i>. +<i>and</i> <i>M</i>. p. 56.</p> +<p><a name="footnote42a"></a><a href="#citation42a">{42a}</a> +<i>W</i>. <i>u</i>. <i>F</i>. <i>K</i>. xxiii.</p> +<p><a name="footnote42b"></a><a href="#citation42b">{42b}</a> +<i>M</i>. <i>R</i>. <i>R</i>. i. 23.</p> +<p><a name="footnote42c"></a><a href="#citation42c">{42c}</a> +<i>W</i>. <i>u</i>. <i>F</i>. <i>K</i>. xvii.</p> +<p><a name="footnote46"></a><a href="#citation46">{46}</a> <i>Golden</i> +<i>Bough</i>, 1. ix.</p> +<p><a name="footnote48"></a><a href="#citation48">{48}</a> περιελθειν +δρομω την κωμην. +Dionys. i. 80.</p> +<p><a name="footnote51a"></a><a href="#citation51a">{51a}</a> +Pausanias, viii. 25.</p> +<p><a name="footnote51b"></a><a href="#citation51b">{51b}</a> +<i>Myth</i>. <i>Forsch</i>. p. 244.</p> +<p><a name="footnote51c"></a><a href="#citation51c">{51c}</a> +<i>Iliad</i>, xx. 226.</p> +<p><a name="footnote52"></a><a href="#citation52">{52}</a> <i>Myth</i>. +<i>Forsch</i>, p. 265</p> +<p><a name="footnote54"></a><a href="#citation54">{54}</a> September +19, 1875. <i>Myth</i>. <i>Forsch</i>. xiv.</p> +<p><a name="footnote55"></a><a href="#citation55">{55}</a> For +undeniable solar myths see <i>M</i>. <i>R</i>. <i>R</i>. i. 124-135.</p> +<p><a name="footnote56"></a><a href="#citation56">{56}</a> <i>Op</i>. +<i>cit</i>. p. xx.</p> +<p><a name="footnote60"></a><a href="#citation60">{60}</a> Folk +Lore Society.</p> +<p><a name="footnote61a"></a><a href="#citation61a">{61a}</a> +<i>Von</i> <i>einem</i> <i>der</i> <i>vorzüglichsten</i> <i>Schiriftgelehrten</i>, +<i>Annana</i>, <i>in</i> <i>klassischer</i> <i>Darstellung</i> <i>aufgezeichneten</i> +<i>Märchens</i>, p. 240.</p> +<p><a name="footnote61b"></a><a href="#citation61b">{61b}</a> +<i>Custom</i> <i>and</i> <i>Myth</i>.</p> +<p><a name="footnote62a"></a><a href="#citation62a">{62a}</a> +See Preface to Mrs. Hunt’s translation of Grimm’s <i>Märchen</i>.</p> +<p><a name="footnote62b"></a><a href="#citation62b">{62b}</a> +P. 309.</p> +<p><a name="footnote65"></a><a href="#citation65">{65}</a> x. +17. Cf. Muir, <i>Sanskrit</i> <i>Texts</i>, v. 277.</p> +<p><a name="footnote66"></a><a href="#citation66">{66}</a> As +the Sun’s wife is Dawn, and leaves him at dawn, she is not much +of a bedfellow. As <i>Night</i>, however, she <i>is</i> a bedfellow +of the nocturnal Sun.</p> +<p><a name="footnote71"></a><a href="#citation71">{71}</a> <i>M</i>. +<i>R</i>. <i>R</i>. i. 58-81.</p> +<p><a name="footnote72a"></a><a href="#citation72a">{72a}</a> +See Robertson Smith on ‘Semitic Religion.’</p> +<p><a name="footnote72b"></a><a href="#citation72b">{72b}</a> +See Sayce’s <i>Herodotus</i>, p. 344.</p> +<p><a name="footnote72c"></a><a href="#citation72c">{72c}</a> +See Rhys’ <i>Rhind</i> <i>Lectures</i>; I am not convinced by +the evidence.</p> +<p><a name="footnote73"></a><a href="#citation73">{73}</a> <i>Academy</i>, +September 27, 1884.</p> +<p><a name="footnote74a"></a><a href="#citation74a">{74a}</a> +<i>Anth</i>. <i>Rel</i>. p. 405.</p> +<p><a name="footnote74b"></a><a href="#citation74b">{74b}</a> +Plantagenet, <i>Planta</i> <i>genista</i>.—A. L.</p> +<p><a name="footnote74c"></a><a href="#citation74c">{74c}</a> +See <i>M</i>. <i>R</i>. <i>R</i>. ii. 56, for a criticism of this theory.</p> +<p><a name="footnote76"></a><a href="#citation76">{76}</a> <i>Religion</i> +<i>of</i> <i>the</i> <i>Semites</i>, pp. 208, 209.</p> +<p><a name="footnote78"></a><a href="#citation78">{78}</a> <i>Die</i> +<i>Religionen</i>, p. 12.</p> +<p><a name="footnote79"></a><a href="#citation79">{79}</a> <i>Anth</i>. +<i>Rel</i>. p. 122.</p> +<p><a name="footnote80"></a><a href="#citation80">{80}</a> Dalton.</p> +<p><a name="footnote81a"></a><a href="#citation81a">{81a}</a> +Strabo, xiii. 613. Pausanias, i. 24, 8.</p> +<p><a name="footnote81b"></a><a href="#citation81b">{81b}</a> +Crooke, <i>Introduction</i> <i>to</i> <i>Popular</i> <i>Religion</i> +<i>of</i> <i>North</i> <i>India</i>, p. 380.</p> +<p><a name="footnote82a"></a><a href="#citation82a">{82a}</a> +<i>C</i>. <i>and</i> <i>M</i>. p. 115.</p> +<p><a name="footnote82b"></a><a href="#citation82b">{82b}</a> +<i>Contributions</i>, ii. 687.</p> +<p><a name="footnote83a"></a><a href="#citation83a">{83a}</a> +Evidence in <i>G</i>. <i>B</i>. i. 325, 326.</p> +<p><a name="footnote83b"></a><a href="#citation83b">{83b}</a> +Compare Liebrecht, ‘The Eaten God,’ in <i>Zur</i> <i>Volkskunde</i>, +p. 436.</p> +<p><a name="footnote84a"></a><a href="#citation84a">{84a}</a> +Cf. <i>G</i>. <i>B</i>. ii. 17, for evidence.</p> +<p><a name="footnote84b"></a><a href="#citation84b">{84b}</a> +<i>M</i>. <i>R</i>. <i>R</i>. ii. 232.</p> +<p><a name="footnote84c"></a><a href="#citation84c">{84c}</a> +<i>G</i>. <i>B</i>. ii. 90-113.</p> +<p><a name="footnote84d"></a><a href="#citation84d">{84d}</a> +In <i>Encyclop</i>. <i>Brit</i>. he thinks it ‘very probable.’</p> +<p><a name="footnote85a"></a><a href="#citation85a">{85a}</a> +i. 200.</p> +<p><a name="footnote85b"></a><a href="#citation85b">{85b}</a> +<i>M</i>. <i>R</i>. <i>R</i>. ii. 142, 148-149.</p> +<p><a name="footnote85c"></a><a href="#citation85c">{85c}</a> +<i>R</i>. <i>V</i>. iv. 18, 10.</p> +<p><a name="footnote86"></a><a href="#citation86">{86}</a> <i>G</i>. +<i>B</i>. ii. 44-49.</p> +<p><a name="footnote87"></a><a href="#citation87">{87}</a> <i>G</i>. +<i>B</i>. ii. 33.</p> +<p><a name="footnote88a"></a><a href="#citation88a">{88a}</a> +Plutarch, <i>Quæst</i>. <i>Rom</i>. vi. McLennan, <i>The</i> +<i>Patriarchal</i> <i>Theory</i>, p. 207, note 2.</p> +<p><a name="footnote88b"></a><a href="#citation88b">{88b}</a> +<i>G</i>. <i>B</i>. ii. 337.</p> +<p><a name="footnote89a"></a><a href="#citation89a">{89a}</a> +See <i>G</i>. <i>B</i>. ii. 332-334.</p> +<p><a name="footnote89b"></a><a href="#citation89b">{89b}</a> +<i>Religion</i> <i>of</i> <i>the</i> <i>Semites</i>, p. 118.</p> +<p><a name="footnote90"></a><a href="#citation90">{90}</a> <i>G</i>. +<i>B</i>. ii. 337, 338.</p> +<p><a name="footnote93a"></a><a href="#citation93a">{93a}</a> +<i>Custom</i> <i>and</i> <i>Myth</i>, p. 235.</p> +<p><a name="footnote93b"></a><a href="#citation93b">{93b}</a> +<i>M</i>. <i>R</i>. <i>R</i>. ii. 327.</p> +<p><a name="footnote93c"></a><a href="#citation93c">{93c}</a> +<i>Op</i>. <i>cit</i>. ii. 329.</p> +<p><a name="footnote94"></a><a href="#citation94">{94}</a> <i>Lectures</i> +<i>on</i> <i>Science</i> <i>of</i> <i>Language</i>, Second Series, p. +41.</p> +<p><a name="footnote95"></a><a href="#citation95">{95}</a> <i>M</i>. +<i>R</i>. <i>R</i>. ii. 336.</p> +<p><a name="footnote96"></a><a href="#citation96">{96}</a> <i>Anthropological</i> +<i>Religion</i>.</p> +<p><a name="footnote97a"></a><a href="#citation97a">{97a}</a> +<i>M</i>. <i>R</i>. <i>R</i>. i. 171-173.</p> +<p><a name="footnote97b"></a><a href="#citation97b">{97b}</a> +<i>Ibid</i>. i. 172.</p> +<p><a name="footnote97c"></a><a href="#citation97c">{97c}</a> +<i>Anth</i>. <i>Rel</i>. p. 180.</p> +<p><a name="footnote100"></a><a href="#citation100">{100}</a> +‘Totemism,’ <i>Encyclop</i>. <i>Brit</i>.</p> +<p><a name="footnote101a"></a><a href="#citation101a">{101a}</a> +<i>M</i>. <i>R</i>. <i>R</i>. ii. 333.</p> +<p><a name="footnote101b"></a><a href="#citation101b">{101b}</a> +<i>Ibid</i>. ii. 335.</p> +<p><a name="footnote103"></a><a href="#citation103">{103}</a> +<i>M</i>. <i>R</i>.. <i>R</i>.. i. 96, 127; ii. 22, 336.</p> +<p><a name="footnote106a"></a><a href="#citation106a">{106a}</a> +<i>Greek</i> <i>Etym</i>. Engl. transl. i. 147.</p> +<p><a name="footnote106b"></a><a href="#citation106b">{106b}</a> +<i>Sprachvergleichung</i> <i>und</i> <i>Urgeschichte</i>, p. 431.</p> +<p><a name="footnote109"></a><a href="#citation109">{109}</a> +<i>Gr</i>. <i>Etym</i>. i. 150.</p> +<p><a name="footnote110"></a><a href="#citation110">{110}</a> +<i>M</i>. <i>R</i>. <i>R</i>. ii. 142.</p> +<p><a name="footnote111a"></a><a href="#citation111a">{111a}</a> +ii. 210. <i>Cf</i>. Oldenberg in <i>Deutsche</i> <i>Rundschau</i>, +1895, p. 205.</p> +<p><a name="footnote111b"></a><a href="#citation111b">{111b}</a> +<i>R</i>. <i>V</i>. iv. 18, 10.</p> +<p><a name="footnote114"></a><a href="#citation114">{114}</a> +<i>Aglaophamus</i>, i. 700.</p> +<p><a name="footnote115"></a><a href="#citation115">{115}</a> +<i>Custom</i> <i>and</i> <i>Myth</i>, i. 29-44. <i>M</i>. <i>R</i>. +<i>R</i>. ii. 260-273.</p> +<p><a name="footnote116"></a><a href="#citation116">{116}</a> +<i>Custom</i> <i>and</i> <i>Myth</i>, pp. 212-242.</p> +<p><a name="footnote117a"></a><a href="#citation117a">{117a}</a> +<i>Culte</i> <i>des</i> <i>Fétiches</i>, 1760.</p> +<p><a name="footnote117b"></a><a href="#citation117b">{117b}</a> +Codrington, <i>Journal</i> <i>Anthrop</i>. <i>Inst</i>., Feb. 1881.</p> +<p><a name="footnote118a"></a><a href="#citation118a">{118a}</a> +<i>C</i>. <i>and</i> <i>M</i>. p. 230, note.</p> +<p><a name="footnote118b"></a><a href="#citation118b">{118b}</a> +Rochas, <i>Les</i> <i>Forces</i> <i>non</i> <i>définies</i>, +1888, pp. 340-357, 411, 626.</p> +<p><a name="footnote118c"></a><a href="#citation118c">{118c}</a> +<i>Revue</i> <i>Bleue</i>, 1890, p. 367.</p> +<p><a name="footnote118d"></a><a href="#citation118d">{118d}</a> +De Brosses, p. 16.</p> +<p><a name="footnote120a"></a><a href="#citation120a">{120a}</a> +<i>C</i>. <i>and</i> <i>M</i>. p. 214.</p> +<p><a name="footnote120b"></a><a href="#citation120b">{120b}</a> +<i>M</i>. <i>R</i>. <i>R</i>. i. 327.</p> +<p><a name="footnote120c"></a><a href="#citation120c">{120c}</a> +<i>Lectures</i> <i>on</i> <i>the</i> <i>Science</i> <i>of</i> <i>Language</i>, +2nd series, p. 41.</p> +<p><a name="footnote121"></a><a href="#citation121">{121}</a> +<i>M</i>. <i>R</i>. <i>R</i>. ii. 327 and 329.</p> +<p><a name="footnote124"></a><a href="#citation124">{124}</a> +<i>M</i>. <i>R</i>. <i>R</i>. ii. 324.</p> +<p><a name="footnote125a"></a><a href="#citation125a">{125a}</a> +Paris: <i>Œuvres</i>, 1758, iii. 270.</p> +<p><a name="footnote125b"></a><a href="#citation125b">{125b}</a> +<i>M</i>. <i>R</i>. <i>R</i>. ii. 324.</p> +<p><a name="footnote126"></a><a href="#citation126">{126}</a> +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. Tylor.</p> +<p><a name="footnote135"></a><a href="#citation135">{135}</a> +Meyer, 1846, <i>apud</i> Brough Smyth, <i>Aborigines</i> <i>of</i> <i>Victoria</i>, +i. 432.</p> +<p><a name="footnote138"></a><a href="#citation138">{138}</a> +My italics.</p> +<p><a name="footnote139a"></a><a href="#citation139a">{139a}</a> +<i>M</i>. <i>R</i>. <i>R</i>. ii. 208-221.</p> +<p><a name="footnote139b"></a><a href="#citation139b">{139b}</a> +<i>Ibid</i>. ii. 209.</p> +<p><a name="footnote140"></a><a href="#citation140">{140}</a> +<i>M</i>. <i>R</i>. <i>R</i>. ii. 218.</p> +<p><a name="footnote141a"></a><a href="#citation141a">{141a}</a> +<i>De</i> <i>Dianæ</i> <i>Antiquissima</i> <i>apud</i> <i>Græcos</i> +<i>Natura</i>, p. 76. Vratislaw, 1881.</p> +<p><a name="footnote141b"></a><a href="#citation141b">{141b}</a> +<i>De</i> <i>Diane</i> <i>Brauron</i>, p. 33. Compare, for all +the learning, Mr. Farnell, in <i>Cults</i> <i>of</i> <i>the</i> <i>Greek</i> +<i>States</i>.</p> +<p><a name="footnote142a"></a><a href="#citation142a">{142a}</a> +<i>M</i>. <i>R</i>. <i>R</i>. i. x.</p> +<p><a name="footnote142b"></a><a href="#citation142b">{142b}</a> +<i>Life</i> <i>in</i> <i>California</i>, pp. 241, 303.</p> +<p><a name="footnote142c"></a><a href="#citation142c">{142c}</a> +<i>Religion</i> <i>of</i> <i>the</i> <i>Semites</i>, p. 274.</p> +<p><a name="footnote142d"></a><a href="#citation142d">{142d}</a> +See also Mr. Frazer, <i>Golden</i> <i>Bough</i>, ii. 90-94; and Robertson +Smith, <i>op</i>. <i>cit</i>. pp. 416-418.</p> +<p><a name="footnote142e"></a><a href="#citation142e">{142e}</a> +Apostolius, viii. 19; vii. 10.</p> +<p><a name="footnote143a"></a><a href="#citation143a">{143a}</a> +<i>Melanesians</i>, p. 32.</p> +<p><a name="footnote143b"></a><a href="#citation143b">{143b}</a> +<i>Samoa</i>, p. 17.</p> +<p><a name="footnote143c"></a><a href="#citation143c">{143c}</a> +<i>M</i>. <i>R</i>. <i>R</i>. ii. 33.</p> +<p><a name="footnote143d"></a><a href="#citation143d">{143d}</a> +See also Frazer, <i>Golden</i> <i>Bough</i>, ii. 92.</p> +<p><a name="footnote143e"></a><a href="#citation143e">{143e}</a> +<i>M</i>. <i>R</i>. <i>R</i>. ii. 208.</p> +<p><a name="footnote144a"></a><a href="#citation144a">{144a}</a> +<i>M</i>. <i>R</i>. <i>R</i>. ii. 209.</p> +<p><a name="footnote144b"></a><a href="#citation144b">{144b}</a> +<i>Custom</i> <i>and</i> <i>Myth</i>, ‘Star Myths.’</p> +<p><a name="footnote148a"></a><a href="#citation148a">{148a}</a> +L. Preller, <i>Röm</i>. <i>Myth</i>. p. 239, gives etymologies.</p> +<p><a name="footnote148b"></a><a href="#citation148b">{148b}</a> +<i>Æn</i>. xi. 785.</p> +<p><a name="footnote149a"></a><a href="#citation149a">{149a}</a> +<i>A</i>. <i>W</i>. <i>F</i>. p. 328.</p> +<p><a name="footnote149b"></a><a href="#citation149b">{149b}</a> +<i>Dionys</i>. <i>Halic</i>. iii. 32.</p> +<p><a name="footnote149c"></a><a href="#citation149c">{149c}</a> +<i>Hist</i>. <i>Nat</i>. vii. 2.</p> +<p><a name="footnote149d"></a><a href="#citation149d">{149d}</a> +<i>Æn</i>. xi. 784.</p> +<p><a name="footnote149e"></a><a href="#citation149e">{149e}</a> +<i>Æn</i>. xi. 787.</p> +<p><a name="footnote150a"></a><a href="#citation150a">{150a}</a> +Serv. <i>Æn</i>. vii. 800.</p> +<p><a name="footnote150b"></a><a href="#citation150b">{150b}</a> +Authorities in <i>A</i>. <i>F</i>. <i>W</i>. <i>K</i>. p. 325.</p> +<p><a name="footnote151a"></a><a href="#citation151a">{151a}</a> +<i>Herabkunft</i>, p. 30.</p> +<p><a name="footnote151b"></a><a href="#citation151b">{151b}</a> +Pausanias, viii. 385.</p> +<p><a name="footnote151c"></a><a href="#citation151c">{151c}</a> +<i>A</i>. <i>W</i>. <i>F</i>. <i>K</i>. xxii. xxiii.</p> +<p><a name="footnote153"></a><a href="#citation153">{153}</a> +<i>Janus</i>, pp. 44-49.</p> +<p><a name="footnote161"></a><a href="#citation161">{161}</a> +Home, the medium, was, or affected to be, entranced in his fire tricks, +as was Bernadette, at Lourdes, in the <i>Miracle</i> <i>du</i> <i>Cierge</i>.</p> +<p><a name="footnote163"></a><a href="#citation163">{163}</a> +The photograph referred to is evidently taken from a sketch by hand, +and is not therefore a photograph from life.—EDITOR. The +original photograph was hereon sent to the editor and acknowledged by +him.—A. L.</p> +<p><a name="footnote169"></a><a href="#citation169">{169}</a> +<i>Procès</i>, Quicherat, ii. 396, 397</p> +<p><a name="footnote171"></a><a href="#citation171">{171}</a> +<i>Introduction</i> <i>to</i> <i>Popular</i> <i>Religion</i> <i>and</i> +<i>Folk</i>-<i>Lore</i> <i>in</i> <i>Northern</i> <i>India</i>, by W. +Crookes, B.A., p. 10.</p> +<p><a name="footnote172"></a><a href="#citation172">{172}</a> +Iamblichus, <i>De</i> <i>Myst</i>. iii. 4.</p> +<p><a name="footnote173"></a><a href="#citation173">{173}</a> +<i>Folk</i>-<i>Lore</i>, September 1895.</p> +<p><a name="footnote174"></a><a href="#citation174">{174}</a> +Quoted by Dr. Boissarie in his book, <i>Lourdes</i>, p. 49, from a book +by Dr. Dozous, now rare. Thanks to information from Dr. Boissarie, +I have procured the book by Dr. Dozous, an eye-witness of the miracle, +and have verified the quotation.</p> +<p><a name="footnote175"></a><a href="#citation175">{175}</a> +<i>Predvestniki</i> <i>spiritizma</i> <i>za</i> <i>posleanie</i> 250 +<i>lyet</i>. A. M. Aksakoff, St. Petersburg, 1895. See Mr. +Leaf’s review, <i>Proceedings</i> <i>S</i>. <i>P</i>. <i>R</i>. +xii. 329.</p> +<p><a name="footnote178"></a><a href="#citation178">{178}</a> +<i>Prim</i>. <i>Cult</i>. i. 138.</p> +<p><a name="footnote179"></a><a href="#citation179">{179}</a> +<i>Journal</i> <i>of</i> <i>Anthrop</i>. <i>Institute</i>, x. iii.</p> +<p><a name="footnote180a"></a><a href="#citation180a">{180a}</a> +<i>Tales</i> <i>and</i> <i>Traditions</i> <i>of</i> <i>the</i> <i>Eskimo</i>, +p. 42.</p> +<p><a name="footnote180b"></a><a href="#citation180b">{180b}</a> +<i>Relations</i>, 1637, p. 49.</p> +<p><a name="footnote183a"></a><a href="#citation183a">{183a}</a> +<i>Abor</i>. <i>of</i> <i>Victoria</i>, i. 429.</p> +<p><a name="footnote183b"></a><a href="#citation183b">{183b}</a> +Dalton, <i>op</i>. <i>cit</i>.</p> +<p><a name="footnote184"></a><a href="#citation184">{184}</a> +Codrington, <i>Journal</i> <i>Anthrop</i>. <i>Institute</i>, x. iii. +For America, compare <i>Relations</i> <i>de</i> <i>la</i> <i>Nouvelle</i> +<i>France</i>, 1674, p. 13.</p> +<p><a name="footnote185"></a><a href="#citation185">{185}</a> +The connection between the Moon and the Hare is also found in Sanskrit, +in Mexican, in some of the South Sea Islands, and in German and Buddhist +folklore. Probably what we call ‘the Man in the Moon’ +seemed very like a hare to various races, roused their curiosity, and +provoked explanations in the shape of myths.</p> +<p><a name="footnote186"></a><a href="#citation186">{186}</a> +Hahn, <i>Tsuni</i>-<i>Goam</i>, p. 150.</p> +<p><a name="footnote187"></a><a href="#citation187">{187}</a> +Codrington, <i>op</i>. <i>cit</i>, p. 304.</p> +<p><a name="footnote188"></a><a href="#citation188">{188}</a> +Codrington, <i>op</i>. <i>cit</i>.</p> +<p><a name="footnote190a"></a><a href="#citation190a">{190a}</a> +Bastian, <i>Heilige</i> <i>Sage</i>.</p> +<p><a name="footnote190b"></a><a href="#citation190b">{190b}</a> +<i>Primitive</i> <i>Culture</i>, i. 336.</p> +<p><a name="footnote194"></a><a href="#citation194">{194}</a> +Kuhn, <i>Die</i> <i>Herabkunft</i> <i>der</i> <i>Feuers</i> <i>und</i> +<i>der</i> <i>Göttertranks</i>. Berlin, 1859.</p> +<p><a name="footnote195a"></a><a href="#citation195a">{195a}</a> +<i>Herabkunft</i>, pp. 16, 24.</p> +<p><a name="footnote195b"></a><a href="#citation195b">{195b}</a> +Dupret, Paris, 1886. Translation by M. Parmentier.</p> +<p><a name="footnote195c"></a><a href="#citation195c">{195c}</a> +Pliny, <i>Hist</i>. <i>Nat</i>. xiii. 22. Bent. <i>Cyclades</i>.</p> +<p><a name="footnote196a"></a><a href="#citation196a">{196a}</a> +Servius ad Virg., <i>Eclogue</i> vi. 42.</p> +<p><a name="footnote196b"></a><a href="#citation196b">{196b}</a> +<i>Australian</i> <i>Legendary</i> <i>Tales</i>. Nutt: London, +1897. Mrs. Parker knows Australian dialects, and gives one story +in the original. Her tribes live on the Narran River, in New South +Wales.</p> +<p><a name="footnote196c"></a><a href="#citation196c">{196c}</a> +Bosquet, <i>La</i> <i>Normandie</i> <i>Merveilleuse</i>. Paris, +1845.</p> +<p><a name="footnote196d"></a><a href="#citation196d">{196d}</a> +<i>Journal</i> <i>Anthrop</i>. <i>Institute</i>, November, 1884.</p> +<p><a name="footnote197"></a><a href="#citation197">{197}</a> +<i>Odyssey</i>, v. 488-493.</p> +<p><a name="footnote198"></a><a href="#citation198">{198}</a> +References for savage myths of the Fire-stealer will be found—for +the Ahts, in Sproat; for the tribes of the Pacific coast, in Bancroft; +for Australians in Brough Smyth’s <i>Aborigines</i> <i>of</i> +<i>Victoria</i>.</p> +<p><a name="footnote201"></a><a href="#citation201">{201}</a> +Trübner, Strasburg, 1897.</p> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MODERN MYTHOLOGY***</p> +<pre> + + +***** This file should be named 14576-h.htm or 14576-h.zip****** + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/4/5/7/14576 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Modern Mythology + +Author: Andrew Lang + +Release Date: January 3, 2005 [eBook #14576] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MODERN MYTHOLOGY*** + + + + + +Transcribed from the 1897 Longmans, Green, and Co. edition by David +Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk + + + + + +MODERN MYTHOLOGY + + +DEDICATION + + +Dedicated to the memory of John Fergus McLennan. + + + + +INTRODUCTION + + +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 Muller'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 Muller did not state their general +theory, as he understands it, fully and once for all. Adversaries rarely +succeed in quite understanding each other; but had Mr. Max Muller made +such a statement, we could have cleared up anything in our position which +might seem to him obscure. + +Our system is but one aspect of the theory of evolution, or is but the +application 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 Institutions has a similar +method. He finds his relics of the uncivilised past in agricultural +usages, in archaic methods of allotment of land, in odd marriage customs, +things rudimentary--fossil relics, as it were, of an early social and +political condition. The archaeologist 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 to these things, +so out of keeping with civilisation, we recognise in the creeds and rites +of the lower races, even of cannibals; but _there_ the creeds and rites +are _not_ incongruous with their environment of knowledge and culture. +There they are as natural and inevitable as the flint-headed spear or +marriage by capture. We argue, therefore, that religions and mythical +faiths and rituals which, among Greeks and Indians, are inexplicably +incongruous have lived 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 Muller had stated it in his own luminous way, if he wished to +oppose us, and had shown us where 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 it. 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 Muller really never conies to grips with his opponents, and +his large volumes shine rather in erudition and style than in method and +system. Anyone who attempts a reply must necessarily follow Mr. Max +Muller up and down, collecting his scattered remarks on this or that +point at 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 Muller'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 Muller's Chips from a German Workshop, vol. iv. (Longmans, 1895), +than in his two recent volumes. The general problem is this: Has +language--especially language in a state of 'disease,' been the great +source of the mythology of the world? Or does mythology, on the whole, +represent the survival of an old stage of thought--not caused by +language--from which civilised men have slowly emancipated themselves? +Mr. Max Muller is of the former, anthropologists are of the latter, +opinion. Both, of course, agree that myths are a product of thought, of +a kind of thought almost extinct in civilised races; but Mr. Max Muller +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 myth, as of fairy tale, we agree, is the conception of the +things in the world as all alike animated, personal, capable of endless +interchanges of form. Men may become beasts; beasts may change into men; +gods may appear as human 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 mental condition, this early sort of false +metaphysics, come into existence? We have no direct historical +information on the subject. If I were obliged to offer an hypothesis, it +would be that early men, conscious of personality, will, and +life--conscious that force, when exerted by themselves, followed on a +determination of will within them--extended that explanation to all the +exhibitions of force which they beheld without them. Rivers run (early +man thought), winds blow, fire burns, trees wave, as a result of their +own will, the will of personal conscious entities. Such vitality, and +even power of motion, early man attributed even to inorganic matter, as +rocks and stones. All these things were beings, like man himself. This +does not appear to me an unnatural kind of nascent, half-conscious +metaphysics. 'Man never knows how much he anthropomorphises.' He +extended the only explanation of his own action which consciousness +yielded to him, he extended it to explain every other sort of action in +the sensible world. Early Greek philosophy recognised the stars as +living bodies; all things had once 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 therefore 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 distributed +personality which is the basis of mythology. + +But Mr. Max Muller 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. 'Roots were +all, or nearly all, 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; _we_ 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 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 gender-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 Muller takes the opposite view. Man did not call lifeless things +by names denoting sex because he regarded them as persons; he came to +regard them as persons because he had already given them names connoting +sex. And why had he done that? This is what Mr. Max Muller 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.' +{0a} + +It is curious that, in proof apparently of this, Mr. Max Muller cites a +passage from the Printer's 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.' + +The Printer's Register states our theory in its own words. First came +the childlike and savage belief in universal personality. Thence arose +the genders, masculine and feminine, in early languages. These ideas are +the precise reverse of Mr. Max Muller's ideas. In his opinion, genders +in language caused the belief in the universal personality even of +inanimate things. The Printer's Register holds that the belief in +universal personality, on the other hand, caused the genders. Yet for +thirty years, since 1868, Mr. Max Muller has been citing his direct +adversary, in the Printer's 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 Muller holds that, because man used +gender-terminations, therefore he thought all things animated, and so he +became mythopoeic. In the passage cited, Mr. Max Muller does not say +_why_ 'in ancient languages every one of these words had _necessarily_ +terminations expressive of gender.' He merely quotes the hypothesis of +the Printer's 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 +cannot find the reference--Mr. Max Muller seems to admit that +personalising thought caused gender-terminations, but these later +'reacted' on thought, an hypothesis which multiplies causes praeter +necessitatem. + +Here, then, at the very threshold of the science of mythology we find Mr. +Max Muller at once maintaining that a feature of language, +gender-terminations, caused the mythopoeic state of thought, and quoting +with approval the statement that the mythopoeic state of thought caused +gender-terminations. + +Mr. Max Muller's whole system of mythology is based on reasoning +analogous to this example. His mot d'ordre, 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 +misconceptions of the meaning of old words in his own language, 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 speech, and a score +of others, come to have precisely the same malady? + +Mr. Max Muller alludes to a Maori parallel to the myth of Cronos. {0b} +'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 myth occurs in two remote and +absolutely unconnected languages, a theory of disease of language cannot +turn the wards of the rusty locks. The myth is, in part at least, a +nature-myth--an attempt to account for the severance of Heaven and Earth +(once united) by telling a story in which natural phenomena are animated +and personal. A disease of language has nothing to do with this myth. It +is cited as a proof against the theory of disease of language. + +The truth is, that while languages 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 we now +study myths 'in the unrestrained utterances of the people,' either of +savage tribes or of the European Folk, the unprogressive peasant class. +The former, and to some extent the latter, still live in the mythopoeic +state of mind--regarding bees, for instance, as persons who must be told +of a death in the family. Their myths are still not wholly out of +concord with their habitual view of a world in which an old woman may +become a hare. As soon as learned Jesuits like Pere Lafitau began to +understand their savage flocks, they said, 'These men are living in +Ovid's Metamorphoses.' They found mythology in situ! Hence mythologists +now study mythology 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 Muller says, {0d} 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 siccus, but in situ. Mannhardt, though he +appreciated 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 in situ, in 'the unrestrained utterances of +the people,' Mr. Max Muller 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, Mannhardt, 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, Mannhardt, Islay, and the rest--mythology in situ. We +compare it with the dry mythologic blossoms of the classical hortus +siccus, and with Greek ritual and temple legend, and with Marchen 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 gather but few facts 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 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 inevitable 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 Muller's +reply to me 'by name.' Since Myth, Ritual, and Religion (now out of +print, but accessible in the French of M. Marillier) was published, 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 Cults of the Greek States, by Mr. Jevons in his +Introduction to the History of Religion, by Miss Harrison 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 {0e} with the +section on her in this volume. + +Mr. Max Muller observes that 'Mannhardt's mythological 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. {0f} Mannhardt in his second +period was indeed chiefly concerned with myths connected, as he held, +with agriculture and with tree-worship. Mr. Max Muller, 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 comparative mythology were devoted exclusively +to the special subject of solar myths.' {0g} But Mr. Max Muller 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 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. In +comparative mythology there was, with rare exceptions, no agreement at +all about results beyond this point; Greek and Sanskrit, German and +Slavonic myths were, in the immense majority of instances, to be regarded +as mirror-pictures on earth, 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 something else according to taste. + +Again, Greek or German myths were usually to be interpreted by comparison +with myths in the Rig Veda. Their origin was to be ascertained by +discovering the Aryan root and original significance 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, as many opinions as to the +etymology 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 Muller 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 were made part of +the education of children, 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 Muller 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 +Muller, namely the attacks on _his_ system 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 +mythology in the eyes of England. + + + +Autobiographical + + +Like other inquiring undergraduates in the sixties, I read such works on +mythology as Mr. Max Muller had then given to the world; I read them with +interest, but without conviction. The argument, the logic, seemed to +evade one; it was purely, with me, a question of logic, for I was of +course prepared to accept all of Mr. Max Muller's dicta on questions of +etymologies. Even now I never venture to impugn them, only, as I observe +that other scholars very frequently differ, toto caelo, from him and from +each other in essential questions, I preserve a just balance of doubt; I +wait till these gentlemen shall be at one among themselves. + +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 Muller 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-Aryan 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 Ugly Scars + + +The ugly scars 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 civilised fancy _is_ puzzled +when the beautiful Sun-god makes love in the shape of a dog. {5} To me, +and indeed to Mr. Max Muller, the ugly scars were the problem. + +He has written--'What makes mythology mythological, in the true sense of +the word, is what is utterly unintelligible, absurd, strange, or +miraculous.' 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. What 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 +Muller calls them, of early Greece, and implicated in a ritual which +religious conservatism dared not abandon, the fables of perhaps neolithic +ancestors of the Hellenes remained in the religion and the legends 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 we would explain by survival from a savage state of +society and from the mental peculiarities observed among savages in all +ages and countries. Of course there is nothing new in this: I was +delighted to discover the idea in Eusebius as in Fontenelle; while, for +general application to singular institutions, it was a commonplace of the +last century. {6a} 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 Muller + + +This idea I set about applying to the repulsive myths of civilised races, +and to Marchen, 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 Muller, +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 asking 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 'Mythology' in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and in La +Mythologie. {6b} It did not appear to me that Mr. Max Muller's general +theory was valid, logical, historically demonstrated, or self-consistent. +My other writings on the topic are chiefly Custom and Myth, Myth, Ritual, +and Religion (with French and Dutch translations, both much improved and +corrected by the translators), and an introduction to Mrs. Hunt's +translation of Grimm's Marchen. + + + +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 Robertson 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 much is owed, and, of course, +above all, to Dr. Tylor. These writers, like Mr. Farnell and Mr. Jevons +recently, seek for the answer to mythological problems rather in the +habits and ideas of the folk and of savages and barbarians than in +etymologies and 'a disease of language.' There are differences of +opinion in detail: I myself may think that 'vegetation 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. {7} 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 method is wrong, +or that the Dawn is not as great a factor in myth as Mr. Max Muller +believes himself to have proved it to be. Science is inevitably subject +to shiftings of opinion, action, and reaction. + + + +Mr. Max Muller's Reply + + +In this state of things Mr. Max Muller produces his Contributions to the +Science of Mythology, {8} 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 Muller'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 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 level with stones, beasts, +and plants; or (2) as a tale 'moulded by poets on the same model.' {11} +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 Muller, 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 does not usually when he deals with me +give chapter and verse. This may avoid an air of personal bickering, but +how inconvenient it is! + +Let me not be supposed to accuse Mr. Max Muller of consciously +misrepresenting me. Of that I need not say 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. Max Muller, 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 statement (i. +4-7):-- + +'I must dwell a little longer on this passage in order to show the real +difference between the ethnological 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 +juxtaposition 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, or consulted scholars +like the Rev. 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 aetiological +plant-stories, which are meant to explain a no longer intelligible name +of a plant, such as Snakeshead, Stiefmutterchen, &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 +Rev. W. W. Gill about these South Pacific myths 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 +explanation. + +'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 nut in order to see in the +sprouting germ the two eyes and the mouth of Tuna, the great eel, the +lover of Ina. For a full understanding of this very complicated 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 (aitu) 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 cocoanut 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 Veda 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 {14} 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 examined and +criticised all the sources for the tale before trying to explain it. +However, Daphne was not mangled; a tree did not spring from 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 _why_ the people of Mangaia 'believe in the +change 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.' {15a} I illustrate this mental condition fully in M. R. R. 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 philosophy of nature.' {15b} M. Lefebure appeals to +psychical phenomena as I show later (see 'Fetishism'). At all events, +the existence of these savage metaphysics is a demonstrated fact. I +established it {15c} before invoking it as an explanation of savage +belief in metamorphosis. + +(3) 'The Tuna story belongs to a very well known class of aetiological +plant-stories' (aetiological: assigning 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--namely, +for the existence of certain plants, and for their place in ritual.' {16} + +The reader has before him Mr. Max Muller's view. The white kernel of the +cocoanut was locally styled 'the brains of Tuna.' That name required +explanation. 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 Muller'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 likeness 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 '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 +Muller does not tell us), was an eel. {17} 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 cocoanut, rather +than for the name 'brains of Tuna;' for we still ask, 'Why of Tuna in +particular? Why Tuna more than Rangoa, 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 illustrations 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 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 Muller, 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 explains 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 etymological explanation of the origin of the +_word_ marmalade. 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 pursued +by Apollo, and changed into a daphne plant or laurel, or a laurel springs +from the earth where she was buried. On Mr. Max Muller'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). {18} 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 Muller'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 etymological 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 undemonstrated. See +the chapter here on 'The Riddle 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. {20a} 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 Muller 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 Oxford 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.' {20b} In 1877, a year after Mannhardt is said by Mr. Max +Muller to have returned to his old colours, he repeats this explanation. +{21a} In the same work (p. 20) he says that 'there is no reason for +accepting Max Muller's explanation about the Sun-god and the Dawn, wo +jeder thatliche Anhalt dafur fehlt.' For this opinion we might also cite +the Sanskrit scholars Whitney and Bergaigne. {21b} + + + + +THE QUESTION OF ALLIES + + +Athanasius + + +Mr. Max Muller protests, most justly, against the statement that he, like +St. Athanasius, stands alone, contra 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 Muller's ideas, in +various modifications, are doubtless still the most prevalent of any. The +anthropological method has hardly touched, I think, the learned +contributors to Roscher's excellent mythological Lexicon. Dr. Brinton, +whose American researches 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 Muller asks, {22} 'What would Mr. Andrew Lang say if he read the +words of Signer 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 Muller say if he read the words of +Professor Enrico Morselli, 'Lang gives no quarter to his adversaries, +who, for the rest, have long been reduced to silence'? {23} The Right +Hon. Professor also smiles, no doubt. We both smile. Solvuntur risu +tabulae. + + + +A Dutch Defender + + +The question of the precise attitude of Professor Tiele, the accomplished +Gifford 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 separately reprinted, in 1886, from the 'Revue +de l'Histoire des Religions,' 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 +Muller'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 l'exactitude . . . centre 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 a comparer a tort et a travers, et pour tout +resultat produiront la confusion."' + +Again (i. 35): + +'Besides Signer Canizzaro and Mr. Horatio Hale, the veteran among +comparative ethnologists, Professor 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., p. 31):- + +'"M. Lang m'a fait 1'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 1'exactitude dont elle +ne peut pas plus se passer que les autres sciences, contre une methode +qui ne fait que glisser sur des problemes de premiere importance," &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 I 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 anybody 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, 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 forgotten? 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?' + + + +Reply + + +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. {25a} To +citations made by me later in 1887 Professor Tiele cannot be referring. +{25b} 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:--{25c} + +'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 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 pecus, braves gens, and so forth, as in the passage which Mr. +Max Muller, 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:--{26} + +'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, enfin, can alone help us to account for the genesis of myths, +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 Tiele's statement 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. {27} + + + +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 Midler'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 Professor Tiele had said against +us. First, as to our want of novelty. That merit, I think, I had never +claimed. I was proud to point out that we had been anticipated by +Eusebius of Caesarea, 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 Muller'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 myself later. {28a} + + + +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. Robert Brown, +junior, for their etymologies of Poseidon. Indiscreet followers are not +confined to our army alone. Now, the use of philology, we learn, is to +discourage such etymological vagaries as those of Sir G. Cox. {28b} _We_ +also discourage them--severely. But we are warned that philology really +has discovered 'some undeniably certain etymologies' of divine names. +Well, I also say, 'Philology alone can tell whether Zeus Asterios, or +Adonis, or Zeus Labrandeus is originally a Semitic or a Greek divine +name; here she is the Pythoness we must all consult.' {29a} 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 Ahana (Max Muller)? 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 Muller has a mot d'ordre, it is, +says Professor Tiele, 'to call mythology a disease of language.' {29b} +But, adds Mr. Max Muller's learned Dutch defender, mythologists, while +using philology for certain purposes, 'must shake themselves free, of +course, from the false hypothesis' (Mr. Max Muller's) 'which makes of +mythology a mere maladie du langage.' This professor is rather a +dangerous defender of Mr. Max Muller! He removes the very corner-stone +of his edifice, which Tiele does not object to our describing as founded +on the sand. Mr. Max Muller 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 Professor Tiele has +altered his mind, and, while keeping what Mr. Max Muller quotes, braves +gens, and so on, has withdrawn what he said about 'the false hypothesis +of a disease of language.' But my own last book about myths was written +in 1886-1887, shortly after Professor Tiele's remarks were published +(1886) as I have cited them. + + + +Personal Controversy + + +All this matter of alliances may seem, and indeed is, of a personal +character, and therefore unimportant. 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, cannot 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 +Muller, 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 statement about my claim of his alliance before +1885-86. I merely ask for a reference to this claim. In 1887 {30} I +cited his observations (already quoted) on the inadequate and misleading +character of the philological 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,' 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 +Tiele's comments on the _merits_ of the philological method. To be sure, +he himself 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.' {31a} 'Mr. Lang has justly rejected the opinion of Welcker and +Mr. Max Muller, that Cronos is simply formed from Zeus's epithet, +[Greek].' {31b} This opinion, however, Mr. Max Muller 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 competent +authority, and it has been _warmly accepted_' (pray note the distinction) +by M. Gaidoz. {31c} I trust that what I have said is not unfair. +Professor Tiele's objections, 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. Max +Muller has not wholly succeeded in giving the full drift of Professor +Tiele'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 comparison 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.' {32a} 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 light 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 mythe primitif de l'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.' {32b} What is the myth +of Cronos? Ouranos (Heaven) married Gaea (Earth). 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 (Rangi) 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, enfin, 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 +sunset. The mutilated part of poor Ouranos is le phallus du ciel, 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 Muller. + +I say that, in my opinion, the second part of the Cronos myth (the child- +swallowing performances of Cronos) 'was probably a world-wide Marchen, 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 meaning of, or believe in, any +such law. Well, why is 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. {34} But Cronos was an odious ruffian. The world-wide +tale of swallowing and disgorging 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 Tiele'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 they were +really _bees_ (Hesychius, [Greek]=[Greek])--'that is to say, stars.' +Everybody 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 Muller, of Schwartz +(Cronos=storm god), Preller (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 underworld and harvest; he 'doubles the +part.' 'Il est l'un et l'autre'--that is, 'le dieu qui fait murir le +ble' and also 'un dieu des lieux souterrains.' 'Il habite les +profondeurs sous la terre,' he is also le dieu du ciel nocturne. + +It may have been remarked that I declined to add to this interesting +collection of plausible explanations of Cronos. A selection of such +explanations I offer in tabular form:-- + +Cronos was God of + +Time (?)--Max Muller +Sun--Sayce +Midnight sky--Kuhn + +Under-world } +Midnight sky}--Tiele +Harvest } + +Harvest--Preller +Storm--Schwartz +Star-swallowing sky--Canon Taylor +Sun scorching spring--Hartung + +Cronos was by Race + +Late Greek (?)--Max Muller +Semitic--Bottiger +Accadian (?)--Sayce + +Etymology of Cronos + +[Greek]=Time (?)--Max Muller +Krana (Sanskrit)--Kuhn +Karnos (Horned)--Brown +[Greek]--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 +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 rejecting the method of Mr. Max Muller, 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 exactness 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 questions can only reply, with a smile, C'est chercher raison ou + il n'y 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 Marchen 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. + + + +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 Marchen. +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, Red 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' +{37}--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 interpretation. 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, tell such a +disgusting story?' And I replied, with Professor Tiele's approval, that +they inherited it from an age to which such follies were natural, an age +when the 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 Muller'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 Muller'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 Muller'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 nymphs, the phallus of Ouranos, &c.), +and showed scientific inexactitude in declining chercher raison ou il n'y +en a pas. + +None the less, in Professor Tiele's opinion, our method is new (or is +_not_ new), illuminating, successful, and _alone_ successful, for the +ends to which we apply it, and, finally, we have shown Mr. Max Muller's +method to be a house builded on the sand. That is the gist of what +Professor Tiele said. + +Mr. Max Muller, like myself, quotes part and omits part. He quotes twice +Professor Tiele's observations 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 ourselves. + +But if Mr. Max Muller quotes Professor Tiele's remarks 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 passages in Contributions to +the Science of Mythology. + +The reader may decide as to the relative importance of what I left out, +and of what Mr. Max Muller 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 Muller's war-cry, +slogan, mot d'ordre, is to Professor Tiele 'a false hypothesis.' Our +method, which Mr. Max Muller combats so bravely, is all that Professor +Tiele has said of it. But, if all this is not 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 +Muller has not avoided the same error. + + + + +MANNHARDT + + +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, +doubtless the most original student of folk-lore since Grimm, 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 Muller 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 Muller. 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 Muller, I do not care for the vague word 'fetishism,' +otherwise Mannhardt's remark exactly represents my own position, the +anthropological position. {42a} Now, Mr. Max Muller does not like that +position. That position he assails. It was Mannhardt's, however, when +he wrote the book quoted, and, so far, Mannhardt was _not_ absolutely one +of Mr. Max Muller's 'supporters'--unless I am one. 'I have even been +accused,' says Mr. Max Muller, '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 Muller, 'expressed his mistrust in +some of the results of comparative mythology' (1. xvii.). Indeed, I +myself quote him to that very effect. {42b} 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 working lies +in a lack of the historical sense,' says Mannhardt. {42c} Mr. Max Muller +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 Die lettischen Sonnenmythen (1875). In 1880 Mannhardt died. +Mr. Max Muller does not say whether Mannhardt, before a decease deeply +regretted, recanted 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 Muller 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 +suppress it (todtschweigen), but simply my want of knowledge of the +materials with which he dealt' (German popular customs and traditions) +'and therefore the consciousness of my incompetence to sit in judgment 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 Muller, +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 employment of the method. This, at least, is 'not exactly' Mr. +Max Muller'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 Muller about 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 everything becoming everything.' In Mr. Max +Muller's own words, written long ago, _he_ expressed his dread, not of +'everything becoming everything' (a truly Heraclitean state of affairs), +but of the 'omnipresent Sun and the inevitable Dawn appearing in ever so +many disguises.' 'Have we not,' he asks, 'arrived both at the same +conclusion?' Really, 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 Mannhardt's disciple. But where, all this time, is +there a reference by Mannhardt to 'the general principles of comparative +philology'? Where does he accept 'the omnipresent Sun and the inevitable +Dawn'? Why, he says the reverse; he says in this letter that he is +immeasurably removed from accepting them at all as Mr. Max Muller 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 Muller and their school.' What a +queer way of expressing his agreement with Mr. Max Muller! + +The Professor expostulates with Mannhardt (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'? Whatever he meant, he meant that +he was 'still more than very far removed from looking upon all myths' as +Mr. Max Muller does. + +Mannhardt's next passage I quote entire and textually from Mr. Max +Muller's translation:-- + + 'I have learnt to appreciate poetical and literary production as an + essential element in the development 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 circumstances 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 Muller asks, 'Where is there any 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 Muller + + +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 Muller, goes on to describe +it; but Mr. Max Muller 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 whose combined growth +mythical tales form themselves in very different ways.' + +Mr. Frazer gives us a similar description of Mannhardt's method, whether +dealing with sun myths or tree myths. {46} 'Mannhardt set himself +systematically to collect, compare, and explain the living superstitions +of the peasantry.' Now Mr. Max Muller has just confessed, as a reason +for incompetence to criticise Mannhardt's labours, 'my want of knowledge +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 Muller'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 Muller interprets +them by _etymologies_. + +The difference is incalculable; not that Mannhardt always abstains from +etymologising. + + + +Another Claim on Mannhardt + + +While maintaining that 'all comparative mythology 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 Muller says, 'It is well +known that in his last, nay posthumous essay, 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 Muller's convictions, +our author cites Mythologische Forschungen (pp. 86-113). + + + +What Mannhardt said + + +In the passages here produced as proof of Mannhardt's conversion, he is +not investigating a myth at all, or a name which occurs in mythology. He +is trying to discover the meaning of the practices of the Lupercalia at +Rome. In February, says Dionysius of Halicarnassus, the Romans 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 philological mythologist. To take a case in point, at Selkirk and +Queensferry the bounds are ridden, or walked, by 'Burleymen' or +'Burrymen.' {48} 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 +discovered, 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 comparing Greek with Vedic divine names, +and arriving thence at some celestial phenomenon as the basis of a +terrestrial myth? Yet he sometimes does this. + + + +My Relations to Mannhardt + + +If anything could touch and move an unawakened 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 Kernababy, 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 regular image of the harvest goddess,' +and I compared [Greek]. Next I gave the parallel case from ancient Peru, +and the odd accidental coincidence that _there_ the maize was styled Mama +Cora ([Greek]!). + +In entire ignorance of Mannhardt's corn-spirit, or corn-mother, I was +following Mannhardt's track. Indeed, Mr. Max Muller 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 Return 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 Rome 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 Muller +reminds me of the good Cardinal. I do not feel so satisfied as he does +of Mannhardt's re-conversion. + + + +Mannhardt's Attitude to Philology + + +We have heard Mannhardt, in a letter partly cited by Mr. Max Muller, +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 etymologies 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 if one +chemist 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 Muller cites the letter to Mullenhoff, 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. {51a} +Her anger at the unhandsome behaviour of Poseidon caused Demeter to be +called Erinnys--'to be angry' being [Greek] in Arcadian--a +folk-etymology, clearly. Mannhardt first dives deep into the sources for +this fable. {51b} 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, +[Greek], There run horses! And Homer himself {51c} 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 Hippies, or Poseidon in +horse's form, rushes through the growing grain and 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 undeniably 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 + wedding of Demeter and Poseidon comes from the sight of the waves + passing over the cornfield. . . .' {52} + +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 + today," or "Loki is driving his goats." + + 'N.B.--Oats in Danish are havre, which suggests O.N. hafrar, goats. + Modern Icelandic has hafrar=oats, 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, O. Muller, A. Kuhn, W. Sonne, Max +Muller, E. Burnouf, de Gubernatis, Schwartz, and H. D. Muller. 'Here,' +he cries, 'is a variegated list of hypotheses!' Demeter is + + Storm-cloud + Sun Goddess + Earth and Moon Goddess + Dawn + Night. + +Poseidon is + + Sea + Storm God + Cloud-hidden Sun + Rain God. + +Despoina is + + Rain + Thunder + Moon. + +Arion, the horse, is + + Lightning + Sun + Thunder-horse. + +Erinnys is + + Storm-cloud + Red Dawn. + +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 contending etymologies of Demeter, and decides ('for the man was +mortal and had been a' philologer) in favour of his own guess, +[Greek]+[Greek]='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 +explanation. I cannot say, then, that I share Mr. Max Muller's +impression. I do not feel sure that Mannhardt did return to his old +colours. + + + +Why Mannhardt is Thought to have been Converted + + +Mannhardt's friend, Mullenhoff, had an aversion to solar myths. He said: +{54} 'I deeply mistrust all these combinations of the new so-called +comparative mythology.' Mannhardt was preparing to study Lithuanian +solar myths, based on Lithuanian and Lettish marriage songs. Mullenhoff +and Scherer seem to have thought this work too solar for their taste. +Mannhardt therefore replied to their objections in the letter quoted in +part by Mr. Max Muller. 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. {55} 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 Mullenhoff +apparently dreaded even real solar myths. Mr. Max Muller, 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 life days was Antike Wald- und +Feldkulte (1877). In the preface, 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 to Kuhn and his +comparisons of European with Indian myths, he says that, in his opinion, +comparative Indo-Germanic mythology has not yet borne the expected +fruits. 'The _assured_ gains shrink into very few divine names, such as +Dyaus--Zeus--Tius, 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 (geistvolle Spiele des Witzes) +may once more encroach on science. Then, after a lucid statement of Mr. +Max Muller's position, he says, 'Ich vermag dem von M. Muller +aufgestellten Principe, wenn uberhaupt eine, so doch nur eine sehr +beschrankte Geltung zuzugestehen.' + + 'To the principle of Max Muller I can only assign a very limited + value, if any value at all.' {56} + + 'Taken all in all, I consider the greater part of the results hitherto + obtained in the field of Indo-Germanic 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-Hartmann's Ethnological Journal will bear witness.' + +Such is Mannhardt's conclusion. Taken in connection with his still later +essay 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 Muller ever did quote Mannhardt as +one of his supporters, but such a claim, if really made, would obviously +give room for criticism. + + + +Mannhardt on Solar Myths + + +What the attitude of Mannhardt was, in 1877 and later, we have seen. He +disbelieves in the philological 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 Ethnologie, 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 would say, in the Veda we +have (1) myths of nature, formed in the remote past, and (2) poetical +phrases about heavenly phenomena, 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 Muller'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 phenomena are, in popular +belief, personages--mythical personages--the Sun as 'a magnified +non-natural man,' or woman; the Sun's mother, daughters, and other +heavenly people. Their 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, 'aetiological,' giving a +fabulous reason for facts of nature. + + + +Mannhardt on Marchen. + + +But Mannhardt goes farther. He not only recognises, 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 probability +(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 popular tale, is a delicate and dangerous task. In +many stories a girl has three balls--one of silver, one of gold, one of +diamond--which she offers, in succession, 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. Really 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 Marchen 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 affair of the separable soul may 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 +plein, which may be studied, in African and Santhal shapes, in Miss +Coxe's valuable Cinderella. {60} Pharaoh'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 Marchen, accommodated to royal +tastes and Egyptian ideas of royalty by a royal scribe, the courtly +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 Marchen. 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, +Mannhardt's disciple, protests a grands cris against these +identifications when made by others than Mannhardt, who says, 'The +Marchen 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 formulas from other +Marchen, and giving to all a thoroughly classical Egyptian colouring. +{61a} 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 Marchen 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 Red Indian tribes, and +elsewhere--in 'A Far-travelled Tale.' {61b} 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 Romaic. 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. Mannhardt (pp. 282, 283) +abounds in solar explanations of the Fleece of Gold, hanging on the oak- +tree in the dark AEaean 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 (Night) 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 elemental 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 countless examples where no Fleece of +Gold occurs? The Greek tale of Jason is made up of several Marchen, as +is the Odyssey, by epic poets. These Marchen have no necessary +connection with each other; they are tagged on to each other, and +localised in Greece and on the Euxine. {62a} 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 popular songs like the Lettish chants (p. +328). A similar dubious adhesion may be given by us in the case of +Castor and Polydeuces (Morning and Evening Stars?), and Helen (Dawn), +{62b} and the Hesperides (p. 234). The germs of the myths _may_ be +popular poetical views of elemental phenomena. But to insist on +elemental allegories through all the 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, unverkennbar das +werk der Dichter (p. 328). + + + +Mannhardt's Approach to Mr. Max Muller + + +In this essay on Lettish Sun-songs (1875) Mannhardt comes nearest to Mr. +Max Muller. He cites passages from him with approval (cf. pp. 314, 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 interpretations of +old proper names--Athene, Hera, Artemis, 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-myths shows an undeniable tendency to return to Mr. Max +Muller'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. + + + + +PHILOLOGY AND DEMETER ERINNYS + + +Mr. Max Muller 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 +unseemly tale, and asks why the Earth goddess became a mare? Then he +gives the analogous myth from the Rig-Veda, {65} which, as it stands, is +'quite unintelligible.' 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 Yaska's idea. Mr. Max Muller 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 Muller's system 'has just got to be' Dawn, a position proved +thus: 'Yaska makes this clear by saying 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 perfectly clear, remember that the +husband of Saranyu, whom she leaves at sunrise, is--I give you three +guesses--is the Sun! The Sun's wife leaves the Sun at sunrise. {66} This +is proved, for Aditya is Vivasvat=the Sun, and is the husband of Saranyu +(ii. 541). These methods of proving Night 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 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 hypothetical 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 +difficulties' (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 +[Greek]' (ii. 642). Here, as regards the Asvins and the Dioskouroi, +Mannhardt may be regarded as Mr. Max Muller'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 Muller well says, 'If we look about for +analogies we find nothing, as far as I know, corresponding to the 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 Rig Veda?' (x 17, 1). + +I do rejoice! The 'song of triumph,' as Professor Tiele says, will be +found in M. R. R. ii. 266 (note), where I give the Vedic and other +references. I even asked why Mr. Max Muller 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. Edgeworth's trillions of trillions feebly +express it. Two goddesses, Indian and Greek, have, ex hypothesi, 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 +character, 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-man,' or modern witch who becomes a hare. This is not the +exception but the rule in savage mythology. Anyone can consult my Myth, +Ritual, and Religion, or Mr. Frazer's work Totemism, for abundance 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 +dispersion, 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. + + + + +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 Muller +is from acting with a shadow of unfairness 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 demonstrating 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 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, {71} and the reader may consult Mr. +Frazer's work on the subject, or Mr. MacLennan's essays, or 'Totemism' in +the Encyclopaedia 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 relationship with +it, and sometimes uses its effigy 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 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, {72a} and in bestial or semi-bestial gods of certain nomes, or +districts, in ancient Egypt; {72b} in Pictish names; {72c} 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 Muller asks if 'any Egyptologists have adopted' 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 +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. {73} 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 writers, 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) lived 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 different 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, 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. {74a} + +For all this, Mr. Max Muller suggests the explanation that people who +marked their abode with crow or wolf might come to be called Wolves or +Crows. {74b} Again, people might borrow beast names from the prevalent +beast of their district, as Arkades, [Greek], 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 River, as we +say, 'An Ettrick man.'] Once more, the name-giving beast, say, 'Great +Hare,' is explained by Dr. Brinton as 'the inevitable Dawn.' {74c} '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 Muller 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 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. +Robertson Smith, but Mr. Max Muller 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 Red Indians only.' Yes, and 'clan' +applies in the first instance to the Scottish clans only! When Mr. Max +Muller speaks of 'clans' among the Red Indians, he uses a word whose +connotation differs from anything known to exist in America. But the +analogy between a Scottish clan and an American totem-kin is close enough +to justify Mr. Max Muller in speaking of Red Indian 'clans.' By parity +of reasoning, the analogy between the Australian Kobong 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? + + + +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 Muller 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 +totemisms?' Why not, indeed? Professor Sayce remarks, 'They were the +sacred animals of the clans,' survivals from an age 'when the religion of +Egypt was totemism.' 'In Egypt the gods themselves are totem-deities, +i.e. personifications or individual representations of the sacred +character and attributes which in the purely totem stage of religion were +ascribed without distinction to all animals of the holy kind.' So says +Dr. Robertson Smith. He and Mr. Sayce are 'scholars,' not mere +unscholarly anthropologists. {76} + + + +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 +Muller refute my opinion by urging that 'a Tory meant originally an Irish +rapparee,' or whatever the word _did_ originally mean? + +Mr. Max Muller 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 agreement. So much for totems and sign- +boards. Only a weak fanatic will find a totem in every animal connected +with gods, sacred names, and religious 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. Rhys, Dr. Robertson 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 inconvenience. 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.' As no reference was offered, I invented 'a wild +surmise' that Mr. Max Muller had conceivably misapprehended 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. {78} 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 Robertson Smith offered none, nor have I displayed the spirit +of scientific exactitude by a guess in the dark. To gratify Mr. Max +Muller by defining totemism as Mr. McLennan first used the term is all +that I dare do. Here one may remark that if Mr. Max Muller really wants +'an accurate definition' of totemism, the works of McLennan, Frazer, +Robertson 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 argument should be met in its +strongest and most authoritative form. 'Define what you mean by a +totem,' says Professor Max Muller 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 Encyclopaedia 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 discriminating.' {79} 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 appearance of certain sacred animals in Greek +religion. 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 still 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. + + + +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 prehistoric Greece the mouse had been a totem, as it is among the +Oraons of Bengal. {80} 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 sans phrase, later explained their own myth to themselves 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 prehistoric 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 +AElian 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. {81a} The locust is still painted red, salaamed to, and +set free in India, by way of propitiating his companions. {81b} 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. + +There would be no mouse-totem in the background. I do not feel quite +convinced--the mouse being a totem, and a sacred or tabooed animal, in +India and Egypt. {82a} But I am content to remain in a balance of +opinion. That the Mouse is the Night (Gubernatis), or the Lightning +(Grohmann), I am disinclined 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 mythologists prefer to believe that the forgotten meaning of +words produced the results; that the wolf-born Apollo ([Greek]) +originally meant 'Light-born Apollo,' {82b} and that the wolf came in +from a confusion between [Greek], 'Light,' and [Greek], a wolf. I make +no doubt that philologists can explain Sminthian Apollo, the Dog-Apollo, +and all the rest in the same way, 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 might leave surviving behind it, or which propitiation of mice +might leave behind it, by a chance coincidence, determined by forgotten +meanings of words. The Greek analogy to totemistic facts would be +explained, (1) either by asking for a definition of totemism, and not +listening when it is 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 Muller), 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 Greek Religion + + +In The 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 bull-shaped Dionysus. {83a} '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.' {83b} Mr. Frazer concludes that there are two +possible explanations 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 the corn-spirit in Northern Europe.' {84a} +(2) The other possible explanation 'appears to be the view taken by Mr. +Lang, who suggests that the bull-formed Dionysus "had either been +developed out of, or had succeeded to, the worship of a bull-totem."' +{84b} + +Now, anthropologists are generally agreed, I think, that occasional +sacrifices of and communion in the flesh of the totem or other sacred +animals do occur among totemists. {84c} But Mr. Frazer and I both admit, +and indeed are eager to state publicly, that the evidence for sacrifice +of the totem, and communion in eating him, is very scanty. The fact is +rather inferred from rites among peoples just emerging 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.' +{84d} 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 survivals 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 characteristic 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 Muller sees (in the +case of Indra, called the bull) 'words meaning simply male, manly, +strong,' an 'animal simile.' {85a} Here, of course, Mr. Max Muller 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 Muller 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. {85b} To prove that I do not force the evidence, I take the Vedic +text. {85c} 'His mother, a cow, bore Indra, an unlicked calf.' I then +give Sayana's explanation. Indra entered into the body of Dakshina, and +was reborn of her. She also bore a cow. But this legend, I say, '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 doubtless be explained away as metaphorical.' Nay, I will go +further. It is perfectly 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 metaphorically +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 connection 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 {86} 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 suggestion. 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 catalogue of forms of the corn-spirits, +taken from Mannhardt. {87} 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, _may_ 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 undiscriminating, 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 fabulous 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 Rome we do find +traces of exogamy, as among totemists. 'Formerly they did not marry +women connected with them by blood.' {88a} But we do not find, and would +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 would +'hesitate dislike' of this passage in Mr. Frazer's work: {88b} + +'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 _himself_ 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 an individual savage (Zapotec, tona; +Guatemalan, nagual; North America, Manitou, 'medicine') is _not_ that +savage's totem. {89a} 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 himself. 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 Muller 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 Muller'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. Professor +Robertson Smith did not know the origin of totems. 'The origin of totems +is as much a problem as the origin of local gods.' {89b} Mr. Max Muller +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 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 member 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. Therefore 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. {90} + +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 Chingachgook, 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 Ihlozi +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 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 Red Indian _women_ 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. + + + + +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 geographers, 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 Muller 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 + misrepresentations of my real opinion in comparative mythology, and + have rebuked the flippant tone of some of my eager critics' [i. 26, + 27]. + +I must here confess to the belief that no gentleman 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 +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 Muller never dreamed of 'audaciously 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 _don't_ call my savages 'primitive.' Thus 'contemporary +savages may be degraded, they certainly are not primitive.' {93a} 'One +thing about the past of [contemporary] savages we do know: it must have +been a long past.' {93b} 'We do not wish to call savages primitive.' +{93c} 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 Muller admits, +where language is concerned. {94} 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 Muller +'audaciously misrepresents' me when he avers that I 'call my savages +primitive'? But he never dreamed of misrepresenting 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 +centuries. Those described by Herodotus, Strabo, Dio Cassius, Christoval +de Moluna, Sahagun, Cieza de Leon, Brebeuf, Garoilasso de la Vega, +Lafitau, Nicholas Damascenus, Leo Africanus, and a hundred others, are +_not_ 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 today, +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 Muller unconsciously +misrepresents me (and my savages) when he says that my 'savages are of +the nineteenth century.' The fact is the reverse. They are of many +centuries. These two unconscious misrepresentations occur in four +consecutive lines. + + + +Anthropological Evidence + + +In connection with this topic (the nature of anthropological evidence), +Mr. Max Muller (i. 205-207) repeats what he has often said before. Thus +he cites Dr. Codrington's remarks, most valuable 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, {95} and had +compiled a number of instances in which the errors of travellers were +exposed, and their habitual fallacies were detected. Fifteen closely +printed pages were devoted by me to a criterion of evidence, and a reply +to Mr. Max Muller'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 Rink, 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 argument to the same effect, +an argument offered by him to 'a great historian,' apparently. + + + +Mr. Max Muller's Method of Controversy + + +Now no member of the reading public, perusing Mr. Max Muller 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 elaboration. Our +defence of our evidence is not noticed by Mr. Max Muller. 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 +Muller does not oblige us in this way. + + + +Mr. Max Muller on our Evidence + + +In an earlier work, The Gifford Lectures for 1891, {96} 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 Muller's own difficulties +in understanding a Mohawk (which the Mohawk no doubt also felt in +understanding Mr. Max Muller), 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 Muller now +fixes on a flagrant case, some fables about the godless Mincopies of the +Andaman Islands. But _he_ relies on the evidence of Mr. Man. So do I, +as far as it seems beyond doubt. {97a} 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 necessarily borrowed from our stone houses at +Port Blair.' {97b} 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 _may_ bear +traces of Christian teaching. Caution is indicated. + +Does Mr. Max Muller, 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 Andamans. {97c} +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. + +On p. 413 our author returns to the charge. He observes (as I have also +observed) the often contradictory 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 living and distinguished British +subject, how can it be accepted about hallucinations? + +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 +criticising it. Thus, when Mr. Max Muller 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 despair 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 hand, +much less anything so startling 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 Muller now gives a list of inconsistencies in descriptions of +Australian 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. Ridley 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 private. The +difference rages among historians of civilised races. So, also, as to +portable property. Mr. Curr (Mr. Max Muller'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; therefore almost all scientific +theories are fluctuating. Nothing here is peculiar to anthropology. A +single word, or two or three, will prove or disprove a theory of phonetic +laws. Even phonetics are disputable ground. + +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. {100} To this circumstance we +may return. + +Mr. Max Muller 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 precisely 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 Codrington 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 Recurrences.' + + 'If two independent visitors to different countries, say a mediaeval + Mahommedan in Tartary and a modern Englishman in Dahomey, or a Jesuit + 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 anticipated by Professor Millar +in his Origin of Rank, and has been restated by myself. {101a} Thus I +wrote (in 1887) 'it is to be regretted that Mr. Max Muller 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 opponents' 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. {101b} 'Travellers and +missionaries have begun to read anthropological books, and their evidence +is, therefore, much more likely 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 declined 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 observers of barbaric tribes. + +It does not quite seem to me that Mr. Max Muller 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 Melanesians, our authorities, whether missionaries, +traders, or writers on ethnology, are troubled by no difficulties' (i. +207). Yet on this very page Mr. Max Muller 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. {103} The doctor, himself a +missionary, ex hypothesi 'untroubled by difficulties,' has just been +quoted by Mr. Max Muller, and by myself, as a witness to the difficulties +which trouble himself and us. What can Mr. Max Muller 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). + + + + +THE PHILOLOGICAL METHOD IN ANTHROPOLOGY + + +Mr. Max Muller as Ethnologist + + +Our author is apt to remonstrate with his anthropological 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 ungrateful to Mr. Max Muller 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 +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 Muller 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 Muller, 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 'defender,' 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 Muller's favourite etymological +'equations,' Sarameya=Hermeias; Saranyu=Demeter-Erinnys; +Kentauros=Gandharvas and others, would not stand criticism. 'The method +in its practical working shows a lack of the historical sense,' said +Mannhardt. Curtius--a scholar, as Mr. Max Muller declares (i. 32)--says, +'It is especially difficult to conjecture the meaning of proper names, +and above all of local and mythical names.' {106a} 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 River-god! Or does [Greek] suggest aqua, Achelous the +River? Leto, mother of Apollo, cannot be from [Greek], as Mr. Max Muller +holds (ii. 514, 515), to which Mr. Max Muller replies, perhaps not, as +far as the phonetic rules go 'which determine the formation of +appellative 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. {106b} + +When Dr. Hahn applies the process in Hottentot, we urge with a friendly +candour these cautions from scholars on Mr. Max Muller. + + + +A Hottentot God + + +In Custom and Myth (p. 207), I examine the logic by which Dr. Hahn proves +Tsuni-Goam to be 'The Red Dawn.' One of his steps is to say that few +means 'sore,' or 'wounded,' and that a wound is _red_, so he gets his +'red' in Red 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 scabreux, got over by a series of +logical leaps. As to our quarrel with Mr. Max Muller about his friend's +treatment 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 Scepticism + + +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 Muller 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 equations 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 Signer Canizzaro calls some of your 'equations' +'irrefutably 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, Benfey, Curtius, Preller, Furtwangler, +Schwartz, and now Bechtel (i. 378). Mr. Max Muller 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 Muller 'formerly agreed with Curtius 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 demand 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 Muller 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 strictly as to ordinary words? +'This is a question that has often been asked . . . but it has never been +boldly answered' (i. 297). Mr. Max Muller cannot have forgotten that +Curtius answered boldly--in the negative. 'Without such rigour all +attempts at etymology are impossible. For this very reason ethnologists +and mythologists should make themselves acquainted with the simple +principles of comparative philology.' {109} + +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 Muller calls 'the usual bickerings' +begin among scholars (i. 416). And Mr. Max Muller connects Ouranos with +Vedic Varuna, while Wackernagel prefers to derive it from [Greek], urine, +and this from [Greek]=Sk. Varshayami, to rain (ii. 416, 417), and so it +goes on for years with a glorious uncertainty. If Mr. Max Muller's +equations are scientifically 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 validity 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 application 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. + + + +Philology in Action--Indra + + +As an example of the philological method with a Vedic 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 +Muller 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). Roth 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. {110} 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 Muller. 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 Muller asks, 'Why should not a cloud or air goddess _of India_, +whether called Svara or Urvasi, have supplied the first germs from which +[Greek] 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). Why, 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 intervals 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! +{111a} 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. +{111b} 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. + + + + +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 Muller's prohibition. Yet (ii. +220) '_no true scholar_ would accept any comparison' 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.' + + + +Comparisons, when odious + + +Once more, Mr. Max Muller 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 demonstrated' 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 dealing 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 demonstrated before they are +made? And made they must not be! + + + +'Scholars' + + +It would be useful if Mr. Max Muller 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 'very thoughtful scholars,' even Dr. Oldenberg, Mr. Rhys, Dr. +Robertson 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 +comparisons 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 Vedic +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 conscience +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 resembling parts of the rites of the +Eleusinia, Dionysia, and Thesmophoria. Thus Lobeck, a scholar, describes +the Rhombos used in the Dionysiac mysteries, citing Clemens Alexandrinus. +{114} Thanks to Dr. Tylor's researches I was able to show (what Lobeck +knew not) that 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. {115} 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 Muller 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! 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 +_must_ learn 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 Hibbert Lectures, in Mind; +{116} on reading the essay over, I find no obloquy and no storm. I find, +however, 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 Muller in his +Hibbert 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 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 {117a} first +compared 'the so-called fetishes' of the Gold Coast with Greek and Roman +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, Rome, 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, _why_ 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.' {117b} + +Other 'fetishes' are revealed in dreams, or by ghosts, or by spirits +appearing in semblance of animals. {118a} + + + +'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 Muller, '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, {118b} with examples from Dr. Tylor, P. +de la Rissachere, Dr. Gibier, {118c} and other authorities, good or bad. +Grouping, then, his facts under the dubious title of le magnetisme, 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 conjurers, who +certainly profess {118d} to produce the phenomena, might originate, or +help to originate, the respect paid to 'fetishes' and the belief in Mana. +But probably Major Ellis's researches into the religion of the +Tshi-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 endowed with a living spirit.' +So far, fetishism is spiritualism. + + + +Civilised 'Fetishism' + + +De Brosses did not look among civilised fetishists 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 Muller's etymologies 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 examine it in its +details. While we have talismans, amulets, gamblers' fetiches, I do not +think that, except 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. + + + +More Mischiefs of Comparison + + +The 'Nemesis' (i. 196) of De Brosses' errors did not stay in her ravaging +progress. Fetishism was represented as 'the very beginning of religion,' +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.' {120a} But from even this rather guarded statement I +withdraw. 'No man can watch the idea of GOD in the making or in the +beginning.' {120b} + + + +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 Muller, 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 childhood of language, +with all its childish pranks.' {120c} + +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, nor even that Mr. Max Muller is +right in _his_ remark on language. The Australian 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 anthropologists, if they are meant, +regard modern savages 'as just evolved from the earth, or the sky,' or +from monkeys (i. 197). 'Savages have a far-stretching unknown history +behind them.' 'The past of savages, I say, must have been a long past.' +{121} 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 be gained before it can +be 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 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 religions' (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 Muller does not tell us who says that they +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 race of savages. Such we believe the ancestors +of mankind to have been--at any rate after the Fall. + +Now when Mr. Max Muller 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 compared to the + earliest men of all. + +Here is an uncompromising statement by Fontenelle 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 +Muller eagerly accepts the postulate:-- + + 'There is not a word of Fontenelle'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 folklore.' + +Well, if Mr. Max Muller 'gladly subscribes,' in p. 15, to the postulate +of an original universal stage of savagery, whence civilised races +inherit their incredibly repulsive 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 Muller'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 I can +see, self-contradictory--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 {124} 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 contrary, +he has been the first to point out and proclaim. He is thus suggested +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 Fontenelle, in De +l'Origine des Fables, {125a} 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 Muller says. I was glad to +have a predecessor in a past less remote than that of Eusebius of +Caesarea. 'A briefer and better system of mythology,' I wrote, 'could +not be devised; but the Mr. Casaubons of this world have neglected it, +and even now it is beyond their comprehension.' {125b} 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 'forgotten 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 Muller 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 misapprehension, which I vainly attempt to +detect, and for which, if it exists, I apologise humbly) that Mr. Max +Muller, on p. 15, accepts the doctrine which he denounces on p. 197. +{126} Again, I am entirely at one with Mr. Max Muller 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 Principles +of Psychology, on 'Mediumship.' + + + + +THE RIDDLE THEORY + + +What 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 appellatives become proper names--Apollo, Daphne, &c.? Mr. Max +Muller seems to think some proof of this process as a vera causa may be +derived from 'Folk Riddles.' + + + +The Riddle Theory + + +We now come, therefore, to the author's treatment 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.' + +In Mr. Max Muller'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 meaning of, e.g. '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 Muller'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. + +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 intelligible 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 language, and so had to be accepted as a proper name, Cronos--a god +who swallows things at large. + +Where is the proof of such endurance of intelligible phrases with just +the one central necessary word obsolete 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. Riddles, of +course, prove nothing of this kind:-- + + Thy riddle is easy + Blind Gest + To read! + +Yet Mr. Max Muller 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 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 Muller may mean that in riddles an almost obsolete +word was used to designate the object. Perhaps, instead of 'the Dark +One,' a peasant would say, 'What is the Rooky One?' But as soon as +nobody knew what 'the Rooky One' meant, the riddle would cease to +exist--Rooky 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 +difficult word 'Rooky' would die. But Mr. Max Muller says, 'Riddles +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. + +Language cannot be clearer. Yet the riddle has not 'ceased to be a +riddle,' as Mr. Max Muller thinks it must do, though the words are 'clear +and intelligible.' 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 +acceptable 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) cannot 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 hypothetical process by which a riddle, or popular +poetical saying, remains intelligible in a language, while the mot +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 Muller 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 +graceful to have said 'a misapprehension.' + +Another 'stratagem' I myself must guard against. I do not say that _no_ +unintelligible strings of obsolete words may 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 Muller 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 (chi=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 contamination. There are plenty +of minor gods, and spirits good and bad. Dawn was a Mordvinian girl; in +Australia she was a lubra addicted to lubricity. + +_How does this help philological mythology_? + +Mr. Max Muller is pleased to find solar and other elemental gods among +the Mordvinians. But the discovery in no way aids his special theory. +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. +R. (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. All this does not illustrate the case of Greek +divine names by resemblance, but by difference. Real 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 philological 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 people who bake bread on Friday? (237.) Our opponent does not +seem to understand the portee 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 Muller'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 undisputed etymologies, as +originally elemental, we still object to such logic as that which turns +Saranyu into 'grey dawn.' We still object to the competing +interpretations by which almost every detail of very composite myths is +explained as a poetical description 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 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 Encounter 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.' {135} This tale was told to Mr. Meyer +in 1846, before Mr. Max Muller's Dawn had become 'inevitable,' 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 regarded many or most of the +philological solutions of gods into dawn or sun, or thunder or cloud, as +empty jeux d'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 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. + + + + +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 comparative +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 Muller is writing _about_ without name or reference. If so, +he here sharply distinguishes between me on the one hand and 'classical +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 disentangling the many myths told about +her. Easy to understand as her character seems when we confine our +attention to Homer, it becomes extremely complicated 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, +and the views advocated by classical scholars_ {138} 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 particularly +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 beautiful 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 celebrated by dances of young girls +disguised as bears or imitating the movements of bears, &c. She was +represented as [Greek], 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 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 Muller's version of my remarks on Artemis. +{139a} 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 Muller 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 information, 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 [Greek] (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 divinity of Oriental +religion.' {139b} Is this 'large term' too vague? Then consider the +Artemis of Ephesus and 'the alabaster statuette of the goddess' in +Roscher's Lexikon, p. 558. Compare, for an Occidental parallel, the many- +breasted goddess of the maguey plant, in Mexico. {140} 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 [Greek] (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 Muller proceeds (ii. 734)--'He [Otfried] did not go so far as some +modern mythologists who want us to believe that originally the animal, +the she-bear, was the goddess, and that a later worship had replaced the +ancient worship of the animal pur 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 extremely 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 Muller's error, it will be observed, consists 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 Muller's own opinion, for he next reports his +anonymous author (myself) as saying ('we are now told'), 'though without +any reference to Pausanias or any other Greek writers, that the young +maidens, the [Greek], 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 [Greek] +in Egypt.' Of course I never said that the [Greek] 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 +Claus {141a} and referred to Suchier, {141b} including the reference in +brackets [ ] to indicate that I borrowed it from a book which I was +unable to procure. {142a} I then gave references for the classical use +of a saffron vest by the [Greek]. + + + +Beast Dances + + +For the use of beast-skins in such dances among totemists I cite Bancroft +(iii. 168) and (M. R. R. ii. 107) Robinson {142b} (same authority). I +may now also refer to Robertson Smith: {142c} '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. {142d} 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 confirmation. {142e} 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 demonstrated. 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 +Muller quotes (of course, without reference or marks of quotation) and +adds, 'pace Dr. Codrington.' Have I incurred Dr. Codrington's feud? He +doubts or denies totems in Melanesia. Is Samoa in Melanesia, par +exemple? {143a} 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. {143b} 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.' {143c} I expressly contrast the Samoan creed +with 'pure totemism.' {143d} + +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.' {143e} +'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 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 foret). And the nocturnal hunt is Dian's; so she is protectress of +the chase. Exactly what I said! {144a} + +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 Muller'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 anybody. 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 [Greek] (a bear), while they knew the Bear constellation, +'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. {144b} But +that an Aryan, a Greek, should talk 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 +hundred beasts came to be claimed as ancestors? Perhaps 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 Ionians, 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. Mr. Max Muller remarks that the name +'Arcades' _may_ come from [Greek], a bear (i. 738); so the Arcadians +(Proselenoi, the oldest of races, 'men before the moon') may be--Bears. +So, of course (in this case), they would necessarily be Bears _before_ +they invented Areas, an eponymous hero whose name is derived from the pre- +existing tribal name. His name, then, could not, before they invented +it, remind them of a bear. It was from their name [Greek] (Bears) that +they developed _his_ name Areas, as in all such cases of eponymous +heroes. I slightly incline to hold that this is exactly what occurred. A +bear-kin claimed descent from a bear, and later, developing an eponymous +hero, Areas, regarded him as son of a bear. Philologically 'it is +possible;' I say no more. + + + +The Bear Dance + + +'The dances of the maidens called [Greek], would receive an easy +interpretation. They were Arkades, and why not [Greek] (bears)?' And if +[Greek], why not clad in bear-skins, and all the rest? (ii. 738). This +is our author's explanation; it is also my own conjecture. The Arcadians +were bears, knew it, and possibly danced a bear dance, as Mandans or +Nootkas dance a buffalo dance or a wolf dance. But all such dances are +not totemistic. They have often other aims. One only names such dances +totemistic when performed by people who call themselves by the name of +the animal represented, and claim descent from him. Our author says +genially, 'if anybody prefers to say that the arctos was something like a +totem of the Arcadians . . . why not?' But, if the arctos was a totem, +that fact explains the Callisto story and Attic bear dance, while the +philological theory--Mr. Max Muller's theory--does not explain it. What +is oddest of all, Mr. Max Muller, as we have seen, says that the bear- +dancing girls were 'Arkades.' Now we hear of no bear dances in Arcadia. +The dancers were Athenian girls. This, indeed, is the point. We have a +bear Callisto (Artemis) in Arcady, where a folk etymology might explain +it by stretching a point. But no etymology will explain bear dances to +Artemis in Attica. So we find bears doubly connected with Artemis. The +Athenians were not Arcadians. + +As to the meaning and derivation of Artemis, or Artamis, our author knows +nothing (ii. 741). I say, 'even [Greek] ([Greek], bear) has occurred to +inventive men.' Possibly I invented it myself, though not addicted to +etymological conjecture. + + + + +THE FIRE-WALK + + +The Method of Psychical Research + + +As a rule, mythology asks for no aid from Psychical Research. But there +are problems in religious rite and custom where the services of the +Cendrillon of the sciences, the despised youngest sister, may be of use. +As an example I take the famous mysterious old Fire-rite of the Hirpi, or +wolf-kin, of Mount Soracte. I shall first, following Mannhardt, and +making use of my own trifling researches in ancient literature, describe +the rite itself. + + + +Mount Soracte + + +Everyone has heard of Mount Soracte, white with shining snow, the peak +whose distant cold gave zest to the blazing logs on the hearth of Horace. +Within sight of his windows was practised, by men calling themselves +'wolves' (Hirpi), a rite of extreme antiquity and enigmatic character. On +a peak of Soracte, now Monte di Silvestre, stood the ancient temple of +Soranus, a Sabine sun-god. {148a} Virgil {148b} identifies Soranus with +Apollo. At the foot of the cliff was the precinct of Feronia, a Sabine +goddess. Mr. Max Muller says that Feronia corresponds to the Vedic +Bhuranyu, a name of Agni, the Vedic fire-god (ii. 800). Mannhardt +prefers, of course, a derivation from _far_ (grain), as in confarreatio, +the ancient Roman bride-cake form of marriage. Feronia Mater=Sanskrit +bharsani mata, Getreide Mutter. {149a} It is a pity that philologists so +rarely agree in their etymologies. In Greek the goddess is called +Anthephorus, Philostephanus, and even Persephone--probably the Persephone +of flowers and garlands. {149b} + + + +Hirpi Sorani + + +Once a year a fete of Soranus and Feronia was held, in the precinct of +the goddess at Soracte. The ministrants were members of certain local +families called Hirpi (wolves). Pliny says, {149c} 'A few families, +styled Hirpi, at a yearly sacrifice, walk over a burnt pile of wood, yet +are not scorched. On this account they have a perpetual exemption, by +decree of the Senate, from military and all other services.' Virgil +makes Aruns say, {149d} 'Highest of gods, Apollo, guardian of Soracte, +thou of whom we are the foremost worshippers, thou for whom the burning +pile of pinewood is fed, while we, strong in faith, walk through the +midst of the fire, and press our footsteps in the glowing mass. . . .' +Strabo gives the same facts. Servius, the old commentator on Virgil, +confuses the Hirpi, not unnaturally, with the Sabine 'clan,' the Hirpini. +He says, {149e} 'Varro, always an enemy of religious belief, writes that +the Hirpini, when about to walk the fire, smear the soles of their feet +with a drug' (medicamentum). Silius Italicus (v. 175) speaks of the +ancient rite, when 'the holy bearer of the bow (Apollo) rejoices in the +kindled pyres, and the ministrant thrice gladly bears entrails to the god +through the harmless flames.' Servius gives an aetiological myth to +account for the practice. 'Wolves came and carried off the entrails from +the fire; shepherds, following them, were killed by mortal vapours from a +cave; thence ensued a pestilence, because they had followed the wolves. +An oracle bade them "play the wolf," i.e. live on plunder, whence they +were called Hirpi, wolves,' an attempt to account for a wolf clan-name. +There is also a story that, when the grave of Feronia seemed all on fire, +and the people were about carrying off the statue, it suddenly grew green +again. {150a} + +Mannhardt decides that the so-called wolves leaped through the sun-god's +fire, in the interest of the health of the community. He elucidates this +by a singular French popular custom, held on St. John's Eve, at Jumieges. +The Brethren of the Green Wolf select a leader called Green Wolf, there +is an ecclesiastical procession, cure and all, a souper maigre, the +lighting of the usual St. John's fire, a dance round the fire, the +capture of next year's Green Wolf, a mimicry of throwing him into the +fire, a revel, and next day a loaf of pain benit, above a pile of green +leaves, is carried about. {150b} + +The wolf, thinks Mannhardt, is the Vegetation-spirit in animal form. Many +examples of the 'Corn-wolf' in popular custom are given by Mr. Frazer in +The Golden Bough (ii. 3-6). The Hirpi of Soracte, then, are so called +because they play the part of Corn-wolves, or Korndamonen in wolf shape. +But Mannhardt adds, 'this _seems_, at least, to be the explanation.' He +then combats Kuhn's theory of Feronia as lightning goddess. {151a} He +next compares the strange Arcadian cannibal rites on Mount Lycaeus. +{151b} + + + +Mannhardt's Deficiency + + +In all this ingenious reasoning, Mannhardt misses a point. What the +Hirpi did was _not_ merely to leap through light embers, as in the Roman +Palilia, and the parallel doings in Scotland, England, France, and +elsewhere, at Midsummer (St. John's Eve). The Hirpi would not be freed +from military service and all other State imposts for merely doing what +any set of peasants do yearly for nothing. Nor would Varro have found it +necessary to explain so easy and common a feat by the use of a drug with +which the feet were smeared. Mannhardt, as Mr. Max Muller says, ventured +himself little 'among red skins and black skins.' He read Dr. Tylor, and +appreciated the method of illustrating ancient rites and beliefs from the +living ways of living savages. {151c} But, in practice, he mainly +confined himself to illustrating ancient rites and beliefs by survival in +modern rural folk-lore. I therefore supplement Mannhardt's evidence from +European folk-lore by evidence from savage life, and by a folk-lore case +which Mannhardt did not know. + + + +The Fire-walk + + +A modern student is struck by the cool way in which the ancient poets, +geographers, and commentators mention a startling circumstance, the Fire- +walk. The only hint of explanation is the statement that the drug or +juice of herbs preserved the Hirpi from harm. That theory may be kept in +mind, and applied if it is found useful. Virgil's theory that the +ministrants walk, pietate freti, corresponds to Mrs. Wesley's belief, +when, after praying, she 'waded the flames' to rescue her children from +the burning parsonage at Epworth. The hypothesis of Iamblichus, when he +writes about the ecstatic or 'possessed' persons who cannot be injured by +fire, is like that of modern spiritualists--the 'spirit' or 'daemon' +preserves them unharmed. + +I intentionally omit cases which are vaguely analogous to that of the +Hirpi. In Icelandic sagas, in the Relations of the old Jesuit +missionaries, in the Travels of Pallas and Gmelin, we hear of medicine- +men and Berserks who take liberties with red-hot metal, live coals, and +burning wood. Thus in the Icelandic Flatey Book (vol. i. p. 425) we read +about the fighting evangelist of Iceland, a story of Thangbrandr and the +foreign Berserkir. 'The Berserkir said: "I can walk through the burning +fire with my bare feet." Then a great fire was made, which Thangbrandr +hallowed, and the Berserkir went into it without fear, and burned his +feet'--the Christian spell of Thangbrandr being stronger than the heathen +spell of the Berserkir. What the saga says is not evidence, and some of +the other tales are merely traditional. Others may be explained, +perhaps, by conjuring. The mediaeval ordeal by fire may also be left on +one side. In 1826 Lockhart published a translation of the Church Service +for the Ordeal by Fire, a document given, he says, by Busching in Die +Vorzeit for 1817. The accused communicates before carrying the red-hot +iron bar, or walking on the red-hot ploughshare. The consecrated wafer +is supposed to preserve him from injury, if he be guiltless. He carries +the iron for nine yards, after which his hands are sealed up in a linen +cloth and examined at the end of three days. 'If he be found clear of +scorch or scar, glory to God.' Lockhart calls the service 'one of the +most extraordinary records of the craft, the audacity, and the weakness +of mankind.' {153} + +The fraud is more likely to have lain in the pretended failure to find +scorch or scar than in any method of substituting cold for hot iron, or +of preventing the metal from injuring the subject of the ordeal. The +rite did not long satisfy the theologians and jurists of the Middle Ages. +It has been discussed by Lingard in his History of England, and by Dr. E. +B. Tylor in Primitive Culture. + +For the purpose of the present inquiry I also omit all the rites of +leaping sportfully, and of driving cattle through light fires. Of these +cases, from the Roman Palilia, or Parilia, downwards, there is a useful +collection in Brand's Popular Antiquities under the heading 'Midsummer +Eve.' One exception must be made for a passage from Torreblanca's +Demonologia (p. 106). People are said 'pyras circumire et transilire in +futuri mali averruncatione'--to 'go round about and leap over lighted +pyres for the purpose of averting future evils,' as in Mannhardt's theory +of the Hirpi. This may be connected with the Bulgarian rite, to be +described later, but, as a rule, in all these instances, the fire is a +light one of straw, and no sort of immunity is claimed by the people who +do not walk through, but leap across it. + +These kinds of analogous examples, then, it suffices merely to mention. +For the others, in all affairs of this sort, the wide diffusion of a tale +of miracle is easily explained. The fancy craves for miracles, and the +universal mode of inventing a miracle is to deny the working, on a given +occasion, of a law of Nature. Gravitation was suspended, men floated in +air, inanimate bodies became agile, or fire did not burn. No less +natural than the invention of the myth is the attempt to feign it by +conjuring or by the use of some natural secret. But in the following +modern instances the miracle of passing through the fire uninjured is +apparently feigned with considerable skill, or is performed by the aid of +some secret of Nature not known to modern chemistry. The evidence is +decidedly good enough to prove that in Europe, India, and Polynesia the +ancient rite of the Hirpi of Soracte is still a part of religious or +customary ceremony. + + + +Fijian Fire-walk + + +The case which originally drew my attention to this topic is that given +by Mr. Basil Thomson in his South Sea Yarns (p. 195). Mr. Thomson +informs me that he wrote his description on the day after he witnessed +the ceremony, a precaution which left no room for illusions of memory. Of +course, in describing a conjuring trick, one who is not an expert +records, not what actually occurred, but what he was able to see, and the +chances are that he did not see, and therefore omits, an essential +circumstance, while he misstates other circumstances. I am informed by +Mrs. Steel, the author of The Potter's Thumb and other stories of Indian +life, that, in watching an Indian conjurer, she generally, or frequently, +detects his method. She says that the conjurer often begins by whirling +rapidly before the eyes of the spectators a small polished skull of a +monkey, and she is inclined to think that the spectators who look at this +are, in some way, more easily deluded. These facts are mentioned that I +may not seem unaware of what can be said to impugn the accuracy of the +descriptions of the Fire Rite, as given by Mr. Thomson and other +witnesses. + +Mr. Thomson says that the Wesleyan missionaries have nearly made a clean +sweep of all heathen ceremonial in Fiji. 'But in one corner of Fiji, the +island of Nbengga, a curious observance of mythological origin has +escaped the general destruction, probably because the worthy iconoclasts +had never heard of it.' The myth tells how the ancestor of the clan +received the gift of fire-walking from a god, and the existence of the +myth raises a presumption in favour of the antiquity of the observance. + +* * * * * + +'Once every year the masawe, a dracaena that grows in profusion on the +grassy hillsides of the island, becomes fit to yield the sugar of which +its fibrous root is full. To render it fit to eat, the roots must be +baked among hot stones for four days. A great pit is dug, and filled +with large stones and blazing logs, and when these have burned down, and +the stones are at white heat, the oven is ready for the masawe. It is at +this stage that the clan Na Ivilankata, favoured of the gods, is called +on to "leap into the oven" (rikata na lovo), and walk unharmed upon the +hot stones that would scorch and wither the feet of any but the +descendants of the dauntless Tui Nkualita. Twice only had Europeans been +fortunate enough to see the masawe cooked, and so marvellous had been the +tales they told, and so cynical the scepticism with which they had been +received, that nothing short of another performance before witnesses and +the photographic camera would have satisfied the average "old hand." + +'As we steamed up to the chiefs village of Waisoma, a cloud of blue smoke +rolling up among the palms told us that the fire was newly lighted. We +found a shallow pit, nineteen feet wide, dug in the sandy soil, a stone's +throw from high-water mark, in a small clearing among the cocoanuts +between the beach and the dense forest. The pit was piled high with +great blazing logs and round stones the size of a man's head. Mingled +with the crackling roar of the fire were loud reports as splinters flew +off from the stones, warning us to guard our eyes. A number of men were +dragging up more logs and rolling them into the blaze, while, above all, +on the very brink of the fiery pit, stood Jonathan Dambea, directing the +proceedings with an air of noble calm. As the stones would not be hot +enough for four hours, there was ample time to hear the tradition that +warrants the observance of the strange ceremony we were to see. + +'When we were at last summoned, the fire had been burning for more than +four hours. The pit was filled with a white-hot mass shooting out little +tongues of white flame, and throwing out a heat beside which the +scorching sun was a pleasant relief. A number of men were engaged, with +long poles to which a loop of thick vine had been attached, in noosing +the pieces of unburnt wood by twisting the pole, like a horse's twitch, +until the loop was tight, and dragging the log out by main force. When +the wood was all out there remained a conical pile of glowing stones in +the middle of the pit. Ten men now drove the butts of green saplings +into the base of the pile, and held the upper end while a stout vine was +passed behind the row of saplings. A dozen men grasped each end of the +vine, and with loud shouts hauled with all their might. The saplings, +like the teeth of an enormous rake, tore through the pile of stones, +flattening them out towards the opposite edge of the pit. The saplings +were then driven in on the other side and the stones raked in the +opposite direction, then sideways, until the bottom of the pit was +covered with an even layer of hot stones. This process had taken fully +half an hour, but any doubt as to the heat of the stones at the end was +set at rest by the tongues of flame that played continually among them. +The cameras were hard at work, and a large crowd of people pressed +inwards towards the pit as the moment drew near. They were all excited +except Jonathan, who preserved, even in the supreme moment, the air of +holy calm that never leaves his face. All eyes are fixed expectant on +the dense bush behind the clearing, whence the Shadrachs, Meshachs and +Abednegos of the Pacific are to emerge. There is a cry of "Vutu! Vutu!" +and forth from the bush, two and two, march fifteen men, dressed in +garlands and fringes. They tramp straight to the brink of the pit. The +leading pair show something like fear in their faces, but do not pause, +perhaps because the rest would force them to move forward. They step +down upon the stones and continue their march round the pit, planting +their feet squarely and firmly on each stone. The cameras snap, the +crowd surges forward, the bystanders fling in great bundles of green +leaves. But the bundles strike the last man of the procession and cut +him off from his fellows; so he stays where he is, trampling down the +leaves as they are thrown to line the pit, in a dense cloud of steam from +the boiling sap. The rest leap back to his assistance, shouting and +trampling, and the pit turns into the mouth of an Inferno, filled with +dusky frenzied fiends, half seen through the dense volume that rolls up +to heaven and darkens the sunlight. After the leaves, palm-leaf baskets +of the dracaena root are flung to them, more leaves, and then bystanders +and every one join in shovelling earth over all till the pit is gone, and +a smoking mound of fresh earth takes its place. This will keep hot for +four days, and then the masawe will be cooked. + +'As the procession had filed up to the pit, by a preconcerted arrangement +with the noble Jonathan, a large stone had been hooked out of the pit to +the feet of one of the party, who poised a pocket-handkerchief over it, +and dropped it lightly upon the stone when the first man leapt into the +oven, and snatched what remained of it up as the last left the stones. +During the fifteen or twenty seconds it lay there every fold that touched +the stone was charred, and the rest of it scorched yellow. So the stones +were not cool. We caught four or five of the performers as they came +out, and closely examined their feet. They were cool, and showed no +trace of scorching, nor were their anklets of dried tree-fern leaf burnt. +This, Jonathan explained, is part of the miracle; for dried tree-fern is +as combustible as tinder, and there were flames shooting out among the +stones. Sceptics had affirmed that the skin of a Fijian's foot being a +quarter of an inch thick, he would not feel a burn. Whether this be true +or not of the ball and heel, the instep is covered with skin no thicker +than our own, and we saw the men plant their insteps fairly on the +stone.' + +* * * * * + +Mr. Thomson's friend, Jonathan, said that young men had been selected +because they would look better in a photograph, and, being inexperienced, +they were afraid. A stranger would share the gift if he went in with one +of the tribe. Some years ago a man fell and burned his shoulders. 'Any +trick?' 'Here Jonathan's ample face shrunk smaller, and a shadow passed +over his candid eye.' Mr. Thomson concludes: 'Perhaps the Na Ivilankata +clan have no secret, and there is nothing wonderful in their performance; +but, miracle or not, I am very glad I saw it.' The handkerchief dropped +on the stone is 'alive to testify to it.' Mr. Thomson's photograph of +the scene is ill-developed, and the fumes of steam somewhat interfere +with the effect. A rough copy is published in Folk-Lore for September, +1895, but the piece could only be reproduced by a delicate drawing with +the brush. + +The parallel to the rite of the Hirpi is complete, except that red-hot +stones, not the pyre of pine-embers, is used in Fiji. Mr. Thomson has +heard of a similar ceremony in the Cook group of islands. As in ancient +Italy, so in Fiji, a certain _clan_ have the privilege of fire-walking. +It is far enough from Fiji to Southern India, as it is far enough from +Mount Soracte to Fiji. But in Southern India the Klings practise the +rite of the Hirpi and the Na Ivilankata. I give my informant's letter +exactly as it reached me, though it has been published before in +Longman's Magazine: + + + +Kling Fire-walk + + +'Dear Sir,--Observing from your note in Longman's Magazine that you have +mislaid my notes re fire-walking, I herewith repeat them. I have more +than once seen it done by the "Klings," as the low-caste Tamil-speaking +Hindus from Malabar are called, in the Straits Settlements. On one +occasion I was present at a "fire-walking" held in a large tapioca +plantation in Province Wellesley, before many hundreds of spectators, all +the Hindu coolies from the surrounding estates being mustered. A trench +had been dug about twenty yards long by six feet wide and two deep. This +was piled with faggots and small wood four or five feet high. This was +lighted at midday, and by four p.m. the trench was a bed of red-hot +ashes, the heat from which was so intense that the men who raked and +levelled it with long poles could not stand it for more than a minute at +a time. A few yards from the end of the trench a large hole had been dug +and filled with water. When all was ready, six men, ordinary coolies, +dressed only in their "dholis," or loin-cloths, stepped out of the crowd, +and, amidst tremendous excitement and a horrible noise of conches and +drums, passed over the burning trench from end to end, in single file, at +a quick walk, plunging one after the other into the water. Not one of +them showed the least sign of injury. They had undergone some course of +preparation by their priest, not a Brahman, but some kind of devil-doctor +or medicine-man, and, as I understood it, they took on themselves and +expiated the sins of the Kling community for the past year (a big job, if +thieving and lying count; probably not). They are not, however, always +so lucky, for I heard that on the next occasion one of the men fell and +was terribly burnt, thus destroying the whole effect of the ceremony. I +do not think this to be any part of the Brahmanical religion, though the +ordeal by fire as a test of guilt is, or was, in use all over India. The +fact is that the races of Southern India, where the Aryan element is very +small, have kept all their savage customs and devil-worship under the +form of Brahmanism. + +'Another curious feat I saw performed at Labuan Deli, in Sumatra, on the +Chinese New Year. A Chinaman of the coolie class was squatted stark +naked on the roadside, holding on his knees a brass pan the size of a +wash-hand basin, piled a foot high with red-hot charcoal. The heat +reached one's face at two yards, but if it had been a tray of ices the +man couldn't have been more unconcerned. There was a crowd of Chinese +round him, all eagerly asking questions, and a pile of coppers +accumulating beside him. A Chinese shopkeeper told me that the man "told +fortunes," but from the circumstance of a gambling-house being close by, +I concluded that his customers were getting tips on a system. + +'Hoping these notes may be of service to you, +'I remain, +'Yours truly, +'STEPHEN PONDER.' + +* * * * * + +In this rite the fire-pit is thrice as long (at a rough estimate) as that +of the Fijians. The fire is of wooden embers, not heated stones. As in +Fiji, a man who falls is burned, clearly suggesting that the feet and +legs, but not the whole body, are in some way prepared to resist the +fire. As we shall find to be the practice in Bulgaria, the celebrants +place their feet afterwards in water. As in Bulgaria, drums are beaten +to stimulate the fire-walkers. Neither here nor in Fiji are the +performers said to be entranced, like the Bulgarian Nistinares. {161} On +the whole, the Kling rite (which the Klings, I am informed, also practise +in the islands whither they are carried as coolies) so closely resembles +the Fijian and the Tongan that one would explain the likeness by +transmission, were the ceremony not almost as like the rite of the Hirpi. +For the Tongan fire-ritual, the source is The Polynesian Society's +Journal, vol. ii. No. 2. pp. 105-108. My attention was drawn to this by +Mr. Laing, writing from New Zealand. The article is by Miss Tenira +Henry, of Honolulu, a young lady of the island. The Council of the +Society, not having seen the rite, 'do not guarantee the truth of the +story, but willingly publish it for the sake of the incantation.' Miss +Henry begins with a description of the ti-plant (Dracaena terminalis), +which 'requires to be well baked before being eaten.' She proceeds thus: + +'The ti-ovens are frequently thirty feet in diameter, and the large +stones, heaped upon small logs of wood, take about twenty-four hours to +get properly heated. Then they are flattened down, by means of long +green poles, and the trunks of a few banana-trees are stripped up and +strewn over them to cause steam. The ti-roots are then thrown in whole, +accompanied by short pieces of ape-root (Arum costatum), that are not +quite so thick as the ti, but grow to the length of six feet and more. +The oven is then covered over with large leaves and soil, and left so for +about three days, when the ti and the ape are taken out well cooked, and +of a rich, light-brown colour. The ape prevents the ti from getting too +dry in the oven. + +'There is a strange ceremony connected with the Uum Ti (or ti-oven), that +used to be practised by the heathen priests at Raiatea, but can now be +performed by only two individuals (Tupua and Taero), both descendants of +priests. This ceremony consisted in causing people to walk in procession +through the hot oven when flattened down, before anything had been placed +in it, and without any preparation whatever, bare-footed or shod, and on +their emergence not even smelling of fire. The manner of doing this was +told by Tupua, who heads the procession in the picture, to Monsieur +Morne, Lieutenant de Vaisseau, who also took the photograph {163} of it, +about two years ago, at Uturoa, Raiatea, which, being on bad paper, was +copied off by Mr. Barnfield, of Honolulu. All the white residents of the +place, as well as the French officers, were present to see the ceremony, +which is rarely performed nowadays. + +'No one has yet been able to solve the mystery of this surprising feat, +but it is to be hoped that scientists will endeavour to do so while those +men who practise it still live. + + + +Tupua's Incantation used in Walking Over the Uum-Ti.--Translation + + +'Hold the leaves of the ti-plant before picking them, and say: "O hosts +of gods! awake, arise! You and I are going to the ti-oven to-morrow." + +'If they float in the air, they are gods, but if their feet touch the +ground they are human beings. Then break the ti-leaves off and look +towards the direction of the oven, and say: "O hosts of gods! go +to-night, and to-morrow you and I shall go." Then wrap the ti-leaves up +in han (Hibiscus) leaves, and put them to sleep in the marae, where they +must remain until morning, and say in leaving: + +'"Arise! awake! O hosts of gods! Let your feet take you to the ti-oven; +fresh water and salt water come also. Let the dark earth-worm and the +light earth-worm go to the oven. Let the redness and the shades of fire +all go. You will go; you will go to-night, and to-morrow it will be you +and I; we shall go to the Uum-Ti." (This is for the night.) + +'When the ti-leaves are brought away, they must be tied up in a wand and +carried straight to the oven, and opened when all are ready to pass +through; then hold the wand forward and say: + +'"O men (spirits) who heated the oven! let it die out! O dark +earth-worms! O light earthworms! fresh water and salt water, heat of the +oven and redness of the oven, hold up the footsteps of the walkers, and +fan the heat of the bed. O cold beings, let us lie in the midst of the +oven! O Great-Woman-who-set-fire-to-the-skies! hold the fan, and let us +go into the oven for a little while!" Then, when all are ready to walk +in, we say: + + "Holder of the first footstep! + Holder of the second footstep! + Holder of the third footstep! + Holder of the fourth footstep! + Holder of the fifth footstep! + Holder of the sixth footstep! + Holder of the seventh footstep! + Holder of the eighth footstep! + Holder of the ninth footstep! + Holder of the tenth footstep! + "O Great-Woman-who-set-fire-to-the-skies! all is covered!" + +'Then everybody walks through without hurt, into the middle and around +the oven, following the leader, with the wand beating from side to side. + +'The Great-Woman-who-set-fire-to-the-skies was a high-born woman in olden +times, who made herself respected by the oppressive men when they placed +women under so many restrictions. She is said to have had the lightning +at her command, and struck men with it when they encroached on her +rights. + +'All the above is expressed in old Tahitian, and when quickly spoken is +not easily understood by the modern listener. Many of the words, though +found in the dictionary, are now obsolete, and the arrangement of others +is changed. Oe and tana are never used now in place of the plural outou +and tatou; but in old folk-lore it is the classical style of addressing +the gods in the collective sense. Tahutahu means sorcery, and also to +kindle a fire.' + +* * * * * + +So far Miss Henry, on this occasion, and the archaic nature of the hymn, +with the reference to a mythical leader of the revolt of women, deserves +the attention of anthropologists, apart from the singular character of +the rite described. In the third number of the Journal (vol. ii.) the +following editorial note is published: + + 'Miss Tenira Henry authorises us to say that her sister and her + sister's little child were some of those who joined in the Uum-Ti + ceremony referred to in vol. ii. p. 108, and in the preceding note, + and actually walked over the red-hot stones. The illustration of the + performance given in the last number of the Journal, it appears, is + actually from a photograph taken by Lieutenant Morne, the original of + which Miss Henry has sent us for inspection.--EDITOR.' + + + +Corroborative Evidence + + +The following corroborative account is given in the Journal, from a +source vaguely described as 'a pamphlet published in San Francisco, by +Mr. Hastwell:' + +'The natives of Raiatea have some performances so entirely out of the +ordinary course of events as to institute (sic) inquiry relative to a +proper solution. + +'On September 20, 1885, I witnessed the wonderful, and to me +inexplicable, performance of passing through the "fiery furnace." + +'The furnace that I saw was an excavation of three or four feet in the +ground, in a circular form (sloping upwards), and about thirty feet +across. The excavation was filled with logs and wood, and then covered +with large stones. A fire was built underneath, and kept burning for a +day. When I witnessed it, on the second day, the flames were pouring up +through the interstices of the rocks, which were heated to a red and +white heat. When everything was in readiness, and the furnace still +pouring out its intense heat, the natives marched up with bare feet to +the edge of the furnace, where they halted for a moment, and after a few +passes of the wand made of the branches of the ti-plant by the leader, +who repeated a few words in the native language, they stepped down on the +rocks and walked leisurely across to the other side, stepping from stone +to stone. This was repeated five times, without any preparation whatever +on their feet, and without injury or discomfort from the heated stones. +There was not even the smell of fire on their garments.' + +* * * * * + +Mr. N. J. Tone, in the same periodical (ii. 3,193), says that he arrived +just too late to see the same rite at Bukit Mestajam, in Province +Wellesley, Straits Settlements; he did see the pit and the fire, and +examined the naked feet, quite uninjured, of the performers. He +publishes an extract to this effect from his diary. The performers, I +believe, were Klings. Nothing is said to indicate any condition of +trance, or other abnormal state, in the fire-walkers. + + + +The Fire-walk in Trinidad. + + +Mr. Henry E. St. Clair, writing on September 14. 1896, says: 'In +Trinidad, British West Indies, the rite is performed annually about this +time of the year among the Indian coolie immigrants resident in the small +village of Peru, a mile or so from Port of Spain. I have personally +witnessed the passing, and the description given by Mr. Ponder tallies +with what I saw, except that, so far as I can remember, the number of +those who took part in the rite was greater than six. In addition, there +is this circumstance, which was not mentioned by that gentleman: each of +the "passers" carried one or two lemons, which they dropped into the fire +as they went along. These lemons were afterwards eagerly scrambled for +by the bystanders, who, so far as I can recollect, attributed a healing +influence to them.' + + + +Bulgarian Fire-walk + + +As to the Bulgarian rite, Dr. Schischmanof writes to me: + + 'I am sure the observance will surprise you; I am even afraid that you + will think it rather fantastic, but you may rely on my information. + The danse de feu was described long ago in a Bulgarian periodical by + one of our best known writers. What you are about to read only + confirms his account. What I send you is from the Recueil de Folk + Lore, de Litterature et de Science (vol. vi. p. 224), edited, with my + aid and that of my colleague, Mastov, by the Minister of Public + Instruction. How will you explain these hauts faits de l'extase + religieuse? I cannot imagine! For my part, I think of the + self-mutilations and tortures of Dervishes and Fakirs, and wonder if + we have not here something analogous.' + +The article in the Bulgarian serial is called 'The Nistinares.' The word +is not Bulgarian; possibly it is Romaic. + +The scene is in certain villages in Turkey, on the Bulgarian frontier, +and not far from the town of Bourgas, on the Euxine, in the department of +Lozen Grad. The ministrants (Nistinares) have the gift of fire-walking +as a hereditary talent; they are specially _just_, and the gift is +attributed as to a god in Fiji, in Bulgaria to St. Constantine and St. +Helena. + + 'These _just ones_ feel a desire to dance in the flames during the + month of May; they are filled at the same time with some unknown + force, which enables them to predict the future. The best Nistinare + is he who can dance longest in the live flame, and utter the most + truthful prophecies.' + +The Nistinares may be of either sex. + +On May 1 the Nistinares hold a kind of religious festival at the house of +one of their number. Salutations are exchanged, and presents of food and +raki are made to the chief Nistinare. The holy icones of saints are +wreathed with flowers, and perfumed with incense. Arrangements are made +for purifying the holy wells and springs. + +On May 21, the day of St. Helena and St. Constantine, the parish priest +says Mass in the grey of dawn. At sunrise all the village meets in +festal array; the youngest Nistinare brings from the church the icones of +the two saints, and drums are carried behind them in procession. They +reach the sacred well in the wood, which the priest blesses. This is +parallel to the priestly benediction on 'Fountain Sunday' of the well +beneath the Fairy Tree at Domremy, where Jeanne d'Arc was accused of +meeting the Good Ladies. {169} Everyone drinks of the water, and there +is a sacrifice of rams, ewes, and oxen. A festival follows, as was the +use of Domremy in the days of the Maid; then all return to the village. +The holy drum, which hangs all the year before St. Helena in the church, +is played upon. A mock combat between the icones which have visited the +various holy wells is held. + +Meanwhile, in each village, pyres of dry wood, amounting to thirty, +fifty, or even a hundred cartloads, have been piled up. The wood is set +on fire before the procession goes forth to the hallowing of the +fountains. On returning, the crowd dances a horo (round dance) about the +glowing logs. Heaps of embers (Pineus acervus) are made, and water is +thrown on the ground. The musicians play the tune called 'L'Air +Nistinar.' A Nistinare breaks through the dance, _turns blue_, trembles +like a leaf, and glares wildly with his eyes. The dance ends, and +everybody goes to the best point of view. Then the wildest Nistinare +seizes the icon, turns it to the crowd, and with naked feet climbs the +pyre of glowing embers. The music plays, and the Nistinare dances to the +tune in the fire. If he is so disposed he utters prophecies. He dances +till his face resumes its ordinary expression; then he begins to feel the +burning; he leaves the pyre, and places his feet in the mud made by the +libations of water already described. The second Nistinare then dances +in the fire, and so on. The predictions apply to villages and persons; +sometimes sinners are denounced, or repairs of the church are demanded in +this queer parish council. All through the month of May the Nistinares +call out for fire when they hear the Nistinare music playing. They are +very temperate men and women. Except in May they do not clamour for +fire, and cannot dance in it. + +In this remarkable case the alleged gift is hereditary, is of saintly +origin, and is only exercised when the Nistinare is excited, and +(apparently) entranced by music and the dance, as is the manner also of +medicine-men among savages. The rite, with its sacrifices of sheep and +oxen, is manifestly of heathen origin. They 'pass through the fire' to +St. Constantine, but the observance must be far older than Bulgarian +Christianity. The report says nothing as to the state of the feet of the +Nistinares after the fire-dance. Medical inspection is desirable, and +the photographic camera should be used to catch a picture of the wild +scene. My account is abridged from the French version of the Bulgarian +report sent by Dr. Schischmanof. + + + +Indian Fire-walk + + +Since these lines were written the kindness of Mr. Tawney, librarian at +the India Office, has added to my stock of examples. Thus, Mr. Stokes +printed in the Indian Antiquary (ii. p. 190) notes of evidence taken at +an inquest on a boy of fourteen, who fell during the fire-walk, was +burned, and died on that day. The rite had been forbidden, but was +secretly practised in the village of Periyangridi. The fire-pit was 27 +feet long by 7.5 feet broad and a span in depth. Thirteen persons walked +through the hot wood embers, which, in Mr. Stokes's opinion (who did not +see the performance), 'would hardly injure the tough skin of the sole of +a labourer's foot,' yet killed a boy. The treading was usually done by +men under vows, perhaps vows made during illness. One, at least, walked +'because it is my duty as Pujari.' Another says, 'I got down into the +fire at the east end, meditating on Draupati, walked through to the west, +and up the bank.' Draupati is a goddess, wife of the Pandavas. Mr. +Stokes reports that, according to the incredulous, experienced +fire-walkers smear their feet with oil of the green frog. No report is +made as to the condition of their feet when they emerge from the fire. + +Another case occurs in Oppert's work, The Original Inhabitants of India +(p. 480). As usual, a pit is dug, filled with faggots. When these have +burned down 'a little,' and 'while the heat is still unbearable in the +neighbourhood of the ditch, those persons who have made the vow . . . +walk . . . on the embers in the pit, without doing themselves as a rule +much harm.' + +Again, in a case where butter is poured over the embers to make a blaze, +'one of the tribal priests, in a state of religious afflatus, walks +through the fire. It is said that the sacred fire is harmless, but some +admit that a certain preservative ointment is used by the performers.' A +chant used at Mirzapur (as in Fiji) is cited. {171} + +In these examples the statements are rather vague. No evidence is +adduced as to the actual effect of the fire on the feet of the +ministrants. We hear casually of ointments which protect the feet, and +of the thickness of the skins of the fire-walkers, and of the +unapproachable heat, but we have nothing exact, no trace of scientific +precision. The Government 'puts down,' but does not really investigate +the rite. + + + +Psychical Parallels + + +I now very briefly, and 'under all reserves,' allude to the only modern +parallel in our country with which I am acquainted. We have seen that +Iamblichus includes insensibility to fire among the privileges of Graeco- +Egyptian 'mediums.' {172} The same gift was claimed by Daniel Dunglas +Home, the notorious American spiritualist. I am well aware that as +Eusapia Paladino was detected in giving a false impression that her hands +were held by her neighbours in the dark, therefore, when Mr. Crookes +asserts that he saw Home handle fire in the light, his testimony on this +point can have no weight with a logical public. Consequently it is not +as evidence to the _fact_ that I cite Mr. Crookes, but for another +purpose. Mr. Crookes's remarks I heard, and I can produce plenty of +living witnesses to the same experiences with D. D. Home: + + 'I several times saw the fire test, both at my own and at other + houses. On one occasion he called me to him when he went to the fire, + and told me to watch carefully. He certainly put his hand in the + grate and handled the red-hot coals in a manner which would have been + impossible for me to have imitated without being severely burnt. I + once saw him go to a bright wood fire, and, taking a large piece of + red-hot charcoal, put it in the hollow of one hand, and, covering it + with the other, blow into the extempore furnace till the coal was + white hot, and the flames licked round his fingers. No sign of + burning could be seen then or afterwards on his hands.' + +On these occasions Home was, or was understood to be, 'entranced,' like +the Bulgarian Nistinares. Among other phenomena, the white handkerchief +on which Home laid a red-hot coal was not scorched, nor, on analysis, did +it show any signs of chemical preparation. Home could also (like the +Fijians) communicate his alleged immunity to others present; for example, +to Mr. S. C. Hall. But it burned and marked a man I know. Home, +entranced, and handling a red-hot coal, passed it to a gentleman of my +acquaintance, whose hand still bears the scar of the scorching endured in +1867. Immunity was not _always_ secured by experimenters. + +I only mention these circumstances because Mr. Crookes has stated that he +knows no chemical preparation which would avert the ordinary action of +heat. Mr. Clodd (on the authority of Sir B. W. Richardson) has suggested +diluted sulphuric acid (so familiar to Klings, Hirpi, Tongans, and +Fijians). But Mr. Clodd produced no examples of successful or +unsuccessful experiment. {173} The nescience of Mr. Crookes may be taken +to cover these valuable properties of diluted sulphuric acid, unless Mr. +Clodd succeeds in an experiment which, if made on his own person, I would +very willingly witness. + +Merely for completeness, I mention Dr. Dozous's statement, {174} that he +timed by his watch Bernadette, the seer of Lourdes, while, for fifteen +minutes, she, in an ecstatic condition, held her hands in the flame of a +candle. He then examined her hands, which were not scorched or in any +way affected by the fire. This is called, at Lourdes, the Miracle du +Cierge. + +Here ends my list of examples, in modern and ancient times, of a rite +which deserves, though it probably will not receive, the attention of +science. The widely diffused religious character of the performance +will, perhaps, be admitted as demonstrated. As to the method by which +the results are attained, whether by a chemical preparation, or by the +influence of a certain mental condition, or by thickness of skin, or +whether all the witnesses fable with a singular unanimity (shared by +photographic cameras), I am unable even to guess. On May 21, in +Bulgaria, a scientific observer might come to a conclusion. At present I +think it possible that the Jewish 'Passing through the Fire' may have +been a harmless rite. + + + +Conclusion as to Fire-walk + + +In all these cases, and others as to which I have first-hand evidence, +there are decided parallels to the Rite of the Hirpi, and to Biblical and +ecclesiastical miracles. The savage examples are _rites_, and appear +intended to secure good results in food supplies (Fiji), or general well- +being, perhaps by expiation for sins, as in the Attic Thargelia. The +Bulgarian rite also aims at propitiating general good luck. + + + +Psychical Research + + +But how is the Fire-walk done? That remains a mystery, and perhaps no +philologist, folk-lorist, anthropologist, or physiologist, has seriously +asked the question. The medicamentum of Varro, the green frog fat of +India, the diluted sulphuric acid of Mr. Clodd, are guesses in the air, +and Mr. Clodd has made no experiment. The possibility of plunging the +hand, unhurt, in molten metal, is easily accounted for, and is not to the +point. In this difficulty Psychical Research registers, and no more, the +well-attested performances of D. D. Home (entranced, like the +Nistinares); the well observed and timed Miracle du Cierge at +Lourdes--Bernadette being in an ecstatic condition; the Biblical story of +Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace; the researches of +Iamblichus; the case of Madame Shchapoff, carefully reported, {175} and +other examples. There is no harm in collecting examples, and the +question remains, are all those rites, from those of Virgil's Hirpi to +Bulgaria of to-day, based on some actual but obscure and scientifically +neglected fact in nature? At all events, for the Soranus-Feronia rite +philology only supplies her competing etymologies, folk-lore her modern +rural parallels, anthropology her savage examples, psychical research her +'cases' at first-hand. Anthropology had neglected the collection of +these, perhaps because the Fire-walk is 'impossible.' + + + + +THE ORIGIN OF DEATH + + +Yama + + +This excursus on 'The Fire-walk' has been introduced, as an occasion +arose, less because of controversy about a neglected theme than for the +purpose of giving something positive in a controversial treatise. For +the same reason I take advantage of Mr. Max Muller's remarks on Yama, +'the first who died,' to offer a set of notes on myths of the Origin of +Death. Yama, in our author's opinion, is 'the setting sun' (i. 45; ii. +563). Agni (Fire) is 'the first who was born;' as the other twin, Yama, +he was also the first who died (ii. 568). As 'the setting sun he was the +first instance of death.' Kuhn and others, judging from a passage in the +Atharva Veda (xviii. 3, 13), have, however, inferred that Yama 'was +really a human being and the first of mortals.' He is described in the +Atharva as 'the gatherer of men, who died the first of mortals, who went +forward the first to that world.' In the Atharva we read of 'reverence +to Yama, to Death, who first approached the precipice, finding out the +path for many.' 'The myth of Yama is perfectly intelligible, if we trace +its roots back to the sun of evening' (ii. 573). Mr. Max Muller then +proposes on this head 'to consult the traditions of real Naturvolker' +(savages). The Harvey Islanders speak of dying as 'following the sun's +track.' The Maoris talk of 'going down with the sun' (ii. 574). No more +is said here about savage myths of 'the first who died.' I therefore +offer some additions to the two instances in which savages use a poetical +phrase connecting the sun's decline with man's death. + + + +The Origin of Death + + +Civilised man in a scientific age would never invent a myth to account +for 'God's great ordinance of death.' He regards it as a fact, obvious +and necessarily universal; but his own children have not attained to his +belief in death. The certainty and universality of death do not enter +into the thoughts of our little ones. + + For in the thought of immortality + Do children play about the flowery meads. + +Now, there are still many childlike tribes of men who practically +disbelieve in death. To them death is always a surprise and an +accident--an unnecessary, irrelevant intrusion on the living world. +'Natural deaths are by many tribes regarded as supernatural,' says Dr. +Tylor. These tribes have no conception of death as the inevitable, +eventual obstruction and cessation of the powers of the bodily machine; +the stopping of the pulses and processes of life by violence or decay or +disease. To persons who regard Death thus, _his_ intrusion into the +world (for Death, of course, is thought to be a person) stands in great +need of explanation. That explanation, as usual, is given in myths. + + + +Death, regarded as Unnatural + + +But before studying these widely different myths, let us first establish +the fact that death really is regarded as something non-natural and +intrusive. The modern savage readily believes in and accounts in a +scientific way for _violent_ deaths. The spear or club breaks or crushes +a hole in a man, and his soul flies out. But the deaths he disbelieves +in are _natural_ deaths. These he is obliged to explain as produced by +some supernatural cause, generally the action of malevolent spirits +impelled by witches. Thus the savage holds that, violence apart and the +action of witches apart, man would even now be immortal. 'There are rude +races of Australia and South America,' writes Dr. Tylor, {178} 'whose +intense belief in witchcraft has led them to declare that if men were +never bewitched, and never killed by violence, _they would never die at +all_. Like the Australians, the Africans will inquire of their dead +"what sorcerer slew them by his wicked arts."' 'The natives,' says Sir +George Grey, speaking of the Australians, 'do not believe that there is +such a thing as death from natural causes.' On the death of an +Australian native from disease, a kind of magical coroner's inquest is +held by the conjurers of the tribe, and the direction in which the wizard +lives who slew the dead man is ascertained by the movements of worms and +insects. The process is described at full length by Mr. Brough Smyth in +his Aborigines of Victoria (i. 98-102). Turning from Australia to +Hindustan, we find that the Puwarrees (according to Heber's narrative) +attribute all natural deaths to a supernatural cause--namely, witchcraft. +That is, the Puwarrees do not yet believe in the universality and +necessity of Death. He is an intruder brought by magic arts into our +living world. Again, in his Ethnology of Bengal (pp. 199, 200), Dalton +tells us that the Hos (an aboriginal non-Aryan race) are of the same +opinion as the Puwarrees. 'They hold that all disease in men or animals +is attributable to one of two causes: the wrath of some evil spirit or +the spell of some witch or sorcerer. These superstitions are common to +all classes of the population of this province.' In the New Hebrides +disease and death are caused, as Mr. Codrington found, by tamates, or +ghosts. {179} In New Caledonia, according to Erskine, death is the +result of witchcraft practised by members of a hostile tribe, for who +would be so wicked as to bewitch his fellow-tribesman? The Andaman +Islanders attribute all natural deaths to the supernatural influence of e +rem chaugala, or to jurn-win, two spirits of the jungle and the sea. The +death is avenged by the nearest relation of the deceased, who shoots +arrows at the invisible enemy. The negroes of Central Africa entertain +precisely similar ideas about the non-naturalness of death. Mr. Duff +Macdonald, in Africana, writes: 'Every man who dies what we call a +natural death is really killed by witches.' It is a far cry from the +Blantyre Mission in Africa to the Eskimo of the frozen North; but so +uniform is human nature in the lower races that the Eskimo precisely +agree, as far as theories of death go, with the Africans, the aborigines +of India, the Andaman Islanders, the Australians, and the rest. Dr. Rink +{180a} found that 'sickness or death coming about in an accidental manner +was always attributed to witchcraft, and it remains a question whether +death on the whole was not originally accounted for as resulting from +magic.' Pere Paul le Jeune, writing from Quebec in 1637, says of the Red +Men: 'Je n'en voy mourir quasi aucun, qui ne pense estre ensorcele.' +{180b} It is needless to show how these ideas survived into +civilisation. Bishop Jewell, denouncing witches before Queen Elizabeth, +was, so far, mentally on a level with the Eskimo and the Australian. The +familiar and voluminous records of trials for witchcraft, whether at +Salem or at Edinburgh, prove that all abnormal and unwonted deaths and +diseases, in animals or in men, were explained by our ancestors as the +results of supernatural mischief. + +It has been made plain (and the proof might be enlarged to any extent) +that the savage does not regard death as 'God's great ordinance,' +universal and inevitable and natural. But, being curious and +inquisitive, he cannot help asking himself, 'How did this terrible +invader first enter a world where he now appears so often?' This is, +properly speaking, a scientific question; but the savage answers it, not +by collecting facts and generalising from them, but by inventing a myth. +That is his invariable habit. Does he want to know why this tree has red +berries, why that animal has brown stripes, why this bird utters its +peculiar cry, where fire came from, why a constellation is grouped in one +way or another, why his race of men differs from the whites--in all +these, and in all other intellectual perplexities, the savage invents a +story to solve the problem. Stories about the Origin of Death are, +therefore, among the commonest fruits of the savage imagination. As +those legends have been produced to meet the same want by persons in a +very similar mental condition, it inevitably follows that they all +resemble each other with considerable closeness. We need not conclude +that all the myths we are about to examine came from a single original +source, or were handed about--with flint arrow-heads, seeds, shells, +beads, and weapons--in the course of savage commerce. Borrowing of this +sort may--or, rather, must--explain many difficulties as to the diffusion +of some myths. But the myths with which we are concerned now, the myths +of the Origin of Death, might easily have been separately developed by +simple and ignorant men seeking to discover an answer to the same +problem. + + + +Why Men are Mortal + + +The myths of the Origin of Death fall into a few categories. In many +legends of the lower races men are said to have become subject to +mortality because they infringed some mystic prohibition or taboo of the +sort which is common among untutored peoples. The apparently +untrammelled Polynesian, or Australian, or African, is really the slave +of countless traditions, which forbid him to eat this object or to touch +that, or to speak to such and such a person, or to utter this or that +word. Races in this curious state of ceremonial subjection often account +for death as the punishment imposed for breaking some taboo. In other +cases, death is said to have been caused by a sin of omission, not of +commission. People who have a complicated and minute ritual (like so +many of the lower races) persuade themselves that Death burst on the +world when some passage of the ritual was first omitted, or when some +custom was first infringed. Yet again, Death is fabled to have first +claimed us for his victims in consequence of the erroneous delivery of a +favourable message from some powerful supernatural being, or because of +the failure of some enterprise which would have resulted in the overthrow +of Death, or by virtue of a pact or covenant between Death and the gods. +Thus it will be seen that death is often (though by no means invariably) +the penalty of infringing a command, or of indulging in a culpable +curiosity. But there are cases, as we shall see, in which death, as a +tolerably general law, follows on a mere accident. Some one is +accidentally killed, and this 'gives Death a lead' (as they say in the +hunting-field) over the fence which had hitherto severed him from the +world of living men. It is to be observed in this connection that the +first of men who died is usually regarded as the discoverer of a hitherto +'unknown country,' the land beyond the grave, to which all future men +must follow him. Bin dir Woor, among the Australians, was the first man +who suffered death, and he (like Yama in the Vedic myth) became the +Columbus of the new world of the dead. + + + +Savage Death-Myths + + +Let us now examine in detail a few of the savage stories of the Origin of +Death. That told by the Australians may be regarded with suspicion, as a +refraction from a careless hearing of the narrative in Genesis. The +legend printed by Mr. Brough Smyth {183a} was told to Mr. Bulwer by 'a +black fellow far from sharp,' and this black fellow may conceivably have +distorted what his tribe had heard from a missionary. This sort of +refraction is not uncommon, and we must always guard ourselves against +being deceived by a savage corruption of a Biblical narrative. Here is +the myth, such as it is:--'The first created man and woman were told' (by +whom we do not learn) 'not to go near a certain tree in which a bat +lived. The bat was not to be disturbed. One day, however, the woman was +gathering firewood, and she went near the tree. The bat flew away, and +after that came Death.' More evidently genuine is the following legend +of how Death 'got a lead' into the Australian world. 'The child of the +first man was wounded. If his parents could heal him, Death would never +enter the world. They failed. Death came.' The wound in this legend +was inflicted by a supernatural being. Here Death acts on the principle +ce n'est que le premier pas qui coute, and the premier pas was made easy +for him. We may continue to examine the stories which account for death +as the result of breaking a taboo. The Ningphos of Bengal say they were +originally immortal. {183b} They were forbidden to bathe in a certain +pool of water. Some one, greatly daring, bathed, and ever since Ningphos +have been subject to death. The infringement, not of a taboo, but of a +custom, caused death in one of the many Melanesian myths on this subject. +Men and women had been practically deathless because they cast their old +skins at certain intervals; but a grandmother had a favourite grandchild +who failed to recognise her when she appeared as a young woman in her new +skin. With fatal good-nature the grandmother put on her old skin again, +and instantly men lost the art of skin-shifting, and Death finally seized +them. {184} + + + +The Greek Myth + + +The Greek myth of the Origin of Death is the most important of those +which turn on the breaking of a prohibition. The story has unfortunately +become greatly confused in the various poetical forms which have reached +us. As far as can be ascertained, death was regarded in one early Greek +myth as the punishment of indulgence in forbidden curiosity. Men appear +to have been free from death before the quarrel between Zeus and +Prometheus. In consequence of this quarrel Hephaestus fashioned a woman +out of earth and water, and gave her to Epimetheus, the brother of the +Titan. Prometheus had forbidden his brother to accept any gift from the +gods, but the bride was welcomed nevertheless. She brought her tabooed +coffer: this was opened; and men--who, according to Hesiod, had hitherto +lived exempt from 'maladies that bring down Fate'--were overwhelmed with +the 'diseases that stalk abroad by night and day.' Now, in Hesiod (Works +and Days, 70-100) there is nothing said about unholy curiosity. Pandora +simply opened her casket and scattered its fatal contents. But +Philodemus assures us that, according to a variant of the myth, it was +Epimetheus who opened the forbidden coffer, whence came Death. + +Leaving the myths which turn on the breaking of a taboo, and reserving +for consideration the New Zealand story, in which the Origin of Death is +the neglect of a ritual process, let us look at some African myths of the +Origin of Death. It is to be observed that in these (as in all the myths +of the most backward races) many of the characters are not gods, but +animals. + +The Bushman story lacks the beginning. The mother of the little Hare was +lying dead, but we do not know how she came to die. The Moon then struck +the little Hare on the lip, cutting it open, and saying, 'Cry loudly, for +your mother will not return, as _I_ do, but is quite dead.' In another +version the Moon promises that the old Hare shall return to life, but the +little Hare is sceptical, and is hit in the mouth as before. The +Hottentot myth makes the Moon send the Hare to men with the message that +they will revive as he (the Moon) does. But the Hare 'loses his memory +as he runs' (to quote the French proverb, which may be based on a form of +this very tale), and the messenger brings the tidings that men shall +surely die and never revive. The angry Moon then burns a hole in the +Hare's mouth. In yet another Hottentot version the Hare's failure to +deliver the message correctly caused the death of the Moon's mother +(Bleek, Bushman Folklore). {185} Compare Sir James Alexander's +Expedition, ii. 250, where the Namaquas tell this tale. The Fijians say +that the Moon wished men to die and be born again, like herself. The Rat +said, 'No, let them die, like rats;' and they do. {186} + + + +The Serpent + + +In this last variant we have death as the result of a failure or +transgression. Among the more backward natives of South India (Lewin's +Wild Races of South India) the serpent is concerned, in a suspicious way, +with the Origin of Death. The following legend might so easily arise +from a confused understanding of the Mohammedan or Biblical narrative +that it is of little value for our purpose. At the same time, even if it +is only an adaptation, it shows the characteristics of the adapting +mind:--God had made the world, trees, and reptiles, and then set to work +to make man out of clay. A serpent came and devoured the still inanimate +clay images while God slept. The serpent still comes and bites us all, +and the end is death. If God never slept, there would be no death. The +snake carries us off while God is asleep. But the oddest part of this +myth remains. Not being able always to keep awake, God made a dog to +drive away the snake by barking. And that is why dogs always howl when +men are at the point of death. Here we have our own rural superstition +about howling dogs twisted into a South Indian myth of the Origin of +Death. The introduction of Death by a pure accident recurs in a myth of +Central Africa reported by Mr. Duff Macdonald. There was a time when the +man blessed by Sancho Panza had not yet 'invented sleep.' A woman it was +who came and offered to instruct two men in the still novel art of +sleeping. 'She held the nostrils of one, and he never awoke at all,' and +since then the art of dying has been facile. + + + +Dualistic Myths + + +A not unnatural theory of the Origin of Death is illustrated by a myth +from Pentecost Island and a Red Indian myth. In the legends of very many +races we find the attempt to account for the Origin of Death and Evil by +a simple dualistic myth. There were two brothers who made things; one +made things well, the other made them ill. In Pentecost Island it was +Tagar who made things well, and he appointed that men should die for five +days only, and live again. But the malevolent Suque caused men 'to die +right out.' {187} The Red Indian legend of the same character is printed +in the Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology (1879-80), p. 45. The +younger of the Cin-au-av brothers, who were wolves, said, 'When a man +dies, send him back in the morning and let all his friends rejoice.' 'Not +so,' said the elder; 'the dead shall return no more.' So the younger +brother slew the child of the elder, and this was the beginning of death. + + + +Economic Myth + + +There is another and a very quaint myth of the Origin of Death in Banks +Island. At first, in Banks Island, as elsewhere, men were immortal. The +economical results were just what might have been expected. Property +became concentrated in the hands of the few--that is, of the first +generations--while all the younger people were practically paupers. To +heal the disastrous social malady, Qat (the maker of things, who was more +or less a spider) sent for Mate--that is, Death. Death lived near a +volcanic crater of a mountain, where there is now a by-way into Hades--or +Panoi, as the Melanesians call it. Death came, and went through the +empty forms of a funeral feast for himself. Tangaro the Fool was sent to +watch Mate, and to see by what way he returned to Hades, that men might +avoid that path in future. Now when Mate fled to his own place, this +great fool Tangaro noticed the path, but forgot which it was, and pointed +it out to men under the impression that it was the road to the _upper_, +not to the _under_, world. Ever since that day men have been constrained +to follow Mate's path to Panoi and the dead. {188} Another myth is +somewhat different, but, like this one, attributes death to the +imbecility of Tangaro the Fool. + + + +Maui and Yama + + +The New Zealand myth of the Origin of Death is pretty well known, as Dr. +Tylor has seen in it the remnants of a solar myth, and has given it a +'solar' explanation. It is an audacious thing to differ from so cautious +and learned an anthropologist as Dr. Tylor, but I venture to give my +reasons for dissenting in this case from the view of the author of +Primitive Culture (i. 335). Maui is the great hero of Maori mythology. +He was not precisely a god, still less was he one of the early elemental +gods, yet we can scarcely regard him as a man. He rather answers to one +of the race of Titans, and especially to Prometheus, the son of a Titan. +Maui was prematurely born, and his mother thought the child would be no +credit to her already numerous and promising family. She therefore (as +native women too often did in the South-Sea Islands) tied him up in her +long tresses and tossed him out to sea. The gales brought him back to +shore: one of his grandparents carried him home, and he became much the +most illustrious and successful of his household. So far Maui had the +luck which so commonly attends the youngest and least-considered child in +folklore and mythology. This feature in his myth may be a result of the +very widespread custom of jungsten Recht (Borough English), by which the +youngest child is heir at least of the family hearth. Now, unluckily, at +the baptism of Maui (for a pagan form of baptism is a Maori ceremony) his +father omitted some of the Karakias, or ritual utterances proper to be +used on such occasions. This was the fatal original mistake whence came +man's liability to death, for hitherto men had been immortal. So far, +what is there 'solar' about Maui? Who are the sun's brethren?--and Maui +had many. How could the sun catch the sun in a snare, and beat him so as +to make him lame? This was one of Maui's feats, for he meant to prevent +the sun from running too fast through the sky. Maui brought fire, +indeed, from the under-world, as Prometheus stole it from the +upper-world; but many men and many beasts do as much as the myths of the +world, and it is hard to see how the exploit gives Maui 'a solar +character.' Maui invented barbs for hooks, and other appurtenances of +early civilisation, with which the sun has no more to do than with patent +safety-matches. His last feat was to attempt to secure human immortality +for ever. There are various legends on this subject. + + + +Maui Myths + + +Some say Maui noticed that the sun and moon rose again from their daily +death, by virtue of a fountain in Hades (Hine-nui-te-po) where they +bathed. Others say he wished to kill Hine-nui-te-po (conceived of as a +woman) and to carry off her heart. Whatever the reason, Maui was to be +swallowed up in the giant frame of Hades, or Night, and, if he escaped +alive, Death would never have power over men. He made the desperate +adventure, and would have succeeded but for the folly of one of the birds +which accompanied him. This little bird, which sings at sunset, burst +out laughing inopportunely, wakened Hine-nui-te-po, and she crushed to +death Maui and all hopes of earthly immortality. Had he only come forth +alive, men would have been deathless. Now, except that the bird which +laughed sings at sunset, what is there 'solar' in all this? _The sun +does daily what Maui failed to do_, {190a} passes through darkness and +death back into light and life. Not only does the sun daily succeed +where Maui failed, but it was his observation of this fact which +encouraged Maui to risk the adventure. If Maui were the sun, we should +all be immortal, for Maui's ordeal is daily achieved by the sun. But Dr. +Tylor says: {190b} 'It is seldom that solar characteristics are more +distinctly marked in the several details of a myth than they are here.' +To us the characteristics seem to be precisely the reverse of solar. +Throughout the cycle of Maui he is constantly set in direct opposition to +the sun, and the very point of the final legend is that what the sun +could do Maui could not. Literally the one common point between Maui and +the sun is that the little bird, the tiwakawaka, which sings at the daily +death of day, sang at the eternal death of Maui. + +Without pausing to consider the Tongan myth of the Origin of Death, we +may go on to investigate the legends of the Aryan races. According to +the Satapatha Brahmana, Death was made, like the gods and other +creatures, by a being named Prajapati. Now of Prajapati, half was +mortal, half was immortal. With his mortal half he feared Death, and +concealed himself from Death in earth and water. Death said to the gods, +'What hath become of him who created us?' They answered, 'Fearing thee, +hath he entered the earth.' The gods and Prajapati now freed themselves +from the dominion of Death by celebrating an enormous number of +sacrifices. Death was chagrined by their escape from the 'nets and +clubs' which he carries in the Aitareya Brahmana. 'As you have escaped +me, so will men also escape,' he grumbled. The gods appeased him by the +promise that, _in the body_, no man henceforth for ever should evade +Death. 'Every one who is to become immortal shall do so by first parting +with his body.' + + + +Yama + + +Among the Aryans of India, as we have already seen, Death has a +protomartyr, Tama, 'the first of men who reached the river, spying out a +path for many.' In spying the path Yama corresponds to Tangaro the Fool, +in the myth of the Solomon Islands. But Yama is not regarded as a +maleficent being, like Tangaro. The Rig Veda (x. 14) speaks of him as +'King Yama, who departed to the mighty streams and sought out a road for +many;' and again, the Atharva Veda names him 'the first of men who died, +and the first who departed to the celestial world.' With him the Blessed +Fathers dwell for ever in happiness. Mr. Max Muller, as we said, takes +Yama to be 'a character suggested by the setting sun'--a claim which is +also put forward, as we have seen, for the Maori hero Maui. It is Yama, +according to the Rig Veda, who sends the birds--a pigeon is one of his +messengers (compare the White Bird of the Oxenhams)--as warnings of +approaching death. Among the Iranian race, Yima appears to have been the +counterpart of the Vedic Yama. He is now King of the Blessed; originally +he was the first of men over whom Death won his earliest victory. + + + +Inferences + + +That Yama is mixed up with the sun, in the Rig Veda, seems certain +enough. Most phenomena, most gods, shade into each other in the Vedic +hymns. But it is plain that the conception of a 'first man who died' is +as common to many races as it is natural. Death was regarded as +unnatural, yet here it is among us. How did it come? By somebody dying +first, and establishing a bad precedent. But need that somebody have +been originally the sun, as Mr. Max Muller and Dr. Tylor think in the +cases of Yama and Maui? This is a point on which we may remain in doubt, +for death in itself was certain to challenge inquiry among savage +philosophers, and to be explained by a human rather than by a solar myth. +Human, too, rather than a result of 'disease of language' is, probably, +the myth of the Fire-stealer. + + + +The Stealing of Fire + + +The world-wide myth explaining how man first became possessed of +fire--namely, by _stealing_ it--might well serve as a touchstone of the +philological and anthropological methods. To Mr. Max Muller the interest +of the story will certainly consist in discovering connections between +Greek and Sanskrit names of fire-gods and of fire bringing heroes. He +will not compare the fire-myths of other races all over the world, nor +will he even try to explain why--in almost all of these myths we find a +thief of fire, a Fire-stealer. This does not seem satisfactory to the +anthropologist, whose first curiosity is to know why fire is everywhere +said to have been obtained for men by sly theft or 'flat burglary.' Of +course it is obvious that a myth found in Australia and America cannot +possibly be the result of disease of Aryan languages not spoken in those +two continents. The myth of fire-stealing must necessarily have some +other origin. + + + +'Fire Totems' + + +Mr. Max Muller, after a treatise on Agni and other fire-gods, consecrates +two pages to 'Fire Totems.' 'If we are assured that there are some dark +points left, and that these might be illustrated and rendered more +intelligible by what are called fire totems among the Red Indians of +North America, let us have as much light as we can get' (ii. 804). Alas! +I never heard of fire totems before. Probably some one has been writing +about them, somewhere, unless we owe them to Mr. Max Muller's own +researches. Of course, he cites no authority for his fire totems. 'The +fire totem, we are told, would thus naturally have become the god of the +Indians.' 'We are told'--where, and by whom? Not a hint is given on the +subject, so we must leave the doctrine of fire totems to its mysterious +discoverer. 'If others prefer to call Prometheus a fire totem, no one +would object, if only it would help us to a better understanding of +Prometheus' (ii. 810). Who are the 'others' who speak of a Greek +'culture-hero' by the impossibly fantastic name of 'a fire totem'? + + + +Prometheus + + +Mr. Max Muller 'follows Kuhn' in his explanation of Prometheus, the Fire- +stealer, but he does not follow him all the way. Kuhn tried to account +for the myth that Prometheus _stole_ fire, and Mr. Max Muller does not +try. {194} Kuhn connects Prometheus with the Sanskrit pramantha, the +stick used in producing fire by drilling a pointed into a flat piece of +wood. The Greeks, of course, made Prometheus mean 'foresighted,' +providens; but let it be granted that the Germans know better. Pramantha +next is associated with the verb mathnami, 'to rub _or_ grind;' and that, +again, with Greek [Greek], 'to learn.' We too talk of a student as a +'grinder,' by a coincidence. The root manth likewise means 'to rob;' and +we can see in English how a fire-stick, a 'fire-rubber,' might become a +'fire-robber,' a stealer of fire. A somewhat similar confusion in old +Aryan languages converted the fire-stick into a person, the thief of +fire, Prometheus; while a Greek misunderstanding gave to Prometheus +(pramantha, 'fire-stick') the meaning of 'foresighted,' with the word for +prudent foresight, [Greek]. This, roughly stated, is the view of Kuhn. +{195a} Mr. Max Muller concludes that Prometheus, the producer of fire, +is also the fire-god, a representative of Agni, and necessarily 'of the +inevitable Dawn'--'of Agni as the deus matutinus, a frequent character of +the Vedic Agni, the Agni aushasa, or the daybreak' (ii. 813). + +But Mr. Max Muller does not say one word about Prometheus as the Fire- +stealer. Now, that he _stole_ fire is of the essence of his myth; and +this myth of the original procuring of fire by theft occurs all over the +world. As Australian and American savages cannot conceivably have +derived the myth of fire-stealing from the root manth and its double +sense of stealing and rubbing, there must be some other explanation. But +this fact could not occur to comparative mythologists who did not +compare, probably did not even know, similar myths wherever found. + + + +Savage Myths of Fire-stealing + + +In La Mythologie (pp. 185-195) I have put together a small collection of +savage myths of the theft of fire. {195b} Our text is the line of Hesiod +(Theogony, 566), 'Prometheus _stole_ the far-seen ray of unwearied fire +in a hollow stalk of fennel.' The same stalk is still used in the Greek +isles for carrying fire, as it was of old--whence no doubt this feature +of the myth. {195c} How did Prometheus steal fire? Some say from the +altar of Zeus, others that he lit his rod at the sun. {196a} The +Australians have the same fable; fire was obtained by a black fellow who +climbed by a rope to the sun. Again, in Australia fire was the +possession of two women alone. A man induced them to turn their backs, +and stole fire. A very curious version of the myth occurs in an +excellent book by Mrs. Langloh Parker. {196b} There was no fire when +Rootoolgar, the crane, married Gooner, the kangaroo rat. Rootoolgar, +idly rubbing two sticks together, discovered the art of fire-making. +'This we will keep secret,' they said, 'from all the tribes.' A fire- +stick they carried about in their comebee. The tribes of the Bush +discovered the secret, and the fire-stick was stolen by Reeargar, the +hawk. We shall be told, of course, that the hawk is the lightning, or +the Dawn. But in this savage Jungle Book all the characters are animals, +and Reeargar is no more the Dawn than is the kangaroo rat. In savage +myths animals, not men, play the leading roles, and the fire-stealing +bird or beast is found among many widely scattered races. In Normandy +the wren is the fire-bringer. {196c} A bird brings fire in the Andaman +Isles. {196d} Among the Ahts a fish owned fire; other beasts stole it. +The raven hero of the Thlinkeets, Yehl, stole fire. Among the Cahrocs +two old women possessed it, and it was stolen by the coyote. Are these +theftuous birds and beasts to be explained as Fire-gods? Probably not. +Will any philologist aver that in Cahroc, Thlinkeet. Australian, +Andaman, and so forth, the word for 'rub' resembled the word for 'rob,' +and so produced by 'a disease of language' the myth of the Fire-stealer? + + + +Origin of the Myth of Fire-stealing + + +The myth arose from the nature of savage ideas, not from unconscious +puns. Even in a race so civilised as the Homeric Greeks, to make fire +was no easy task. Homer speaks of a man, in a lonely upland hut, who +carefully keeps the embers alive, that he may not have to go far afield +in search of the seed of fire. {197} Obviously he had no ready means of +striking a light. Suppose, then, that an early savage loses his seed of +fire. His nearest neighbours, far enough off, may be hostile. If he +wants fire, as they will not give it, he must _steal_ it, just as he must +steal a wife. People in this condition would readily believe, like the +Australian blacks, that the original discoverers or possessors of a +secret so valuable as fire would not give it away, that others who wanted +it would be obliged to get it by theft. In Greece, in a civilised race, +this very natural old idea survives, though fire is not the possession of +a crane, or of an old woman, but of the gods, and is stolen, not by a +hawk or a coyote, but by Prometheus, the culture-hero and demiurge. +Whether his name 'Foresighted' is a mistaken folk-etymology from the root +manth, or not, we have, in the ancient inevitable idea, that the original +patentees of fire would not willingly part with their treasure, the +obvious origin of the myth of the Fire-stealer. And this theory does not +leave the analogous savage myths of fire-stealing unexplained and out in +the cold, as does the philological hypothesis. {198} In this last +instance, as in others, the origin of a world-wide myth is found, not in +a 'disease of language,' but in a form of thought still natural. If a +foreign power wants what answers among us to the exclusive possession of +fire, or wants the secret of its rival's new explosive, it has to _steal_ +it. + + + + +CONCLUSION + + +Here ends this 'Gentle and Joyous Passage of Arms.' I showed, first, why +anthropological students of mythology, finding the philological school +occupying the ground, were obliged in England to challenge Mr. Max +Muller. I then discoursed of some inconveniences attending his method in +controversy. Next, I gave a practical example, the affair of Tuna and +Daphne. This led to a comparison of the philological and the +anthropological ways of treating the Daphne myth. The question of our +allies then coming up, I stated my reasons for regarding Prof. Tiele +'rather as an ally than an adversary,' the reason being his own +statement. Presently, I replied to Prof. Tiele's criticism of my +treatment of the myth of Cronos. After a skirmish on Italian fields, I +gave my reasons for disagreeing with Mr. Max Muller's view of Mannhardt's +position. His theory of Demeter Erinnys was contrasted with that of Mr. +Max Muller. Totemism occupied us next, and the views of Mr. Max Muller +and Mr. J. G. Frazer were criticised. Then I defended anthropological +and criticised philological evidence. Our method of universal comparison +was next justified in the matter of Fetishism. The Riddle Theory of Mr. +Max Muller was presently discussed. Then followed a review of our +contending methods in the explanation of Artemis, of the Fire-walk, of +Death Myths, and of the Fire-stealer. Thus a number of points in +mythological interpretation have been tested on typical examples. + +Much more might be said on a book of nearly 900 pages. Many points might +be taken, much praise (were mine worth anything) might be given; but I +have had but one object, to defend the method of anthropology from a +running or dropping fire of criticism which breaks out in many points all +along the line, through Contributions to the Science of Mythology. If my +answer be desultory and wandering, remember the sporadic sharpshooting of +the adversary! For adversary we must consider Mr. Max Muller, so long as +we use different theories to different results. If I am right, if he is +wrong, in our attempts to untie this old Gordian knot, he loses little +indeed. That fame of his, the most steady and brilliant light of all +which crown the brows of contemporary scholars, is the well-earned +reward, not of mythological lore nor of cunning fence in controversy, but +of wide learning and exquisitely luminous style. + +I trust that I have imputed no unfairness, made no charge of conscious +misrepresentation (to accidents of exposition we are all liable), have +struck no foul blow, hazarded no discourteous phrase. If I have done so, +I am thereby, even more than in my smattering of unscholarly learning, an +opponent more absolutely unworthy of the Right Hon. Professor than I +would fain believe myself. + + + + +APPENDIX A: The Fire-walk in Spain + + +One study occasionally illustrates another. In examining the history of +the Earl Marischal, who was exiled after the rising of 1715, I found, in +a letter of a correspondent of d'Alembert, that the Earl met a form of +the fire-walk in Spain. There then existed in the Peninsula a hereditary +class of men who, by dint of 'charms' permitted by the Inquisition, could +enter fire unharmed. The Earl Marischal said that he would believe in +their powers if he were allowed first to light the fire, and then to look +on. But the fire-walkers would not gratify him, as not knowing what kind +of fire a heretic might kindle. + + + + +APPENDIX B: Mr. Macdonell on Vedic Mythology + + +Too late for use here came Vedic Mythology, from Grundriss der +indo-arischen Philologie, {201} by Mr. A. Macdonell, the representative +of the historic house of Lochgarry. This even a non-scholar can perceive +to be a most careful and learned work. As to philological 'equations' +between names of Greek and Vedic gods, Mr. Macdonell writes: +'Dyaus=[Greek] is the only one which can be said to be beyond the range +of doubt.' As to the connection of Prometheus with Sanskrit Pramantha, +he says: '[Greek] has every appearance of being a purely Greek formation, +while the Indian verb math, to twirl, is found compounded only with nis, +never with pra, to express the art of producing fire by friction.' (See +above, p. 194.) If Mr. Macdonell is right here, the Greek myth of the +fire-stealer cannot have arisen from 'a disease of language.' But +scholars must be left to reconcile this last typical example of their +ceaseless differences in the matter of etymology of names. + + + + +FOOTNOTES + + +{0a} Chips, iv. 62. + +{0b} Chips, iv. p. xxxv. + +{0c} Chips, iv. pp. vi. vii. + +{0d} Ibid. iv. p. xv. + +{0e} Cults of the Greek States, ii. 435-440. + +{0f} Chips, iv. p. xiv. + +{0g} Chips, iv. p. xiii. + +{5} Suidas, s.v. [Greek]; he cites Dionysius of Chalcis, B.C. 200. + +{6a} See Goguet, and Millar of Glasgow, and Voltaire. + +{6b} Translated by M. Parmentier. + +{7} See 'Totemism,' infra. + +{8} Longmans. + +{10a} M. R. R. i. 155-160. + +{10b} Tylor's Prim. Cult. i. 145. + +{10c} Turner's Samoa, p. 219. + +{10d} Gill's Myths and Songs, p. 79. + +{11} M. R. R. ii. 160. + +{14} Metam. i. 567. + +{15a} Grimm, cited by Liebrecht in Zur Volkskunde, p. 17. + +{15b} Primitive Culture, i. 285. + +{15c} Op. cit. i. 46-81. + +{16} M. R. R. i. 160. + +{17} Erratum: This is erroneous. See Contributions, &c., vol. i. p. 6, +where Mr. Max Muller 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. + +{18} Phonetically there may be 'no possible objection to the derivation +of [Greek] from a Sanskrit form, *Apa-var-yan, or *Apa-val-yan' (ii. +692); but, historically, Greek is not derived from Sanskrit surely! + +{20a} Mythologische Forschungen, p. 275. + +{20b} Baumkultus, p. 297. Berlin: 1875. + +{21a} Antike Wald- und Feldkulte, p. 257. Referring to Baumkultus, p. +297. + +{21b} Oriental and Linguistic Studies, second series, p. 160. La +Religion Vedique, iii. 293. + +{22} 1, viii. cf. i. 27. + +{23} Riv. Crit. Mensile. Geneva, iii. xiv. p. 2. + +{25a} Custom and Myth, p. 3, citing Revue de l'Hist. des Religions, ii. +136. + +{25b} M. R. R. i. 24. + +{25c} Revue de l'Hist. des Religions, xii. 256. + +{26} Op. cit. p. 253. + +{27} Op. cit. xii. 250. + +{28a} P. 104, infra. + +{28b} Revue de l'Hist. des Religions, xii. 259. + +{29a} M. R. R. i. 25. + +{29b} Rev. xii. 247. + +{30} M. R. R. i. 24. + +{31a} Rev. xii. 277. + +{31b} Rev. xii. 264. + +{31c} M. R. R. i. 44, 45. + +{32a} Custom and Myth, p. 51. + +{32b} Rev. xii. 262. + +{34} Odyssey, book ix. + +{37} C. and M. p. 56. + +{42a} W. u. F. K. xxiii. + +{42b} M. R. R. i. 23. + +{42c} W. u. F. K. xvii. + +{46} Golden Bough, 1. ix. + +{48} [Greek]. Dionys. i. 80. + +{51a} Pausanias, viii. 25. + +{51b} Myth. Forsch. p. 244. + +{51c} Iliad, xx. 226. + +{52} Myth. Forsch, p. 265 + +{54} September 19, 1875. Myth. Forsch. xiv. + +{55} For undeniable solar myths see M. R. R. i. 124-135. + +{56} Op. cit. p. xx. + +{60} Folk Lore Society. + +{61a} Von einem der vorzuglichsten Schiriftgelehrten, Annana, in +klassischer Darstellung aufgezeichneten Marchens, p. 240. + +{61b} Custom and Myth. + +{62a} See Preface to Mrs. Hunt's translation of Grimm's Marchen. + +{62b} P. 309. + +{65} x. 17. Cf. Muir, Sanskrit Texts, v. 277. + +{66} 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. + +{71} M. R. R. i. 58-81. + +{72a} See Robertson Smith on 'Semitic Religion.' + +{72b} See Sayce's Herodotus, p. 344. + +{72c} See Rhys' Rhind Lectures; I am not convinced by the evidence. + +{73} Academy, September 27, 1884. + +{74a} Anth. Rel. p. 405. + +{74b} Plantagenet, Planta genista.--A. L. + +{74c} See M. R. R. ii. 56, for a criticism of this theory. + +{76} Religion of the Semites, pp. 208, 209. + +{78} Die Religionen, p. 12. + +{79} Anth. Rel. p. 122. + +{80} Dalton. + +{81a} Strabo, xiii. 613. Pausanias, i. 24, 8. + +{81b} Crooke, Introduction to Popular Religion of North India, p. 380. + +{82a} C. and M. p. 115. + +{82b} Contributions, ii. 687. + +{83a} Evidence in G. B. i. 325, 326. + +{83b} Compare Liebrecht, 'The Eaten God,' in Zur Volkskunde, p. 436. + +{84a} Cf. G. B. ii. 17, for evidence. + +{84b} M. R. R. ii. 232. + +{84c} G. B. ii. 90-113. + +{84d} In Encyclop. Brit. he thinks it 'very probable.' + +{85a} i. 200. + +{85b} M. R. R. ii. 142, 148-149. + +{85c} R. V. iv. 18, 10. + +{86} G. B. ii. 44-49. + +{87} G. B. ii. 33. + +{88a} Plutarch, Quaest. Rom. vi. McLennan, The Patriarchal Theory, p. +207, note 2. + +{88b} G. B. ii. 337. + +{89a} See G. B. ii. 332-334. + +{89b} Religion of the Semites, p. 118. + +{90} G. B. ii. 337, 338. + +{93a} Custom and Myth, p. 235. + +{93b} M. R. R. ii. 327. + +{93c} Op. cit. ii. 329. + +{94} Lectures on Science of Language, Second Series, p. 41. + +{95} M. R. R. ii. 336. + +{96} Anthropological Religion. + +{97a} M. R. R. i. 171-173. + +{97b} Ibid. i. 172. + +{97c} Anth. Rel. p. 180. + +{100} 'Totemism,' Encyclop. Brit. + +{101a} M. R. R. ii. 333. + +{101b} Ibid. ii. 335. + +{103} M. R.. R.. i. 96, 127; ii. 22, 336. + +{106a} Greek Etym. Engl. transl. i. 147. + +{106b} Sprachvergleichung und Urgeschichte, p. 431. + +{109} Gr. Etym. i. 150. + +{110} M. R. R. ii. 142. + +{111a} ii. 210. Cf. Oldenberg in Deutsche Rundschau, 1895, p. 205. + +{111b} R. V. iv. 18, 10. + +{114} Aglaophamus, i. 700. + +{115} Custom and Myth, i. 29-44. M. R. R. ii. 260-273. + +{116} Custom and Myth, pp. 212-242. + +{117a} Culte des Fetiches, 1760. + +{117b} Codrington, Journal Anthrop. Inst., Feb. 1881. + +{118a} C. and M. p. 230, note. + +{118b} Rochas, Les Forces non definies, 1888, pp. 340-357, 411, 626. + +{118c} Revue Bleue, 1890, p. 367. + +{118d} De Brosses, p. 16. + +{120a} C. and M. p. 214. + +{120b} M. R. R. i. 327. + +{120c} Lectures on the Science of Language, 2nd series, p. 41. + +{121} M. R. R. ii. 327 and 329. + +{124} M. R. R. ii. 324. + +{125a} Paris: OEuvres, 1758, iii. 270. + +{125b} M. R. R. ii. 324. + +{126} 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. Tylor. + +{135} Meyer, 1846, apud Brough Smyth, Aborigines of Victoria, i. 432. + +{138} My italics. + +{139a} M. R. R. ii. 208-221. + +{139b} Ibid. ii. 209. + +{140} M. R. R. ii. 218. + +{141a} De Dianae Antiquissima apud Graecos Natura, p. 76. Vratislaw, +1881. + +{141b} De Diane Brauron, p. 33. Compare, for all the learning, Mr. +Farnell, in Cults of the Greek States. + +{142a} M. R. R. i. x. + +{142b} Life in California, pp. 241, 303. + +{142c} Religion of the Semites, p. 274. + +{142d} See also Mr. Frazer, Golden Bough, ii. 90-94; and Robertson +Smith, op. cit. pp. 416-418. + +{142e} Apostolius, viii. 19; vii. 10. + +{143a} Melanesians, p. 32. + +{143b} Samoa, p. 17. + +{143c} M. R. R. ii. 33. + +{143d} See also Frazer, Golden Bough, ii. 92. + +{143e} M. R. R. ii. 208. + +{144a} M. R. R. ii. 209. + +{144b} Custom and Myth, 'Star Myths.' + +{148a} L. Preller, Rom. Myth. p. 239, gives etymologies. + +{148b} AEn. xi. 785. + +{149a} A. W. F. p. 328. + +{149b} Dionys. Halic. iii. 32. + +{149c} Hist. Nat. vii. 2. + +{149d} AEn. xi. 784. + +{149e} AEn. xi. 787. + +{150a} Serv. AEn. vii. 800. + +{150b} Authorities in A. F. W. K. p. 325. + +{151a} Herabkunft, p. 30. + +{151b} Pausanias, viii. 385. + +{151c} A. W. F. K. xxii. xxiii. + +{153} Janus, pp. 44-49. + +{161} Home, the medium, was, or affected to be, entranced in his fire +tricks, as was Bernadette, at Lourdes, in the Miracle du Cierge. + +{163} The photograph referred to is evidently taken from a sketch by +hand, and is not therefore a photograph from life.--EDITOR. The original +photograph was hereon sent to the editor and acknowledged by him.--A. L. + +{169} Proces, Quicherat, ii. 396, 397 + +{171} Introduction to Popular Religion and Folk-Lore in Northern India, +by W. Crookes, B.A., p. 10. + +{172} Iamblichus, De Myst. iii. 4. + +{173} Folk-Lore, September 1895. + +{174} Quoted by Dr. Boissarie in his book, Lourdes, p. 49, from a book +by Dr. Dozous, now rare. Thanks to information from Dr. Boissarie, I +have procured the book by Dr. Dozous, an eye-witness of the miracle, and +have verified the quotation. + +{175} Predvestniki spiritizma za posleanie 250 lyet. A. M. Aksakoff, +St. Petersburg, 1895. See Mr. Leaf's review, Proceedings S. P. R. xii. +329. + +{178} Prim. Cult. i. 138. + +{179} Journal of Anthrop. Institute, x. iii. + +{180a} Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo, p. 42. + +{180b} Relations, 1637, p. 49. + +{183a} Abor. of Victoria, i. 429. + +{183b} Dalton, op. cit. + +{184} Codrington, Journal Anthrop. Institute, x. iii. For America, +compare Relations de la Nouvelle France, 1674, p. 13. + +{185} The connection between the Moon and the Hare is also found in +Sanskrit, in Mexican, in some of the South Sea Islands, and in German and +Buddhist folklore. Probably what we call 'the Man in the Moon' seemed +very like a hare to various races, roused their curiosity, and provoked +explanations in the shape of myths. + +{186} Hahn, Tsuni-Goam, p. 150. + +{187} Codrington, op. cit, p. 304. + +{188} Codrington, op. cit. + +{190a} Bastian, Heilige Sage. + +{190b} Primitive Culture, i. 336. + +{194} Kuhn, Die Herabkunft der Feuers und der Gottertranks. Berlin, +1859. + +{195a} Herabkunft, pp. 16, 24. + +{195b} Dupret, Paris, 1886. Translation by M. Parmentier. + +{195c} Pliny, Hist. Nat. xiii. 22. Bent. Cyclades. + +{196a} Servius ad Virg., Eclogue vi. 42. + +{196b} Australian Legendary Tales. Nutt: London, 1897. Mrs. Parker +knows Australian dialects, and gives one story in the original. Her +tribes live on the Narran River, in New South Wales. + +{196c} Bosquet, La Normandie Merveilleuse. Paris, 1845. + +{196d} Journal Anthrop. Institute, November, 1884. + +{197} Odyssey, v. 488-493. + +{198} References for savage myths of the Fire-stealer will be found--for +the Ahts, in Sproat; for the tribes of the Pacific coast, in Bancroft; +for Australians in Brough Smyth's Aborigines of Victoria. + +{201} Trubner, Strasburg, 1897. + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MODERN MYTHOLOGY*** + + +******* This file should be named 14576.txt or 14576.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/4/5/7/14576 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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