As an illustration of the author's controversial methods, take his
observations on my alleged attempt to account for the metamorphosis of
Daphne into a laurel tree. When I read these remarks (i. p. 4) I said,
'Mr. Max Muller vanquishes me _there_,' for he gave no reference to my
statement. I had forgotten all about the matter, I was not easily able
to find the passage to which he alluded, and I supposed that I had said
just what Mr. Max Muller seemed to me to make me say--no more, and no
less. Thus:
'Mr. Lang, as usual, has recourse to savages, most useful when they
are really wanted. He quotes an illustration from the South Pacific
that Tuna, the chief of the eels, fell in love with Ina and asked her
to cut off his head. When his head had been cut off and buried, two
cocoanut trees sprang up from the brain of Tuna. How is this, may I
ask, to account for the story of Daphne? Everybody knows that
"stories of the growing of plants out of the scattered members of
heroes may be found from ancient Egypt to the wigwams of the
Algonquins," but these stories seem hardly applicable to Daphne, whose
members, as far as I know, were never either severed or scattered.'
I thought, perhaps hastily, that I must have made the story of Tuna
'account for the story of Daphne.' Mr. Max Muller does not actually say
that I did so, but I understood him in that sense, and recognised my
error. But, some guardian genius warning me, I actually hunted up my own
observations. {10a} Well, I had never said (as I conceived my critic to
imply) that the story of Tuna 'accounts for the story of Daphne.' That
was what I had not said. I had observed, 'As to interchange of shape
between men and women and _plants_, our information, so far as the lower
races are concerned, is less copious'--than in the case of stones. I
then spoke of plant totems of one kin with human beings, of plant-souls,
{10b} of Indian and Egyptian plants animated by _human_ souls, of a tree
which became a young man and made love to a Yurucari girl, of
metamorphosis into vegetables in Samoa, {10c} of an Ottawa myth in which
a man became a plant of maize, and then of the story of Tuna. {10d} Next
I mentioned plants said to have sprung from dismembered gods and heroes.
_All_ this, I said, _all_ of it, proves that savages mythically regard
human life as on a level with vegetable no less than with animal life.
'Turning to the mythology of Greece, we see that the same rule holds
good. Metamorphosis into plants and flowers is extremely common,' and I,
of course, attributed the original idea of such metamorphoses to 'the
general savage habit of "levelling up,"' of regarding all things in
nature as all capable of interchanging their identities. I gave, as
classical examples, Daphne, Myrrha, Hyacinth, Narcissus, and the sisters
of Phaethon. Next I criticised Mr. Max Muller's theory of Daphne. But I
never hinted that the isolated Mangaian story of Tuna, or the stories of
plants sprung from mangled men, 'accounted,' by themselves, 'for the
story of Daphne.'
Mr. Max Muller is not content with giving a very elaborate and
interesting account of how the story of Tuna arose (i. 5-7). He keeps
Tuna in hand, and, at the peroration of his vast work (ii. 831), warns us
that, before we compare myths in unrelated languages, we need 'a very
accurate knowledge of their dialects . . . to prevent accidents like that
of Tuna mentioned in the beginning.' What accident? That I explained
the myth of Daphne by the myth of Tuna? But that is precisely what I did
not do. I explained the Greek myth of Daphne (1) as a survival from the
savage mental habit of regarding men as on a level with stones, beasts,
and plants; or (2) as a tale 'moulded by poets on the same model.' {11}
The latter is the more probable case, for we find Daphne late, in
artificial or mythographic literature, in Ovid and Hyginus. In Ovid the
river god, Pentheus, changes Daphne into a laurel. In Hyginus she is not
changed at all; the earth swallows her, and a laurel fills her place.
Now I really did believe--perhaps any rapid reader would have
believed--when I read Mr. Max Muller, that I must have tried to account
for the story of Daphne by the story of Tuna. I actually wrote in the
first draft of this work that I had been in the wrong. Then I verified
the reference which my critic did not give, with the result which the
reader has perused. Never could a reader have found out what I did
really say from my critic, for he does not usually when he deals with me
give chapter and verse. This may avoid an air of personal bickering, but
how inconvenient it is!
Let me not be supposed to accuse Mr. Max Muller of consciously
misrepresenting me. Of that I need not say that he is absolutely
incapable. My argument merely took, in his consciousness, the form which
is suggested in the passage cited from him.