"That the conception of a separable surviving soul of a dead man was
not only not essential to the savage's idea of his supreme god ... but
would have been wholly inconsistent with that conception." (2) That the
original idea of god among primitive peoples was not animistic and did
not evolve from the idea of the existence of spirit, but came first
in order of evolution and was that of a "magnified non-natural man"
(anthropomorphic and monotheistic). "He existed before death came into
the world and he still exists." Moreover, such cults contained ethical
and moral ideas not usually discovered in 'animistic' religions. Lang
illustrates this theory by examples taken from Australian, Fuegian,
Andamanese, Zulu, and other races of low culture.
As regards the first part of his contention, whatever may have been
the case with primitive man (concerning whose religious ideas we can
only theorize), it does not hold good of savages of the present day,
when animistic ideas are universally in the transition state. The
second argument is very much open to criticism, because the religious
ideas of the races alluded to by Lang as monotheistic may have been
modified by the theology of missionaries, Christian or Mohammedan.
This criticism Lang himself held not to be justified by facts, and
there are grounds for believing that his theory possesses a certain
amount of truth. Before, however, it can be discussed in its entirety,
the religious ideas of the peoples to which he alludes and those of
other races similarly environed will require to be much more fully
and rigorously examined and a much larger body of data collected.
If Lang's conclusions could be justified, they would revolutionize
the whole study of comparative religion. It would perhaps mean that
such gods as Yahweh in Israel and Tezcatlipoca in Mexico, instead of
being gradually evolved from lower spiritual forms, were survivals of
very early conceptions of non-spiritual forms of deity. But Lang's
data show that the early monotheistic, or the 'All-Father' idea, as
he calls it, disappears because of the adoption of animistic ideas.
Yahweh and Tezcatlipoca, we know, flourished side by side with and in
an atmosphere of animism. It would be strange if the Hebrews, a branch
of a race typically polytheistic (and therefore animistic), had not
at one time been given to a similar worship, and everything seems to
prove that they were originally polytheistic. If Yahweh was, as Lang
suggested, an original 'All-Father,' it is strange that Noldeke should
have been able to trace his name through the form _Shaddai_ to _Shedi_
('my demon') a name sufficiently animistic. This would appear to be a
test of Lang's theory, but the question, as he stated, "can only be
settled by specialists." He was right. He himself failed entirely to
realize the weight and abundance of the evidence for early polytheism
and animism among the Israelites. Again, when in Mexico we observe
the rise of Tezcatlipoca from the obsidian stone, we must repeat that
further special study alone can throw light on the question. Lang
called his examination of the subject "a 'sketch'--not an exhaustive
survey," but the thoughtful student of comparative religion will admit
that it is a sketch raising questions of the greatest import to the
science he explores.[26]
SIR JAMES GEORGE FRAZER
One of the greatest modern names in primitive religious science is that
of Sir James George Frazer, the world-famous author of _The Golden
Bough_. Founded to some extent upon the principles of Mannhardt, Sir
J.G. Frazer's mythological studies relate chiefly to vegetation and the
deities connected therewith. Indeed, it has been said that he has seen
gods of vegetation everywhere, just as the Müller school saw sun-gods
everywhere.
Perhaps the most acute criticism upon Sir J.G. Frazer's great work is
to be found in Lang's _Magic and Religion_, in the essay "The Ghastly
Priest." The first critical paragraph of this makes amusing reading:
"Still, the new school of mythology does work the vegetable element in
mythology hard; nearly as hard as the solar element used to be worked.
Aphrodite, as the female mate of Adonis, gets mixed up with plant life.
So does Attis with Cybele, so does Balder, so does Death, so does
Dionysus with undoubted propriety; so does Eabani, so does Gilgamesh,
so does Haman, so does Hera, so does Iasion with Demeter, so does Isis,
so does Jack-in-the-Green, so does Kupalo, so do Linus and Lityerses,
so does Mamurius Veturius, so does Merodach or Marduk (if he represents
Eabani or Gilgamesh), so does Mars, so does Osiris, so, I think, does
Semiramis, so does Tammuz, so does Virbius, so does Zeus, probably; so
does a great multitude of cattle, cats, horses, bulls, goats, cocks,
with plenty of other beasts. The solar mythologists did not spare
heroes like Achilles; they too were the sun. But the vegetable school,
the Covent Garden school of mythologists, mixes up real human beings
with vegetation."
FRAZER'S MAIN CONTENTION
Frazer's main contention is that the priest of the sanctuary of
Diana Nemorensis, near the modern Nemi, in Italy (a priest who was
invariably a murderer, and who only held office until another murderer
dispossessed and slew him, after plucking a bough from the tree
under which he sheltered), has numerous parallels in other, ancient
and modern, barbarian priesthoods. He says: "If we can show that a
barbarous custom, like that of the priesthood of Nemi, has existed
elsewhere; if we can detect the motives which led to its institution;
if we can prove that these motives have operated widely, perhaps
universally, in human society, producing in varied circumstances a
variety of institutions specifically different but generally alike;
if we can show, lastly, that these very motives, with some of their
derivative institutions, were actually at work in classical antiquity;
then we may fairly infer that at a remoter age the same motives gave
birth to the priesthood of Nemi. Such an inference, in default of
direct evidence as to how the priesthood did actually arise, can never
amount to demonstration. But it will be more or less probable according
to the degree of completeness with which it fulfils the conditions
indicated above. The object of this book is, by meeting these
conditions, to offer a fairly probable explanation of the priesthood of
Nemi."
According to Frazer, too, the priest of Nemi was of a class regarded
as divine. He says (vol. i, p. 231): "Thus the cult of the Arician
grove was essentially that of a tree-spirit or sylvan deity. But our
examination of European folk-custom demonstrated that a tree-spirit
is frequently represented by a living person, who is regarded as an
embodiment of the tree-spirit and possessed of its fertilising powers;
and our previous survey of primitive belief proved that this conception
of a god incarnate in a living man is common among rude races, Further,
we have seen that the living person who is believed to embody in
himself the tree-spirit is often called a king, in which respect,
again, he strictly represents the tree-spirit. For the sacred cedar
of the Gilgit tribes is called, as we have seen, 'the Dreadful King';
and the chief forest god of the Finns, by name Tapio, represented as
an old man with a brown beard, a high hat of fir-cones, and a coat of
tree-moss, was styled the Wood King, Lord of the Woodland, Golden King
of the Wood. May not then the King of the Wood in the Arician grove
have been, like the King of May, the Leaf King, the Grass King, and
the like, an incarnation of the tree-spirit or spirit of vegetation?
His title, his sacred office, and his residence in the grove all point
to this conclusion, which is confirmed by his relation to the Golden
Bough. For since the King of the Wood could only be assailed by him who
had plucked the Golden Bough, his life was safe from assault so long
as the bough, or the tree on which it grew, remained uninjured. In a
sense, therefore, his life was bound up with that of the tree; and thus
to some extent he stood to the tree in the same relation in which the
incorporate or immanent tree-spirit stands to it."
LANG'S CRITICISM OF FRAZER'S THESIS
But Lang controverts these premises. He does not regard the priest of
the Arician grove as a likely representative of a god of vegetation.
"First," he says (I quote at length because of the importance of the
passage), "let us ask what we know about this ghastly priest. Let us
begin with the evidence of Virgil, in the Sixth Book of the _Æneid_
(line 136 and so onwards). Virgil says nothing about the ghastly
priest, or, in this place, about Diana, or the grove near Aricia.
Virgil, indeed, tells us much about a bough of a tree, a golden branch,
but as to the singular priest, nothing. But some four hundred years
after Virgil's date (say A.D. 370), a commentator on Virgil, Servius,
tried to illustrate the passage cited from the _Æneid_. He obviously
knows nothing about Virgil's mystic golden bough, but he tells us that,
in his own time, 'public opinion' (_publica opinio_) placed the habitat
of Virgil's bough in the grove haunted by the ghastly priest, near
Aricia. It is, in fact, not known whether Virgil invented his bough,
with its extraordinary attributes, or took it from his rich store of
antiquarian learning. It may have been a folklore belief, like _Le
Rameau d'Or_ of Madame d'Aulnoy's fairy-tale. Virgil's bough, as we
shall see, has one folklore attribute in common with a mystic sword in
the Arthurian cycle of romances, and in the _Volsunga Saga_. I think
that Mr Frazer has failed to comment on this point. If I might hazard a
guess as to Virgil's branch, it is that, of old, suppliants approached
gods or kings with boughs in their hands. He who would approach
Proserpine carried, in Virgil, a bough of pure gold, which only the
favoured and predestined suppliant could obtain, as shall be shown.
"In the four centuries between Virgil and Servius the meaning and
source of Virgil's branch of gold were forgotten. But people, and
Servius himself, knew of another bough, near Aricia, and located
(conjecturally?) Virgil's branch of gold in that district. Servius,
then, in his commentary on the _Æneid,_ after the manner of annotators
in all ages, talks much about the boughs of a certain tree in a certain
grove, concerning which Virgil makes no remark. Virgil, as we shall
see, was writing about a golden branch of very peculiar character.
Knowing, like the public opinion of his age, something about quite
other branches, and nothing about Virgil's branch, Servius tells us
that, in the grove of Diana at Aricia, there grew a tree from which
it was unlawful (_non licebat_) to break a bough. If any fugitive
slave, however, could break a branch from this tree, he might fight
the priest, taking his office if successful. In the opinion of Servius
the temple was founded by Orestes, to the barbaric Diana of the
Chersonese, whence he had fled after a homicide. _That_ Diana received
human sacrifices of all strangers who landed on her coasts. The rite of
human sacrifice was, in Italy, commuted, Servius thinks, for the duel
between the priest and the fugitive slave, Orestes having himself been
a fugitive. The process is, first a Greek wanderer on a barbarous coast
is in danger of being offered, as all outlanders were offered, to the
local goddess. This rite was a form of _xenelasia_, an anti-immigrant
statute. Compare China, the Transvaal, the agitation against pauper
immigrants. Having escaped being sacrificed, and having killed the
king in an unfriendly land, Orestes flies to Italy and appeases the
cruel Diana by erecting her fane at Aricia. But, instead of sacrificing
immigrants, he, or his successors, establishes a duel between the
priest and any other fugitive slave. Servius then, not observing this,
goes off into an allegorising interpretation of Virgil's branch, as
worthless as all such interpretations always are.
"The story about Orestes appears to myself to be a late 'ætiological
myth,' a story invented to explain the slaying of the slayer--which it
does not do; in short, it is an hypothesis. The priesthood is open not
to men flying the blood feud like Orestes, but only to runaway slaves.
The custom introduced by Orestes was the sacrifice of outlanders, not
of priests. The story has a _doublette_ in Pausanias. According to
Pausanias, Hippolytus was raised from the dead, and, in hatred of his
father, and being a fugitive, he went and reigned at the Arician grove
of the goddess.
THE GHASTLY PRIEST
"For these reasons, apparently, Statius calls the Arician grove
_profugis regibus aptum_, a sanctuary of exiled princes, Orestes and
Hippolytus. From Suetonius we learn that the ghastly priest was styled
_Rex Nemorensis_ King of the Wood, and that the envious Caligula,
thinking the priest had held office long enough, set another athlete to
kill him. The title of 'king,' borne by a priest, suggests, of course,
the sacrificial king at Rome. Also Mr Frazer adduces African kings of
fire and water, credited with miraculous powers over the elements.
They kill nobody and nobody kills them. Then we have Jack-in-the-Green
= May-tree = the Spirit of Vegetation--the May _King_ and the _Queen_
of the May. 'These titles,' as Mannhardt observes, 'imply that the
spirit incorporate in vegetation is a ruler, whose creative power
extends far and wide.' Possibly so. Now, the King of the Wood, the
ghastly priest, lived in the grove of Diana, who (among other things)
has the attributes of a tree-spirit. 'May not, then, the King of the
Wood, in the Arician grove, have been, like the King of the May ...
an incarnation of the tree-spirit, or spirit of vegetation?' Given a
female tree-spirit, we should rather expect a _Queen_ of the Wood; and
we assuredly do not expect a priest of Diana to represent the supreme
Aryan god, nay to incarnate him. But this Mr Frazer thinks probable.
Again, 'since the King of the Wood could only be assailed by him who
had plucked the Golden Bough, his life was safe from assault so long as
the bough, or the tree on which it grew, remained uninjured.'
WHAT IS THE 'GOLDEN BOUGH'?
"Here we remark the nimbleness of Mr Frazer's method. In vol. i, 4,
he had said: 'Tradition averred that the fatal branch' (in the grove
near Aricia) 'was that golden bough which, at the Sibyl's bidding,
Æneas plucked before he assayed the perilous journey to the world of
the dead.' But I have tried to show that, according to Servius, this
identification of two absolutely distinct boughs, neither similar nor
similarly situated, was the conjecture of 'public opinion' in an age
divided from Virgil's date by four hundred years.
"In the space between vol. i, 4, and i, 231, the averment of tradition,
as Mr Frazer calls it, the inference of the curious, as I suppose, to
the effect that Virgil's golden branch and the Arician branch were
identical, has become matter of fact for Mr Frazer. 'Since the King
of the Wood could only be assailed by him who had plucked the Golden
Bough,' he says; with what follows.
"But who has told us anything about the breaking, by a fugitive slave,
near Aricia, of a _golden_ bough? Nobody, as far as I am aware, has
mentioned the circumstance. After an interval of four hundred years,
the golden bough of Virgil is only brought by Servius into connection
with the wood at Aricia, because Servius, and the public opinion of
his age, knew about a branch there, and did not know anything about
Virgil's branch of gold.
"_That_ branch is a safe passport to Hades. It is sacred, not to a
tree-spirit named Diana, but to Infernal Juno, or Proserpine. It cannot
be broken by a fugitive slave, or anybody else; no, nor can it be cut
with edge of iron. None but he whom the Fates call can break it. It
yields at a touch of the predestined man, and another golden branch
grows instantly in its place.
"Primo avolso non deficit alter
Aureus....
... Ipse volens facilisque sequetur,
Si te fata vocant.
"Virgil's bough thus answers to the magical sword set in a stone in
the Arthurian legends, in a tree-trunk in the _Volsunga Saga_, as
Mr H.S.C. Everard reminds me. All the knights may tug vainly at the
sword, but you can draw it lightly, _si te fata vacant_, if you are the
predestined king, if you are Arthur or Sigmund. When Æneas bears _this_
bough, Charon recognises the old familiar passport. Other living men,
in the strength of this talisman, have already entered the land of the
dead.
"Ille admirans venerabile donum
Fatalis virgæ, longo post tempore visum.
"I have collected all these extraordinary attributes of Virgil's bough
(in origin, a suppliant's bough, perhaps), because, as far as I notice,
Mr Frazer lays no stress on the many peculiarities which differentiate
Virgil's bough from any casual branch of the tree at Aricia, and
connect it with the mystic sword. The 'general reader' (who seldom
knows Latin) needs, I think, to be told precisely what Virgil's bough
was. Nothing can be more unlike a branch, any accessible branch, of
the Arician tree, than is Virgil's golden bough. It does not grow at
Aricia. It is golden. It is not connected with a tree-spirit, but is
dear to Proserpine. (I easily see, of course, that Proserpine may be
identified with a tree-spirit.) Virgil's branch is not to be plucked by
fugitive slaves. It is not a challenge, but a talismanic passport to
Hades, recognised by Charon, who has not seen a specimen for ever so
long. It is instantly succeeded, if plucked, by another branch of gold,
which the Arician twig is not. So I really do not understand how Mr
Frazer can identify Virgil's golden bough with an ordinary branch of a
tree at Aricia, which anybody could break, though only runaway slaves,
strongly built, had an interest in so doing."[27]
FARNELL'S CRITICISM OF "THE GOLDEN BOUGH"
_The Golden Bough_ is an exhaustive repository of mythic and
anthropological fact. It has been criticized[28] as leaning too much
to the side of the 'stratification' theory--that is, the belief in the
existence of certain fixed religious conditions at different epochs of
man's experience and the labelling of these by such names as 'animism,'
'totemism,' and the like. At least,
Thus says the _Quarterly,_ So savage and Tartarly.
The present writer cannot subscribe to such criticism. It
should be plain that in the earliest times the animistic
and pre-animistic types of religious experience must
have held single and undisputed sway among the whole of
mankind. 'Totemism' and 'fetishism' are merely animism
in another form, and in effect there are only two great
types of primitive religious belief, the animistic and the
polytheistic, the latter differing from the former merely
because animism, or personalization of all phenomena,
animal or vegetable, developed into anthropomorphism,
which saw man's nature in the gods. It is admitted that
the lesser stages of animism overlap each other in
numerous instances, but one outstanding type gives shape
to most systems of belief capable of classification,
lesser types serving only to throw the one great one
into relief. Thus Greek religion was unquestionably an
anthropomorphic polytheism; the Mexican a polytheism
with survivals of totemism and fetishism; and so on. But
although the great central type permits us to give a
broad classification to any religion, it is the lesser
attributes which help us to pigeon-hole it properly.
Thus we might class the majority of American religions
as polytheisms newly emerged or emerging from animistic
influences; but such a general definition would be
imperfect because the combination of the bird-and-serpent
myth has provided America with many outstanding divine
forms in some measure different from gods evolved
elsewhere. Monotheism is a religious condition so rare
that it may be altogether discounted in classifying
primitive religion. These conclusions hedge between the
Frazerian view that religious experience is capable of
more or less concrete classification, and the bewildering,
chaotic opinion that classification should be entirely
discountenanced in religious science. While we may
hesitate to speak with Sir James Frazer of such hard and
fast periods as an "age of magic" or an "age of religion,"
we can subscribe to "anthropomorphism superimposed upon
a previous theriomorphism or theriolatry," a description
at which Sir James Frazer's reviewer cavils. He would
doubtless tell us that many religious types coexisted in
that age. Quite so; but were they as distinctive, as
widespread, and as illustrative of prevailing conditions
in such-and-such a region at such-and-such a period as the
above?
THE 'ADJACENT' METHOD
Sir James Frazer is further accused of employing the universal
comparative method at the expense of the 'adjacent' method, the method
which studies the religion of a certain people in its own sphere. It
is often pretended nowadays that more merit accrues to the pursuit
of this form of anthropological science than to the comparative
method. We do not deny that a very considerable degree of training,
experience, and erudition is required to achieve success in it, but the
assumption that it in any way approaches in magnitude the task which
the comparative student proposes to himself is absurd. The greatest
mythological studies are comparative in character. True, many works on
particular mythologies are of outstanding excellence and charm; but
students of comparative religion still await a work dealing with an
isolated mythology of the calibre of _The Golden Bough_, mistaken as
are many of its premises, Payne's _New World called America_, or Lang's
_Myth, Ritual, and Religion,_ unless it be, perhaps, Robertson Smith's
_Religion of the Semites._
It is, further, scarcely criticism to label Sir James Frazer's great
work 'second-hand.' In works dealing with comparative mythology the
facts collated must of necessity be gleaned from the writings of
others. This cry is surely unsuitable to mythological debate!
The criticism that Sir James Frazer is unable to pursue to their
logical ends the problems he proposes to himself is better founded, as
is the charge of discursiveness. It is true, too, that he possesses
the faculty of seeing resemblances but not differences when dealing
with analogies, and that, consequently, he lumps too many diverse facts
together. Lastly he is tacitly charged with perversion of evidence![29]
His definition of magic will be dealt with elsewhere.
_The Golden Bough_ has served the passing and the present generations
of mythologists and folklorists well as a great compendium of mythic
and anthropological fact. From its far-flung influence none can escape.
It is a body of learning to which the searcher must return again and
yet again.
E.J. PAYNE
Edward John Payne, in his _History of the New World called America_,
a work of surprising erudition too little known, applied the
anthropological conception of myth to the mythologies of Mexico and
Peru, but although his reading on these subjects was wide and his
treatment marked by care and insight, he does not appear to have been
closely acquainted with the _pinturas_ or manuscript remains of the
Mexican peoples, a knowledge of which is essential to all students
of the subject. Instead of specializing upon any one department of
American aboriginal civilization, he took the whole of it for his
province and applied the anthropological method to all the conditions
of American life, social, linguistic, agricultural, and religious; and
he produced a work truly monumental in spirit, not surpassed by any
kindred effort of his generation, in spite of the defect mentioned
above.
SALOMON REINACH
Salomon Reinach has done good service to the science of comparative
religion in France. After a distinguished archæological career he
interested himself in the study of religious science. In 1905 he began
his _Cultes, mythes, et religions_[30] and in 1909 he published a
general sketch of the history of religions under the title _Orpheus_.
In his preface to _Cultes, mythes, et religions_ M. Reinach makes
some lively and amusing remarks concerning the ignorance in France of
later developments of religious science. Speaking of new theories,
he says: "As a matter of fact, I do not exactly know who made the
discoveries. The names of Tylor, McLennan, Lang, Smith, Frazer, and
Jevons suggest themselves; but the one thing certain is that it was
not myself. Mine has been a lowlier part--to grasp the ideas of my
betters, and to diffuse them as widely as I might, first in my lectures
at the École du Louvre, then in the Académie des Inscriptions, and
again in many popular and scientific reviews. In France, when I began
my excursions into these fields, the whole subject was so absolutely
a sealed book that M. Charles Richet had to ask me to explain the
word _totemism_, before I dealt with that group of phenomena in the
_Revue Scientifique_. At the Académie des Inscriptions in 1900 the
only members who did not doubt my sanity when I read some lucubrations
on the Biblical taboos and the totemism of the Celts were MM. Maspero
and Hamy. The German scholars whom I saw about the same time, Mommsen
among the rest, had never heard of a totem.[31] The taboos and totems
of the Bible, a question underlying those alimentary interdictions
which ignorance regards as hygienic precepts, brought the Jewish
theologians into the lists. One of them dealt faithfully with me as
an anti-Semite, an epithet already hurled at me by my distinguished
friend Victor Bérard, because I had ventured to impugn, in the pages of
the _Mirage Oriental,_ the antiquity and omnipresence of Phœnician
commerce. To-day the voice of ignorance is a little less heard in the
land. Thanks to the diffusion of the English works which have inspired
me, thanks to the labours of the lamented Marillier and the editors
of the _Année Sociologique_--thanks perhaps, in some degree, to my
own missionary efforts, which, with the ardour of the neophyte, I have
carried into the very precincts of the popular universities--those
who once kicked most obstinately against the pricks now acknowledge
that the system of anthropological exegesis is 'the fashion,' and that
'something may be said for' totems and taboos."
DR F. B. JEVONS
Dr F. B. Jevons in his _Introduction to the History of Religion_ avows
himself a disciple of Lang so far as his views upon myth are concerned.
He too believes that the religious feeling in myth is conspicuously
absent, but that the consideration of myth cannot be excluded from
the history of religion. He says (p. 250): "Myths are not like psalms
or hymns, lyrical expressions of religious emotion; they are not like
creeds or dogmas, statements of things which must be believed: they
are narratives. They are not history, they are tales told about gods
and heroes, and they all have two characteristics: on the one hand,
they are to us obviously or demonstrably untrue and often irrational;
on the other hand, they were to their first audience so reasonable
as to appear truths which were self-evident." Some myths, he thinks,
"explain nothing and point no moral; they are tales told for the sake
of telling and repeated for the pleasure of hearing, like fairy-tales."
What, then, he asks, is the difference between myths that 'explain'
phenomena and those which obviously do not? He considers that totems
aroused curiosity and necessitated explanations, and that when the
beliefs were dead and forgotten the stories invented to account
for them would appear no longer as reasons or explanations, but as
statements of facts which occurred 'once upon a time.' These stories
were often appropriated to the wrong persons, and we have also yet to
learn why they were grouped together, a point Dr Jevons considers as
of first-rate importance, because "they would not have survived if
they had not been combined together. We cannot suppose that they were
first dissevered from the beliefs on which they originally depended for
their existence, and then were subsequently combined so as to obtain
a renewed existence, because they would probably have perished in
the interval. We must therefore suppose that they were combined into
tales ere yet the beliefs or institutions which gave them their first
lease of life had perished. This means that the various parts of one
institution, for instance, must have had each its separate explanation,
and that these explanations were combined into one whole, the unity
of which corresponded to the unity of the institution," (P. 254.)
These contentions are confirmed, Jevons thinks, by certain ceremonies
obviously representing the details of certain myths. "They afford
instances of myths which from the beginning were tales and not merely
single incidents; a single rite might consist of a series of acts, each
of which demanded its own explanation; and the unity of the rite might
produce a unity of interest and action in the resulting myth." (P.
254.) Stories designed to explain phenomena would provide a groundwork
for a rich embroidery of incidents. The person who could remember these
and could tell them effectively would not have to seek an audience,
and semi-consciously he might substitute for part of the story an
analogous incident.[32] "Tales with a permanent human interest would
easily spread beyond the limits of the original audience." Myth is not
religion; it is not the source of religion, it is "one of the spheres
of human activity in which religion may manifest itself, one of the
departments of human reason which religion may penetrate, suffuse, and
inspire." The religious consciousness rejected the repugnant elements
of myth, and perhaps the whole primitive hypothesis upon which myth
was based. "The result would be twofold: the imagination would be more
and more excluded from the region of speculation which produced the
ordinary myths of early peoples; and more and more restricted to the
path of religious meditation." (P. 266.) These are all conclusions
which we cannot admit. Myth is not any less religious in character
because associated with an early instead of a later form of religion,
or because it was discarded in later times! In an important passage Dr
Jevons declares with a great deal of truth that: "The extraordinary
notion that mythology is religion is the outcome of the erroneous and
misleading practice of reading modern ideas into ancient religions.
It is but one form of the fallacy that mythology was to the antique
religions what dogma is to the modern--with the superadded fallacy
that dogma is the source, instead of the expression, of religious
conviction. Mythology is primitive science, primitive philosophy, an
important constituent of primitive history, the source of primitive
poetry, but it is not primitive religion. It is not necessarily or
usually even religious. It is not the proper or even the ordinary
vehicle for the expression of the religious spirit." Where the
sensitiveness of the religious spirit "was great only those pieces of
primitive science survived which were capable of being informed" by it.
THE RELIGIOUS INFLUENCE OF MYTH
Jevons' conception of the nature of myth, however, does not take into
consideration that at least one class of myth--that which deals with
the gods--has probably more influence upon the popular acceptance and
spread of religious ideas of a primitive type than either dogma or
ritual. Those myths which furnish accounts of the deeds and adventures
of the gods are as much religion as are ritual or dogma. No religion
can exist without an explanation of a god or the gods, their nature,
their attitude toward men, and their divine environment; and such an
explanation was myth. Although savage and primitive, myths furnished
a suitable account of the gods to their primitive worshippers, whose
habits they almost certainly reflected.
DR R. R. MARETT
Dr R. R. Marett, in an admirable and suggestive volume, _The Threshold
of Religion_ (1909), has, as we already know, distinguished between
animism and the forms which preceded it. Regarding mythology proper
and its "quality of religiousness," and speaking in connexion with
religious observances, he says: "Meanwhile, whatever view be taken of
the parts respectively played by animism, mythology, animatism, or
what not, in investing these observances with meaning and colour, my
main point is that the quality of religiousness attaches to them far
less in virtue of any one of these ideal constructions, than in virtue
of that basic feeling of awe which drives a man, ere he can think or
theorize upon it, into personal relations with the supernatural."
Regarding 'explanatory' myths, Dr Marett says (p. 149): "What the
learned know as 'ætiological myths' and juvenile readers of Mr Kipling
as 'Just So Stories' undoubtedly tend to arise in connection with
human institutions no less than in connection with the rest of the
more perplexing or amazing facts and circumstances of life. It is the
'nature of man' (as it is of the child, the father of the man) to ask
'Why?' and further to accept any answer as more satisfactory than none
at all. Again, it is sound method in dealing with myth as associated
with ritual at the stage of rudimentary religion to assume that for the
most part it is the ritual that generates the myth, and not the myth
the ritual."[33]
THE EUROPEAN 'SKY-GOD'
Professor A.B. Cook of Cambridge has collected a wealth of material to
prove the existence throughout the length and breadth of Europe of a
sky-god worshipped by both Celt and Teuton; but he elevates this cult
into something resembling a state mythology, and we have no record of
any such state religion. Early Celtic and Teutonic religions must have
been incipient only, and far from possessing any such organization and
unity.
THE GRIMMS
Having concluded our review of the ideas and hypotheses of the great
mythologists proper, we will glance at what has been said by the
great students of folklore. Jakob Ludwig Karl Grimm (1785-1863) along
with his brother Wilhelm Karl (1786-1859) published in 1816-1818
_Deutsche Sagen_, an analysis and criticism of the old German epic
traditions, and in 1812-1815 _Kinder- und Hausmärchen_. Their first
volume of the Eddaic songs of Iceland saw the light in 1815, and the
_Deutsche Mythologie_ in 1835. The last-named work traces the myths of
Germany from a period as remote as is permitted by the evidence down
to the time when they became merged in popular tradition. Folklore is
indebted to the Grimms, who originally discerned its importance, but
they did not in any way connect the stories themselves with custom
or superstition. They were inimical to the allegorical method and
decidedly trended toward the later position of Mannhardt and his school.
SIR G. L. GOMME
Few names are more distinguished in folklore than that of the late
Sir George Laurence Gomme. His standpoint on myth is to be found in
his able and liberal-minded treatise upon _Folklore as an Historical
Science_, on p. 101 of which he says: "They [the mythologists]
have entirely denied or ignored all history contained in the folk-tale,
and they have proceeded on the assumption, the bald assumption not
accompanied by any kind of proof, that the folk-tale contains nothing
but the remnants of a once prevalent system of mythology.... It is not,
however, upon the mistakes of other inquirers that the mythologists
may rest a good claim for their own view. The _Historia Britonum_ of
Geoffrey of Monmouth disposes of neither the myths nor the history of
the Celts. It shows myth in its secondary position, in the handling of
those who would make it all history, just as now there are scholars who
would make it all myth. In front of the legends attaching to persons
and places is the history of these persons and places. Behind these
legends lies the domain of the unattached and primitive folk-tale."
There should not be much doubt concerning which tales are of the nature
of myth and those which enshrine historic fact. Does the tale bear a
strong resemblance in more than one of its circumstances to any other
tradition or group of traditions? If so, it should be a comparatively
simple matter to judge to which group it belongs, although the student
requires to be constantly on his guard. The transition from fact or
surmise to myth, myth to pseudo-history, or from history to myth, and
then perhaps to history again; from legend to history, from history
to legend, or from folk-tale to history--these metamorphoses must
be searched for diligently. Our 'test of recurrence' is not always
sufficient, for occasionally myth will be seen to group with folklore
and legend and _vice versa._
On p. 125 of his admirable book Sir George says: "The traditional
narrative, the myth, the folk-tale, or the legend, is not dependent
upon the text in which it appears for the first time. That text as we
have it was not written down by contemporary or nearly contemporary
authority. Before it had become a written document it had lived long as
oral tradition. In some cases the written document is itself centuries
old, the record of some early chronicler or early writer who did not
make the record for tradition's sake. In other cases the written
document is quite modern, the record of a professed lover of tradition.
This unequal method of recording tradition is the main source of the
difficulty in the way of those who cannot accept tradition as a record
of fact. In all cases the test of its value and the interpretation of
its testimony are matters which need special study and examination
before the exact value of each tradition is capable of being
determined. The date when and the circumstances in which a tradition is
first reduced to literary form are important factors in the evidence
as to the credibility of the particular form in which the tradition is
preserved; but they are not all the factors, nor do they of themselves
afford better evidence when they are comparatively ancient than forms
of much later date and of circumstances far different. It cannot be
too often impressed upon the student of tradition that the tradition
itself affords the chief if not the only sure evidence of its age, its
origin, and its meaning; for the preservation of tradition is due to
such varied influences that the mere fact of preservation or the method
or particular date of preservation cannot be relied upon to give the
necessary authority for the authenticity of the tradition. Tradition
can never assume the position of written history, because it does not
owe its origin, but only its preservation, to writing."
Dealing with the relations of myth to history, Sir George says (p.
128): "Because mythic tradition has been found to include many
traditions which of late years have been claimed to belong to a
definitely historical race of people, it must not be identified with
history. This claim is based upon two facts, the presence of myth
in the shape of the folk-tale and the preservation of much mythic
tradition beyond the stage of thought to which it properly belongs by
becoming attached to an historical event or series of events, or to
an historical personage, and in this way carrying on its life into
historic periods and among historic peoples. The first position has
resulted in an appropriation of the folk-tale to the cause of the
mythologists; the second position has hitherto resulted either in a
disastrous appropriation of the entire tradition to mythology, or
in a still more disastrous rejection both of the tradition and the
historical event round which it clusters. Historians doubting the myth
doubt too the history; mythologists doubting the history reject the
myth from all consideration, and in this way much is lost to history
which properly belongs to it, and something is lost to myth."
Sir George subscribes to Robertson Smith's statement that "Mythology
was no essential part of ancient religion, for it had no sacred
sanction and no binding force on the worshippers." Yet on the next page
(p. 148) he says: "Myths constitute a part of the _serious life_ of the
people." He also speaks of myth (p. 149) as being told "in the hushed
sanctity of a great wonder," of primitive myth being "preserved in a
special manner and for _religious purposes"_ (p. 150), and (on the same
page) he alludes to its "sacredness." Yet it had "no sacred sanction
and no binding force "!
MR SIDNEY HARTLAND
Mr Sidney Hartland in his _Science of Fairy Tales_ (1890) has applied
"the principles and methods which guide investigators into popular
traditions to a few of the most remarkable stories embodying the fairy
superstitions of the Celtic and Teutonic peoples." The unity of human
imagination is pleaded for. "Man's imagination," writes Mr Hartland,
"like every other known power, works by fixed laws, the existence and
operation of which it is possible to trace; and it works upon the same
material--the external universe, the mental and moral constitution of
man, and his social relations. Hence diverse as may seem at first sight
the results among the cultured Europeans and the debased Hottentots,
the philosophical Hindoos and the Red Indians of the Far West, they
present, on a close examination, features absolutely identical.... The
incidents [of story-plots] ... are not merely alike; they are often
indistinguishable." Further, the anthropological standpoint is upheld.
In _The Legend of Perseus_ (1894-1896) the author has attempted to show
"the dependence of the folk-tale upon custom and superstition, and to
determine the place of origin of one world-famous tale."
DR RENDEL HARRIS
Dr Rendel Harris of Manchester has in several works propounded
mythological views of startling novelty, with a wealth of illustration
and argument which do credit alike to his scholarship and his
didactical skill. In his latest work, _The Ascent of Olympus_, which
it is incumbent upon all students of myth to study, he explains the
cults of Dionysus, Apollo, Artemis, and Aphrodite. In Dr Harris's view
the cults of these gods are respectively cults of the ivy, the apple,
the mugwort, and the mandrake, of which plants the deities in question
were personifications. Early Greek religion is thus evolved from the
witch-doctor's garden, and, _a fortiori_, Olympus itself is a later
development of the _hortus siccus_ of the medicine-man. I will not
attempt to advance any criticism of Dr Harris's thesis in this place,
as I freely confess that his iconoclastic conclusions stun me. He
triumphs in argument, and I live in fear and trembling that in his next
book he may prove that Hephæstus was evolved from a tenpenny nail, or
Poseidon from a lobster, As he is strong, let us beg him to be merciful
also, for if he further depreciates our old mythological stock, those
of us who are professional mythologists will be forced to dispose of it
and begin life over again as his apprentices.
As proof of his masterly presentment of the astounding conclusions he
has advanced, I quote the following summing-up from his _Ascent of
Olympus_ (p. 57):
"Let us refresh our memory as to the method we pursued and the results
which we obtained in the case of the cults of Dionysos and Apollo.
It will be remembered that we started from the sanctity of the oak
as the animistic repository of the thunder, and in that sense the
dwelling-place of Zeus; it was assumed that the oak was taboo and all
that belonged to it; that the woodpecker who nested in it or hammered
at its bark was none other than Zeus himself, and it may turn out
that Athena, who sprang from the head of the thunder-oak, was the owl
that lived in one of its hollows. Even the bees who lived underneath
its bark were almost divine animals, and had duties to perform to
Zeus himself. The question having been raised as to the sanctity of
the creepers upon the oak, it was easy to show that the ivy (with
the smilax and the vine) was a sacred plant, and that it was the
original cult-symbol of Dionysos, who thus appeared as a lesser Zeus
projected from the ivy, just as Zeus himself, in one point of view,
was a projection from the oak. Dionysos, whose thunder-birth could be
established by the well-known Greek tradition concerning Semele and
Zeus, was the ivy on the oak, and after that became an ivy fire-stick
in the ritual for the making of fire. From Dionysos to Apollo was the
next step: it was suggested in the first instance by the remarkable
confraternity of the two gods in question. They were shown to exchange
titles, to share sanctuaries, and to have remarkable cult-parallelisms,
such as the chewing of the sacred laurel by the Pythian priestess,
and the chewing of the sacred ivy by the Mænads: and since it was
discovered that the Delphic laurel was a surrogate for a previously
existing oak, it was natural to inquire whether in any way Apollo, as
well as Dionysos, was linked to the life of Zeus through the life of
the oak. The inquiry was very fruitful in results: the undoubted solar
elements in the Apolline cult were shown to be capable of explanation
by an identification of Apollo with the mistletoe, and it was found
that Apollo was actually worshipped at one centre in Rhodes as the
Mistletoe Apollo, just as Dionysos was worshipped as the Ivy Dionysos
at Acharnai. Further inquiry led to the conclusion that the sanctity of
the oak had been transferred by the mistletoe from the oak to the apple
tree, and that the cult betrayed a close connection between the god and
the apple-tree, as, for instance, in the bestowal of sacred apples from
the god's own garden upon the winners of the Pythian games. In this
way it came to be seen that Apollo was really the mistletoe upon the
apple-tree for the greater part of the development of the cult, just as
Dionysos was the ivy, not detached as some had imagined, but actually
upon the oak-tree. It was next discovered that the garden at Delphi
was a reproduction of another Apolline garden in the far north, among
the Hyperboreans, the garden to which Boreas had carried off Orithyia,
and to which (or to another adjacent garden) at a later date the sons
of Asklepios were transferred for the purpose of medical training....
Apollo came from the North as a medicine-man, a herbalist, and brought
his simples with him. His character of a god of healing was due, in the
first instance, to the fact that the mistletoe, which he represented,
was the All-heal of antiquity.... An attempt was then made to show that
the very name of Apollo was in its early form Apellon, a loan-word
from the North, disguising in the thinnest way his connection with the
apple-tree. The apple had come into Greece from the North, perhaps
from Teutonic peoples, just as it appears to have come into Western
Italy from either Teutons or Celts, giving its name in the one case to
the great god of healing, and in the other to the city of Abella in
Campania, through the Celtic word _Aball_."
PROFESSOR ELLIOT SMITH
Professor George Elliot Smith, of University College, London,
has brought to the problems of archæology a mental freshness and
originality of outlook that have placed him in the front rank of
the science in a surprisingly short space of time. He is the chief
supporter of the theory that by slow degrees the civilization of
ancient Egypt spread itself over the habitable globe, even to far
America. His sledge-hammer logic and array of excellent if rather
limited illustrations are capable of daunting the most doughty
opponent. In his recent book, _The Evolution of the Dragon_, he
probes as deeply into the basic mysteries of mythology as Dr Rendel
Harris, of whose work he says: "Our genial friend has been cultivating
his garden on the slopes of Olympus, and has been plucking the rich
fruits of his ripe scholarship and nimble wit. At the same time, with
rougher implements and cruder methods, I have been burrowing in the
depths of the earth, trying to recover information concerning the
habits and thoughts of mankind many centuries before Dionysus and
Apollo and Artemis and Aphrodite were dreamt of. In the course of
these subterranean gropings no one was more surprised than I was to
discover that I was getting entangled in the roots of the same plants
whose golden fruit Dr Rendel Harris was gathering from his Olympian
heights. But the contrast in our respective points of view was perhaps
responsible for the different appearance the growths assumed. To drop
the metaphor, while he was searching for the origins of the deities a
few centuries before the Christian era began, I was finding their more
or less larval forms flourishing more than twenty centuries before the
commencement of his story. For the gods and goddesses of his narrative
were only the thinly disguised representatives of much more ancient
deities decked out in the sumptuous habiliments of Greek culture."
_The Evolution of the Dragon_ contains three essays, "Incense and
Libations," "Dragons and Rain-gods," and "The Birth of Aphrodite," all
of which are of the first importance to students of mythic science,
as illustrating the possibility of tracing evolved divine figures to
their primitive forms. The first essay begins with Professor Smith's
well-known hypothesis that the reasons for the adoption of custom
are not "simple and obvious," and are not inspired by reason, but
by tradition. Man is not an inventive animal, and two independent
inventions of any custom, story, or article of utility are improbable.
The part played by the ancient Egyptians in the development of certain
arts and beliefs was a paramount one. The necessity for obtaining wood,
spices, and gums for the mummification of the dead forced them to make
long voyages; and consequently they became the missionary carriers of
the religious customs and ideas they had evolved at home, disseminating
these throughout the Mediterranean world. Professor Smith then traces
the early idea of godhead to the apotheosized ruler or king, whose
posthumous benevolence rendered the land fertile. He believes that
animism received its definite form in Egypt, where it was fostered by
the art of mummification, and spread thence broadcast. The development
of animism was enormously complex. It received its first great impetus
from an early Egyptian king who believed that he could restore the
breath of life to the dead by means of the magic wand. Then the burning
of incense before a body or statue was intended to convey to it the
warmth, the sweat, and the colours of life. Mummification, indeed,
"laid the foundation of the ideas which subsequently were built up
into a theory of the soul: in fact, it was intimately connected with
the birth of all those ideals and aspirations which are now included
in the conception of religious belief and ritual." The development
of animism, too, brought the supernatural idea of the properties and
functions of water, an idea which had previously sprung up in connexion
with agriculture, into a more definite form. It was a factor in the
development of the paraphernalia of the gods and of current popular
belief, of the temple and its ritual, and led to a definite formulation
of the conception of deities.
The second essay, "Dragons and Rain-gods," is the longest of the three.
The dragon legend, says Professor Smith, is the history of the search
for the elixir of life. "The original dragon was a beneficent creature,
the personification of water, and was identified with kings and gods."
"The dragon myth, however, did not really begin to develop until an
ageing king refused to be slain, and called upon the Great Mother as
the giver of life to rejuvenate him. Her only elixir was human blood;
and to obtain it she was compelled to make a human sacrifice. Her
murderous act led to her being compared and ultimately identified
with a man-slaying lioness or a cobra. The story of the slaying of
the dragon is a much-distorted rumour of this incident; and in the
process of elaboration the incidents were subjected to every kind of
interpretation, and also confusion with the legendary account of the
conflict between Horus and Set." Thus the Great Mother became confused
with Horus as the avenger of the god, and legendary complications
caused Horus to be regarded as her son. But the infamy of her deeds of
destruction seems to have led to her being further confused with the
rebellious followers of Set. "Thus an evil dragon emerged from this
blend of the attributes of the Great Mother and Set."
It seems to me that this theory is much too complicated and multiplies
difficulties, as will be seen if we ponder for a moment the history of
the Mother-goddess in Mexico. In Mexican myth the earth is represented
as a monster, Cipactli, the pictures of which suggest a crocodile, a
swordfish, or a dragon, probably a dragon, that great earth-monster
common to the mythologies of many races and most conveniently called
the 'earth-dragon,' The sign 'Cipactli' became the first in the
calendar, and with it are connected the creative deities and the
Earth-Mother or Great Mother. Circumstances exist which lend colour
to the idea that, as in other countries, the Mexican Mother was at
one time regarded as forming the earth, the soil. At the terrible and
picturesque festival of the Xalaquia ('She who is clothed with the
soil') a sacrificed virgin enriched and recruited with her blood the
frame of the worn-out goddess, who had been, says Seler, "merged in
the popular imagination with the all-nourisher, the all-begetter, the
earth." Perhaps the best evidence that the Earth-Mother was evolved
from the earth-dragon is the colossal stone figure which once towered
above the entrance to the temple of Uitzilopochtli in Mexico and is
now housed in the museum of that city. In this figure, as in a similar
though less massive statue from Tehuacan, the characteristics of
the Cipactli animal are reproduced in a wealth of scale, claw, and
tusk. The direct descent of the Great Mother from the earth-animal,
the personification of the earth-beast as a divine being, explains
her savage wantonness and spares us the necessity for the elaborate
genealogy with which Professor Elliot Smith so ably dowers her. He
cannot allege that Egypt had no earth-dragon, because Apep is alluded
to in the _Book of Overthrowing Apep_ as a crocodile and a serpent, and
that he was developed from the earth-beast seems fairly clear. He might
also say that the Mexican myth was a distorted echo of the Egyptian.
But the evolutionary process is too apparent in Mexican art to permit
of such an hypothesis.
The last paper, "The Birth of Aphrodite," traces that goddess, not to
the mandrake, as Dr Harris does, but to the cowrie-shell. The cowrie
was an amulet employed to increase the fertility of women, and in time
came to be personified in statuettes. Hence arose the idea of a Great
Mother, a giver of health, life, and good luck. "These beliefs," says
the Professor, "had taken shape long before any definite ideas had been
formulated as to the physiology of animal reproduction, and before
agriculture was practised." It is impossible to quote more from the
work of this most suggestive and stimulating of all modern writers on
mythology, and I can only here warn my readers against the unwisdom of
leaving his essays unread.
The great ability with which Professor Elliot Smith presents his
thesis is as obvious as the probability of most of his ideas, but it
seems to me that he regards them too much as proven facts, and that he
fails to recognize the insecurity of hypotheses based upon the present
inadequate data of early religious manifestations. These essays are
the outcome of a brilliant mind impatient of the lumbering slowness of
the mythological machine, and they show a kind of prophetic gift which
pierces beyond proof, and may be accepted as infallible, if uncanny,
or rejected as over-adventurous. For my part, I feel that Professor
Smith is right in by far the greater number of his beliefs, but I
can scarcely admit that he supplies me with sufficient proof. Rather
would I say that his book affects me as a work of genuine theoretical
inspiration and insight, and not as a cold catalogue of established
facts. Professor Smith is the Galileo of mythology--a science which
has brought forth many personalities of ponderous erudition, but few
geniuses. This does not mean that he is illogical, or that his papers
are not prepared with adequate and even meticulous care. It means that
he is looking out of a casement through which he alone has the right of
vision, and, seeing things so plainly as he does, he expects those who
do not possess similar gifts to participate in his clairvoyance. His
proofs, if few, are always apposite. The reviewer might wish that each
of the essays occupied three portly volumes instead of a demy octavo
book of 234 pages, and included a much larger number of confirmatory
illustrations.
RECAPITULATION
The space allotted to this chapter would be greatly exceeded if we
alluded to the numerous collectors of myth who have enriched the
science with their labours. So far we have limited ourselves to the
work of the great theorists, and we will now recapitulate their ideas,
and draw therefrom our conclusions, accepting only what we believe to
be correct and 'safe,' and adding our own inferences and deductions.
Summarized, these ideas are as follows:
(1) The anthropological school showed that the identity between Aryan
and savage myth could not be explained upon a linguistic basis.
(2) Tylor laid stress upon the value of the comparison of myth and
the 'test of recurrence.' He did not entirely discount philological
evidence, but denied the large place claimed for allegory.
(3) He showed that myth displayed a regularity of development not to be
accounted for by motiveless fancy, but by laws of formation.
(4) The promulgation of the animistic hypothesis by Tylor is a landmark
in mythic science.
(5) Robertson Smith showed that myth takes the place of dogma in
primitive religions.
(6) Lang demonstrated the unsoundness of the 'disease of language'
theory.
He laid stress on the irrational element in myth;
Indicated the complexity of mythic development; Showed how the
evolutionary theory may be applied to myth;
Pointed out that the persistence of myth was accounted for by religious
conservatism;
Laid it down that the occurrence of identical myths may be accounted
for by the universal prevalence of similar mental habits (this,
however, will not account for long and intricate plots).
(7) Jevons points out the reflection of myth by ritual.
(8) The present writer believes:
(i) That myth is for the most part sacred in character,
(ii) That it is prior in origin to ritual and is not
derived from it, except in a secondary sense,
(iii) That mythic conditions are capable of a more or less
exact classification.
Having indicated our own attitude toward myth, we will now proceed to
examine the manner in which the idea of the gods was evolved.
[1] It follows that neither is this a sketch of the history of the
science of folklore. The Greeks of Pausanias' day may have possessed
the elements of a folklore. He flourished before the State recognition
of Christianity, but Greek myth in his day was breaking down. In any
case, such questions are foreign to our inquiry, which deals with myth
as defined by us and with that alone. The great students of folklore
are alluded to in this sketch for what they have written on myth, and
for nothing else. The present condition of the science demands explicit
statement in this respect, and this must be our excuse in making it.
[2] Iris, daughter of Thaumas and the ocean nymph Electra, was the
personification of the rainbow and messenger of the Greek gods,
especially of Zeus and Hera.
[3] Müller, _A Scientific System of Mythology,_ 1838.
[4] Cow. A 'shelly-coat cow' was, in Scots parlance, a bogy. It is
thought that the shells on such an animal are a reminiscence of the
scale armour of the vikings, whose memory was a terror to the Scottish
peasantry. To 'cow' is, of course, much the same as to 'bully.'
[5] Grimace.
[6] That is, "These shall surround the bier."
[7] Thus, according to Müller, the name Athene, unintelligible in its
Greek form, at once becomes explicable when compared with the Sanskrit
Ahana, 'the dawn.'
[8] His views will be found stated in _Selected Essays_ and _Lectures
upon Language._
[9] See his _Comparative Grammar_, English translation by Eastwick (3rd
ed.), 1862.
[10] See "The Lesson of Jupiter," _Nineteenth Century_ for October
1885: "To understand the origin and meaning of the names of the Greek
gods and to enter into the original intention of the fables told of
each, we must take into account the collateral evidence supplied by
Latin, German, Sanskrit, and Zend philology." See also _Lectures on
Language_,2nd ser., p. 406.
[11] See his _Nebelsagen_ (1879) and _Das Räthsel der Sphinx_ (1889).
[12] Apart from its philological efforts, the work of Müller his
disciples is of permanent value, and his critics undoubtedly did a
disservice to mythological science when they condemned it root and
branch. The training of no student of mythology can be complete if
it lacks a consideration of Müller's works, which, of course, must
be perused in the light of the comparative failure of his linguistic
hypotheses.
[13] Lang in _Ency. Brit._, (11th ed.), art. "Mythology."
[14] _Ibid._
[15] _Modern Mythology_, pp. 55, 63.
[16] _Primitive Culture_(London, 1871), p. 282.
[17] _Primitive Culture_(London, 1871), pp. 283, 284.
[18] _Ibid._, p. 284.
[19] _Primitive Culture_ (London, 1871), p. 320.
[20] _Primitive Culture_(London, 1871), p. 320.
[21] _Ibid._, pp. 415, 416.
[22] This appears to the author a suitable term for those bodies of
myth which deal exclusively with the lives and adventures of the gods,
and differ therefore so strikingly from all other classes of myth.
[23] It seems to me that a small proportion only of myth as we know it
can owe its origin to the intention of the males to conceal matters
from the women and boys. Most written myth is certainly the work of
priesthoods, and as it often accompanies ritual, the immobile character
of the latter is a guarantee of its genuineness. Again, it frequently
appears as pseudo-history, and could therefore scarcely be designed to
screen anything more esoteric. The myths enacted in Hellenic mystery
plays do not appear to have differed much in plot from the stories of
popular acceptance, and the same may be said concerning those American
myths which are danced out in the secrecy of male mystic societies.
[24] Extensive correspondence with students of myth has helped to
convince me of the partial breakdown of Lang's argument.
[25] For example, on America, like Frazer, he bungles sadly, and seems
to have betaken himself for information to the wrong authority in
almost every instance, and especially when he desires to illustrate an
argument.
[26] Lang's 'All-Father' deities forcibly suggest evolution from
the old 'sky-god,' if, indeed, they were not that deity without
much alteration. The 'Sky-Father' in opposition, or at least
in contradistinction, to the 'Earth-Mother' was merely the sky
personalized as a 'magnified non-natural man.' Let us enumerate his
attributes, given by Lang in the _Encyclopædia Britannica:_
(1) His home is in the sky.
(2) He is the maker of things.
(3) Mankind are his disobedient progeny, whom he casts out of heaven.
This specification can allude to no type other than sky-gods, which
are wholly 'animistic' in origin. If Lang had chanced to think of this
resemblance himself, he would probably have been the first to admit the
correctness of such a statement. His _The Making of Religion_ bears
proof of its obviousness on every page. The 'All-Father' idea certainly
evolves from the personalization of the sky. He quotes the Zuñi Indian
god Awonawilona as an 'All-Father'; Awonawilona is a Sky-Father pure
and simple, as his myth shows; and practically all his other examples
may be traced back in the same manner.
[27] _Magic and Religion_, pp. 207 _sqq._
[28] See review by Lewis Farnell in the _Quarterly Review_ for April
1915.
[29] The implication is frivolous and crude. I observe, as a specialist
in Mexican mythology, that Sir James habitually and most unfortunately
makes use of the wrong authorities to substantiate his claims when
dealing with this province of tradition; but that a scholar of his
standing would descend to such depths there is not a shadow of
proof. The science of tradition at the present time is in much the
same state as was that of chemistry in the hands of the medieval
alchemists--_i.e._, a large degree of experiment must enter into its
composition--and where all are beginners who dare cast the first stone,
especially if it be against a man who has rendered such services to
mythology and folklore as must be remembered with gratitude and even
affection by all the workers in our common vineyard? Has he not taught
us
"To hope, till hope creates From its own wreck the thing it
contemplates"?
I differ from him in many points _toto cœlo_; but is not endeavour the
most precious thing in a new science? May we not say in mythology as in
literature, _Fax mentis incendium gloria_? The very circumstance that a
man carries such a torch as is borne by Sir James entitles him to our
highest esteem, even if, as in my own case, we only partially agree
with his notions, or almost wholly dissent from them, as Mr Farnell
seems to do.
[30] English translation by Elizabeth Frost, London, 1912.
[31] This deals an effective blow to more than one Teutonic claim to
priority in this field.
[32] We have shown above that the conservatism of the savage, like that
of the child, would not permit this.
[33] It must of course be clear to the 'meanest intelligence' that it
is quite possible for myths to be created to explain ritual, but such
myths must, almost of necessity; be late in origin and can only arise
when the original myth which gave rise to the ritualistic practice has
been lost. For what reason, it may be asked, is ritual invented and
originated? Surely it presupposes a divine being, and if it does, it
creates a myth; unless, of course, ritual was originally a magical act,
an attempt to use some occult force, such as _mana_. One can understand
that in the latter circumstances a myth may ultimately arise from
ritual, otherwise I am unable to comprehend the contention, so often
made in works dealing with mythology, that ritual is prior to myth.
Nor do I consider magical ritual 'religious' but pseudo-scientific in
nature, as magic is invariably pseudo-scientific and not religious at
all.