Language may be divided into three distinct periods, when taken as a
whole.
The first is, when language, finding itself released from those
restraints which enveloped it in its cradle, supplies those words which
are most indispensable to man in connecting the one word with others,
such as pronouns, prepositions, names of numbers, and of objects of
daily use. This must have been the first stage of a language hardly
yet agglutinate, free from trammels, with no sign of nationality, or
individuality, but containing in itself all the chief features of the
many forms belonging to the Turanian, Aryan and Semitic families; the
explorer of philosophic antiquity does not penetrate beyond this first
period.
The second phase is that in which two linguistic families passing out
of the agglutinate stage, unattached as yet to grammatical forms,
received once for all the stamp of the formation which we find amongst
the popular and modern dialects belonging both to the Semitic and
Aryan divisions, and to which they owe this family resemblance,
which justifies their inclusion in one or other of these branches
of language; on the one side the Teutonic, Celtic, Slav, Italic,
Hellenic, Iranian and Indian; on the other Arabic, Armenian and Hebrew;
the yet unformed elements of grammar were eventually introduced
into these languages at the substitution of the amalgamate for the
agglutinate. The Turanian or Ural-Altaic languages have an entirely
different character; they preserved for some time--and one or two
still retain--the agglutinate form which retards the development of
the grammar, and hides the evidence of relationship to the languages
between China and the Pyrenees, and between Cape Comorin and Lapland.
These two periods are followed by a third, generally known as the
mythological; it is obscure, and is calculated to shake one’s faith
in the regular and orderly progress of human reason. We find it to be
a phase through which all peoples have passed; yet in using the word
mythology our thoughts naturally turn to the mythology of Greece, the
only one with which we were made acquainted in our school days, and
also the only one with which those were familiar who had not given
themselves over specially to the study of the beliefs of antiquity. In
the schools this study ran side by side with history; from our earliest
days we had been taught the complete polytheism of heathen divinities;
our work as pupils was to know our lessons, the work of the masters
was to see that we learnt them. Mythology, therefore, was to us only
one chapter in that great work, entitled the compulsory course of
studies--a chapter which apparently required no more elucidation than
the gymnastic lesson.
Our masters represented the Greeks as a people endowed with a vivid
imagination, who recounted in exalted pure language most fantastic
stories; we read in these authors: “Eos has fled--Eos will return--Eos
has returned--Eos wakens the sleepers--Eos lengthens the life of
mortals--Eos rises from the sea--Eos is the daughter of the sky--Eos
is followed by the sun--Eos is loved by the sun--Eos is killed by the
sun,” and so on _ad infinitum_; and we were told, “These are myths.” As
no explanation was given of the word myth, we were none the wiser.
If the movements of Eos are inexplicable, they are not without a
certain picturesqueness. But what shall we say of the myth concerning
Saturn, who, on account of a prediction that he would be killed by his
children, swallowed them as soon as they were born, with the exception
of Jupiter, who was saved by the substitution of a stone, which Saturn
afterwards brought up with the children he had swallowed. Or again,
what can be said of the feast offered to the gods by Tantalus to test
their omniscience; he caused the members of the body of his son Pelops
to be mixed with other meats; a shoulder was eaten before Jupiter
discovered the deception; he ordered the remainder to be thrown into
a copper from which Pelops emerged alive with one shoulder lacking,
and one made of ivory was given to him. Can anything more grotesque be
imagined? And our children are subjected to this regimen, and their
memories charged with these fables, under the pretext that they will
the better appreciate the _chefs-d’œuvre_ of classical literature.
The enigmatical part of this period of language will be more evident
if we examine the early traditional history which began at its close,
and at which time a light appeared in Greece destined to flood the
world with a splendour hitherto unknown; it was the epoch which
produced Thales, Pythagoras and Heraclitus, who, in the midst of much
ignorance, had thoughts of wonderful lucidity. A national literature
was beginning, where we find indications of the germs of political
societies; the creation of laws, and the development of morals. And we
ask ourselves: Whence come these sages? Who were their masters? How
could these glorious days of Greek civilisation have been preceded
by several generations whose principal occupation seemed to consist
in inventing and repeating to satiety absurd fables concerning gods,
heroes, and other beings whom no human being had ever seen; which
fables contravene the simplest principles of logic, morality and
religion? The ancient sages themselves were harsh in their judgment of
these revolting stories contained in Grecian mythology; Xenophanes, a
contemporary of Pythagoras, considered Hesiod and Homer responsible
for these superstitions, and blamed them for attributing to the gods
all that was most reprehensible in man. Heraclitus was of opinion
that Homer deserved to be banished from the public assemblies, and
Plato wrote, “Mothers and nurses tell their children stories full of
misstatements and immoralities which are gathered from the poets.”
Thus spoke philosophers 500 years before our era, because they knew
that if the “gods commit anything that is evil they are no gods.”
“Taken by themselves and in their literal meaning, most of these
ancient myths are absurd and irrational, and frequently opposed to
the principles of thought, religion, and morality which guided the
Greeks as soon as they appear to us in the twilight of traditional
history.”[47]
Many explanations have been sought to account in a rational manner for
these strange tales; writers have striven to discover what can have
given rise to such ridiculous inventions; some have asserted that it
was the intention of the authors of mythology to convey to the people a
knowledge of certain facts of nature, and certain moral truths whilst
clothing them in allegorical form, and by endowing the divinities with
certain virtues which it would become men to imitate and acquire; and
that the worship of these divinities was instituted that man might be
more fully impressed, that the likeness of the virtues upheld might
be more deeply engraved in the heart of the pious worshipper. Zeus,
was mind; Athene, art; Hercules, energy and perseverance in labours of
great difficulty; whilst the Homeric heroes, Agamemnon, Achilles, and
Hector represented physical activities. According to another theory the
object with which the myths were composed was political, the laws of
government were supposed to emanate from the gods; and whoso refused
to recognise the excellence of the institutions of the country was
held to be in revolt against the gods themselves. The philosopher
Euhemerus was the author of a third theory, called the historical; he
represented the mythological personages not as gods, but as kings,
heroes, and philosophers, who, after their death, had received divine
honours among their fellow men; in this system Eolus, the god of the
winds, became a skilful mariner who could foretell atmospheric changes;
Atlas, supporting the sky and earth on his wide shoulders, had been
formerly a great astronomer; Jupiter, a ruler of Crete; Hercules, a
knight-errant. Although these ancient writers interpreted the fables
in so many different ways, they all agreed in denying that an atom of
truth is found in these stories concerning the gods, and they insisted
that no myth must be taken _au pied de la lettre_. At a later period
it was thought that reminiscences of a barbaric age could be found in
which the ancestors of the Greeks apparently occupied themselves by
stealing, killing, deceiving, and eating their offspring. “Lactantius,
St Augustine, and the first missionaries, in their attacks on the
religious belief of the Greeks, and Romans availed themselves of
these arguments of Euhemerus, and taunted them with worshipping gods
that were no gods, but known and admitted to have been merely deified
mortals.”[48] In later times the same theory was revived; certain
theologians, rather lacking in penetration, looked to Greek mythology
for traces of sacred personages, they imagined that they could
recognise in Saturn and his three sons, Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto,
the features of Noah and his sons, Ham, Japhet, and Shem; and in a
recently published book the author suggests that when Hesiod describes
the garden of the Hesperides, we have a tradition of the garden of Eden.
Thus from the moment when, for the first time, the ancient philosophers
questioned “why?” from the time of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, to
our own practical and matter-of-fact century, mythology has not ceased
to compel attention, and to furnish endless matter of conjecture.
Learned writers have sought in physical sciences, history, and
metaphysics, an explanation of this phenomenon; but in spite of this
vast labour inspired by a love of science, and carried on for more
than two thousand years, the secret of the sphinx of mythology remains
undisclosed, and we still ask, “what is mythology?” Is it an invention
of Homer and Hesiod? Or is it a phase in the development of the human
mind, a deviation in the growth of reason?
The school of philology has a solution of its own to offer; will it be
as futile as the others? After hearing it shall we still say the Sphinx
is mute? This school takes upon itself to assert that the explanation
of the mystery can only be found in the Science of Language. It is a
fact that the history of language--which is the history of the human
mind--enables us to answer the preceding questions categorically.
Yes. Mythology was inevitable, an inherent part of language itself,
to be considered, not as a simple external symbol, but as the only
incorporation of thought possible. Mythology, in the widest acceptation
of the term, is the shadow which language casts on thought; and
the whole history of philosophy from Thales to Hegel has been one
uninterrupted struggle with mythology, a constant protest between
thought and language.
FOOTNOTES:
[47] _Chips from a German Workshop_, vol. ii. p. 11. Max Müller.
[48] Max Müller, _Science of Language_, vol. ii. p. 436.