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?