which seeks to explain how the old myths, some poetical, many
disgusting, and all impossible, originated, is a modern study
which has fascinated a large number of learned scholars.
The old notion that they were merely allegorical forms of
representing facts and phenomena is not tenable in view of the
universality of the legends among the least cultivated races.
Professor Max Müller initiated a lively controversy some forty
years ago by suggesting that myths were a consequence of
language, a disease of language, as Mr. Andrew Lang has termed
it. He traced many of the Greek myths to Aryan sources, and
insisted that they had developed from the words or phrases
used to describe natural phenomena. Thus, for example, he
explained the myth of Apollo and Daphne (mentioned on page
9) by supposing that a phrase existed describing the Sun
following, or chasing, the Dawn. He even maintained that the
Sanskrit Ahana, dawn, was the derivation of Daphne. Words, of
course, were invented to convey some mental conception; that
conception, while it was intelligible, would (according to Max
Müller’s system) be developed into a story. The argument was
most ingeniously worked out, but it has not proved capable
of satisfying the conditions of the problem. How could it
suffice, for instance, to explain the occurrence of almost
identical myths treasured by the most degraded and widely
separated peoples? The more likely theory is that in a very
early stage of the savage mind the untrained imagination
tended inevitably to associate the facts of nature with
certain monstrous, obscene, and irrational forms. Perhaps
the most able exposition of this view, or something like it,
expounded within moderate limits, is to be found in an article
on Mythology contributed to the “Encyclopædia Britannica” by
Mr. Andrew Lang.