Transcriber’s Note:
This version of the text cannot represent certain typographical effects.
Italics are delimited with the ‘_’ character as _italic_. Bold font is
delimited by the ‘=’ character. The rendering of certain characters in
classical languages may not display correctly in your reader.
Superscripted characters appear as ^m.
Footnotes, which appeared at the bottom of each page, have been gathered
at the end of each chapter. They have also been renumbered consecutively
in order establish the uniqueness required to facilitate searches. Any
references to specific notes in the text have been corrected to follow
the new numbering.
MYTHOLOGY AMONG THE HEBREWS
LONDON: PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
AND PARLIAMENT STREET
MYTHOLOGY AMONG THE HEBREWS
AND
ITS HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT
BY
IGNAZ GOLDZIHER, PH.D.
MEMBER OF THE HUNGARIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES
_TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN, WITH ADDITIONS BY THE AUTHOR_
BY
RUSSELL MARTINEAU, M.A.
OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM
LONDON
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
1877
_All rights reserved_
TO
PROFESSORS
H.L. FLEISCHER
FRIEDRICH MAX MÜLLER
H. VÁMBÉRY
THE PIONEERS OF SEMITIC, ARYAN, AND TURCO-TATARIC PHILOLOGY
This Work is Dedicated
BY THE AUTHOR AND THE TRANSLATOR
_Errata._
P. 13 line 5 from below, _for_ ‘with all his advanced ideas’ _read_
‘notwithstanding the progress of modern ideas.’
P. 209, first line of note, after ‘ball,’ _insert_ ‘that descended from
heaven.’ Whether this feather-ball
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
------------------
Conscious that Comparative Mythology is not very generally studied even
in England, where some of the earliest and ablest expositions of its
principles have appeared, I foresee that this work is likely to fall
into the hands of many who have not the preliminary intellectual
training necessary to an appreciation of its principles. If anyone takes
up the book with an idea that it will settle anything in the history of
the Jews, he will be disappointed. Its aim is not theological nor
historical, but mythological; and Mythology precedes History and
Theology, and has nothing to do with them, except as a factor that may
to a certain extent determine their form. To understand this book fully,
some previous knowledge of what has already been done on the field of
Comparative Mythology is essential. This is easily obtained by reference
to the various works of Prof. Max Müller and Rev. G.W. Cox, which are
frequently quoted.[1] Such studies will enable the reader to see how far
Dr. Goldziher is merely treading in the footsteps of others, and how far
he has struck out a new track. Speaking generally, it may be said that
he acknowledges the principles of the science as laid down by Kuhn and
Max Müller, but that the application to the Semitic nations is his own.
This application was, indeed, first attempted, fifteen years ago, by
Professor H. Steinthal of Berlin with reference to one special
mythological cycle, in Essays which, on p. xxix of his Introduction, Dr.
Goldziher urgently recommends the reader to study as a suitable
preparation for this book, since they ‘showed for the first time and on
a large scale how the matter of the Hebrew legends yields to
mythological analysis,’ and contain matter which is left out here
precisely because it is to be had there. Through the obligingness of the
publishers I am enabled to present the English reader with a translation
of these Essays, whereby he is put in a position of no disadvantage as
compared with the German. They will also serve the purpose of showing
that the principles of Semitic Mythology were asserted in weighty words
by a philosopher of high repute many years ago. But Dr. Goldziher has in
the present work for the first time extended the application of the
principles of Comparative Mythology to the entire domain of Hebrew
Mythology, and laid down a broad foundation of theory, on which the
elaboration of special points may be subsequently built up. Both these
authors, it will be seen, regard a systematic working out of the results
of Psychological science as the fundamental pillar of Mythological
studies; and the reader will consequently find some psychological
preparation not less necessary to the full understanding of the book
than a knowledge of what has been written on Comparative Mythology.
The translation has received so many additions and corrections made
expressly for it by the author, that it is far superior to the original
German edition; moreover, it has been thoroughly revised by the author
in proof.
I have added a few notes, where they seemed to be wanted; they are
always distinguished (by ‘TR.’) from the author’s own. The Index is also
compiled by me.
References to the Old Testament are made to the original Hebrew; in the
few cases where the chapter or verse bears a different number in the
English and other modern versions, the reference to the latter is added
in brackets.
I have adopted a few peculiarities of orthography, which I ought to
confess to, the more so as I hope others may be convinced of their
reasonableness. _Nazirite_, _Hivvite_, are corrections of positive
blunders in spelling of the English Bible. _Hivite_ was probably written
in obedience to an unwritten law of English spelling which forbids the
doubling of _v_; whether there is now any sense in this precept (which
must have originated when _vv_ would be confounded with _w_) or not, at
least it ought not to be extended to foreign names. The tendency of the
age to dispense with the Latin diphthongs _æ_, _œ_ (which were a few
generations ago used in _æra_, _œconomy_, _Ægypt_, etc.), I have
ventured to anticipate in similar words, such as _esthetic_, _Phenicia_,
_Phenix_. The anomaly of the French spelling of the Greek word
_programme_, alongside of _anagram_, _diagram_, _parallelogram_, seems
to me sufficient condemnation of the form.
In the Hebrew and Arabic quotations the Latin alphabet has been used
throughout. The transliteration of the following letters should be
noted, as being the only ones about which there could be any doubt:—ا א
commencing a syllable in the middle of a word = ʾ. ע ﻊ = ʿ. ﻎ = ġ. ﺝ =
j. ﺡ = ḥ ה ﺥ = ch. כ ك = k. ק ق = ḳ. ת ت ۃ = t. ט ط = ṭ. ظ =
ẓ. ס שׂ س = s. שׁ ش = sh. ث = th. ذ = ḏ. צ ص = ṣ. ض = ḍ. ו as
consonant generally = v, but و = w. י ى as consonant = y. The aspirated
_תפכב_ are written bh (to be pronounced v), kh, ph, th. In Hebrew ă ĕ ŏ
denote either the ordinary short vowels or the châṭêph vowels; and ĕ
also the vocal sheva. In Arabic texts the iʿrâb is omitted in prose, but
preserved in verse on account of the metre. These principles of
transliteration are the same which the author adopts in the German
edition, with a few modifications which seemed desirable for English
readers, especially the use of the letters j, th and y with their usual
English force.
RUSSELL MARTINEAU.
LONDON: _January 1877._
CONTENTS.
TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE vii
INTRODUCTION xiii
CHAPTER I.
ON HEBREW MYTHOLOGY 1
CHAPTER II.
SOURCES OF HEBREW MYTHOLOGY 17
CHAPTER III.
THE METHOD OF INVESTIGATING HEBREW MYTHS 35
CHAPTER IV.
NOMADISM AND AGRICULTURE 49
CHAPTER V.
THE MOST PROMINENT FIGURES IN HEBREW MYTHOLOGY 90
CHAPTER VI.
THE MYTH OF CIVILISATION AND THE FIRST SHAPING OF HEBREW 198
RELIGION
CHAPTER VII.
INFLUENCE OF THE AWAKING NATIONAL IDEA ON THE TRANSFORMATION 231
OF THE HEBREW MYTH
CHAPTER VIII.
COMMENCEMENT OF MONOTHEISM AND THE DIFFERENTIATION OF THE 259
MYTHS
CHAPTER IX.
PROPHETISM AND THE JAHVEH RELIGION 290
CHAPTER X.
THE HEBREW MYTH IN THE BABYLONIAN CAPTIVITY 316
EXCURSUS 337
APPENDIX.
_Two Essays by H. Steinthal._
1. THE ORIGINAL FORM OF THE LEGEND OF PROMETHEUS 363
2. THE LEGEND OF SAMSON 392
INDEX 447
INTRODUCTION.
------------------
The following sheets make no claim to present a _system_ of Hebrew
Mythology. I have left out much that would necessarily be included in a
system, and confined myself to a limited portion of what can be proved
to be the matter of the Hebrew myths. Even within the actual domain of
my labours, I was not anxious to subject the extant narratives in all
their minutest features to mythological analysis. The application of the
certain results of the science of Mythology in general to a domain
hitherto almost ignored with reference to this subject, could only be
accomplished by some self-limitation on the part of the author; and my
immediate task was only to show that Semitism in general, and Hebrew in
particular, could not be exceptions to the laws of mythological enquiry
established on the basis of psychology and the science of language, and
that it is possible from Semitism itself, on psychological and
philological principles, to construct a scientific Semitic Mythology.
By blindly tracing out copious matters of detail, the investigator of
myths is very easily and unconsciously seduced to the slippery ground of
improbabilities; and therefore I preferred, in the first instance, to
enlarge only on subjects on which I was confident of being able to
present what was self-evident, and in these only, so to speak, to reveal
the first cellular formations, from which later growths were produced,
and to leave the analysis of the entire substance, and of the separate
elements which complete the conception of the mythical figures, to a
future time, when the science will have gained a firmer footing even on
the Semitic domain, and will have less distrust and misunderstanding to
contend against. I am myself responsible for this limitation of the
subject, in the service of which, encouraged by kind friends, I resolved
to publish the following pages. In mythological affairs I acknowledge
myself a pupil of the school established on the Aryan domain by Ad. Kuhn
and Max Müller. Only in certain points, which, however, occasionally
touch upon first principles, I have been compelled to differ from the
masters of Comparative Mythology. It may be boldly asserted that,
especially through Max Müller’s literary labours, Comparative Mythology
and the Science of Religion have been added to those chapters of human
knowledge with which certain borderlands of science cannot dispense, and
which can claim to have become an essential portion of general
culture.[2] This conviction must excuse frequent copiousness of
exposition, which I have adopted knowingly and intentionally. I have had
in my eye not only the small circle of professional mythologists on the
Aryan and other domains, but also the larger circle of educated readers
who will be interested in learning how the results of Comparative
Mythology shape themselves when applied to Semitic nations. But, on the
other hand, I must crave the indulgence of the latter readers, if I have
not always succeeded (especially in the fifth chapter) in making my
meaning as intelligible as I could wish. For it is a fact that the
Semitic still remains further removed from the mind of educated society
than the Aryan, which, through the study of classical antiquity, has so
ensnared us from our school-days with its irresistible charms, that it
can never cease to determine the direction of our thought and action.
Therefore I have had resort to foreign examples, sometimes non-Semitic
instances from antiquity, sometimes instances from modern poets, for
illustrations of particular assertions, which otherwise would appear
improbable, but could thus be brought nearer to the understanding. From
the figures used by poets the wealth and variety of the mythical
apperception of the primeval man is truly elucidated. Here and there I
have also permitted myself to make reference to Hungarian idioms, which
was very natural, as I originally composed this book in my Hungarian
mother-tongue for the purpose of University lectures, and then
translated it myself into German. Some parts of these essays have been
already published in Hungarian, in a different connexion and with
special reference to linguistic results, in the first and second parts
of Vol. XII. of the _Nyelvtudományi Közlemények_ (Philological Essays),
edited by Paul Hunfalvy for the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
In adducing Aryan parallels, I am very far from thinking that where the
Hebrew exhibits a striking similarity to something Aryan it has borrowed
from the latter, or that, as a recent scholar tried to make out, the
Hebrews themselves were originally Aryans, who afterwards took a Semitic
language and preserved their Aryan habits of thought. I start from the
conviction that the Myth is something universal, that the faculty of
forming it cannot _a priori_ be denied to any race as such, and that the
coincidence of mythical ideas and modes of expression is the result of
the uniformity of the psychological process which is the foundation of
the creation of myths in all races; and this very uniformity of mythical
ideas may consequently serve to psychologists as an argument for the
thesis of the psychological uniformity of all races.[3] ‘Where no
historical transference of myths can be proved,’ says Bastian very
justly,[4] ‘the uniformity must be referred to the organic law of the
growth of the mind, which will everywhere put forth similar products,
corresponding and alike, but variously modified by surrounding
influences.’ The oldest history of paleography exhibits on the
ideographic and figurative stage the most striking similarities in the
modes of apperception belonging to nations of the most various races.
Lenormant says: ‘Nous pourrions faire voir, si nous voulions nous
laisser aller à la tentation d’entreprendre un petit traité de
l’écriture symbolique chez les différents peuples, comment certaines
métaphores naturelles ont été conçues spontanément par plusieurs races
diverses sans communication les unes avec les autres, et comment, par
suite, le même symbole se retrouve avec le même sens dans plusieurs
systèmes d’origine tout-à-fait indépendante. L’exemple le plus frappant
peut-être de ce genre est celui du symbole de l’abeille, qui, ainsi que
nous venons de le dire, signifie Roi dans les hiéroglyphes égyptiens, et
se reconnaît encore clairement dans le type le plus ancien de
l’idéogramme doué du même sens dans le cunéiforme anarien.’[5] The same
lesson is taught by Prehistoric Archeology, the comparative study of
which among the various races would present very instructive examples.
In our museums we see identical implements used by men of the most
various races at the same primitive stage of civilisation,[6] yet in
this case the idea of one having borrowed from another enters no one’s
head. Why should we be surprised at meeting with the very same
phenomenon in Comparative Mythology?
The uniformity of the Hebrew myths with those of nations belonging to
other races only becomes an obvious fact when we apply the method of
modern mythological enquiry to Semitic stories. But, even without the
help of this method, the mere outside of the Hebrew stories attracted
the attention of many enquirers. It occasionally gave rise to the
absurdest aberrations, which even now shoot out into a fresh crop of
mischief. One answer, of course, was always at hand—that Greek and
Egyptian narratives and ‘theogonies’ were bad translations or ‘diluted’
versions of the Hebrew; or else, as it has often been attempted in
recent times to prove, the Egyptian was the original, from which
everything else had flowed. The eighteenth century was especially rich
in literary productions of the first species, following the lead of
Gerhard Johann Voss, Huet,[7] Bochart, and others whose labours had
prepared the way. G. Croesius published at Dort, in 1704, ‘Ὅμηρος
Ἑβραῖος, sive Historia Hebraeorum ab Homero Hebraicis nominibus ac
sententiis conscripta in Odyssea et Iliade,’ and V.G. Herklitz at
Leipzig two years later, 1706, ‘Quod Hercules idem sit ac Josua.’ At
Amsterdam a book was published in 1721 entitled ‘Parallela τῆς
χρονολογίας et Historiae Sacrae,’ having the same object; and in 1730 a
book in two volumes, of similar tendency, by Guillaume de Lavaur, an
_avocat_, was published at Paris in French, and translated into German
by Johann Daniel Heyden (Leipzig, 1745).[8] But it was reserved for the
end of the century to produce the most curious specimen, in the work
entitled ‘Histoire véritable des Temps Fabuleux: ouvrage qui, en
dévoilant le vrai que les histoires fabuleuses ont travesti et altéré,
sert à éclaircir les antiquités des peuples et surtout à venger
l’histoire sainte,’ by the Abbé Guérin du Rocher. I have not seen the
original edition of this work, but have consulted a later edition
prepared by the Abbé Chapelle, an admirer of the author (Paris and
Besançon, 1824), in five volumes, of which the first three contain the
original work, and the fourth and fifth are taken up by the editor with
a recapitulation of principles and a defence against the attacks of
antagonists, who count among their number such men as Voltaire, De la
Harpe, De Guignes, Du Voisin, Dinouart, and Anquetil du Perron. The
author undertook to prove that the entire ancient history of the
Egyptians and other nations is only a repetition of Biblical narratives:
that thus what is related of Bothyris, Orpheus, Menes, Sesostris, and
others, is identical with the Biblical history of Abraham, Jacob, Lot,
Noah, and others; even the Egyptian Thebes is not a city, but Noah’s
ark. The influence which this sensational book exercised on the learning
of the period is very characteristic of the times. Dr. Asselini, vicar
of the diocese of Paris, who had to pass judgment on it for the
censorship (1779), regards it as a vindication of the Bible. The
Sorbonne appropriated Guérin’s theorems, and made them the subject of
theses for graduation. The King of Poland read the work through, and
sent his compliments to the author. The French government accorded the
Abbé an annual pension of 1,200 livres. One reviewer compares Guérin’s
discoveries to those of Columbus and Newton; and a poetical panegyrist
sees in them a French counterpoise to the superiority in science then
possessed by England in virtue of discoveries of the first rank in
physical science. He says—
Fière et docte Albion, qui dans un coin des mers
Prétends aux premier rang de la littérature,
Pour avoir à vos yeux dévoilé l’univers
Et le vrai plan de la nature,
De tes discours hautains rabaisse enfin le ton;
La France, ta rivale, va égaler ta gloire.
Ce que pour la physique a fait le grand Newton,
Du Rocher l’a fait pour l’histoire.
But even on the very threshold of the second part of our century, in
1849, a systematic argument was conducted, to show that Livy had read
the Bible, and based his description of T. Manlius Torquatus’ battle
with the Gauls on that of David and his battle with the Philistine
giant; and twenty-two similarities between the respective stories had to
do duty as demonstrations.[9] The unscientific mode of regarding these
subjects prevailing up to the most recent time has not yet ceased to
generate absurdities.
We see old-fashioned absurdities still finding a way to the general
reading public by means of encyclopedias, as in a ‘Dictionary of the
Mythology of all Nations,’ of which a third edition was recently
published.[10] This work in its new form comes before the public with a
touching delivery against modern physical science by way of
introduction. Here we read under _Abraham_, ‘Some scholars are inclined
to make this celebrated Patriarch of the Jewish nation either the god
Brahma himself or a Brahman who was obliged to leave India in the
contest between the worshippers of Siva and those of Brahma. _In truth,
there is much that might lead to such a conjecture._ In Sanskrit the
word ‘earth’ is often expressed by _Brahm_ or _Abrahm_. Abraham’s wife
was named Sarah; Brahma’s wife was Sara (Sarasvati)’ etc. But sins of a
different kind also are committed up to the present day. The Hebrews are
said to have borrowed their myths from foreign parts. It is not only by
Voltaire and men of his age and spirit that this assumption is made. It
is expressed in a recent article by a learned German investigator
intended for the widest circulation. Sepp writes, 'No nation has been so
clever as the Hebrews in appropriating to themselves the property of
others, both intellectual and material. What can we say to the fact that
the sun’s standing still at Joshua’s bidding, with the purpose of
enabling the Hebrews to complete the slaughter of the Amalekites, is
_directly borrowed from Homer_ (_Il._ ii. 412), where the poetical
hyperbole ‘Let not the sun go down, O Zeus,’ etc., is put into the mouth
of Agamemnon?... To be brief, the popular hero Samson has had the Twelve
Labours of the Lybian Herakles transferred to him, and bears the doors,
as Sandon or Melkart the pillars of the world, on his shoulders.'[11]
The reader will agree with me in regarding it as superfluous at the
present day to attempt a serious refutation of the hypothesis of
_borrowing_, which assails the originality of the most primitive
mythological ideas known to the nation under review. But it is
impossible to evade the obligation to find an explanation of the
manifold coincidences exhibited in the independently produced myths of
nations belonging to quite different races. Under the new method of
mythological enquiry this obligation is doubly pressing; for the
coincidences appear yet more surprising, and occupy a more extensive
sphere when the myths are considered analytically by the light of the
new method, and from a linguistic point of view. Only then does the
identity become psychologically important. And then it can in my view be
explained only by the rejection of the prejudice that there are
unmythological races, or at least one race incapable of forming any
myths—the Semitic. If the Myth is a form of life of the human mind
psychologically necessary at a certain stage of growth, then the
intellectual life of every individual, nation, and race must pass
through it. ‘The tendency of modern enquiry is more and more toward the
conclusion that if law is anywhere, it is everywhere,’ as Tylor
maintains.[12] This means, applied to the present question, that if the
formation of myths is a natural law of the ψυχή (mind) at a certain
stage, it must necessarily occur everywhere where there is a beginning
of intellectual life, unless we could speak of whole races or tribes as
psychologically pathologic,[13] and make the whole Semitic race thus
pathologic on account of its alleged incapacity to form myths—which
would, after all, be rather a curious proceeding. No doubt we often read
in ethnological works of nations without a trace of Mythology. But we
ought not to forget either that such informants understand by Mythology
only complicated stories and fables, which in my view represent the more
advanced stage of mythic development, or that they identify Mythology
with heathen religious ideas, and confound absence of religion or
atheism with want of myths. So, e.g., Sir John Lubbock says, quoting
Sibree,[14] ‘Even in Madagascar, according to a good authority, “there
is nothing corresponding to a Mythology, _or any fables of gods or
goddesses_, amongst the Malagasy;”’ but this want of stories of gods and
goddesses is very far from demonstrating the absence of myths of all and
every sort.
It would be worth while in this connexion to pursue a thought raised by
Schelling, with the aid of the present more advanced ideas on the
psychology of nations. According to Schelling,[15] a nation becomes a
nation through community of consciousness between the individuals; and
this community has its foundation in a common view of the world, and
this again in Mythology. Consequently in Schelling’s system absence of
Mythology can only occur in circles of men in which nationality is as
yet unformed, and the necessary community undeveloped. But to Schelling
‘it appears impossible, because inconceivable, that a _Nation should be
without Mythology_.’ However the question may stand with reference to
savage tribes, modern science cannot possibly support the old thesis
concerning the Semitic Hebrews of their incapacity for Mythology.
Guided by this conviction, I lay down at starting the necessity of
subjecting the material of the Hebrew myths to the same psychological
and linguistic analysis which has contributed so much light to the
consideration of the beginnings of intellectual life in the Aryan race.
I do not conceal from myself that the acknowledgment of the legitimacy
of this method for Semitic things may be exposed to many attacks. For
even on Aryan ground the results which the school of Kuhn and Max Müller
have brought to light do not enjoy that general acceptation which ought
to reward such sound investigations—investigations, moreover, the basis
of which is being constantly extended by later writers such as G.W. Cox
and De Gubernatis. Both in Germany and in England this school has
notable adversaries. I do not speak of Julius Braun, who, in his
_Naturgeschichte der Sage_ (Natural History of Legend), thought to
undermine the solid substratum of Comparative Mythology by extending to
the domain of mythology the consequences of his theory of the history of
art and of Röthe’s assumptions, and by fetching from Egypt the
foundation-stone on which to construct a Science of Mythology—an attempt
which turned out most unfortunate, especially in etymology. But some
worthy partisans of the study of classical literature refuse to receive
the results of the science of Comparative Mythology. One of these is K.
Lehrs;[16] another is the latest German editor of Hesiod, who objects to
the modern science of Mythology that it ignores historical and
philological criticism and seizes upon every passage of an author that
suits its theory, without regard to its value and genuineness.[17] Among
the English scholars it is no less a writer than Fergusson who declares,
‘So far as I am capable of understanding it, it appears to me that the
ancient Solar Myth of Messrs. Max Müller and Cox is very like mere
modern moonshine.’[18] And Mr. George Smith, the renowned pioneer of the
ancient Assyrian literature, seems not to have much confidence in the
latest method of mythological investigation; for he says in his latest
book,[19] ‘The early poems and stories of almost every nation are by
some writers resolved into elaborate descriptions of natural phenomena;
and in some cases, if that were true, the myth would have taken to
create it a genius as great as that of the philosophers who explain it.’
So that the so-called ‘Solar theory’ is far from being generally adopted
even on the domain where it was first brought out and has been most
firmly established. But the adherents of the school of Max Müller may
take comfort from the consideration that the accusations made against
them hit only those who have ridden the theory too hard, since, as Tylor
says, no allegory, no nursery-rhyme, is safe from the speculations of
some fanatical mythological theoriser. ‘Much abused’ is a correct
epithet used of the Solar theory by a learned English Assyriologist,
himself a friend of it.[20] If, then, on Aryan ground the legitimacy of
the new method is not undisputed, how will it be on Semitic, and
especially on Hebrew ground, which a prejudice prevalent far and wide
has decided to be occupied by a race and a nation with no mythology at
all? Nevertheless, I hope I have kept myself free from abuse and
extravagance in these essays. I have endeavoured sedulously to avoid
whatever, on the Aryan domain, aroused the distrust of the hesitating,
by showing no anxiety to gain immediate command of the whole extent of
the mythological field. The essential point at the commencement of these
matters is not the elucidation of all the minute details, but rather the
solution of the general questions that arise, and the accurate laying
down of a sound method of investigation. What I have brought forward I
wish to be regarded as a collection of examples of the application of
the method.
The reader will observe that I have given to the conception of the myth
a narrower scope than is usually done. I believe it necessary to
separate it strictly from the conception of religion, and especially to
exclude from the sphere of primitive mythology the questions of
Cosmogony and Ethics (the origin of Evil). The latter point was of
especial importance in reference to the Hebrew Myth, since, as I show in
the last chapter, the solution of these questions by the Hebrews was
produced in the later period of civilisation and from a foreign impulse.
There is an immense difference between the ancient mythical view of the
origin of nature and that later cosmogonic system. So long as mythical
ideas are still living in the mind, though under an altered form, when
the times are ripe for cosmogonic speculations, a cosmogony appears as a
stage of development of the ancient myth. But when the myth has utterly
vanished from consciousness, then the mind is ready to receive foreign
cosmogonic ideas, which can be fitted into the frame of its religious
thought and accommodated to its religious views. This was the case with
the Hebrews; and hence it will be understood why I have not treated as
Hebrew mythical matter the Cosmogony of Genesis, which, moreover,
according to all appearance, is to be regarded rather as a mere literary
creation than as a view of the origin of things emanating directly from
the mind of the people.
It appeared desirable to give a few chapters to show what I imagined the
course of development of the primitive myths to have been, before they
attained the form in which they are presented to us in literature. The
mythological question is indeed quite distinct from that concerning the
history of literature, and there is only a distant connexion between the
two. The purpose of the following pages is, strictly speaking, attained
where that of the literary history of the Canon commences; and I would
gladly have kept aloof from the literary question, which cannot yet be
regarded as even nearly settled. But when I included in my task the
description of the further course of development of the myth, it was
obviously impossible to stand so entirely aloof. I have on many points
deviated from the current views, without being able either to enter into
so complete a justification of the deviation as is generally reasonably
expected, and the importance and scope of the subject would demand, or
to refer to all the suggestive and original works contributed,
especially by Germany and Holland, to the elucidation of the problems in
question. For this point, which is only accessory to the real subject of
my work, would require to be treated in a separate monograph, which it
was not my intention to give. On the other hand, it was impossible to
leave these questions quite on one side. On the Pentateuch question I
start from the principles of Graf, which at first were adopted solely by
the learned Professor Kuenen of Leyden, but have recently found zealous
promoters also in England[21] and Germany—in the latter country
especially in the works of Kayser (Strasburg, 1874), and Duhm (Bonn,
1875).[22] Nevertheless, the section on Jahveism and Prophetism has
turned out more lengthy than considerations of symmetry would sanction.
I must confess that my personal sympathy with and affection for this
portion of the history of religion places me too close to it to allow
me, when once brought face to face with it, to impose on my pen a
reserve which perhaps is desirable for the sake of equilibrium. All this
obliges me to count on the kind indulgence of my readers for the second
portion, which may be termed the historical.
It remains to say a few words about previous works of the same
character. Some earlier writings there are on Hebrew Mythology. But it
needs not to be specially insisted on that Nork’s muddle-headed works,
such as his ‘Biblical Mythology of the Old and New Testament,’ his
‘Etymological-symbolical-mythological Cyclopedia for Biblical Students,
Archeologists, and Artists,’[23] and other books of his, and similar
attempts by others,[24] which have tended to discredit the school of
Creuzer rather than to gain lasting adherents to it, do not deserve to
be regarded as anything but passing aberrations. Braun’s ‘Natural
History of Legend: Reference of all Religious Ideas, Legends, and
Systems to their Common Stock and Ultimate Root’[25] maintains a more
serious and dignified tone, but is a kind of anachronism built on an
antiquated theory, and not happier in its etymological identifications
and derivations than Nork’s writings. I think that no branch of the
science of History and Civilisation can be advanced to satisfactory
results when the following thesis is laid down as an axiom: ‘It is a
fundamental law of the nature of the human mind never to invent anything
as long as it is possible to copy’—which is the starting-point of
Braun's studies. It would be quite as difficult to rest satisfied at the
present day with the method which Buttmann follows in treating of Hebrew
Mythology.
There are many smaller excursus by Biblical expositors and historians,
who set out from the standpoint of the earlier views on the relation of
the Myth to the Legend, and more frequently from the exegetical point of
view. Among these ought especially to be named Ewald’s section on the
subject in the first volume of his ‘History of Israel,’ Tuch’s short
treatise ‘Legend and Myth’ in the general introduction to his Commentary
on Genesis, as well as several dissertations by the indefatigable
Nöldeke in his ‘_Untersuchungen_’ (Investigations) and elsewhere. It is
obvious that these performances, though in every sense noteworthy and of
permanent value, could not draw into their sphere of observation those
preliminary questions which in the subsequent investigations of Kuhn and
Max Müller removed to a greater distance the goal of mythological
enquiry. Steinthal, who did so much for the psychological basis of the
new tendency of mythological science, was the first to merit the praise
of making Comparative Mythology fruitful on Hebrew ground. His
dissertations on the Story of Prometheus and the Story of Samson[26]
showed for the first time, and on a large scale, how the matter of the
Hebrew legends yields to mythological analysis. I would on this occasion
beg the reader to have the kindness to read these pioneer-articles of
Steinthal’s, to complete the matter left undiscussed in my work, as I
considered it superfluous repetition to work up a second time what was
sufficiently expounded there. Steinthal must consequently be regarded as
the founder of mythological science on Hebrew ground. He has again
recently given some suggestive hints on this subject in a short article,
in which he again defends the capacity of the Semitic race to form
myths.[27] It is only to be regretted that the commencement made by
Steinthal in this science has not been followed up for more than fifteen
years.[28] Steinthal’s two dissertations gave me the first impulse to
the composition of this work; and my purpose was confirmed by the words
of the ingenious Italian Angelo de Gubernatis, who, in his ‘Zoological
Mythology’ (which appeared at the very time when I was maturing my
purpose of putting together into one work this series of essays
originally written as lectures), eloquently designates the subject of my
researches the next problem of Comparative Mythology.[29] The words in
which he recommends the study of Hebrew Mythology in the spirit of the
new method seem to me very striking. It is my earnest conviction that
not only the interests of learning, but also preeminently the religious
life of the present age make it important to gain for this subject an
acknowledged position in learned literature. For he who feels the true
meaning of religion must welcome these studies as a step in advance
towards the highest ideal of religion, towards Monotheism pure and
unsullied by anything coarse or pagan, which is independent of legends
and traditions of race, and has its centre, its exclusive element of
life, and its impulse towards never-resting enquiry and self-perfection,
in aspiration after the single living Source of all truth and morality.
I am convinced that every step which we take towards a correct
appreciation of the Mythical brings us nearer to that centre. The
confusion of the Mythical with the Religious makes religious life
centrifugal; it is the duty of the progressive tendency on this domain
to confirm a centripetal tendency.[30] The recognition of this relation
between pure Monotheism and the oldest historical portion of the
Biblical literature does not date from yesterday or to-day; the most
ideal representative of Hebrew Monotheism, in whom Jahveism as an
harmonious conception of the universe attained its climax, the Prophet
of the Captivity himself, described this relation in clear terms (Is.
LXIII. 16; see _infra_, p. 229).
But while, on the one hand, the investigation of Hebrew myths gives a
stimulus to religious thought to advance in the direction of a
Monotheism purified from all dross; on the other, the employment of the
method offered to the Hebrew stories by Comparative Mythology in its
latest stage, paves the way for a more serious treatment of the old
Biblical stories. It cannot be denied that there is no little frivolity
in the idea that those stories were invented at a certain time, no
matter whether _bona_ or _mala fide_, by persons guided by some
interest, or affected by some leaning, of their own. It is no more
satisfactory to be told that the stories were not _invented_, but
_sprang up_ naturally, and then to find that no answer is forthcoming to
the question, _How_ that could be? The modern science of Comparative
Mythology has washed the teachers of the human race clean of the
suspicion of mystification and deceptive principles. The origination of
the stories is, at the outset, claimed for an antiquity higher than even
the most orthodox apologists could ever exhibit. Now for the first time
we can learn to appreciate them as spontaneous acts of the human mind;
we perceive that they arose through the same psychological process which
gave us language also; that, like language itself, they were the very
oldest manifestation of activity of the mind, and burst forth from it
φύσει not θέσει, at the very threshold of its history; and subsequently
transformed and developed themselves again quite spontaneously, on the
attainment of a higher stage of civilisation, by processes of national
psychology, and most certainly not by the cunning ingenuity and the
worldly wisdom of certain leading classes.
Last year Dr. Martin Schultze announced a ‘Mythology of the Hebrews in
its connexion with those of the Indogermans and of the Egyptians’[31] as
about to appear. The method followed by the author in a preliminary
specimen[32] was not such as to induce me to delay the publication of my
work and wait for his, even though he promised to give a complete
system, which was not my intention.[33] My manuscript was already in the
publishers’ hands, when the papers announced the publication of a
learned book by Dr. Grill, ‘The Patriarchs of Mankind: a contribution
towards the establishment of a Science of Hebrew Archeology;’[34] and
more than ten sheets were printed before I could gather, from a review
of it in the _Jenaer Literaturzeitung_, in how close a connexion it
stood to the subject of my book; for from the title alone I was not
likely to suspect anything on Mythology. I cannot pretend to explain in
a few lines my opinion of so large a book as Dr. Grill’s. But as he
starts with the assumption of the impossibility of a Semitic Mythology,
and endeavours to establish the view that the Hebrew Myth is that of an
Indogermanic people, that the Hebrews were Indogermans, and that the
Hebrew mythological proper names can find an etymology only in Sanskrit,
I have great pleasure in referring him to p. 25 and to Chapter V. of my
book, where he may convince himself that no very daring etymological
leaps nor arbitrary assumptions of phonological laws of transformation
are necessary to explain the Hebrew mythological figures and their
appellations from the Semitic languages themselves. It must, no doubt,
be admitted that in some cases—but the minority—the formation of the
proper names used in Mythology is not quite in accordance with
grammatical analogy. I account for this by the peculiar feature of the
Semitic languages, that an appellative on becoming a proper name often
takes a peculiar form, differing in some respect from that of the
original appellative: ‘al-ʿadl li-l-ʿalamîyyâ,’ as the Arabian
grammarians say.[35] There will always be _cruces_. Is it possible to
indicate a satisfactory etymon for every proper name of the Greek
mythology? and if not, ought we on that account to explain the Greek out
of Semitic, whenever a case occurs which tempts us to do so, as our
learned ancestors did?[36] For transformation is always easy to find;
since etymology is allowed to be a science in which the consonants go
for but little, and the vowels have nothing at all to say for
themselves! It certainly seems a pity to waste ingenuity in trying to
banish out of the Semitic stock names which sound Semitic and can be
recognised as such without the employment of any law of transformation
at all, like Yiphtâch (Jephthah), Nôach (Noah), and Debhôrâ (Deborah),
and in dissolving by Sanskrit solvents the Hebrew impress of a word like
Yehôshûaʿ (Joshua), produced by Jahveism out of the original Hôshêaʿ,
and not even mythical at all, in order to make it into a ‘Dog of
Heaven,’ instead of ‘He has holpen’ or ‘enlarged [the people’s
possessions],’ i.e. ‘The Helper.’[37] Pinechas (Phinehas), no doubt, is
a word that might drive the etymologist to despair. But there is far
more intrinsic probability in Lauth’s Egyptian interpretation[38] than
in Grill’s Sanskrit _tour de force_, especially considering that
Egyptian proper names cannot be explained away out of the Old Testament,
and have in history a positive reason for existence. Then why hover in
the dream-land of a prehistoric connexion with the Aryans?
When the Arabian traditionary stories are once subjected to etymological
treatment, it will appear how far Semitism is from utter deficiency of
Mythology. In certain instances I have taken occasion to demonstrate
this with reference to Arabian tradition in the course of this work
(e.g. p. 182 _et seq._, p. 334 _et seq._). In other cases no reference
to the etymological meaning of the proper names is required to recognise
true Arabian myths. Instances are found especially in the stories about
the constellations. Al-Meydânî informs us that ‘the old Arabs say that
the star al-Dabarân wooed the Pleiades, but the latter constellation
would have nothing to do with the suitor, turned obstinately away from
him, and said to the Moon, ‘What must I do with that poor devil, who has
no estate at all?’ Then al-Dabarân gathered together his Ḳilâṣ (a
constellation in the neighbourhood of al-Dabarân), and thus gained
possession of an estate. And now he is constantly following after the
Pleiades, driving the Ḳilâṣ before him as a wedding-present.’[39] ‘The
constellation Capricorn killed the Bear (naʿsh), and therefore the
daughters of the latter (binât naʿsh) encircle him, seeking vengeance
for their slain father.’ ‘Suheyl gave the female star al-Jauzâ a blow;
the latter returned it and threw him down where he now lies; but he then
took his sword and cut his adversary in pieces.’ ‘The southern Sirius
(al-Shiʿra al-yamânîyyâ) was walking with her sister the northern Sirius
(al-Shiʿra al-shâmîyyâ); the latter parted company and crossed the Milky
Way, whence her name (al-Shiʿra al-ʿabûr). Her sister, seeing this,
began to weep for the separation, and her eyes dropped tears; therefore
she is called the Wet-eyed (al-ġumeyṣâ).’[40] The existence of similar
Hebrew myths may be inferred from the names of constellations in the
Book of Job (XXXVIII. 31, 32), especially from the Fool (kesîl, Orion)
bound to heaven.[41] Are not these genuine Nomads’ myths, produced
through contemplation of the constellations and their relations to one
another?
In conclusion, I must observe that in many passages, especially of the
later chapters, a fuller citation of literary apparatus would have been
desirable. The want of this is to be ascribed in part to the peculiar
design of the book, and in part to the deficiency of aid from libraries
for the exegetical department in my dwelling-place.
MYTHOLOGY AMONG THE HEBREWS.
CHAPTER I.
_ON HEBREW MYTHOLOGY._
§ 1. At the very foundation of the investigations to which this book is
devoted, we find ourselves in opposition to a wide-spread assumption:
that in regard to Mythology nations may be divided into two classes,
Mythological and Unmythological, or in other words, those which have had
a natural gift for creating Myths, and those whose intellectual capacity
never sufficed for this end. It is therefore desirable to lay down
clearly our position in regard to this assumption, before we advance to
the proper subject of our studies.
The Myth is the result of a purely psychological operation, and is,
together with language, the oldest act of the human mind. This has been
shown conclusively by the modern school of mythologists who are also
psychologists. Assuming then, what can scarcely be called in question,
that the same psychological laws rule the intellectual activity of
mankind without distinction of race, we cannot _a priori_ assume that
the capacity for forming myths can be given or withheld according to
ethnological categories. As there is only one physiology, and every race
of mankind under the influence of certain conditions produces the same
physiological functions in accordance with physiological laws, so it is
also with the psychological functions, given the stimulus necessary to
their production. And this stimulus acts upon mankind everywhere alike.
For it is clearly proved that the Myth tells of the operations of
nature, and is the mode of expressing the perception which man at the
earliest stage of his intellectual life has of these operations and
phenomena. These form the substance of the Myth. Consequently, wherever
they act as attractions to the youthful human mind, the external
conditions of the rise of Mythology are present. Not unjustly,
therefore, it seems to me, has a recent psychologist spoken of the
‘Universal Presence and the Uniformity’ of myths.[42] Undoubtedly the
direction of the myth will vary with the relation of natural phenomena
to mankind; the myth will take one direction where man greets the sun as
a friendly element, and another where the sun meets him as a hostile
power; and in the rainless region the rain cannot act the same part in
Mythology which it plays in the rainy parts of the earth. The manners
and usages of men must also exercise a modifying influence on the
subject and the direction of the Myth. As in the course of our further
inquiries we shall recur to this point, I will here only refer to one
example of the latter. It is well known that in the Aryan mythology,
‘the milking of cows’ is a frequently recurring expression for the
shining of the sun, or as some say for the rain. In tribes which do not
milk their cows, like some Negro peoples,[43] or the American natives,
this mythical expression can of course not arise.
§ 2. There are two points of view, from which the Mythical faculty has
been denied to certain sections of the human race—on the one side a
_linguistic_, on the other an _ethnological_. As to the first, we must
especially name Bleek, the distinguished investigator of the South
African languages, who, in the introduction to his work on the Story of
Reynard the Fox in South Africa, makes the remark that a mythological
genius is peculiar to nations in whose languages a distinction of gender
in nouns finds expression, whereas those whose languages possess no
formal distinction of gender in nouns, have no proper mythology, but
their religion stands on that original stage which is the starting-point
of all human religion, namely that of the cultus of their ancestors.[44]
It is obvious that this learned linguist’s distinction involves a
confusion of Myth and Religion, which we shall find in the course of our
subsequent investigations to be untenable. At present we will disregard
this point, and only refer to the mythologies of the Finnish-Ugrian
nations—peoples whose languages do not indicate any distinction of
gender in their nouns. Or can it be said that the substance of the epos
of Kalevala is not proper mythology? To be sure, in nations whose mind
never evolved the category of grammatical gender in their languages, the
myth will take such a direction as will give to the sexual idea, so
charming a feature in the Aryan mythology, much less prominence. For the
mode of conception which is conveyed by the distinction of ‘_die_ Sonne’
and ‘_der_ Mond,’ or ‘_hic_ sol’ and ‘_haec_ luna,’ cannot arise where
this distinction is not made. But the figures of a mythology not only
vary as to sex and genealogy, but act also; they are busy, they fight
and kill, and the story of these actions and fights is quite independent
of the gender-idea in language. Stories of them, consequently, which we
call Myths, may exist even where the genius of language has opposed the
distinction of gender.
§ 3. The second point of view, from which some have denied to a section
of the human race the faculty and tendency to form myths, is
_ethnological_. Either the Semites in general or the Hebrews specially
fell a sacrifice to this view. The exclusion of the Semites from the
domain of Mythology is announced most emphatically by the ingenious
member of the French Academy, Ernest Renan, in the words, ‘Les Sémites
n'ont jamais eu de mythologie.’[45] This arbitrary assertion is deduced
from a scheme of race-psychology invented by Renan himself, which at the
first glance seems so natural and sounds so plausible when described
with all the elegance of style of which he is master, that it has become
an incontestable scientific dogma to a large proportion of the
professional world—for even the territory of science is sometimes
dominated by mere dogmas—and is treated by learned and cultivated people
not specially engaged in this study as an actual axiom in the
consideration of race-peculiarities.[46] The foundation of this scheme
is the idea that in their views of the world, the Aryans start from
multiplicity, the Semites from unity; and not only in their conception
of the world, but also in politics and art. On intellectual ground,
therefore, the former create mythology, polytheism, science, which is
only possible through discursive observation of natural phenomena; the
latter create monotheism, (‘the desert is monotheistic,’ says Renan),
and have therefore neither mythology nor science. ‘If it is difficult,’
justly observes Waitz, ‘to estimate the capability of single individuals
well known to us, it is a far more dubious task to gauge the
intellectual gifts of whole nations and races. It seems scarcely
possible to find available standards for the purpose, and consequently
the judgment is almost always found to be very much founded on personal
impressions. The various nations stand at various times on very
different stages of development, and if only actual performances permit
a safe induction as to the measure of existing capabilities, then this
measure itself seems not to remain the same in the same nation through
the course of time, but to vary within very wide limits, especially if
we are to assume in all cases that a state of original savageness
preceded civilisation.’[47] In fact, the words of this cautious
psychologist apply admirably to Renan’s scheme of race-psychology; for
history is just what that scheme disregards. He does not observe that
Polytheism and Monotheism are two stages of development in the history
of religious thought, and that the latter does not spring up
spontaneously,[48] without being preceded by the former stage, and that
Polytheism itself is preceded by a preliminary stage, that of the
mythological view of the world, which is in itself not yet a religion,
but prepares the way for the rise of religion.
To form some idea of the arbitrariness of schemes founded upon some
universal characteristics, we have only to glance over the literature
which sprang up as soon as Renan’s dictum was uttered, either to refute
it, or to work his hypothesis still further—a regular host of
dissertations fighting on this side or on that.[49] On reading these, we
see clearly how worthless such clever fancies are, that enable one to
embrace with a stroke of the pen a domain which geographically fills
more than half of the inhabited world, and chronologically stretches
from the highest antiquity down to the most recent time. For even
Renan’s antagonists have fallen into his radical error: they have taken
one-sided schemes and characteristics, only _different_ ones from
Renan’s. How passive and elastic these schemes are, shall be shown by an
example of some importance, which will convince us that the inferences
drawn from ethnological characteristics are never anything higher than
arbitrary sleight-of-hand, which any investigator can manipulate to his
own purpose. To this end we will place side by side the inferences which
Renan has tacked on to his hypothesis, and a talented German’s
conclusions, which also essentially take Renan’s basis as the correct
starting-point. We speak of Lange, who also starts from the principle
that the Semites grasp natural phenomena in combination, the Aryans in
multiplicity, and that therefore the former naturally incline towards
Monotheism, and the latter towards Polytheism. But let us see to what
windings and deductions this dogma leads on both sides. We hear Renan
say: ‘Or la conception de la multiplicité dans l’univers, c’est le
polythéisme chez les peuples enfants; c’est la science chez les peuples
arrivés à l’âge mûr.’[50] Quite the contrary is affirmed by the German
historian of Materialism, who says: ‘When the heathen sees gods
everywhere, and has accustomed himself to regard every separate
operation of nature as the domain of a special demonic action, he throws
in the way of a materialistic explanation difficulties a thousandfold,
like the offices in the Divine household.... But Monotheism here stands
in a very different relation to science.’ ‘If a uniform mode of work on
a large scale is attributed to the one God, the mutual connexion of
things in their origin and action becomes not only a possible, but even
a necessary consequence of the assumption. For if I saw a thousand and
again a thousand wheels in motion, and believed them to be all driven by
one agent, then I should have to conclude that it was a piece of
machinery, the minutest portion of which had its movement absolutely
determined by the plan of the whole.’ [51] ‘The fact that Islâm is the
religion in which that advancement of the study of nature, which we
attribute to the monotheistic principle, shows itself most clearly, is
connected with the peculiar talents of the Arabs, ... but also
undoubtedly with the circumstance that Mohammed’s monotheism was the
severest of all.’[52] Auguste Comte also draws the same inferences from
the tendency of Monotheism to develop a scientific conception of the
world, and makes Monotheism and Scientific treatment exert a reciprocal
influence on each other.[53] To which of these opposite deductions from
the same premisses shall we hold? ‘Which is right?’ every educated man
will ask, and immediately infer the inadequacy of such general
characterisations, and the wide room thereby opened to arbitrariness and
error, in case it should be attempted to erect upon them a history of
civilisation or an ethnology.
Now this foundation is exactly that on which Renan’s assumption of the
absence of mythology from the Semites rests—an assumption which can by
no means be admitted, first, because it is unhistorical; and secondly,
because it would necessarily follow from it that race-distinctions
differentiate the psychological bases of intellectual activity. ‘The
Semites cannot form a myth,’ is a proposition the possibility of which
could be allowed only if such an assertion as ‘This or that race has no
digestive power, or no generative power,’ could be treated otherwise
than as an _a priori_ absurdity. But it is even more remarkable that
Renan, notwithstanding his conviction of the ‘uniform psychological
constitution of the human race,’ in which he finds the justification of
a common story of the Deluge springing up everywhere without
borrowing,[54] and although he finds the gaps in the chronology of the
antediluvian period of the Biblical history filled up, ‘par des noms
d’anciens héros, et peut-être de divinités qu'on retrouve chez les
autres peuples sémitiques,’[55] still speaks of the possibility, indeed
of the necessity, that the Semitic race should be destitute of myths.
Renan’s hypothesis had to encounter many a hard battle soon after its
publication. The theologians were highly pleased at what was said about
the monotheistic tendency of Semitism, but thought it blasphemy for
Renan to find in Monotheism _le minimum de religion_ and in Polytheism a
higher and more civilised stage of religion. And philologists,
historians and philosophers assailed the foundations of Renan’s pile.
Steinthal subjects the notion introduced by Renan, of a monotheistic
_instinct_, to acute psychological criticism. Max Müller does the same,
and points to the history of the Hebrews and the other Semites, to
resolve the dreams of Semitic Monotheism into their nullity. Abraham
Geiger and Salomon Munk (Renan’s successor in the chair of the _Collége
de France_) wish to limit to the Hebrew nation the assertion of Semitic
Monotheism. Yet what is said about Mythology is not much objected to by
any of these critics (with the exception of Steinthal). Indeed, one of
the pioneers of modern Comparative Mythology, while combating the
monotheistic instinct, takes up a position on the mythological question
not very far from Renan’s own: ‘What is peculiar to the Aryan race is
their mythological phraseology, superadded to their polytheism; what is
peculiar to the Semitic race is their belief in a national god—in a god
chosen by his people, as his people had been chosen by him.’[56]
Mythological science has at the present day ceased to hold fast to the
divisions of race in relation to the formation of myths. At least it has
acted so in relation to that class of nations which, though not
exhibiting a single race or several closely connected races, has (_faute
de mieux_) been termed the _Turanian_—a purely negative designation,
which only asserts its members to be neither Semites nor Aryans. Max
Müller himself wishes to see the Turanian mythology investigated by the
same method which is employed in the Aryan; and he is not shaken by the
result, which exhibits a striking identity between Aryan and Turanian
myths. He is not shaken even by consideration of the psychological
force, which must be taken into account in the first instance in the
criticism and valuation of myths. ‘If people cannot bring themselves to
believe in solar and celestial myths among the Hindûs and Greeks,’ says
this leading investigator, ‘let them study the folk-lore of the
_Semitic_ and Turanian races. I know there is, on the part of some of
our most distinguished scholars, the same objection against comparing
Aryan to non-Aryan myths, as there is against any attempt to explain the
features of Sanskrit or Greek by a reference to Finnish or Bask. In one
sense that objection is well founded, for nothing would create greater
confusion than to ignore the genealogical principle as the only safe one
in a scientific classification of languages, of myths, and even of
customs. We must first classify our myths and legends, as we classify
our languages and dialects.... But there is in a comparative study of
languages and myths not only a philological, but also a philosophical
and more particularly a psychological interest, and though even in this
more general study of mankind the frontiers of language and race ought
never to disappear, yet they can no longer be allowed to narrow or
intercept our view.’[57] Thus Müller also lays especial stress upon the
psychological point of view, and, whatever he concedes to
race-distinctions, still takes for granted the universality of the
formation of myths as a psychological postulate. He exhibits, however,
the application of his principle to the Turanian only in concrete
examples. The Semitic, which, as we saw above, cannot be excluded in
reference to the universality of the formation of myths, is left out
altogether. Yet Müller appears in respect of the Semitic to have passed
beyond the position on which he stood in 1860, when writing his essay
‘Semitic Monotheism.’[58] Advancing in the footsteps of the master, a
recent American mythologist, John Fiske, has drawn the Turanian into the
domain of comparative mythology, and worked out a portion of the
American stories collected by Brinton,[59] according to the laws of the
new method,[60] while the German Schirren, and also Gerland less
completely, had already subjected the Polynesian myths to a similar
treatment.[61]
This circumstance, that the stories of the so-called Turanian humanity
lend themselves to the comparative method of investigation quite as
easily as the legendary treasure of the Aryan nations, is a proof how
common to all mankind is the mythological capacity, how false it is to
follow ethnological categories and assign it to one race and deny it to
another; and on the other hand, how the subject-matter, the perception
of which forms the ground-work of the oldest mythology, is everywhere
the same—the phenomena of nature and the contests of alternating
elements. For very many and various races, incapable as yet of
linguistic classification, endowed with the most diverse physical
constitutions, inhabiting the most differing climates from the highest
northern to the furthest southern latitudes, and speaking languages the
most incongruous, have taken refuge in the vast unlimited house of
Turanism, until legitimate parents are found for them. Turanism is
therefore the best test of the controverted universality of mythological
capacity. There is then no tenable reason why, for the sake of
fair-sounding but meaningless distinctions, we should introduce the
Semites into history with the loss of a nose, as it were, and interpret
the history of the intellectual development of that race by a principle
which essentially proclaims that the Semites were not born into life as
infants, and never saw the sunlight till they were men, or even old men.
§ 4. Such reflections may have determined the French Assyriologist
François Lenormant quite recently, to claim mythology for the Semitic
race also; although in so doing he does not mention the Hebrews at
all.[62] For, notwithstanding the alluring mythological subject-matter
deposited in the literature of its traditions, the Hebrew nation has
always been a stepchild of mythological inquiry, and still awaits an
investigator to do full justice to it. It is easy to be understood that
a mistaken religious interest, which identified itself with the Biblical
literature and warned off mythological inquiry with an energetic _Noli
me tangere_, sharpened, it may be, with a dose of canonical or
uncanonical excommunication, blockaded the passage of investigation on
this path. I call it a _mistaken_ interest, because the true interests
of religion are advanced, not imperilled, by the results of science.
Disregarding men of the calibre of Nork and a few other inferior
disciples of the school of Creuzer, we can affirm that, with the
exception of a few essays, even the freest and most earnest interpreters
of the Bible have examined, and do still examine, the Biblical books
only as products of literature, bringing to light valuable results as to
the times and tendencies of the original composition and subsequent
editing of the several parts of the Canon. But on the origin and
significance of the persons themselves who figure in the Biblical
stories, even the freest interpreters are silent, as if the Hebrews were
a people quite apart, and not to be measured by the measure of History
and Psychology.
Even those who are willing to know something of Semitic myths in general
resist the assumption of Hebrew myths. No one has defined his position
on this point so unambiguously as Baron Bunsen, who has thought so much
and so profoundly on religious matters. It is really extraordinary that
this immortal man, who exerted so stimulating an influence on the
studies of his young friend Max Müller, and who welcomed the latter’s
pioneer-essay ‘Comparative Mythology’ with ‘especial pleasure’ at the
‘pure popular poetry of the feeling for nature,’ exhibited so little
comprehension of the aims of the new direction given to mythological
studies by Müller. His view of the connexion of the Aryan mass of
mythology is consequently very confused. This is especially to be
regretted, because the displacement of the true point of view in
mythical speculation, and the continual concessions to Creuzer and
Schelling, hindered him from making permanently useful the philosophical
labour expended on the understanding of the Egyptian theology. Bunsen
did not separate Religion from Myths, and consequently he sees what he
calls Consciousness of a God in a genealogised and systematised
Mythology. It is therefore not surprising that he advanced no further
than his predecessors in relation to the Hebrew myths. He speaks of the
‘spirit of the Jewish people, historically penetrated through and
through with aversion to mythology,’[63] and concentrates his thoughts
on this theme in the sixth, seventh, and eighth of the theses in which
he exhibits the relation of the Egyptian mythology to the Asiatic.
According to these, ‘the Bible has no Mythology; it is the grand,
momentous, and fortunate self-denial of Judaism to possess none.’ As if
a myth—which Bunsen himself had called ‘_pure_ popular poetry of the
feeling for nature’—were an abomination, a defilement of the human mind,
a sinful act voluntarily performed, which the Elect can _deny
themselves_! On the other hand, ‘the national sentiment mirrored in
Abraham, Moses, and the primeval history generally from the Creation to
the Deluge, and the expression of it, are rooted in the mythological
life of the East in the earliest times,’ and ‘in the long period from
Joseph to Moses, there have been interwoven with the life and actions of
this greatest and most influential of all the men of the first age
[Abraham] and the history of his son and grandson, many ancient
traditions from the mythology of those tribes from whose savage natural
life the Hebrews were extracted, to their own good and that of mankind
and for higher ends.’[64] According to this there are Myths belonging to
the Hebrews, but not Hebrew Myths—only borrowed ones, obtained from
‘Primeval Asia.’
I have exhibited Bunsen’s position at some length, because, with all his
advanced ideas on the essence and significance of Mythology, he still to
this day dominates the minds of those who, while admitting the
possibility of Semitic Mythology, are up in arms against the existence
of Hebrew myths.
§ 5. Nevertheless, I hope it is clear from the above that Hebrew
mythology is _a priori_ possible. The following chapters will give
occasion to prove in what this existence consists. It will then appear
that the Hebrew myths, necessarily owing their existence to the same
psychological operation as the Aryan or the so-called Turanian, must
consequently have the same original signification as these. Hence the
figures of Hebrew mythology denote the very natural phenomena whose
appellations lie before us in those figures’ names. These names,
however, are _not symbolic_,[65] but are antiquated appellatives of the
natural phenomena denoted by them, just as the words, _Sun_, _Moon_,
_Rain_, &c. This must be distinctly proclaimed, as some who
misunderstand the modern method of Mythology pervert it in a false and
antiquated way by the introduction of symbolism.
We must also beware of confounding the original Myth with Religion or,
still worse, with the Consciousness of God. This confusion is the source
of most of the erroneous estimates and notions of Mythology, which even
the latest methods of investigating myths has not entirely removed. The
very earliest activity of the human intellect can only work upon what
falls immediately under the cognisance of the senses, and upon what
through its frequency and the regularity of its return prompts men most
readily to speech. Such things are the daily natural phenomena, the
change of light and darkness, of rain and sunshine, and all that
accompanies these changes. What primitive man spoke on these things, is
the Myth. It is psychologically impossible that the earliest activity of
the human mind should have been anything else but this. We cannot speak
of a consciousness of God, a _sensus numinis_, as existing in the
earliest Mythological period. Not till later, when some process in the
history of language gives the ancient myths a new direction, do they
turn into either History or Religion. The latter always arises out of
the materials of Mythology, and then finds its historical task to be to
work itself upwards into independence. Then, while the mythology out of
which it sprang is growing less and less intelligible, and therefore
also less and less expressive, Religion must in the progress of its
development sever its connexion with Mythology, and unite itself with
the scientific consciousness, which now occupies the place of the
mythological.
How Mythology becomes Religion is shown most clearly by _Dualism_.
Nothing can be less correct than the belief that the dualistic system of
religion had from its very origin an ethical meaning. This, as well as
the limitation of Dualism to Irân and Babylon,[66] is refuted by the
frequent occurrence of the dualistic conception of the world among the
most various savage peoples.[67] The ethical significance of Dualism is
decidedly secondary; it is the form of development of the main theme of
all mythology, the relation of light to darkness, proper to a higher
stage of culture. Many mythological fancies, and especially the Sun’s
voyage by ship in the nether world, became religious eschatological
ideas when the mythical meaning itself was lost from the mind, and gave
rise to new ideas of life in the nether world, resurrection, ascent to
heaven, &c.; this was first established in reference to the old Egyptian
mythology.[68] So also Dualism as it appears in Irân is a myth that has
taken an ethical sense. This is best seen in the facts that the northern
Algonquins, with whom Dualism is almost as fixed a principle as in Irân,
call the good and evil principles respectively Sun and Moon, and that
among the Hurons the Evil principle is the grand-mother of the Good:[69]
the Night is the mother or grand-mother, or, in general, the ancestress
of the Day. Here religious dualism has not quite put off the character
of its origin in Mythology. On the other hand, the Iranic system at a
very early age (that of the Avesta) elevated Dualism into the region of
pure morals, and yet at a later (the epic period) formed out of the
original myth the localised story of the war of Zohak against
Ferîdûn.[70]
That Dualism as a religious conception is a further development of the
myth, and not first excited by the moral problem of the strife of the
good against the evil, becomes evident also from the consideration of a
peculiar form of dualistic religion which we find in many Semitic
nations. We here frequently find a deity regarded as male, who has a
corresponding female to represent, as it were, the reverse side of the
same natural force, and then the two forces unite to produce a natural
phenomenon. So, for instance, Sun and Earth, Baal and Mylitta, the
factors of procreation. This likewise is a dualistic tendency, in which
however the two deities are not represented as mutually hostile. We are
justified in placing this phenomenon in the chapter on Dualism, because
two such deities in the course of history are often joined together into
one.[71] Now this side of dualistic religion can be traced back only to
Mythology as its source and point of departure. The Hebrew myth of Judah
and Tamar, which we shall consider further on (Chap. V., § 14), exhibits
a mythical prototype of such dualistic views of religion.
-----
Footnote 1:
Especially Max Müller’s essay on _Comparative Mythology_ (_Chips_
etc., II. 1), and the ninth in the second series of his _Lectures on
the Science of Language_; and Cox’s introductions to his _Manual of
Mythology_, _Tales of the Gods and Heroes_, and _Tales of Thebes and
Argos_.
Footnote 2:
Both in England and in France the attempt has been made with much
taste to introduce the results of comparative mythology in the
instruction of youth; in England by Rev. G.W. Cox in his _Tales of the
Gods and Heroes_, _Tales of Thebes and Argos_, _Tales from Greek
Mythology_, _Manual of Mythology in the form of question and answer_,
1867, and _Tales of Ancient Greece_, 1870, the last two of which have
just been translated into Hungarian, and published by the Franklin
Society; in France by Baudry and Delerot (Paris 1872). Still more
recently the results of comparative mythology have also been
summarised in two excellent books for children by Edward Clodd, _The
Childhood of the World: a simple account of Man in Early Times_, 1873,
and _The Childhood of Religion; embracing a simple account of the
birth and growth of Myths and Legends_, 1875.
Footnote 3:
This psychological uniformity of all races of men is independent of
the question of the monogenetic or polygenetic origin of races. The
psychological uniformity of different races is especially conspicuous
when we observe and compare individuals of the separate races in
infancy, when the distinctions produced by history, education,
instruction, etc., are not yet present (see Frohschammer, _Das
Christenthum und die moderne Naturwissenschaft_, Vienna 1868, p. 208.)
When we are considering the growth of mankind in general, the stage
when myths are created corresponds to the infancy of the individual.
Footnote 4:
_Das Beständige in den Menschenrassen und die Spielweise ihrer
Veränderlichkeit_, Berlin 1868, p. 78.
Footnote 5:
François Lenormant, _Essai sur la Propagation de l’Alphabet phénicien
dans l’ancien monde_, Vol. I. (2nd ed., Paris 1875), p. 17.
Footnote 6:
Tylor, _Primitive Culture_, I. 6.
Footnote 7:
On these two see Pfleiderer, _Die Religion, ihr Wesen und ihre
Geschichte_, II. 8.
Footnote 8:
The title is 'Conférence de la Fable avec l’Histoire sainte, où l’on
voit que les grandes fables, le culte et les mystères du paganisme ne
sont que des copies altérées des histoires, des usages et des
traditions des Hébreux.'
Footnote 9:
Edward Wilton in the _Journal of Sacred Literature_, 1849, II. 374
_et seq._
Footnote 10:
Dr. Vollmer’s _Wörterbuch der Mythologie aller Völker_, newly revised
by Dr. W. Binder, with an Introduction to Mythological Science by Dr.
Johannes Minckwitz, 3rd ed., Stuttgart 1874.
Footnote 11:
See the Augsburg _Allgemeine Zeitung_, 1875, no. 169, p. 2657.
Footnote 12:
_Primitive Culture_, I. 22.
Footnote 13:
See Virchow in the _Monatsbericht der königl. preuss. Akademie der
Wissenschaften_, January 1875, p. 11.
Footnote 14:
_Origin of Civilisation_, 3rd ed., p. 330, quoting Sibree’s
_Madagascar and its People_, p. 396.
Footnote 15:
_Einleitung in die Philosophie der Mythologie_, pp. 62, 63. This is
the idea to which Max Müller refers in noticing the lectures of the
philosopher of Berlin, in his _Introduction to the Science of
Religion_, p. 145.
Footnote 16:
See his _Populäre Aufsätze aus dem Alterthum, vorzugsweise zur Ethik
und Religion der Griechen_, second edition, Leipzig 1875, especially
p. 272 _et seq._
Footnote 17:
Flach, _Das System der Hesiod. Kosmogonie_, Leipzig 1874; see
_Literar. Centralblatt_, 1875, no. 7.
Footnote 18:
_Rude Stone Monuments in all Countries_, p. 32, note 2.
Footnote 19:
_The Chaldean Account of Genesis_, p. 302.
Footnote 20:
Sayce in the _Academy_, 1875, p. 586.
Footnote 21:
The _Academy_, 1875, no. 184, p. 496. The promoters of the
_Theological Translation Fund_, by whom Kuenen’s _Religion of Israel_
was published, Dr. J. Muir of Edinburgh, who wrote some letters to the
_Scotsman_ on the Dutch Theology, and to a certain extent Bishop
Colenso, besides many others who have not avowed their views so
publicly, indicate the progress of opinion in England.—TR.
Footnote 22:
See _Literar. Centralblatt_, 1875, no. 49, p. 157.
Footnote 23:
_Biblische Mythologie des Alten und Neuen Testaments_, 2 vols.,
Stuttgart 1842; _Etymologisch-symbolisch-mythologisches Realwörterbuch
für Bibelforscher, Archäologen und bildende Künstler_, 4 vols.,
Stuttgart 1843–5.
Footnote 24:
I have not succeeded in obtaining a sight of Schwenk’s _Mythologie der
Semiten_, published in 1849; but Bunsen’s condemnation of it in
_Egypt’s Place in Universal History_, IV. p. 363, made me less anxious
to get it.
Footnote 25:
_Naturgeschichte der Sage. Rückführung aller religiösen Ideen, Sagen,
Systeme auf ihren gemeinsamen Stammbaum und ihre letzte Wurzel_, 2
vols., Munich 1864–5.
Footnote 26:
In Vol. II. of his _Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie und
Sprachwissenschaft_, translated and appended to this volume.
Footnote 27:
_Der Semitismus_, in _Zeitsch. für Völkerpsychologie etc._, 1875,
VIII. 339–340.
Footnote 28:
It would be unfair not to mention the Dutch Professor Tiele as a
worker on this field. In his _Vergelijkende Geschiedenis der oude
godsdiensten_, Vol. I.: _De egyptische en mesopotamische godsdiensten_
(Amsterdam 1872) he has occasionally inserted explanations of Hebrew
myths, to which I have referred at the proper places.
Footnote 29:
II. 421 _et seq._; see his _Rivista Europea_, year VI. II. 587. Cf.
his review of the German edition of this work in the _Bollettino
italiano degli studj orientali_, 1876, I. 169–172.
Footnote 30:
In reference to this I may refer to the eloquent expressions of
Steinthal in his lecture _Mythos und Religion_, p. 28 (in Virchow and
Holtzendorff’s _Sammlung gemeinverständlicher Vorträge_, Bd. V. Heft
97).
Footnote 31:
_Mythologie der Ebräer in ihrem Zusammenhange mit den Mythologien der
Indogermanen und der Ægypter._ Nordhausen 1876.
Footnote 32:
_Ausland_, 1874, p. 961 _et seq._, 1001 _et seq._
Footnote 33:
The above-named work was published immediately after the conclusion of
this Introduction.
Footnote 34:
_Die Erzväter der Menschheit: ein Beitrag zur Grundlegung einer
hebräischen Alterthumswissenschaft._ Leipzig, Fues 1875.
Footnote 35:
Ibn Yaʿîsh’s Commentary on the Mufaṣṣal, p. 74 (of the edition now
being published by Dr. Jahn of Berlin). See _Fables_ de Loqman le Sage
(éd. Dérenbourg), Introduction, p. 7.
Footnote 36:
I may refer on this point to Von Grutschmid’s excellent critique on
Bunsen’s attempt to explain Athene as Semitic, in the former’s
_Beiträge zur Geschichte des alten Orients_, Leipzig 1858, p. 46.
Footnote 37:
Stade (_Morgenländische Forschungen_, p. 232) justly insists on the
good Hebrew character of the names occurring in the Hebrew stories,
even against the false supposition of the original Aramaic character
of the Hebrew people.
Footnote 38:
_Zeitsch. d. D.M.G._, 1871, XXV. 139; see Lepsius, _Einleitung zur
Chronologie der alten Ægypten_, I. 326.
Footnote 39:
See Ibn Yaʿîsh’s Commentary on the Mufaṣṣal of Zamachsharî, p. 47, in
which the name of the constellation al-ʿAyyûḳ (Auriga, ‘The Hinderer’)
is imported into this story, as hindering al-Dabarân from coming up
with his beloved.
Footnote 40:
al-Meydânî, Majmaʿ al-amthâl (ed. of Bûlâḳ), II. 209.
Footnote 41:
See Nöldeke in Schenkel’s _Bibellexikon_, 2nd ed. IV. 370.
Footnote 42:
_Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft_, 1869, VI.
Footnote 43:
Theodor Waitz, _Anthropologie der Naturvölker_, II. 85.
Footnote 44:
W.H.I. Bleek, _Reynard the Fox in South Africa_, 1864, pp. xx-xxvi.
See Max Müller’s _Introduction to the Science of Religion_, London
1873, p. 54.
Footnote 45:
_Histoire générale et Système comparé des Langues sémitiques_, p. 7.
Footnote 46:
Two instances will suffice to show how Renan’s hypothesis became the
common property of educated people. It is treated as fully made out,
both by Roscher, the German political economist, and by Draper, the
American naturalist and historian of civilisation. The former says:
‘Life in the desert seems to be an especially favourable soil for
Monotheism. It wants that luxuriant variety of the productive powers
of nature by which Polytheism was encouraged in remarkably fruitful
countries, such as India’ (_System der Volkswirthschaft_, 7th ed.,
Stuttgart 1873, II. 38). The latter: ‘Polytheistic ideas have always
been held in repute by the southern European races; the Semitic have
maintained the unity of God. Perhaps this is due to the fact, as a
recent author has suggested, that a diversified landscape of mountains
and valleys, islands, rivers, and gulfs, predisposes man to a belief
in a multitude of divinities. A vast sandy desert, the illimitable
ocean, impresses him with an idea of the oneness of God’ (_History of
Conflict between Religion and Science_, London 1875, p. 70). This view
has also passed into Peschel’s _Völkerkunde_, and Bluntschli also, in
his lecture on the ancient oriental ideas of God and world in 1861,
echoed Renan’s hypothesis of 1855.
Footnote 47:
_Anthropologie der Naturvölker_, I. 297.
Footnote 48:
On the other side, Renan says (_Hist. gén._ 4th ed., p. 497) ‘Cette
grande conquête (the recognition of Monotheism) ne fut pas pour elle
(i. e. for the Semitic race) l’effet du progrès; ce fut une de ces
premières aperceptions.’
Footnote 49:
Much of this literature has been unnoticed, as e.g. a late pamphlet by
Léon Hugonnet: _La civilisation arabe, défense des peuples sémitiques
en réponse à M. Renan_, Geneva 1873.
Footnote 50:
_Histoire générale_, p.
Footnote 51:
_Geschichte des Materialismus_, 1st ed., 1866, p. 77. See 2nd ed.,
1873, I. 149.
Footnote 52:
Ib. p. 83. See 2nd ed., p. 152.
Footnote 53:
_Cours de Philosophie Positive_, éd. Littré, Paris 1869, V. 90, 197,
324.
Footnote 54:
_Histoire générale_, p. 486: ‘L’unité de constitution psychologique de
l’espèce humaine, au moins des grandes races civilisées, en vertu de
laquelle les mêmes mythes ont dû apparaître parallèlement sur
plusieurs points à la fois, suffirait, d’ailleurs, pour expliquer les
analogies qui reposent sur quelque trait général de la condition de
l’humanité, ou sur quelques-uns de ses instincts les plus profonds.’
Footnote 55:
Ib. p. 27.
Footnote 56:
Max Müller, _Chips from a German Workshop_, I. 370.
Footnote 57:
_Introduction to the Science of Religion_, p. 390 _et seq._
Footnote 58:
In _Chips_, &c., I. p. 341.
Footnote 59:
In _The Myths of the New World_, New York 1868. See Steinthal’s
criticism of this collection in the _Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie
and Sprachwissenschaft_, 1871, Bd. VII.
Footnote 60:
_Myths and Myth-Makers_, Boston 1873, p. 151 _et seq._
Footnote 61:
In the sixth vol. of Waitz’s _Anthropologie der Naturvölker_, where I
obtained information about Schirren’s works.
Footnote 62:
_Les premières civilisations_, Paris 1874, II. 113 _et seq._
Footnote 63:
_Gott in der Geschichte_, I. 353; a passage which, with a large part
of the volume, is omitted in the greatly abridged English translation.
Footnote 64:
_Aegyptens Stelle in der Weltgeschichte_, V. ii. 18–19 (English tr.
IV. 28–29).
Footnote 65:
Even old Plutarch observed in reference to the then favourite
explanation of the myths _ex ratione physica_: Δεῖ δὲ μὴ νομίζειν
ἁπλῶς εἰκόνας ἐκείνων (i.e. of the sun and moon) τούτους (Zeus and
Hera), ἀλλ’ αὐτὸν ἐν ὕλη Δία τὸν ἥλιον καὶ αὐτὴν τὴν Ἥραν ἐν ὕλῃ τὴν
σελήνην (_Quaestiones Romanae_, 77). See Cicero, _De Nat. Deorum_,
III. 24: Longe aliter rem se habere, atque hominum opinio sit: eos
enim, qui dii appellantur, _rerum naturas_ esse, non _figuras deorum_.
Footnote 66:
Spiegel still does this up to a recent date in his _Eranische
Alterthumskunde_, II. 19.
Footnote 67:
See Tylor, _Primitive Culture_, II. 287 _et seq._
Footnote 68:
The story of Osiris and Typhon _e.g._ originally personified the
vegetative life of nature and the struggles incident to it, but was
afterwards transferred to the destinies of the human soul. See Ebers,
_Durch Gosen zum Sinai_, Leipzig 1872, p. 477.
Footnote 69:
Waitz, _Anthropologie der Naturvölker_, III. 183.
Footnote 70:
See Roth in the _Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen
Gesellschaft_, 1848, II. 217; Albrecht Weber, _Akademische Vorlesungen
über indische Literaturgeschichte_, Berlin 1852, p. 35.
Footnote 71:
See Kuenen, _The Religion of Israel_, London 1874, I. 226.
-----