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.