{"collection":"myth-cosmogony","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_14576/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_14576","id":"gutenberg_14576","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14576","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Archaeology & Anthropology","Category: Mythology, Legends & Folklore","Mythology"],"text":"Transcribed from the 1897 Longmans, Green, and Co. edition by David\nPrice, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk\n\n\n\n\n\nMODERN MYTHOLOGY\n\n\nDEDICATION\n\n\nDedicated to the memory of John Fergus McLennan.\n\n\n\n\nINTRODUCTION\n\n\nIt may well be doubted whether works of controversy serve any useful\npurpose.  'On an opponent,' as Mr. Matthew Arnold said, 'one never does\nmake any impression,' though one may hope that controversy sometimes\nilluminates a topic in the eyes of impartial readers.  The pages which\nfollow cannot but seem wandering and desultory, for they are a reply to a\nbook, Mr. Max Muller's Contributions to the Science of Mythology, in\nwhich the attack is of a skirmishing character.  Throughout more than\neight hundred pages the learned author keeps up an irregular fire at the\nideas and methods of the anthropological school of mythologists.  The\nreply must follow the lines of attack.\n\nCriticism cannot dictate to an author how he shall write his own book.\nYet anthropologists and folk-lorists, 'agriologists' and 'Hottentotic'\nstudents, must regret that Mr. Max Muller did not state their general\ntheory, as he understands it, fully and once for all.  Adversaries rarely\nsucceed in quite understanding each other; but had Mr. Max Muller made\nsuch a statement, we could have cleared up anything in our position which\nmight seem to him obscure.\n\nOur system is but one aspect of the theory of evolution, or is but the\napplication of that theory to the topic of mythology.  The archaeologist\nstudies human life in its material remains; he tracks progress (and\noccasional degeneration) from the rudely chipped flints in the ancient\ngravel beds, to the polished stone weapon, and thence to the ages of\nbronze and iron.  He is guided by material 'survivals'--ancient arms,\nimplements, and ornaments.  The student of Institutions has a similar\nmethod.  He finds his relics of the uncivilised past in agricultural\nusages, in archaic methods of allotment of land, in odd marriage customs,\nthings rudimentary--fossil relics, as it were, of an early social and\npolitical condition.  The archaeologist and the student of Institutions\ncompare these relics, material or customary, with the weapons, pottery,\nimplements, or again with the habitual law and usage of existing savage\nor barbaric races, and demonstrate that our weapons and tools, and our\nlaws and manners, have been slowly evolved out of lower conditions, even\nout of savage conditions.\n\nThe anthropological method in mythology is the same.  In civilised\nreligion and myth we find rudimentary survivals, fossils of rite and\ncreed, ideas absolutely incongruous with the environing morality,\nphilosophy, and science of Greece and India.  Parallels to these things,\nso out of keeping with civilisation, we recognise in the creeds and rites\nof the lower races, even of cannibals; but _there_ the creeds and rites\nare _not_ incongruous with their environment of knowledge and culture.\nThere they are as natural and inevitable as the flint-headed spear or\nmarriage by capture.  We argue, therefore, that religions and mythical\nfaiths and rituals which, among Greeks and Indians, are inexplicably\nincongruous have lived on from an age in which they were natural and\ninevitable, an age of savagery.\n\nThat is our general position, and it would have been a benefit to us if\nMr. Max Muller had stated it in his own luminous way, if he wished to\noppose us, and had shown us where and how it fails to meet the\nrequirements of scientific method.  In place of doing this once for all,\nhe often assails our evidence, yet never notices the defences of our\nevidence, which our school has been offering for over a hundred years.  He\nattacks the excesses of which some sweet anthropological enthusiasts have\nbeen guilty or may be guilty, such as seeing totems wherever they find\nbeasts in ancient religion, myth, or art.  He asks for definitions (as of\ntotemism), but never, I think, alludes to the authoritative definitions\nby Mr. McLennan and Mr. Frazer.  He assails the theory of fetishism as if\nit stood now where De Brosses left it in a purely pioneer work--or,\nrather, where he understands De Brosses to have left it.  One might as\nwell attack the atomic theory where Lucretius left it, or the theory of\nevolution where it was left by the elder Darwin.\n\nThus Mr. Max Muller really never conies to grips with his opponents, and\nhis large volumes shine rather in erudition and style than in method and\nsystem.  Anyone who attempts a reply must necessarily follow Mr. Max\nMuller up and down, collecting his scattered remarks on this or that\npoint at issue.  Hence my reply, much against my will, must seem\ndesultory and rambling.  But I have endeavoured to answer with some kind\nof method and system, and I even hope that this little book may be useful\nas a kind of supplement to Mr. Max Muller's, for it contains exact\nreferences to certain works of which he takes the reader's knowledge for\ngranted.\n\nThe general problem at issue is apt to be lost sight of in this guerilla\nkind of warfare.  It is perhaps more distinctly stated in the preface to\nMr. Max Muller's Chips from a German Workshop, vol. iv. (Longmans, 1895),\nthan in his two recent volumes.  The general problem is this: Has\nlanguage--especially language in a state of 'disease,' been the great\nsource of the mythology of the world?  Or does mythology, on the whole,\nrepresent the survival of an old stage of thought--not caused by\nlanguage--from which civilised men have slowly emancipated themselves?\nMr. Max Muller is of the former, anthropologists are of the latter,\nopinion.  Both, of course, agree that myths are a product of thought, of\na kind of thought almost extinct in civilised races; but Mr. Max Muller\nholds that language caused that kind of thought.  We, on the other hand,\nthink that language only gave it one means of expressing itself.\n\nThe essence of myth, as of fairy tale, we agree, is the conception of the\nthings in the world as all alike animated, personal, capable of endless\ninterchanges of form.  Men may become beasts; beasts may change into men;\ngods may appear as human or bestial; stones, plants, winds, water, may\nspeak and act like human beings, and change shapes with them.\n\nAnthropologists demonstrate that the belief in this universal kinship,\nuniversal personality of things, which we find surviving only in the\nmyths of civilised races, is even now to some degree part of the living\ncreed of savages.  Civilised myths, then, they urge, are survivals from a\nparallel state of belief once prevalent among the ancestors of even the\nAryan race.  But how did this mental condition, this early sort of false\nmetaphysics, come into existence?  We have no direct historical\ninformation on the subject.  If I were obliged to offer an hypothesis, it\nwould be that early men, conscious of personality, will, and\nlife--conscious that force, when exerted by themselves, followed on a\ndetermination of will within them--extended that explanation to all the\nexhibitions of force which they beheld without them.  Rivers run (early\nman thought), winds blow, fire burns, trees wave, as a result of their\nown will, the will of personal conscious entities.  Such vitality, and\neven power of motion, early man attributed even to inorganic matter, as\nrocks and stones.  All these things were beings, like man himself.  This\ndoes not appear to me an unnatural kind of nascent, half-conscious\nmetaphysics.  'Man never knows how much he anthropomorphises.'  He\nextended the only explanation of his own action which consciousness\nyielded to him, he extended it to explain every other sort of action in\nthe sensible world.  Early Greek philosophy recognised the stars as\nliving bodies; all things had once seemed living and personal.  From the\nbeginning, man was eager causas cognoscere rerum.  The only cause about\nwhich self-consciousness gave him any knowledge was his own personal\nwill.  He therefore supposed all things to be animated with a like will\nand personality.  His mythology is a philosophy of things, stated in\nstories based on the belief in universal personality.\n\nMy theory of the origin of that belief is, of course, a mere guess; we\nhave never seen any race in the process of passing from a total lack of a\nhypothesis of causes into that hypothesis of universally distributed\npersonality which is the basis of mythology.\n\nBut Mr. Max Muller conceives that this belief in universally distributed\npersonality (the word 'Animism' is not very clear) was the result of an\nhistorical necessity--not of speculation, but of language. 'Roots were\nall, or nearly all, expressive of action. . . .  Hence a river could only\nbe called or conceived as a runner, or a roarer, or a defender; and in\nall these capacities always as something active and animated, nay, as\nsomething masculine or feminine.'\n\nBut _why_ conceived as 'masculine or feminine'?  This necessity for\nendowing inanimate though active things, such as rivers, with sex, is\nobviously a necessity of a stage of thought wholly unlike our own.  _We_\nknow that active inanimate things are sexless, are neuter; _we_ feel no\nnecessity to speak of them as male or female.  How did the first speakers\nof the human race come to be obliged to call lifeless things by names\nconnoting sex, and therefore connoting, not only activity, but also life\nand personality?  We explain it by the theory that man called lifeless\nthings male or female--by using gender-terminations--as a result of his\nhabit of regarding lifeless things as personal beings; that habit, again,\nbeing the result of his consciousness of himself as a living will.\n\nMr. Max Muller takes the opposite view.  Man did not call lifeless things\nby names denoting sex because he regarded them as persons; he came to\nregard them as persons because he had already given them names connoting\nsex.  And why had he done that?  This is what Mr. Max Muller does not\nexplain.  He says:\n\n'In ancient languages every one of these words' (sky, earth, sea, rain)\n'had necessarily' (why necessarily?) 'a termination expressive of gender,\nand this naturally produced in the mind the corresponding idea of sex, so\nthat these names received not only an individual but a sexual character.'\n{0a}\n\nIt is curious that, in proof apparently of this, Mr. Max Muller cites a\npassage from the Printer's Register, in which we read that to little\nchildren '_everything_ is _alive_. . . .  The same instinct that prompts\nthe child to personify everything remains unchecked in the savage, and\ngrows up with him to manhood.  Hence in all simple and early languages\nthere are but two genders, masculine and feminine.'\n\nThe Printer's Register states our theory in its own words.  First came\nthe childlike and savage belief in universal personality.  Thence arose\nthe genders, masculine and feminine, in early languages.  These ideas are\nthe precise reverse of Mr. Max Muller's ideas.  In his opinion, genders\nin language caused the belief in the universal personality even of\ninanimate things.  The Printer's Register holds that the belief in\nuniversal personality, on the other hand, caused the genders.  Yet for\nthirty years, since 1868, Mr. Max Muller has been citing his direct\nadversary, in the Printer's Register, as a supporter of his opinion!  We,\nthen, hold that man thought all things animated, and expressed his belief\nin gender-terminations.  Mr. Max Muller holds that, because man used\ngender-terminations, therefore he thought all things animated, and so he\nbecame mythopoeic.  In the passage cited, Mr. Max Muller does not say\n_why_ 'in ancient languages every one of these words had _necessarily_\nterminations expressive of gender.'  He merely quotes the hypothesis of\nthe Printer's Register.  If he accepts that hypothesis, it destroys his\nown theory--that gender-terminations caused all things to be regarded as\npersonal; for, ex hypothesi, it was just because they were regarded as\npersonal that they received names with gender-terminations.  Somewhere--I\ncannot find the reference--Mr. Max Muller seems to admit that\npersonalising thought caused gender-terminations, but these later\n'reacted' on thought, an hypothesis which multiplies causes praeter\nnecessitatem.\n\nHere, then, at the very threshold of the science of mythology we find Mr.\nMax Muller at once maintaining that a feature of language,\ngender-terminations, caused the mythopoeic state of thought, and quoting\nwith approval the statement that the mythopoeic state of thought caused\ngender-terminations.\n\nMr. Max Muller's whole system of mythology is based on reasoning\nanalogous to this example.  His mot d'ordre, as Professor Tiele says, is\n'a disease of language.'  This theory implies universal human\ndegradation.  Man was once, for all we know, rational enough; but his\nmysterious habit of using gender-terminations, and his perpetual\nmisconceptions of the meaning of old words in his own language, reduced\nhim to the irrational and often (as we now say) obscene and revolting\nabsurdities of his myths.  Here (as is later pointed out) the objection\narises, that all languages must have taken the disease in the same way.  A\nMaori myth is very like a Greek myth.  If the Greek myth arose from a\ndisease of Greek, how did the wholly different Maori speech, and a score\nof others, come to have precisely the same malady?\n\nMr. Max Muller alludes to a Maori parallel to the myth of Cronos. {0b}\n'We can only say that there is a rusty lock in New Zealand, and a rusty\nlock in Greece, and that, surely, is very small comfort.'  He does not\ntake the point.  The point is that, as the myth occurs in two remote and\nabsolutely unconnected languages, a theory of disease of language cannot\nturn the wards of the rusty locks.  The myth is, in part at least, a\nnature-myth--an attempt to account for the severance of Heaven and Earth\n(once united) by telling a story in which natural phenomena are animated\nand personal.  A disease of language has nothing to do with this myth.  It\nis cited as a proof against the theory of disease of language.\n\nThe truth is, that while languages differ, men (and above all early men)\nhave the same kind of thoughts, desires, fancies, habits, institutions.\nIt is not that in which all races formally differ--their language--but\nthat in which all early races are astonishingly the same--their ideas,\nfancies, habits, desires--that causes the amazing similarity of their\nmyths.\n\nMythologists, then, who find in early human nature the living ideas which\nexpress themselves in myths will hardily venture to compare the analogous\nmyths of all peoples.  Mythologists, on the other hand, who find the\norigin of myths in a necessity imposed upon thought by misunderstood\nlanguage will necessarily, and logically, compare only myths current\namong races who speak languages of the same family.  Thus, throughout Mr.\nMax Muller's new book we constantly find him protesting, on the whole and\nas a rule, against the system which illustrates Aryan myths by savage\nparallels.  Thus he maintains that it is perilous to make comparative use\nof myths current in languages--say, Maori or Samoyed--which the\nmythologists confessedly do not know.  To this we can only reply that we\nuse the works of the best accessible authorities, men who do know the\nlanguages--say, Dr. Codrington or Bishop Callaway, or Castren or Egede.\nNow it is not maintained that the myths, on the whole, are incorrectly\ntranslated.  The danger which we incur, it seems, is ignorance of the\noriginal sense of savage or barbaric divine or heroic names--say, Maui,\nor Yehl, or Huitzilopochhtli, or Heitsi Eibib, or Pundjel.  By Mr. Max\nMuller's system such names are old words, of meanings long ago generally\nlost by the speakers of each language, but analysable by 'true scholars'\ninto their original significance.  That will usually be found by the\nphilologists to indicate 'the inevitable Dawn,' or Sun, or Night, or the\nlike, according to the taste and fancy of the student.\n\nTo all this a reply is urged in the following pages.  In agreement with\nCurtius and many other scholars, we very sincerely doubt almost all\netymologies of old proper names, even in Greek or Sanskrit.  We find\namong philologists, as a rule, the widest discrepancies of\ninterpretation.  Moreover, every name must mean _something_.  Now,\nwhatever the meaning of a name (supposing it to be really ascertained),\nvery little ingenuity is needed to make it indicate one or other aspect\nof Dawn or Night, of Lightning or Storm, just as the philologist pleases.\nThen he explains the divine or heroic being denoted by the name--as Dawn\nor Storm, or Fire or Night, or Twilight or Wind--in accordance with his\nprivate taste, easily accommodating the facts of the myth, whatever they\nmay be, to his favourite solution.  We rebel against this kind of logic,\nand persist in studying the myth in itself and in comparison with\nanalogous myths in every accessible language.  Certainly, if divine and\nheroic names--Artemis or Pundjel--_can_ be interpreted, so much is\ngained.  But the myth may be older than the name.\n\nAs Mr. Hogarth points out, Alexander has inherited in the remote East the\nmyths of early legendary heroes.  We cannot explain these by the analysis\nof the name of Alexander!  Even if the heroic or divine name can be shown\nto be the original one (which is practically impossible), the meaning of\nthe name helps us little.  That Zeus means 'sky' cannot conceivably\nexplain scores of details in the very composite legend of Zeus--say, the\nstory of Zeus, Demeter, and the Ram.  Moreover, we decline to admit that,\nif a divine name means 'swift,' its bearer must be the wind or the\nsunlight.  Nor, if the name means 'white,' is it necessarily a synonym of\nDawn, or of Lightning, or of Clear Air, or what not.  But a mythologist\nwho makes language and names the fountain of myth will go on insisting\nthat myths can only be studied by people who know the language in which\nthey are told.  Mythologists who believe that human nature is the source\nof myths will go on comparing all myths that are accessible in\ntranslations by competent collectors.\n\nMr. Max Muller says, 'We seldom find mythology, as it were, in situ--as\nit lived in the minds and unrestrained utterances of the people.  We\ngenerally have to study it in the works of mythographers, or in the poems\nof later generations, when it had long ceased to be living and\nintelligible.'  The myths of Greece and Rome, in Hyginus or Ovid, 'are\nlikely to be as misleading as a hortus siccus would be to a botanist if\ndebarred from his rambles through meadows and hedges.' {0c}\n\nNothing can be more true, or more admirably stated.  These remarks are,\nindeed, the charter, so to speak, of anthropological mythology and of\nfolklore.  The old mythologists worked at a hortus siccus, at myths dried\nand pressed in thoroughly literary books, Greek and Latin.  But we now\nstudy myths 'in the unrestrained utterances of the people,' either of\nsavage tribes or of the European Folk, the unprogressive peasant class.\nThe former, and to some extent the latter, still live in the mythopoeic\nstate of mind--regarding bees, for instance, as persons who must be told\nof a death in the family.  Their myths are still not wholly out of\nconcord with their habitual view of a world in which an old woman may\nbecome a hare.  As soon as learned Jesuits like Pere Lafitau began to\nunderstand their savage flocks, they said, 'These men are living in\nOvid's Metamorphoses.'  They found mythology in situ!  Hence mythologists\nnow study mythology in situ--in savages and in peasants, who till very\nrecently were still in the mythopoeic stage of thought.  Mannhardt made\nthis idea his basis.  Mr. Max Muller says, {0d} very naturally, that I\nhave been 'popularising the often difficult and complicated labours of\nMannhardt and others.'  In fact (as is said later), I published all my\ngeneral conclusions before I had read Mannhardt.  Quite independently I\ncould not help seeing that among savages and peasants we had mythology,\nnot in a literary hortus siccus, but in situ.  Mannhardt, though he\nappreciated Dr. Tylor, had made, I think, but few original researches\namong savage myths and customs.  His province was European folklore.  What\nhe missed will be indicated in the chapter on 'The Fire-Walk'--one\nexample among many.\n\nBut this kind of mythology in situ, in 'the unrestrained utterances of\nthe people,' Mr. Max Muller tells us, is no province of his.  'I saw it\nwas hopeless for me to gain a knowledge at first hand of innumerable\nlocal legends and customs;' and it is to be supposed that he distrusted\nknowledge acquired by collectors: Grimm, Mannhardt, Campbell of Islay,\nand an army of others.  'A scholarlike knowledge of Maori or Hottentot\nmythology' was also beyond him.  We, on the contrary, take our Maori lore\nfrom a host of collectors: Taylor, White, Manning ('The Pakeha Maori'),\nTregear, Polack, and many others.  From them we flatter ourselves that we\nget--as from Grimm, Mannhardt, Islay, and the rest--mythology in situ.  We\ncompare it with the dry mythologic blossoms of the classical hortus\nsiccus, and with Greek ritual and temple legend, and with Marchen in the\nscholiasts, and we think the comparisons very illuminating.  They have\nthrown new light on Greek mythology, ritual, mysteries, and religion.\nThis much we think we have already done, though we do not know Maori, and\nthough each of us can hope to gather but few facts from the mouths of\nliving peasants.\n\nExamples of the results of our method will be found in the following\npages.  Thus, if the myth of the fire-stealer in Greece is explained by\nmisunderstood Greek or Sanskrit words in no way connected with robbery,\nwe shall show that the myth of the theft of fire occurs where no Greek or\nSanskrit words were ever spoken.  _There_, we shall show, the myth arose\nfrom simple inevitable human ideas.  We shall therefore doubt whether in\nGreece a common human myth had a singular cause--in a 'disease of\nlanguage.'\n\nIt is with no enthusiasm that I take the opportunity of Mr. Max Muller's\nreply to me 'by name.'  Since Myth, Ritual, and Religion (now out of\nprint, but accessible in the French of M. Marillier) was published, ten\nyears ago, I have left mythology alone.  The general method there adopted\nhas been applied in a much more erudite work by Mr. Frazer, The Golden\nBough, by Mr. Farnell in Cults of the Greek States, by Mr. Jevons in his\nIntroduction to the History of Religion, by Miss Harrison in explanations\nof Greek ritual, by Mr. Hartland in The Legend of Perseus, and doubtless\nby many other writers.  How much they excel me in erudition may be seen\nby comparing Mr. Farnell's passage on the Bear Artemis {0e} with the\nsection on her in this volume.\n\nMr. Max Muller observes that 'Mannhardt's mythological researches have\nnever been fashionable.'  They are now very much in fashion; they greatly\ninspire Mr. Frazer and Mr. Farnell.  'They seemed to me, and still seem\nto me, too exclusive,' says Mr. Max Muller. {0f}  Mannhardt in his second\nperiod was indeed chiefly concerned with myths connected, as he held,\nwith agriculture and with tree-worship.  Mr. Max Muller, too, has been\nthought 'exclusive'--'as teaching,' he complains, 'that the whole of\nmythology is solar.'  That reproach arose, he says, because 'some of my\nearliest contributions to comparative mythology were devoted exclusively\nto the special subject of solar myths.' {0g}  But Mr. Max Muller also\nmentions his own complaints, of 'the omnipresent sun and the inevitable\ndawn appearing in ever so many disguises.'\n\nDid they really appear?  Were the myths, say the myths of Daphne, really\nsolar?  That is precisely what we hesitate to accept.  In the same way\nMannhardt's preoccupation with vegetable myths has tended, I think, to\nmake many of his followers ascribe vegetable origins to myths and gods,\nwhere the real origin is perhaps for ever lost.  The corn-spirit starts\nup in most unexpected places.  Mr. Frazer, Mannhardt's disciple, is very\nsevere on solar theories of Osiris, and connects that god with the corn-\nspirit.  But Mannhardt did not go so far.  Mannhardt thought that the\nmyth of Osiris was solar.  To my thinking, these resolutions of myths\ninto this or that original source--solar, nocturnal, vegetable, or what\nnot--are often very perilous.  A myth so extremely composite as that of\nOsiris must be a stream flowing from many springs, and, as in the case of\ncertain rivers, it is difficult or impossible to say which is the real\nfountain-head.\n\nOne would respectfully recommend to young mythologists great reserve in\ntheir hypotheses of origins.  All this, of course, is the familiar\nthought of writers like Mr. Frazer and Mr. Farnell, but a tendency to\nseek for exclusively vegetable origins of gods is to be observed in some\nof the most recent speculations.  I well know that I myself am apt to\npress a theory of totems too far, and in the following pages I suggest\nreserves, limitations, and alternative hypotheses.  Il y a serpent et\nserpent; a snake tribe may be a local tribe named from the Snake River,\nnot a totem kindred.  The history of mythology is the history of rash,\npremature, and exclusive theories.  We are only beginning to learn\ncaution.  Even the prevalent anthropological theory of the ghost-origin\nof religion might, I think, be advanced with caution (as Mr. Jevons\nargues on other grounds) till we know a little more about ghosts and a\ngreat deal more about psychology.  We are too apt to argue as if the\npsychical condition of the earliest men were exactly like our own; while\nwe are just beginning to learn, from Prof. William James, that about even\nour own psychical condition we are only now realising our exhaustive\nignorance.  How often we men have thought certain problems settled for\ngood!  How often we have been compelled humbly to return to our studies!\nPhilological comparative mythology seemed securely seated for a\ngeneration.  Her throne is tottering:\n\n   Our little systems have their day,\n      They have their day and cease to be,\n      They are but broken lights from Thee,\n   And Thou, we trust, art more than they.\n\nBut we need not hate each other for the sake of our little systems, like\nthe grammarian who damned his rival's soul for his 'theory of the\nirregular verbs.'  Nothing, I hope, is said here inconsistent with the\nhighest esteem for Mr. Max Muller's vast erudition, his enviable style,\nhis unequalled contributions to scholarship, and his awakening of that\ninterest in mythological science without which his adversaries would\nprobably never have existed.\n\nMost of Chapter XII. appeared in the 'Contemporary Review,' and most of\nChapter XIII. in the 'Princeton Review.'\n\n\n\n\nREGENT MYTHOLOGY\n\n\nMythology in 1860-1880\n\n\nBetween 1860 and 1880, roughly speaking, English people interested in\nearly myths and religions found the mythological theories of Professor\nMax Muller in possession of the field.  These brilliant and attractive\ntheories, taking them in the widest sense, were not, of course, peculiar\nto the Right Hon. Professor.  In France, in Germany, in America, in\nItaly, many scholars agreed in his opinion that the science of language\nis the most potent spell for opening the secret chamber of mythology.  But\nwhile these scholars worked on the same general principle as Mr. Max\nMuller, while they subjected the names of mythical beings--Zeus, Helen,\nAchilles, Athene--to philological analysis, and then explained the\nstories of gods and heroes by their interpretations of the meanings of\ntheir names, they arrived at all sorts of discordant results.  Where Mr.\nMax Muller found a myth of the Sun or of the Dawn, these scholars were\napt to see a myth of the wind, of the lightning, of the thunder-cloud, of\nthe crepuscule, of the upper air, of what each of them pleased.  But\nthese ideas--the ideas of Kuhn, Welcker, Curtius (when he appeared in the\ndiscussion), of Schwartz, of Lauer, of Breal, of many others--were very\nlittle known--if known at all--to the English public.  Captivated by the\ngraces of Mr. Max Muller's manner, and by a style so pellucid that it\naccredited a logic perhaps not so clear, the public hardly knew of the\ndivisions in the philological camp.  They were unaware that, as Mannhardt\nsays, the philological school had won 'few sure gains,' and had\ndiscredited their method by a 'muster-roll of variegated' and discrepant\n'hypotheses.'\n\nNow, in all sciences there are differences of opinion about details.  In\ncomparative mythology there was, with rare exceptions, no agreement at\nall about results beyond this point; Greek and Sanskrit, German and\nSlavonic myths were, in the immense majority of instances, to be regarded\nas mirror-pictures on earth, of celestial and meteorological phenomena.\nThus even the story of the Earth Goddess, the Harvest Goddess, Demeter,\nwas usually explained as a reflection in myth of one or another celestial\nphenomenon--dawn, storm-cloud, or something else according to taste.\n\nAgain, Greek or German myths were usually to be interpreted by comparison\nwith myths in the Rig Veda.  Their origin was to be ascertained by\ndiscovering the Aryan root and original significance of the names of gods\nand heroes, such as Saranyu--Erinnys, Daphne--Dahana, Athene--Ahana.  The\netymology and meaning of such names being ascertained, the origin and\nsense of the myths in which the names occur should be clear.\n\nClear it was not.  There were, in most cases, as many opinions as to the\netymology and meaning of each name and myth, as there were philologists\nengaged in the study.  Mannhardt, who began, in 1858, as a member of the\nphilological school, in his last public utterance (1877) described the\nmethod and results, including his own work of 1858, as 'mainly failures.'\n\nBut, long ere that, the English cultivated public had, most naturally,\naccepted Mr. Max Muller as the representative of the school which then\nheld the field in comparative mythology.  His German and other foreign\nbrethren, with their discrepant results, were only known to the general,\nin England (I am not speaking of English scholars), by the references to\nthem in the Oxford professor's own works.  His theories were made part of\nthe education of children, and found their way into a kind of popular\nprimers.\n\nFor these reasons, anyone in England who was daring enough to doubt, or\nto deny, the validity of the philological system of mythology in general\nwas obliged to choose Mr. Max Muller as his adversary.  He must strike,\nas it were, the shield of no Hospitaler of unsteady seat, but that of the\nTemplar himself.  And this is the cause of what seems to puzzle Mr. Max\nMuller, namely the attacks on _his_ system and _his_ results in\nparticular.  An English critic, writing for English readers, had to do\nwith the scholar who chiefly represented the philological school of\nmythology in the eyes of England.\n\n\n\nAutobiographical\n\n\nLike other inquiring undergraduates in the sixties, I read such works on\nmythology as Mr. Max Muller had then given to the world; I read them with\ninterest, but without conviction.  The argument, the logic, seemed to\nevade one; it was purely, with me, a question of logic, for I was of\ncourse prepared to accept all of Mr. Max Muller's dicta on questions of\netymologies.  Even now I never venture to impugn them, only, as I observe\nthat other scholars very frequently differ, toto caelo, from him and from\neach other in essential questions, I preserve a just balance of doubt; I\nwait till these gentlemen shall be at one among themselves.\n\nAfter taking my degree in 1868, I had leisure to read a good deal of\nmythology in the legends of all races, and found my distrust of Mr. Max\nMuller's reasoning increase upon me.  The main cause was that whereas Mr.\nMax Muller explained Greek myths by etymologies of words in the Aryan\nlanguages, chiefly Greek, Latin, Slavonic, and Sanskrit, I kept finding\nmyths very closely resembling those of Greece among Red Indians, Kaffirs,\nEskimo, Samoyeds, Kamilaroi, Maoris, and Cahrocs.  Now if Aryan myths\narose from a 'disease' of Aryan languages, it certainly did seem an odd\nthing that myths so similar to these abounded where non-Aryan languages\nalone prevailed.  Did a kind of linguistic measles affect all tongues\nalike, from Sanskrit to Choctaw, and everywhere produce the same ugly\nscars in religion and myth?\n\n\n\nThe Ugly Scars\n\n\nThe ugly scars were the problem!  A civilised fancy is not puzzled for a\nmoment by a beautiful beneficent Sun-god, or even by his beholding the\ndaughters of men that they are fair.  But a civilised fancy _is_ puzzled\nwhen the beautiful Sun-god makes love in the shape of a dog. {5}  To me,\nand indeed to Mr. Max Muller, the ugly scars were the problem.\n\nHe has written--'What makes mythology mythological, in the true sense of\nthe word, is what is utterly unintelligible, absurd, strange, or\nmiraculous.'  But he explained these blots on the mythology of Greece,\nfor example, as the result practically of old words and popular sayings\nsurviving in languages after the original, harmless, symbolical meanings\nof the words and sayings were lost.  What had been a poetical remark\nabout an aspect of nature became an obscene, or brutal, or vulgar myth, a\nstumbling block to Greek piety and to Greek philosophy.\n\nTo myself, on the other hand, it seemed that the ugly scars were remains\nof that kind of taste, fancy, customary law, and incoherent speculation\nwhich everywhere, as far as we know, prevails to various degrees in\nsavagery and barbarism.  Attached to the 'hideous idols,' as Mr. Max\nMuller calls them, of early Greece, and implicated in a ritual which\nreligious conservatism dared not abandon, the fables of perhaps neolithic\nancestors of the Hellenes remained in the religion and the legends known\nto Plato and Socrates.  That this process of 'survival' is a vera causa,\nillustrated in every phase of evolution, perhaps nobody denies.\n\nThus the phenomena which the philological school of mythology explains by\na disease of language we would explain by survival from a savage state of\nsociety and from the mental peculiarities observed among savages in all\nages and countries.  Of course there is nothing new in this: I was\ndelighted to discover the idea in Eusebius as in Fontenelle; while, for\ngeneral application to singular institutions, it was a commonplace of the\nlast century. {6a}  Moreover, the idea had been widely used by Dr. E. B.\nTylor in Primitive Culture, and by Mr. McLennan in his Primitive Marriage\nand essays on Totemism.\n\n\n\nMy Criticism of Mr. Max Muller\n\n\nThis idea I set about applying to the repulsive myths of civilised races,\nand to Marchen, or popular tales, at the same time combating the theories\nwhich held the field--the theories of the philological mythologists as\napplied to the same matter.  In journalism I criticised Mr. Max Muller,\nand I admit that, when comparing the mutually destructive competition of\nvarying etymologies, I did not abstain from the weapons of irony and\n_badinage_.  The opportunity was too tempting!  But, in the most sober\nseriousness, I examined Mr. Max Muller's general statement of his system,\nhis hypothesis of certain successive stages of language, leading up to\nthe mythopoeic confusion of thought.  It was not a question of denying\nMr. Max Muller's etymologies, but of asking whether he established his\nhistorical theory by evidence, and whether his inferences from it were\nlogically deduced.  The results of my examination will be found in the\narticle 'Mythology' in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and in La\nMythologie. {6b}  It did not appear to me that Mr. Max Muller's general\ntheory was valid, logical, historically demonstrated, or self-consistent.\nMy other writings on the topic are chiefly Custom and Myth, Myth, Ritual,\nand Religion (with French and Dutch translations, both much improved and\ncorrected by the translators), and an introduction to Mrs. Hunt's\ntranslation of Grimm's Marchen.\n\n\n\nSuccess of Anthropological Method\n\n\nDuring fifteen years the ideas which I advocated seem to have had some\nmeasure of success.  This is, doubtless, due not to myself, but to the\nworks of Mr. J. G. Frazer and of Professor Robertson Smith.  Both of\nthese scholars descend intellectually from a man less scholarly than\nthey, but, perhaps, more original and acute than any of us, my friend the\nlate Mr. J. F. McLennan.  To Mannhardt also much is owed, and, of course,\nabove all, to Dr. Tylor.  These writers, like Mr. Farnell and Mr. Jevons\nrecently, seek for the answer to mythological problems rather in the\nhabits and ideas of the folk and of savages and barbarians than in\netymologies and 'a disease of language.'  There are differences of\nopinion in detail: I myself may think that 'vegetation spirits,' the\n'corn spirit,' and the rest occupy too much space in the systems of\nMannhardt, and other moderns.  Mr. Frazer, again, thinks less of the\nevidence for Totems among 'Aryans' than I was inclined to do. {7}  But it\nis not, perhaps, an overstatement to say that explanation of myths by\nanalysis of names, and the lately overpowering predominance of the Dawn,\nand the Sun, and the Night in mythological hypothesis, have received a\nslight check.  They do not hold the field with the superiority which was\ntheirs in England between 1860 and 1880.  This fact--a scarcely deniable\nfact--does not, of course, prove that the philological method is wrong,\nor that the Dawn is not as great a factor in myth as Mr. Max Muller\nbelieves himself to have proved it to be.  Science is inevitably subject\nto shiftings of opinion, action, and reaction.\n\n\n\nMr. Max Muller's Reply\n\n\nIn this state of things Mr. Max Muller produces his Contributions to the\nScience of Mythology, {8} which I propose to criticise as far as it is,\nor may seem to me to be, directed against myself, or against others who\nhold practically much the same views as mine.  I say that I attempt to\ncriticise the book 'as far as it is, or may seem to me to be, directed\nagainst' us, because it is Mr. Max Muller's occasional habit to argue\n(apparently) _around_ rather than _with_ his opponents.  He says 'we are\ntold this or that'--something which he does not accept--but he often does\nnot inform us as to _who_ tells us, or where.  Thus a reader does not\nknow whom Mr. Max Muller is opposing, or where he can find the\nadversary's own statement in his own words.  Yet it is usual in such\ncases, and it is, I think, expedient, to give chapter and verse.\nOccasionally I find that Mr. Max Muller is honouring me by alluding to\nobservations of my own, but often no reference is given to an opponent's\nname or books, and we discover the passages in question by accident or\nresearch.  This method will be found to cause certain inconveniences.\n\n\n\n\nTHE STORY OF DAPHNE\n\n\nMr. Max Muller's Method in Controversy\n\n\nAs an illustration of the author's controversial methods, take his\nobservations on my alleged attempt to account for the metamorphosis of\nDaphne into a laurel tree.  When I read these remarks (i. p. 4) I said,\n'Mr. Max Muller vanquishes me _there_,' for he gave no reference to my\nstatement.  I had forgotten all about the matter, I was not easily able\nto find the passage to which he alluded, and I supposed that I had said\njust what Mr. Max Muller seemed to me to make me say--no more, and no\nless.  Thus:\n\n   'Mr. Lang, as usual, has recourse to savages, most useful when they\n   are really wanted.  He quotes an illustration from the South Pacific\n   that Tuna, the chief of the eels, fell in love with Ina and asked her\n   to cut off his head.  When his head had been cut off and buried, two\n   cocoanut trees sprang up from the brain of Tuna.  How is this, may I\n   ask, to account for the story of Daphne?  Everybody knows that\n   \"stories of the growing of plants out of the scattered members of\n   heroes may be found from ancient Egypt to the wigwams of the\n   Algonquins,\" but these stories seem hardly applicable to Daphne, whose\n   members, as far as I know, were never either severed or scattered.'\n\nI thought, perhaps hastily, that I must have made the story of Tuna\n'account for the story of Daphne.'  Mr. Max Muller does not actually say\nthat I did so, but I understood him in that sense, and recognised my\nerror.  But, some guardian genius warning me, I actually hunted up my own\nobservations. {10a}  Well, I had never said (as I conceived my critic to\nimply) that the story of Tuna 'accounts for the story of Daphne.'  That\nwas what I had not said.  I had observed, 'As to interchange of shape\nbetween men and women and _plants_, our information, so far as the lower\nraces are concerned, is less copious'--than in the case of stones.  I\nthen spoke of plant totems of one kin with human beings, of plant-souls,\n{10b} of Indian and Egyptian plants animated by _human_ souls, of a tree\nwhich became a young man and made love to a Yurucari girl, of\nmetamorphosis into vegetables in Samoa, {10c} of an Ottawa myth in which\na man became a plant of maize, and then of the story of Tuna. {10d}  Next\nI mentioned plants said to have sprung from dismembered gods and heroes.\n_All_ this, I said, _all_ of it, proves that savages mythically regard\nhuman life as on a level with vegetable no less than with animal life.\n'Turning to the mythology of Greece, we see that the same rule holds\ngood.  Metamorphosis into plants and flowers is extremely common,' and I,\nof course, attributed the original idea of such metamorphoses to 'the\ngeneral savage habit of \"levelling up,\"' of regarding all things in\nnature as all capable of interchanging their identities.  I gave, as\nclassical examples, Daphne, Myrrha, Hyacinth, Narcissus, and the sisters\nof Phaethon.  Next I criticised Mr. Max Muller's theory of Daphne.  But I\nnever hinted that the isolated Mangaian story of Tuna, or the stories of\nplants sprung from mangled men, 'accounted,' by themselves, 'for the\nstory of Daphne.'\n\nMr. Max Muller is not content with giving a very elaborate and\ninteresting account of how the story of Tuna arose (i. 5-7).  He keeps\nTuna in hand, and, at the peroration of his vast work (ii. 831), warns us\nthat, before we compare myths in unrelated languages, we need 'a very\naccurate knowledge of their dialects . . . to prevent accidents like that\nof Tuna mentioned in the beginning.'  What accident?  That I explained\nthe myth of Daphne by the myth of Tuna?  But that is precisely what I did\nnot do.  I explained the Greek myth of Daphne (1) as a survival from the\nsavage mental habit of regarding men as on a level with stones, beasts,\nand plants; or (2) as a tale 'moulded by poets on the same model.' {11}\nThe latter is the more probable case, for we find Daphne late, in\nartificial or mythographic literature, in Ovid and Hyginus.  In Ovid the\nriver god, Pentheus, changes Daphne into a laurel.  In Hyginus she is not\nchanged at all; the earth swallows her, and a laurel fills her place.\n\nNow I really did believe--perhaps any rapid reader would have\nbelieved--when I read Mr. Max Muller, that I must have tried to account\nfor the story of Daphne by the story of Tuna.  I actually wrote in the\nfirst draft of this work that I had been in the wrong.  Then I verified\nthe reference which my critic did not give, with the result which the\nreader has perused.  Never could a reader have found out what I did\nreally say from my critic, for he does not usually when he deals with me\ngive chapter and verse.  This may avoid an air of personal bickering, but\nhow inconvenient it is!\n\nLet me not be supposed to accuse Mr. Max Muller of consciously\nmisrepresenting me.  Of that I need not say that he is absolutely\nincapable.  My argument merely took, in his consciousness, the form which\nis suggested in the passage cited from him.\n\n\n\nTuna and Daphne\n\n\nTo do justice to Mr. Max Muller, I will here state fully his view of the\nstory of Tuna, and then go on to the story of Daphne.  For the sake of\naccuracy, I take the liberty of borrowing the whole of his statement (i.\n4-7):--\n\n'I must dwell a little longer on this passage in order to show the real\ndifference between the ethnological and the philological schools of\ncomparative mythology.\n\n'First of all, what has to be explained is not the growing up of a tree\nfrom one or the other member of a god or hero, but the total change of a\nhuman being or a heroine into a tree, and this under a certain\nprovocation.  These two classes of plant-legends must be carefully kept\napart.  Secondly, what does it help us to know that people in Mangaia\nbelieved in the change of human beings into trees, if we do not know the\nreason why?  This is what we want to know; and without it the mere\njuxtaposition of stories apparently similar is no more than the old trick\nof explaining ignotum per ignotius.  It leads us to imagine that we have\nlearnt something, when we really are as ignorant as before.\n\n'If Mr. A. Lang had studied the Mangaian dialect, or consulted scholars\nlike the Rev. W. W. Gill--it is from his \"Myths and Songs from the South\nPacific\" that he quotes the story of Tuna--he would have seen that there\nis no similarity whatever between the stories of Daphne and of Tuna.  The\nTuna story belongs to a very well known class of aetiological\nplant-stories, which are meant to explain a no longer intelligible name\nof a plant, such as Snakeshead, Stiefmutterchen, &c.; it is in fact a\nclear case of what I call disease of language, cured by the ordinary\nnostrum of folk-etymology.  I have often been in communication with the\nRev. W. W. Gill about these South Pacific myths and their true meaning.\nThe preface to his collection of Myths and Songs from the South Pacific\nwas written by me in 1876; and if Mr. A. Lang had only read the whole\nchapter which treats of these Tree-Myths (p. 77 seq.), he would easily\nhave perceived the real character of the Tuna story, and would not have\nplaced it in the same class as the Daphne story; he would have found that\nthe white kernel of the cocoanut was, in Mangaia, called the \"brains of\nTuna,\" a name like many more such names which after a time require an\nexplanation.\n\n'Considering that \"cocoanut\" was used in Mangaia in the sense of head\n(testa), the kernel or flesh of it might well be called the brain.  If\nthen the white kernel had been called Tuna's brain, we have only to\nremember that in Mangaia there are two kinds of cocoanut trees, and we\nshall then have no difficulty in understanding why these twin cocoanut\ntrees were said to have sprung from the two halves of Tuna's brain, one\nbeing red in stem, branches, and fruit, whilst the other was of a deep\ngreen.  In proof of these trees being derived from the head of Tuna, we\nare told that we have only to break the nut in order to see in the\nsprouting germ the two eyes and the mouth of Tuna, the great eel, the\nlover of Ina.  For a full understanding of this very complicated myth\nmore information has been supplied by Mr. Gill.  Ina means moon; Ina-mae-\naitu, the heroine of our story, means Ina-who-had-a-divine (aitu) lover,\nand she was the daughter of Kui, the blind.  Tuna means eel, and in\nMangaia it was unlawful for women to eat eels, so that even now, as Mr.\nGill informs me, his converts turn away from this fish with the utmost\ndisgust.  From other stories about the origin of cocoanut trees, told in\nthe same island, it would appear that the sprouts of the cocoanut were\nactually called eels' heads, while the skulls of warriors were called\ncocoanuts.\n\n'Taking all these facts together, it is not difficult to imagine how the\nstory of Tuna's brain grew up; and I am afraid we shall have to confess\nthat the legend of Tuna throws but little light on the legend of Daphne\nor on the etymology of her name.  No one would have a word to say against\nthe general principle that much that is irrational, absurd, or barbarous\nin the Veda is a survival of a more primitive mythology anterior to the\nVeda.  How could it be otherwise?'\n\n\n\nCriticism of Tuna and Daphne\n\n\nNow (1), as to Daphne, we are not invariably told that hers was a case of\n'the total change of a heroine into a tree.'  In Ovid {14} she is thus\nchanged.  In Hyginus, on the other hand, the earth swallows her, and a\ntree takes her place.  All the authorities are late.  Here I cannot but\nreflect on the scholarly method of Mannhardt, who would have examined and\ncriticised all the sources for the tale before trying to explain it.\nHowever, Daphne was not mangled; a tree did not spring from her severed\nhead or scattered limbs.  She was metamorphosed, or was buried in earth,\na tree springing up from the place.\n\n(2)  I think we do know _why_ the people of Mangaia 'believe in the\nchange of human beings into trees.'  It is one among many examples of the\nsavage sense of the intercommunity of all nature.  'Antiquity made its\ndivision between man and the world in a very different sort than do the\nmoderns.' {15a}  I illustrate this mental condition fully in M. R. R. i.\n46-56.  _Why_ savages adopt the major premise, 'Human life is on a level\nwith the life of all nature,' philosophers explain in various ways.  Hume\nregards it as an extension to the universe of early man's own\nconsciousness of life and personality.  Dr. Tylor thinks that the opinion\nrests upon 'a broad philosophy of nature.' {15b}  M. Lefebure appeals to\npsychical phenomena as I show later (see 'Fetishism').  At all events,\nthe existence of these savage metaphysics is a demonstrated fact.  I\nestablished it {15c} before invoking it as an explanation of savage\nbelief in metamorphosis.\n\n(3)  'The Tuna story belongs to a very well known class of aetiological\nplant-stories' (aetiological: assigning a cause for the plant, its\npeculiarities, its name, &c.), 'which are meant to explain a no longer\nintelligible name of a plant, &c.'  I also say, 'these myths are nature-\nmyths, so far as they attempt to account for a fact in nature--namely,\nfor the existence of certain plants, and for their place in ritual.' {16}\n\nThe reader has before him Mr. Max Muller's view.  The white kernel of the\ncocoanut was locally styled 'the brains of Tuna.'  That name required\nexplanation.  Hence the story about the fate of Tuna.  Cocoanut was used\nin Mangaia in the sense of 'head' (testa).  So it is now in England.\n\nSee Bell's Life, passim, as 'The Chicken got home on the cocoanut.'\n\n\n\nThe Explanation\n\n\nOn the whole, either cocoanut kernels were called 'brains of Tuna'\nbecause 'cocoanut'='head,' and a head has brains--and, well, somehow I\nfail to see why brains of Tuna in particular!  Or, there being a story to\nthe effect that the first cocoanut grew out of the head of the\nmetamorphosed Tuna, the kernel was called his brains.  But why was the\nstory told, and why of Tuna?  Tuna was an eel, and women may not eat\neels; and Ina was the moon, who, a Mangaian Selene, loved no Latmian\nshepherd, but an eel.  Seriously, I fail to understand Mr. Max Muller's\nexplanation.  Given the problem, to explain a no longer intelligible\nplant-name--brains of Tuna--(applied not to a plant but to the kernel of\na nut), this name is explained by saying that the moon, Ina, loved an\neel, cut off his head at his desire, and buried it.  Thence sprang\ncocoanut trees, with a fanciful likeness to a human face--face of Tuna--on\nthe nut.  But still, why Tuna?  How could the moon love an eel, except on\nmy own general principle of savage 'levelling up' of all life in all\nnature?  In my opinion, the Mangaians wanted a fable to account for the\nresemblance of a cocoanut to the human head--a resemblance noted, as I\nshow, in our own popular slang.  The Mangaians also knew the moon, in her\nmythical aspect, as Ina; and Tuna, whatever his name may mean (Mr. Max\nMuller does not tell us), was an eel. {17}  Having the necessary savage\nmajor premise in their minds, 'All life is on a level and\ninterchangeable,' the Mangaians thought well to say that the head-like\ncocoanut sprang from the head of her lover, an eel, cut off by Ina.  The\nmyth accounts, I think, for the peculiarities of the cocoanut, rather\nthan for the name 'brains of Tuna;' for we still ask, 'Why of Tuna in\nparticular?  Why Tuna more than Rangoa, or anyone else?'\n\n'We shall have to confess that the legend of Tuna throws but little light\non the legend of Daphne, or on the etymology of her name.'\n\nI never hinted that the legend of Tuna threw light on the etymology of\nthe name of Daphne.  Mangaian and Greek are not allied languages.  Nor\ndid I give the Tuna story as an explanation of the Daphne story.  I gave\nit as one in a mass of illustrations of the savage mental propensity so\ncopiously established by Dr. Tylor in Primitive Culture.  The two\nalternative explanations which I gave of the Daphne story I have cited.\nNo mention of Tuna occurs in either.\n\n\n\nDisease of Language and Folk-etymology\n\n\nThe Tuna story is described as 'a clear case of disease of language cured\nby the ordinary nostrum of folk-etymology.'  The 'disease' showed itself,\nI suppose, in the presence of the Mangaian words for 'brain of Tuna.'  But\nthe story of Tuna gives no folk-etymology of the name Tuna.  Now, to give\nan etymology of a name of forgotten meaning is the sole object of folk-\netymology.  The plant-name, 'snake's head,' given as an example by Mr.\nMax Muller, needs no etymological explanation.  A story may be told to\nexplain why the plant is called snake's head, but a story to give an\netymology of snake's head is superfluous.  The Tuna story explains why\nthe cocoanut kernel is called 'brains of Tuna,' but it offers no\netymology of Tuna's name.  On the other hand, the story that marmalade\n(really marmalet) is so called because Queen Mary found comfort in\nmarmalade when she was sea-sick--hence Marie-malade, hence\n_marmalade_--gives an etymological explanation of the origin of the\n_word_ marmalade.  Here is a real folk-etymology.  We must never confuse\nsuch myths of folk-etymology with myths arising (on the philological\nhypothesis) from 'disease of language.'  Thus, Daphne is a girl pursued\nby Apollo, and changed into a daphne plant or laurel, or a laurel springs\nfrom the earth where she was buried.  On Mr. Max Muller's philological\ntheory Daphne=Dahana, and meant 'the burning one.'  Apollo may be derived\nfrom a Sanskrit form, *Apa-var-yan, or *Apa-val-yan (though how Greeks\never heard a Sanskrit word, if such a word as Apa-val-yan ever existed,\nwe are not told), and may mean 'one who opens the gate of the sky' (ii.\n692-696). {18}  At some unknown date the ancestors of the Greeks would\nsay 'The opener of the gates of the sky (*Apa-val-yan, i.e. the sun)\npursues the burning one (Dahana, i.e. the dawn).'  The Greek language\nwould retain this poetic saying in daily use till, in the changes of\nspeech, *Apa-val-yan ceased to be understood, and became Apollo, while\nDahana ceased to be understood, and became Daphne.  But the verb being\nstill understood, the phrase ran, 'Apollo pursues Daphne.'  Now the\nGreeks had a plant, laurel, called daphne.  They therefore blended plant,\ndaphne, and heroine's name, Daphne, and decided that the phrase 'Apollo\npursues Daphne' meant that Apollo chased a nymph, Daphne, who, to escape\nhis love, turned into a laurel.  I cannot give Mr. Max Muller's theory of\nthe Daphne story more clearly.  If I misunderstand it, that does not come\nfrom want of pains.\n\nIn opposition to it we urge that (1) the etymological equations,\nDaphne=Dahana, Apollo=*Apa-val-yan, are not generally accepted by other\nscholars.  Schroder, in fact, derives Apollo 'from the Vedic Saparagenya,\n\"worshipful,\" an epithet of Agni,' who is Fire (ii. 688), and so on.\nDaphne=Dahana is no less doubted.  Of course a Greek simply cannot be\n'derived' from a Sanskrit word, as is stated, though both may have a\ncommon origin, just as French is not 'derived from' Italian.\n\n(2) If the etymologies were accepted, no proof is offered to us of the\nactual existence, as a vera causa, of the process by which a saying.\n'Apollo pursues Daphne,' remains in language, while the meaning of the\nwords is forgotten.  This process is essential, but undemonstrated.  See\nthe chapter here on 'The Riddle Theory.'\n\n(3) These processes, if demonstrated, which they are not, must be\ncarefully discriminated from the actual demonstrable process of\nfolk-etymology.  The Marmalade legend gives the etymology of a word,\nmarmalade; the Daphne legend does not give an etymology.\n\n(4) The theory of Daphne is of the kind protested against by Mannhardt,\nwhere he warns us against looking in most myths for a 'mirror-picture' on\nearth of celestial phenomena. {20a}  For these reasons, among others, I\nam disinclined to accept Mr. Max Muller's attempt to explain the story of\nDaphne.\n\n\n\nMannhardt on Daphne\n\n\nSince we shall presently find Mr. Max Muller claiming the celebrated\nMannhardt as a sometime deserter of philological comparative mythology,\nwho 'returned to his old colours,' I observe with pleasure that Mannhardt\nis on my side and against the Oxford Professor.  Mannhardt shows that the\nlaurel (daphne) was regarded as a plant which, like our rowan tree,\naverts evil influences.  'Moreover, the laurel, like the Maibaum, was\nlooked on as a being with a spirit.  This is the safest result which myth\nanalysis can extract from the story of Daphne, a nymph pursued by Apollo\nand changed into a laurel.  It is a result of the use of the laurel in\nhis ritual.' {20b}  In 1877, a year after Mannhardt is said by Mr. Max\nMuller to have returned to his old colours, he repeats this explanation.\n{21a}  In the same work (p. 20) he says that 'there is no reason for\naccepting Max Muller's explanation about the Sun-god and the Dawn, wo\njeder thatliche Anhalt dafur fehlt.'  For this opinion we might also cite\nthe Sanskrit scholars Whitney and Bergaigne. {21b}\n\n\n\n\nTHE QUESTION OF ALLIES\n\n\nAthanasius\n\n\nMr. Max Muller protests, most justly, against the statement that he, like\nSt. Athanasius, stands alone, contra mundum.  If ever this phrase fell\nfrom my pen (in what connection I know not), it is as erroneous as the\nposition of St. Athanasius is honourable.  Mr. Max Muller's ideas, in\nvarious modifications, are doubtless still the most prevalent of any.  The\nanthropological method has hardly touched, I think, the learned\ncontributors to Roscher's excellent mythological Lexicon.  Dr. Brinton,\nwhose American researches are so useful, seems decidedly to be a member\nof the older school.  While I do not exactly remember alluding to\nAthanasius, I fully and freely withdraw the phrase.  But there remain\nquestions of allies to be discussed.\n\n\n\nItalian Critics\n\n\nMr. Max Muller asks, {22} 'What would Mr. Andrew Lang say if he read the\nwords of Signer Canizzaro, in his \"Genesi ed Evoluzione del Mito\" (1893),\n\"Lang has laid down his arms before his adversaries\"?'  Mr. Lang 'would\nsmile.'  And what would Mr. Max Muller say if he read the words of\nProfessor Enrico Morselli, 'Lang gives no quarter to his adversaries,\nwho, for the rest, have long been reduced to silence'? {23}  The Right\nHon. Professor also smiles, no doubt.  We both smile.  Solvuntur risu\ntabulae.\n\n\n\nA Dutch Defender\n\n\nThe question of the precise attitude of Professor Tiele, the accomplished\nGifford Lecturer in the University of Edinburgh (1897), is more important\nand more difficult.  His remarks were made in 1885, in an essay on the\nMyth of Cronos, and were separately reprinted, in 1886, from the 'Revue\nde l'Histoire des Religions,' which I shall cite.  Where they refer to\nmyself they deal with Custom and Myth, not with Myth, Ritual, and\nReligion (1887).  It seems best to quote, ipsissimis verbis, Mr. Max\nMuller's comments on Professor Tiele's remarks.  He writes (i. viii.):\n\n'Let us proceed next to Holland.  Professor Tiele, who had actually been\nclaimed as an ally of the victorious army, declares:--\"Je dois m'elever,\nau nom de la science mythologique et de l'exactitude . . . centre une\nmethode qui ne fait que glisser sur des problemes de premiere\nimportance.\"  (See further on, p. 35.)\n\n'And again:\n\n'\"Ces braves gens qui, pour peu qu'ils aient lu un ou deux livres de\nmythologie et d'anthropologie, et un ou deux recits de voyages, ne\nmanqueront pas de se mettre a comparer a tort et a travers, et pour tout\nresultat produiront la confusion.\"'\n\nAgain (i. 35):\n\n'Besides Signer Canizzaro and Mr. Horatio Hale, the veteran among\ncomparative ethnologists, Professor Tiele, in his Le Mythe de Kronos\n(1886), has very strongly protested against the downright\nmisrepresentations of what I and my friends have really written.\n\n'Professor Tiele had been appealed to as an unimpeachable authority.  He\nwas even claimed as an ally by the ethnological students of customs and\nmyths, but he strongly declined that honour (1. c., p. 31):-\n\n'\"M. Lang m'a fait 1'honneur de me citer,\" he writes, \"comme un de ses\nallies, et j'ai lieu de croire que M. Gaidoz en fait en quelque mesure\nautant.  Ces messieurs n'ont point entierement tort.  Cependant je dois\nm'elever, au nom de la science mythologique et de 1'exactitude dont elle\nne peut pas plus se passer que les autres sciences, contre une methode\nqui ne fait que glisser sur des problemes de premiere importance,\" &c.\n\n'Speaking of the whole method followed by those who actually claimed to\nhave founded a new school of mythology, he says (p. 21):--\n\n'\"Je crains toutefois que ce qui s'y trouve de vrai ne soit connu depuis\nlongtemps, et que la nouvelle ecole ne peche par exclusionisme tout\nautant que les ainees qu'elle combat avec tant de conviction.\"\n\n'That is exactly what I have always said.  What is there new in comparing\nthe customs and myths of the Greeks with those of the barbarians?  Has\nnot even Plato done this?  Did anybody doubt that the Greeks, nay even\nthe Hindus, were uncivilised or savages, before they became civilised or\ntamed?  Was not this common-sense view, so strongly insisted on by\nFontenelle and Vico in the eighteenth century, carried even to excess by\nsuch men as De Brosses (1709-1771)?  And have the lessons taught to De\nBrosses by his witty contemporaries been quite forgotten?  Must his\nfollowers be told again and again that they ought to begin with a\ncritical examination of the evidence put before them by casual\ntravellers, and that mythology is as little made up of one and the same\nmaterial as the crust of the earth of granite only?'\n\n\n\nReply\n\n\nProfessor Tiele wrote in 1885.  I do not remember having claimed his\nalliance, though I made one or two very brief citations from his remarks\non the dangers of etymology applied to old proper names. {25a}  To\ncitations made by me later in 1887 Professor Tiele cannot be referring.\n{25b}  Thus I find no proof of any claim of alliance put forward by me,\nbut I do claim a right to quote the Professor's published words.  These I\nnow translate:--{25c}\n\n'What goes before shows adequately that I am an ally, much more than an\nadversary, of the new school, whether styled ethnological or\nanthropological.  It is true that all the ideas advanced by its partisans\nare not so new as they seem.  Some of us--I mean among those who, without\nbeing vassals of the old school, were formed by it--had not only remarked\nalready the defects of the reigning method, but had perceived the\ndirection in which researches should be made; they had even begun to say\nso.  This does not prevent the young school from enjoying the great merit\nof having first formulated with precision, and with the energy of\nconviction, that which had hitherto been but imperfectly pointed out.  If\nhenceforth mythological science marches with a firmer foot, and loses\nmuch of its hypothetical character, it will in part owe this to the\nstimulus of the new school.'\n\n\n\n'Braves Gens'\n\n\nProfessor Tiele then bids us leave our cries of triumph to the servum\nimitatorum pecus, braves gens, and so forth, as in the passage which Mr.\nMax Muller, unless I misunderstand him, regards as referring to the 'new\nschool,' and, notably, to M. Gaidoz and myself, though such language\nought not to apply to M. Gaidoz, because he is a scholar.  I am left to\nuncovenanted mercies.\n\n\n\nProfessor Tiele on Our Merits\n\n\nThe merits of the new school Professor Tiele had already stated:--{26}\n\n'If I were reduced to choose between this method and that of comparative\nphilology, I would prefer the former without the slightest hesitation.\nThis method alone enables us to explain the fact, such a frequent cause\nof surprise, that the Greeks like the Germans . . . could attribute to\ntheir gods all manner of cruel, cowardly and dissolute actions.  This\nmethod alone reveals the cause of all the strange metamorphoses of gods\ninto animals, plants, and even stones. . . .  In fact, this method\nteaches us to recognise in all these oddities the survivals of an age of\nbarbarism long over-past, but lingering into later times, under the form\nof religious legends, the most persistent of all traditions. . . .  This\nmethod, enfin, can alone help us to account for the genesis of myths,\nbecause it devotes itself to studying them in their rudest and most\nprimitive shape. . . . '\n\n\n\nDestruction and Construction\n\n\nThus writes Professor Tiele about the constructive part of our work.  As\nto the destructive--or would-be destructive--part, he condenses my\narguments against the method of comparative philology.  'To resume, the\nwhole house of comparative philological mythology is builded on the sand,\nand her method does not deserve confidence, since it ends in such\ndivergent results.'  That is Professor Tiele's statement of my\ndestructive conclusions, and he adds, 'So far, I have not a single\nobjection to make.  I can still range myself on Mr. Lang's side when he'\ntakes certain distinctions into which it is needless to go here. {27}\n\n\n\nAllies or Not?\n\n\nThese are several of the passages on which, in 1887, I relied as evidence\nof the Professor's approval, which, I should have added, is only partial\nIt is he who, unsolicited, professes himself 'much more our ally than our\nadversary.'  It is he who proclaims that Mr. Max Midler's central\nhypothesis is erroneous, and who makes 'no objection' to my idea that it\nis 'builded on the sand.'  It is he who assigns essential merits to our\nmethod, and I fail to find that he 'strongly declines the honour' of our\nalliance.  The passage about 'braves gens' explicitly does not refer to\nus.\n\n\n\nOur Errors\n\n\nIn 1887, I was not careful to quote what Professor Tiele had said against\nus.  First, as to our want of novelty.  That merit, I think, I had never\nclaimed.  I was proud to point out that we had been anticipated by\nEusebius of Caesarea, by Fontenelle, and doubtless by many others.  We\nrepose, as Professor Tiele justly says, on the researches of Dr. Tylor.\nAt the same time it is Professor Tiele who constantly speaks of 'the new\nschool,' while adding that he himself had freely opposed Mr. Max Muller's\ncentral hypothesis, 'a disease of language,' in Dutch periodicals.  The\nProfessor also censures our 'exclusiveness,' our 'narrowness,' our 'songs\nof triumph,' our use of parody (M. Gaidoz republished an old one, not to\nmy own taste; I have also been guilty of 'The Great Gladstone Myth') and\nour charge that our adversaries neglect ethnological material.  On this I\nexplain myself later. {28a}\n\n\n\nUses of Philology\n\n\nOur method (says Professor Tiele) 'cannot answer all the questions which\nthe science of mythology must solve, or, at least, must study.'  Certainly\nit makes no such pretence.\n\nProfessor Tiele then criticises Sir George Cox and Mr. Robert Brown,\njunior, for their etymologies of Poseidon.  Indiscreet followers are not\nconfined to our army alone.  Now, the use of philology, we learn, is to\ndiscourage such etymological vagaries as those of Sir G. Cox. {28b}  _We_\nalso discourage them--severely.  But we are warned that philology really\nhas discovered 'some undeniably certain etymologies' of divine names.\nWell, I also say, 'Philology alone can tell whether Zeus Asterios, or\nAdonis, or Zeus Labrandeus is originally a Semitic or a Greek divine\nname; here she is the Pythoness we must all consult.' {29a}  And is it my\nfault that, even in this matter, the Pythonesses utter such strangely\ndiscrepant oracles?  Is Athene from a Zend root (Benfey), a Greek root\n(Curtius), or to be interpreted by Sanskrit Ahana (Max Muller)?  Meanwhile\nProfessor Tiele repeats that, in a search for the origin of myths, and,\nabove all, of obscene and brutal myths, 'philology will lead us far from\nour aim.'  Now, if the school of Mr. Max Muller has a mot d'ordre, it is,\nsays Professor Tiele, 'to call mythology a disease of language.' {29b}\nBut, adds Mr. Max Muller's learned Dutch defender, mythologists, while\nusing philology for certain purposes, 'must shake themselves free, of\ncourse, from the false hypothesis' (Mr. Max Muller's) 'which makes of\nmythology a mere maladie du langage.'  This professor is rather a\ndangerous defender of Mr. Max Muller!  He removes the very corner-stone\nof his edifice, which Tiele does not object to our describing as founded\non the sand.  Mr. Max Muller does not cite (as far as I observe) these\npassages in which Professor Tiele (in my view, and in fact) abandons (for\ncertain uses) _his_ system of mythology.  Perhaps Professor Tiele has\naltered his mind, and, while keeping what Mr. Max Muller quotes, braves\ngens, and so on, has withdrawn what he said about 'the false hypothesis\nof a disease of language.'  But my own last book about myths was written\nin 1886-1887, shortly after Professor Tiele's remarks were published\n(1886) as I have cited them.\n\n\n\nPersonal Controversy\n\n\nAll this matter of alliances may seem, and indeed is, of a personal\ncharacter, and therefore unimportant.  Professor Tiele's position in 1885-\n86 is clearly defined.  Whatever he may have published since, he then\naccepted the anthropological or ethnological method, as _alone_ capable\nof doing the work in which we employ it.  This method alone can discover\nthe origin of ancient myths, and alone can account for the barbaric\nelement, that old puzzle, in the myths of civilised races.  This the\nphilological method, useful for other purposes, cannot do, and its\ncentral hypothesis can only mislead us.  I was not aware, I repeat, that\nI ever claimed Professor Tiele's 'alliance,' as he, followed by Mr. Max\nMuller, declares.  They cannot point, as a proof of an assertion made by\nProfessor Tiele, 1885-86, to words of mine which did not see the light\ntill 1887, in Myth, Ritual, and Religion, i. pp. 24, 43, 44.  Not that I\ndeny Professor Tiele's statement about my claim of his alliance before\n1885-86.  I merely ask for a reference to this claim.  In 1887 {30} I\ncited his observations (already quoted) on the inadequate and misleading\ncharacter of the philological method, when we are seeking for 'the origin\nof a myth, or the physical explanation of the oldest myths, or trying to\naccount for the rude and obscene element in the divine legends of\ncivilised races.'  I added the Professor's applause of the philological\nmethod as applied to other problems of mythology; for example, 'the\ngenealogical relations of myths. . . .  The philological method alone can\nanswer here,' aided, doubtless, by historical and archaeological\nresearches as to the inter-relations of races.  This approval of the\nphilological method, I cited; the reader will find the whole passage in\nthe Revue, vol. xii. p. 260.  I remarked, however, that this will seem 'a\nvery limited province,' though, in this province, 'Philology is the\nPythoness we must all consult; in this sphere she is supreme, when her\nhigh priests are of one mind.'  Thus I did not omit to notice Professor\nTiele's comments on the _merits_ of the philological method.  To be sure,\nhe himself does not apply it when he comes to examine the Myth of Cronos.\n'Are the God and his myth original or imported?  I have not approached\nthis question because it does not seem to me ripe in this particular\ncase.' {31a}  'Mr. Lang has justly rejected the opinion of Welcker and\nMr. Max Muller, that Cronos is simply formed from Zeus's epithet,\n[Greek].' {31b}  This opinion, however, Mr. Max Muller still thinks the\n'most likely' (ii. 507).\n\nMy other citation of Professor Tiele in 1887 says that our pretensions\n'are not unacknowledged' by him, and, after a long quotation of approving\npassages, I add 'the method is thus _applauded_ by a most competent\nauthority, and it has been _warmly accepted_' (pray note the distinction)\nby M. Gaidoz. {31c}  I trust that what I have said is not unfair.\nProfessor Tiele's objections, not so much to our method as to our\nmanners, and to my own use of the method in a special case, have been\nstated, or will be stated later.  Probably I should have put them forward\nin 1887; I now repair my error.  My sole wish is to be fair; if Mr. Max\nMuller has not wholly succeeded in giving the full drift of Professor\nTiele's remarks, I am certain that it is from no lack of candour.\n\n\n\nThe Story of Cronos\n\n\nProfessor Tiele now devotes fifteen pages to the story of Cronos, and to\nmy essay on that theme.  He admits that I was right in regarding the myth\nas 'extraordinarily old,' and that in Greece it must go back to a period\nwhen Greeks had not passed the New Zealand level of civilisation.  [Now,\nthe New Zealanders were cannibals!]  But 'we are the victims of a great\nillusion if we think that a mere comparison of a Maori and Greek myth\nexplains the myth.'  I only profess to explain the savagery of the myth\nby the fact (admitted) that it was composed by savages.  The Maori story\n'is a myth of the creation of light.'  I, for my part, say, 'It is a myth\nof the severance of heaven and earth.' {32a}  And so it is!  No Being\nsaid, in Maori, 'Fiat lux!'  Light is not here _created_.  Heaven lay\nflat on Earth, all was dark, somebody kicked Heaven up, the already\nexisting light came in.  Here is no creation de la lumiere.  I ask\nProfessor Tiele, 'Do you, sir, create light when you open your window-\nshutters in the morning?  No, you let light in!'  The Maori tale is also\n'un mythe primitif de l'aurore,' a primitive dawn myth.  Dawn, again!\nHere I lose Professor Tiele.\n\n'Has the myth of Cronos the same sense?'  Probably not, as the Maori\nstory, to my mind, has not got it either.  But Professor Tiele says, 'The\nmyth of Cronos has precisely the opposite sense.' {32b}  What is the myth\nof Cronos?  Ouranos (Heaven) married Gaea (Earth).  Ouranos 'hid his\nchildren from the light in the _hollows_ of Earth' (Hesiod).  So, too,\nthe New Zealand gods were hidden from light while Heaven (Rangi) lay flat\non Papa (Earth).  The children 'were concealed between the _hollows_ of\ntheir parent's breasts.'  They did not like it, for they dwelt in\ndarkness.  So Cronos took an iron sickle and mutilated Ouranos in such a\nway, enfin, as to divorce him a thoro.  'Thus,' I say, 'were Heaven and\nEarth practically divorced.'  The Greek gods now came out of the hollows\nwhere they had been, like the New Zealand gods, 'hidden from the light.'\n\n\n\nProfessor Tiele on Sunset Myths\n\n\nNo, says Professor Tiele, 'the story of Cronos has precisely the opposite\nmeaning.'  The New Zealand myth is one of dawn, the Greek myth is one of\nsunset.  The mutilated part of poor Ouranos is le phallus du ciel, le\nsoleil, which falls into 'the Cosmic ocean,' and then, of course, all is\ndark.  Professor Tiele may be right here; I am indifferent.  All that I\nwanted to explain was the savage complexion of the myth, and Professor\nTiele says that I have explained that, and (xii. 264) he rejects the\netymological theory of Mr. Max Muller.\n\nI say that, in my opinion, the second part of the Cronos myth (the child-\nswallowing performances of Cronos) 'was probably a world-wide Marchen, or\ntale, attracted into the cycle of which Cronos was the centre, without\nany particular reason beyond the law which makes detached myths\ncrystallise round any celebrated name.'\n\nProfessor Tiele says he does not grasp the meaning of, or believe in, any\nsuch law.  Well, why is the world-wide tale of the Cyclops told about\nOdysseus?  It is absolutely out of keeping, and it puzzles commentators.\nIn fact, here was a hero and there was a tale, and the tale was attracted\ninto the cycle of the hero; the very last man to have behaved as Odysseus\nis made to do. {34}  But Cronos was an odious ruffian.  The world-wide\ntale of swallowing and disgorging the children was attracted to _his_ too\nnotorious name 'by grace of congruity.'  Does Professor Tiele now grasp\nmy meaning (saisir)?\n\n\n\nOur Lack of Scientific Exactness\n\n\nI do not here give at full length Professor Tiele's explanation of the\nmeaning of a myth which I do not profess to explain myself.  Thus, drops\nof the blood of Ouranos falling on Earth begat the Melies, usually\nrendered 'Nymphs of the Ash-trees.'  But Professor Tiele says they were\nreally _bees_ (Hesychius, [Greek]=[Greek])--'that is to say, stars.'\nEverybody has observed that the stars rise up off the earth, like the\nbees sprung from the blood of Ouranos.  In Myth, Ritual, and Religion (i.\n299-315) I give the competing explanations of Mr. Max Muller, of Schwartz\n(Cronos=storm god), Preller (Cronos=harvest god), of others who see the\nsun, or time, in Cronos; while, with Professor Tiele, Cronos is the god\nof the upper air, and also of the underworld and harvest; he 'doubles the\npart.'  'Il est l'un et l'autre'--that is, 'le dieu qui fait murir le\nble' and also 'un dieu des lieux souterrains.'  'Il habite les\nprofondeurs sous la terre,' he is also le dieu du ciel nocturne.\n\nIt may have been remarked that I declined to add to this interesting\ncollection of plausible explanations of Cronos.  A selection of such\nexplanations I offer in tabular form:--\n\nCronos was God of\n\nTime (?)--Max Muller\nSun--Sayce\nMidnight sky--Kuhn\n\nUnder-world }\nMidnight sky}--Tiele\nHarvest }\n\nHarvest--Preller\nStorm--Schwartz\nStar-swallowing sky--Canon Taylor\nSun scorching spring--Hartung\n\nCronos was by Race\n\nLate Greek (?)--Max Muller\nSemitic--Bottiger\nAccadian (?)--Sayce\n\nEtymology of Cronos\n\n[Greek]=Time (?)--Max Muller\nKrana (Sanskrit)--Kuhn\nKarnos (Horned)--Brown\n[Greek]--Preller\n\nThe pleased reader will also observe that the phallus of Ouranos is the\nsun (Tiele), that Cronos is the sun (Sayce), that Cronos mutilating\nOuranos is the sun (Hartung), just as the sun is the mutilated part of\nOuranos (Tiele); _Or_ is, according to others, the stone which Cronos\nswallowed, and which acted as an emetic.\n\n\n\nMy Lack of Explanation of Cronos\n\n\nNow, I have offered no explanation at all of who Cronos was, what he was\ngod of, from what race he was borrowed, from what language his name was\nderived.  The fact is that I do not know the truth about these important\ndebated questions.  Therefore, after speaking so kindly of our method,\nand rejecting the method of Mr. Max Muller, Professor Tiele now writes\nthus (and _this_ Mr. Max Muller does cite, as we have seen):--\n\n   'Mr. Lang and M. Gaidoz are not entirely wrong in claiming me as an\n   ally.  But I must protest, in the name of mythological science, and of\n   the exactness as necessary to her as to any of the other sciences,\n   against a method which only glides over questions of the first\n   importance' (name, origin, province, race of Cronos), 'and which to\n   most questions can only reply, with a smile, C'est chercher raison ou\n   il n'y en a pas.'\n\n\n\nMy Crime\n\n\nNow, what important questions was I gliding over?  In what questions did\nI not expect to find reason?  Why in this savage fatras about Cronos\nswallowing his children, about blood-drops becoming bees (Mr. Max Muller\nsays 'Melian nymphs'), and bees being stars, and all the rest of a\nprehistoric Marchen worked over again and again by the later fancy of\nGreek poets and by Greek voyagers who recognised Cronos in Moloch.  In\nall this I certainly saw no 'reason,' but I have given in tabular form\nthe general, if inharmonious, conclusions of more exact and conscientious\nscholars, 'their variegated hypotheses,' as Mannhardt says in the case of\nDemeter.  My error, rebuked by Professor Tiele, is the lack of that\n'scientific exactitude' exhibited by the explanations arranged in my\ntabular form.\n\n\n\nMy Reply to Professor Tiele\n\n\nI would reply that I am not engaged in a study of the _Cult_ of Cronos,\nbut of the revolting element in his _Myth_: his swallowing of his\nchildren, taking a stone emetic by mistake, and disgorging the swallowed\nchildren alive; the stone being on view at Delphi long after the\nChristian era.  Now, such stories of divine feats of swallowing and\ndisgorging are very common, I show, in savage myth and popular Marchen.\nThe bushmen have Kwai Hemm, who swallows the sacred Mantis insect.  He is\nkilled, and all the creatures whom he has swallowed return to light.  Such\nstories occur among Australians, Kaffirs, Red Men, in Guiana, in\nGreenland, and so on.  In some cases, among savages.  Night (conceived as\na person), or one star which obscures another star, is said to 'swallow'\nit.  Therefore, I say, 'natural phenomena, explained on savage\nprinciples, might give the data of the swallowing myth, of Cronos'\n{37}--that is, the myth of Cronos may be, probably is, originally a\nnature-myth.  'On this principle Cronos would be (ad hoc) the Night.'\nProfessor Tiele does not allude to this effort at interpretation.  But I\ncome round to something like the view of Kuhn.  Cronos (ad hoc) is the\nmidnight [sky], which Professor Tiele also regards as one of his several\naspects.  It is not impossible, I think, that if the swallowing myth was\noriginally a nature-myth, it was suggested by Night.  But the question I\ntried to answer was, 'Why did the Greeks, of all people, tell such a\ndisgusting story?'  And I replied, with Professor Tiele's approval, that\nthey inherited it from an age to which such follies were natural, an age\nwhen the ancestors of the Greeks were on (or under) the Maori stage of\nculture.  Now, the Maoris, a noble race, with poems of great beauty and\nspeculative power, were cannibals, like Cronos.  To my mind, 'scientific\nexactitude' is rather shown in confessing ignorance than in adding to the\nlist of guesses.\n\n\n\nConclusion as to Professor Tiele\n\n\nThe learned Professor's remarks on being 'much more my ally than my\nopponent' were published before my Myth, Ritual, and Religion, in which\n(i. 24, 25) I cited his agreement with me in the opinion that 'the\nphilological method' (Mr. Max Muller's) is 'inadequate and misleading,\nwhen it is a question of discovering the origin of a myth.'  I also\nquoted his unhesitating preference of ours to Mr. Max Muller's method (i.\n43, 44).  I did not cite a tithe of what he actually did say to our\ncredit.  But I omitted to quote what it was inexcusable not to add, that\nProfessor Tiele thinks us 'too exclusive,' that he himself had already,\nbefore us, combated Mr. Max Muller's method in Dutch periodicals, that he\nblamed our 'songs of triumph' and our levities, that he thought we might\nhave ignorant camp-followers, that I glided over important questions\n(bees, blood-drops, stars, Melian nymphs, the phallus of Ouranos, &c.),\nand showed scientific inexactitude in declining chercher raison ou il n'y\nen a pas.\n\nNone the less, in Professor Tiele's opinion, our method is new (or is\n_not_ new), illuminating, successful, and _alone_ successful, for the\nends to which we apply it, and, finally, we have shown Mr. Max Muller's\nmethod to be a house builded on the sand.  That is the gist of what\nProfessor Tiele said.\n\nMr. Max Muller, like myself, quotes part and omits part.  He quotes twice\nProfessor Tiele's observations on my deplorable habit of gliding over\nimportant questions.  He twice says that we have 'actually' claimed the\nProfessor as 'an ally of the victorious army,' 'the ethnological students\nof custom and myth,' and once adds, 'but he strongly declined that\nhonour.'  He twice quotes the famous braves gens passage, excepting only\nM. Gaidoz, as a scholar, from a censure explicitly directed at our\npossible camp-followers as distinguished from ourselves.\n\nBut if Mr. Max Muller quotes Professor Tiele's remarks proving that, in\nhis opinion, the 'army' _is_ really victorious; if he cites the\nacquiescence in my opinion that _his_ mythological house is 'builded on\nthe sands,' or Professor Tiele's preference for our method over his own,\nor Professor Tiele's volunteered remark that he is 'much more our ally\nthan our adversary,' I have not detected the passages in Contributions to\nthe Science of Mythology.\n\nThe reader may decide as to the relative importance of what I left out,\nand of what Mr. Max Muller omitted.  He says, 'Professor Tiele and I\ndiffer on several points, but we perfectly understand each other, and\nwhen we have made a mistake we readily confess and correct it' (i. 37).\n\nThe two scholars, I thought, differed greatly.  Mr. Max Muller's war-cry,\nslogan, mot d'ordre, is to Professor Tiele 'a false hypothesis.'  Our\nmethod, which Mr. Max Muller combats so bravely, is all that Professor\nTiele has said of it.  But, if all this is not conspicuously apparent in\nour adversary's book, it does not become me to throw the first stone.  We\nare all, in fact, inclined unconsciously to overlook what makes against\nour argument.  I have done it; and, to the best of my belief, Mr. Max\nMuller has not avoided the same error.\n\n\n\n\nMANNHARDT\n\n\nMannhardt's Attitude\n\n\nProfessor Tiele, it may appear, really 'fights for his own hand,' and is\nnot a thorough partisan of either side.  The celebrated Mannhardt, too,\ndoubtless the most original student of folk-lore since Grimm, might, at\ndifferent periods of his career, have been reckoned an ally, now by\nphilologists, now by 'the new school.'  He may be said, in fact, to have\ncombined what is best in the methods of both parties.  Both are anxious\nto secure such support as his works can lend.\n\n\n\nMoral Character Impeached\n\n\nMr. Max Muller avers that his moral character seems to be 'aimed at' by\ncritics who say that he has no right to quote Mannhardt or Oldenberg as\nhis supporters (1. xvi.).  Now, without making absurd imputations, I do\nnot reckon Mannhardt a thorough partisan of Mr. Max Muller.  I could not\nput _our_ theory so well as Mannhardt puts it.  'The study of the lower\nraces is an invaluable instrument for the interpretation of the survivals\nfrom earlier stages, which we meet in the full civilisation of cultivated\npeoples, but which arose in the remotest fetishism and savagery.'\n\nLike Mr. Max Muller, I do not care for the vague word 'fetishism,'\notherwise Mannhardt's remark exactly represents my own position, the\nanthropological position. {42a}  Now, Mr. Max Muller does not like that\nposition.  That position he assails.  It was Mannhardt's, however, when\nhe wrote the book quoted, and, so far, Mannhardt was _not_ absolutely one\nof Mr. Max Muller's 'supporters'--unless I am one.  'I have even been\naccused,' says Mr. Max Muller, 'of intentionally ignoring or suppressing\nMannhardt's labours.  How charitable!' (1. xvii.)  I trust, from our\nauthor's use of the word todtschweigen, that this uncharitable charge was\nmade in Germany.\n\n\n\nMannhardt\n\n\nMannhardt, for a time, says Mr. Max Muller, 'expressed his mistrust in\nsome of the results of comparative mythology' (1. xvii.).  Indeed, I\nmyself quote him to that very effect. {42b}  Not only '_some_ of the\nresults,' but the philological method itself was distrusted by Mannhardt,\nas by Curtius.  'The failure of the method in its practical working lies\nin a lack of the historical sense,' says Mannhardt. {42c}  Mr. Max Muller\nmay have, probably has, referred to these sayings of Mannhardt; or, if he\nhas not, no author is obliged to mention everybody who disagrees with\nhim.  Mannhardt's method was mainly that of folklore, not of philology.\nHe examined peasant customs and rites as 'survivals' of the oldest\npaganism.  Mr. Frazer applies Mannhardt's rich lore to the explanation of\nGreek and other rites in The Golden Bough, that entrancing book.  Such\nwas Mannhardt's position (as I shall prove at large) when he was writing\nhis most famous works.  But he 'returned at last to his old colours' (1.\nxvii.) in Die lettischen Sonnenmythen (1875).  In 1880 Mannhardt died.\nMr. Max Muller does not say whether Mannhardt, before a decease deeply\nregretted, recanted his heretical views about the philological method,\nand his expressed admiration of the study of the lower races as 'an\ninvaluable instrument.'  One would gladly read a recantation so\nimportant.  But Mr. Max Muller does tell us that 'if I did not refer to\nhis work in my previous contributions to the science of mythology the\nreason was simple enough.  It was not, as has been suggested, my wish to\nsuppress it (todtschweigen), but simply my want of knowledge of the\nmaterials with which he dealt' (German popular customs and traditions)\n'and therefore the consciousness of my incompetence to sit in judgment on\nhis labours.'  Again, we are told that there was no need of criticism or\npraise of Mannhardt.  He had Mr. Frazer as his prophet--but not till ten\nyears after his death.\n\n\n\nMannhardt's Letters\n\n\n'Mannhardt's state of mind with regard to the general principles of\ncomparative philology has been so exactly my own,' says Mr. Max Muller,\nthat he cites Mannhardt's letters to prove the fact.  But as to the\n_application_ to myth of the principles of comparative philology,\nMannhardt speaks of 'the lack of the historical sense' displayed in the\npractical employment of the method.  This, at least, is 'not exactly' Mr.\nMax Muller's own view.  Probably he refers to the later period when\nMannhardt 'returned to his old colours.'\n\nThe letters of Mannhardt, cited in proof of his exact agreement with Mr.\nMax Muller about comparative philology, do not, as far as quoted, mention\nthe subject of comparative philology at all (1. xviii-xx.).  Possibly\n'philology' is here a slip of the pen, and 'mythology' may be meant.\n\nMannhardt says to Mullenhoff (May 2, 1876) that he has been uneasy 'at\nthe extent which sun myths threaten to assume in my comparisons.'  He is\nopening 'a new point of view;' materials rush in, 'so that the sad danger\nseemed inevitable of everything becoming everything.'  In Mr. Max\nMuller's own words, written long ago, _he_ expressed his dread, not of\n'everything becoming everything' (a truly Heraclitean state of affairs),\nbut of the 'omnipresent Sun and the inevitable Dawn appearing in ever so\nmany disguises.'  'Have we not,' he asks, 'arrived both at the same\nconclusion?'  Really, I do not know!  Had Mannhardt quite cashiered 'the\ncorn-spirit,' who, perhaps, had previously threatened to 'become\neverything'?  He is still in great vigour, in Mr. Frazer's Golden Bough,\nand Mr. Frazer is Mannhardt's disciple.  But where, all this time, is\nthere a reference by Mannhardt to 'the general principles of comparative\nphilology'?  Where does he accept 'the omnipresent Sun and the inevitable\nDawn'?  Why, he says the reverse; he says in this letter that he is\nimmeasurably removed from accepting them at all as Mr. Max Muller accepts\nthem!\n\n'I am very far from looking upon all myths as psychical reflections of\nphysical phenomena, still less as of exclusively solar or meteorological\nphenomena, like Kuhn, Schwartz, Max Muller and their school.'  What a\nqueer way of expressing his agreement with Mr. Max Muller!\n\nThe Professor expostulates with Mannhardt (1. xx.):--'Where has any one\nof us ever done this?'  Well, when Mannhardt said '_all_ myths,' he wrote\ncolloquially.  Shall we say that he meant 'most myths,' 'a good many\nmyths,' 'a myth or two here and there'?  Whatever he meant, he meant that\nhe was 'still more than very far removed from looking upon all myths' as\nMr. Max Muller does.\n\nMannhardt's next passage I quote entire and textually from Mr. Max\nMuller's translation:--\n\n   'I have learnt to appreciate poetical and literary production as an\n   essential element in the development of mythology, and to draw and\n   utilise the consequences arising from this state of things.  [Who has\n   not?]  But, on the other hand, I hold it as quite certain that a\n   portion of the older myths arose from nature poetry which is no longer\n   directly intelligible to us, but has to be interpreted by means of\n   analogies.  Nor does it follow that these myths betray any historical\n   identity; they only testify to the same kind of conception and\n   tendency prevailing on similar stages of development.  Of these nature\n   myths some have reference to the life and the circumstances of the\n   sun, and our first steps towards an understanding of them are helped\n   on by such nature poetry as the Lettish, which has not yet been\n   obscured by artistic and poetical reflexion.  In that poetry mythical\n   personalities confessedly belonging to a solar sphere are transferred\n   to a large number of poetical representatives, of which the\n   explanation must consequently be found in the same (solar) sphere of\n   nature.  My method here is just the same as that applied by me to the\n   Tree-cult.'\n\nMr. Max Muller asks, 'Where is there any difference between this, the\nlatest and final system adopted by Mannhardt, and my own system which I\nput forward in 1856?' (1. xxi.)\n\n\n\nHow Mannhardt differs from Mr. Max Muller\n\n\nI propose to show wherein the difference lies.  Mannhardt says, 'My\nmethod is just the same as that applied by me to the Tree-cult.'  What\nwas _that_ method?\n\nMannhardt, in the letter quoted by Mr. Max Muller, goes on to describe\nit; but Mr. Max Muller omits the description, probably not realising its\nimportance.  For Mannhardt's method is the reverse of that practised\nunder the old colours to which he is said to have returned.\n\n\n\nMannhardt's Method\n\n\n'My method is here the same as in the Tree-cult.  I start from a given\ncollection of facts, of which the central idea is distinct and generally\nadmitted, and consequently offers a firm basis for explanation.  I\nillustrate from this and from well-founded analogies.  Continuing from\nthese, I seek to elucidate darker things.  I search out the simplest\nradical ideas and perceptions, the germ-cells from whose combined growth\nmythical tales form themselves in very different ways.'\n\nMr. Frazer gives us a similar description of Mannhardt's method, whether\ndealing with sun myths or tree myths. {46}  'Mannhardt set himself\nsystematically to collect, compare, and explain the living superstitions\nof the peasantry.'  Now Mr. Max Muller has just confessed, as a reason\nfor incompetence to criticise Mannhardt's labours, 'my want of knowledge\nof the materials with which he dealt--the popular customs and traditions\nof Germany.'  And yet he asks where there is any difference between his\nsystem and Mannhardt's.  Mannhardt's is the study of rural survival, the\nsystem of folklore.  Mr. Max Muller's is the system of comparative\nphilology about which in this place Mannhardt does not say one single\nword.  Mannhardt interprets some myths 'arising from nature poetry, no\nlonger intelligible to us,' by _analogies_; Mr. Max Muller interprets\nthem by _etymologies_.\n\nThe difference is incalculable; not that Mannhardt always abstains from\netymologising.\n\n\n\nAnother Claim on Mannhardt\n\n\nWhile maintaining that 'all comparative mythology must rest on comparison\nof names as its most certain basis' (a system which Mannhardt declares\nexplicitly to be so far 'a failure'), Mr. Max Muller says, 'It is well\nknown that in his last, nay posthumous essay, Mannhardt, no mean\nauthority, returned to the same conviction.'  I do not know which is\nMannhardt's very last essay, but I shall prove that in the posthumous\nessays Mannhardt threw cold water on the whole method of philological\ncomparative mythology.\n\nHowever, as proof of Mannhardt's return to Mr. Max Muller's convictions,\nour author cites Mythologische Forschungen (pp. 86-113).\n\n\n\nWhat Mannhardt said\n\n\nIn the passages here produced as proof of Mannhardt's conversion, he is\nnot investigating a myth at all, or a name which occurs in mythology.  He\nis trying to discover the meaning of the practices of the Lupercalia at\nRome.  In February, says Dionysius of Halicarnassus, the Romans held a\npopular festival, and lads ran round naked, save for skins of victims,\nwhipping the spectators.  Mannhardt, in his usual way, collects all the\nfacts first, and then analyses the name Luperci.  This does not make him\na philological mythologist.  To take a case in point, at Selkirk and\nQueensferry the bounds are ridden, or walked, by 'Burleymen' or\n'Burrymen.' {48}  After examining the facts we examine the words, and\nask, 'Why Burley or Burry men?'  At Queensferry, by a folk etymology, one\nof the lads wears a coat stuck over with burrs.  But 'Borough-men' seems\nthe probable etymology.  As we examine the names Burley, or Burry men, so\nMannhardt examines the name Luperci; and if a true etymology can be\ndiscovered, it will illustrate the original intention of the Lupercalia\n(p. 86).\n\nHe would like to explain the Lupercalia as a popular play, representing\nthe spirits of vegetation opposing the spirits of infertility.  'But we\ndo not forget that our whole theory of the development of the rite rests\non a hypothesis which the lack of materials prevents us from\ndemonstrating.'  He would explain Luperci as Lupiherci--'wolf-goats.'\nOver this we need not linger; but how does all this prove Mannhardt to\nhave returned to the method of comparing Greek with Vedic divine names,\nand arriving thence at some celestial phenomenon as the basis of a\nterrestrial myth?  Yet he sometimes does this.\n\n\n\nMy Relations to Mannhardt\n\n\nIf anything could touch and move an unawakened anthropologist it would be\nthe conversion of Mannhardt.  My own relations with his ideas have the\ninterest of illustrating mental coincidences.  His name does not occur, I\nthink, in the essay, 'The Method of Folklore,' in the first edition of my\nCustom and Myth.  In that essay I take, as an example of the method, the\nScottish and Northumbrian Kernababy, the puppet made out of the last\ngleanings of harvest.  This I compared to the Greek Demeter of the\nharvest-home, with sheaves and poppies in her hands, in the immortal\nSeventh Idyll of Theocritus.  Our Kernababy, I said, is a stunted\nsurvival of our older 'Maiden,' 'a regular image of the harvest goddess,'\nand I compared [Greek].  Next I gave the parallel case from ancient Peru,\nand the odd accidental coincidence that _there_ the maize was styled Mama\nCora ([Greek]!).\n\nIn entire ignorance of Mannhardt's corn-spirit, or corn-mother, I was\nfollowing Mannhardt's track.  Indeed, Mr. Max Muller has somewhere\nremarked that I popularise Mannhardt's ideas.  Naturally he could not\nguess that the coincidence was accidental and also inevitable.  Two men,\nunknown to each other, were using the same method on the same facts.\n\n\n\nMannhardt's Return to his old Colours\n\n\nIf, then, Mannhardt was re-converted, it would be a potent argument for\nmy conversion.  But one is reminded of the re-conversion of Prince\nCharles.  In 1750 he 'deserted the errors of the Church of Rome for those\nof the Church of England.'  Later he returned, or affected to return, to\nthe ancient faith.\n\nA certain Cardinal seemed contented therewith, and, as the historian\nremarks, 'was clearly a man not difficult to please.'  Mr. Max Muller\nreminds me of the good Cardinal.  I do not feel so satisfied as he does\nof Mannhardt's re-conversion.\n\n\n\nMannhardt's Attitude to Philology\n\n\nWe have heard Mannhardt, in a letter partly cited by Mr. Max Muller,\ndescribe his own method.  He begins with what is certain and\nintelligible, a mass of popular customs.  These he explains by analogies.\nHe passes from the known to the obscure.  Philological mythologists begin\nwith the unknown, the name of a god.  This they analyse, extract a\nmeaning, and (proceeding to the known) fit the facts of the god's legend\ninto the sense of his name.  The methods are each other's opposites, yet\nthe letter in which Mannhardt illustrates this fact is cited as a proof\nof his return to his old colours.\n\n\n\nIrritating Conduct of Mannhardt\n\n\nNothing irritates philological mythologists so much, nothing has injured\nthem so much in the esteem of the public which 'goes into these things a\nlittle,' as the statement that their competing etymologies and discrepant\ninterpretations of mythical names are mutually destructive.  I have been\ntold that this is 'a mean argument.'  But if one chemical analyst found\nbismuth where another found iridium, and a third found argon, the public\nwould begin to look on chemistry without enthusiasm; still more so if one\nchemist rarely found anything but inevitable bismuth or omnipresent\niridium.  Now Mannhardt uses this 'mean argument.'\n\n\n\nMannhardt on Demeter Erinnys\n\n\nIn a posthumous work, Mythologische Forschungen (1884), the work from\nwhich Mr. Max Muller cites the letter to Mullenhoff, Mannhardt discusses\nDemeter Erinnys.  She is the Arcadian goddess, who, in the form of a\nmare, became mother of Despoina and the horse Arion, by Poseidon. {51a}\nHer anger at the unhandsome behaviour of Poseidon caused Demeter to be\ncalled Erinnys--'to be angry' being [Greek] in Arcadian--a\nfolk-etymology, clearly.  Mannhardt first dives deep into the sources for\nthis fable. {51b}  Arion, he decides, is no mythological personification,\nbut a poetical ideal (Bezeichnung) of the war-horse.  Legend is ransacked\nfor proof of this.  Poseidon is the lord of wind and wave.  Now, there\nare waves of corn, under the wind, as well as waves of the sea.  When the\nSuabian rustic sees the wave running over the corn, he says, Da lauft das\nPferd, and Greeks before Homer would say, in face of the billowing corn,\n[Greek], There run horses!  And Homer himself {51c} says that the horses\nof Erichthonius, children of Boreas, ran over cornfield and sea.  We\nourselves speak of sea-waves as 'white horses.'  So, to be brief,\nMannhardt explains the myth of Demeter Erinnys becoming, as a mare, a\nmother by Poseidon as a horse, thus, 'Poseidon Hippies, or Poseidon in\nhorse's form, rushes through the growing grain and weds Demeter,' and he\ncites peasant proverbs, such as Das Korn heirathet; das Korn feiert\nHochzeit (p. 264).  'This is the germ of the Arcadian Saga.'\n\n   'The Arcadian myth of Demeter Erinnys is undeniably a blending of the\n   epic tradition [of the ideal war-horse] with the local cult of\n   Demeter. . . .  It is a probable hypothesis that the belief in the\n   wedding of Demeter and Poseidon comes from the sight of the waves\n   passing over the cornfield. . . .' {52}\n\nIt is very neat!  But a certain myth of Loki in horse-form comes into\nmemory, and makes me wonder how Mannhardt would have dealt with that too\nliberal narrative.\n\nLoki, as a mare (he being a male god), became, by the horse of a giant,\nthe father of Sleipnir, Odin's eight-footed steed.  Mr. W. A. Craigie\nsupplies this note on Loki's analogy with Poseidon, as a horse, in the\nwaves of corn:--\n\n   'In North Jutland, when the vapours are seen going with a wavy motion\n   along the earth in the heat of summer, they say, \"Loki is sowing oats\n   today,\" or \"Loki is driving his goats.\"\n\n   'N.B.--Oats in Danish are havre, which suggests O.N. hafrar, goats.\n   Modern Icelandic has hafrar=oats, but the word is not found in the old\n   language.'\n\nIs Loki a corn-spirit?\n\n\n\nMannhardt's 'Mean Argument'\n\n\nMannhardt now examines the explanations of Demeter Erinnys, and her\nlegend, given by Preller, E. Curtius, O. Muller, A. Kuhn, W. Sonne, Max\nMuller, E. Burnouf, de Gubernatis, Schwartz, and H. D. Muller.  'Here,'\nhe cries, 'is a variegated list of hypotheses!'  Demeter is\n\n   Storm-cloud\n   Sun Goddess\n   Earth and Moon Goddess\n   Dawn\n   Night.\n\nPoseidon is\n\n   Sea\n   Storm God\n   Cloud-hidden Sun\n   Rain God.\n\nDespoina is\n\n   Rain\n   Thunder\n   Moon.\n\nArion, the horse, is\n\n   Lightning\n   Sun\n   Thunder-horse.\n\nErinnys is\n\n   Storm-cloud\n   Red Dawn.\n\nMannhardt decides, after this exhibition of guesses, that the Demeter\nlegends cannot be explained as refractions of any natural phenomena in\nthe heavens (p. 275).  He concludes that the myth of Demeter Erinnys, and\nthe parallel Vedic story of Saranyu (who also had an amour as a mare),\nare 'incongruous,' and that neither sheds any light on the other.  He\nprotests against the whole tendency to find prototypes of all Aryan myths\nin the Veda, and to think that, with a few exceptions, all mythology is a\nterrestrial reflection of celestial phenomena (p. 280).  He then goes\ninto the contending etymologies of Demeter, and decides ('for the man was\nmortal and had been a' philologer) in favour of his own guess,\n[Greek]+[Greek]='Corn-mother' (p. 294).\n\nThis essay on Demeter was written by Mannhardt in the summer of 1877, a\nyear after the letter which is given as evidence that he had 'returned to\nhis old colours.'  The essay shows him using the philological string of\n'variegated hypotheses' as anything but an argument in favour of the\nphilological method.  On the other hand, he warns us against the habit,\nso common in the philological school, of looking for prototypes of all\nAryan myths in the Veda, and of finding in most myths a reflection on\nearth of phenomena in the heavens, Erinnys being either Storm-cloud or\nDawn, according to the taste and fancy of the inquirer.  We also find\nMannhardt, in 1877, starting from the known--legend and rural survival in\nphrase and custom--and so advancing to the unknown--the name Demeter.  The\nphilologists commence with the unknown, the old name, Demeter Erinnys,\nexplain it to taste, and bring the legend into harmony with their\nexplanation.  I cannot say, then, that I share Mr. Max Muller's\nimpression.  I do not feel sure that Mannhardt did return to his old\ncolours.\n\n\n\nWhy Mannhardt is Thought to have been Converted\n\n\nMannhardt's friend, Mullenhoff, had an aversion to solar myths.  He said:\n{54} 'I deeply mistrust all these combinations of the new so-called\ncomparative mythology.'  Mannhardt was preparing to study Lithuanian\nsolar myths, based on Lithuanian and Lettish marriage songs.  Mullenhoff\nand Scherer seem to have thought this work too solar for their taste.\nMannhardt therefore replied to their objections in the letter quoted in\npart by Mr. Max Muller.  Mannhardt was not the man to neglect or suppress\nsolar myths when he found them, merely because he did not believe that a\ngreat many other myths which had been claimed as celestial were solar.\nLike every sensible person, he knew that there are numerous real,\nobvious, confessed solar myths _not_ derived from a disease of language.\nThese arise from (1) the impulse to account for the doings of the Sun by\ntelling a story about him as if he were a person; (2) from the natural\npoetry of the human mind. {55}  What we think they are _not_ shown to\narise from is forgetfulness of meanings of old words, which, ex\nhypothesi, have become proper names.\n\nThat is the theory of the philological school, and to that theory, to\nthese colours, I see no proof (in the evidence given) that Mannhardt had\nreturned.  But 'the scalded child dreads cold water,' and Mullenhoff\napparently dreaded even real solar myths.  Mr. Max Muller, on the other\nhand (if I do not misinterpret him), supposes that Mannhardt had returned\nto the philological method, partly because he was interested in _real_\nsolar myths and in the natural poetry of illiterate races.\n\n\n\nMannhardt's Final Confession\n\n\nMannhardt's last work published in his life days was Antike Wald- und\nFeldkulte (1877).  In the preface, dated November 1, 1876 (_after_ the\nfamous letter of May 1876), he explains the growth of his views and\ncriticises his predecessors.  After doing justice to Kuhn and his\ncomparisons of European with Indian myths, he says that, in his opinion,\ncomparative Indo-Germanic mythology has not yet borne the expected\nfruits.  'The _assured_ gains shrink into very few divine names, such as\nDyaus--Zeus--Tius, Parjany--Perkunas, Bhaga--Bug, Varuna--Uranus, &c.'  I\nwish he had completed the list included in &c.  Other equations, as\nSarameya=Hermeias, Saranyu=Demeter Erinnys, he fears will not stand close\ncriticism.  He dreads that jeux d'esprit (geistvolle Spiele des Witzes)\nmay once more encroach on science.  Then, after a lucid statement of Mr.\nMax Muller's position, he says, 'Ich vermag dem von M. Muller\naufgestellten Principe, wenn uberhaupt eine, so doch nur eine sehr\nbeschrankte Geltung zuzugestehen.'\n\n   'To the principle of Max Muller I can only assign a very limited\n   value, if any value at all.' {56}\n\n   'Taken all in all, I consider the greater part of the results hitherto\n   obtained in the field of Indo-Germanic comparative mythology to be, as\n   yet, a failure, premature or incomplete, my own efforts in German\n   Myths (1858) included.  That I do not, however, \"throw out the babe\n   with the bath,\" as the proverb goes, my essay on Lettish sun myths in\n   Bastian-Hartmann's Ethnological Journal will bear witness.'\n\nSuch is Mannhardt's conclusion.  Taken in connection with his still later\nessay on Demeter, it really leaves no room for doubt.  There, I think, he\ndoes 'throw out the child with the bath,' throw the knife after the\nhandle.  I do not suppose that Mr. Max Muller ever did quote Mannhardt as\none of his supporters, but such a claim, if really made, would obviously\ngive room for criticism.\n\n\n\nMannhardt on Solar Myths\n\n\nWhat the attitude of Mannhardt was, in 1877 and later, we have seen.  He\ndisbelieves in the philological system of explaining myths by\netymological conjectures.  He disbelieves in the habit of finding, in\nmyths of terrestrial occurrences, reflections of celestial phenomena.  But\nearlier, in his long essay Die lettischen Sonnenmythen (in Zeitschrift\nfur Ethnologie, 1875), he examines the Lettish popular songs about the\nSun, the Sun's daughters, the god-sons, and so forth.  Here, of course,\nhe is dealing with popular songs explicitly devoted to solar phenomena,\nin their poetical aspect.  In the Lettish Sun-songs and Sun-myths of the\npeasants we see, he says, a myth-world 'in process of becoming,' in an\nearly state of development, as in the Veda (p. 325).  But, we may reply,\nin the Veda, myths are already full-grown, or even decadent.  Already\nthere are unbelievers in the myths.  Thus we would say, in the Veda we\nhave (1) myths of nature, formed in the remote past, and (2) poetical\nphrases about heavenly phenomena, which resemble the nature-poetry of the\nLetts, but which do not become full-grown myths.  The Lett songs, also,\nhave not developed into myths, of which (as in the Apollo and Daphne\nstory, by Mr. Max Muller's hypothesis) _the original meaning is lost_.\n\nIn the Lett songs we have a mass of nature-pictures--the boat and the\napples of the Sun, the red cloak hung on the oak-tree, and so on;\npictures by which it is sought to make elemental phenomena intelligible,\nby comparison with familiar things.  Behind the phenomena are, in popular\nbelief, personages--mythical personages--the Sun as 'a magnified\nnon-natural man,' or woman; the Sun's mother, daughters, and other\nheavenly people.  Their conduct is 'motived' in a human way.  Stories are\ntold about them: the Sun kills the Moon, who revives.\n\nAll this is perfectly familiar everywhere.  Savages, in their fables,\naccount for solar, lunar, and similar elemental processes, on the theory\nthat the heavenly bodies are, and act like, human beings.  The Eskimo\nmyth of the spots on the Moon, marks of ashes thrown by the Sun in a love-\nquarrel, is an excellent example.  But in all this there is no 'disease\nof language.'  These are frank nature-myths, 'aetiological,' giving a\nfabulous reason for facts of nature.\n\n\n\nMannhardt on Marchen.\n\n\nBut Mannhardt goes farther.  He not only recognises, as everyone must do,\nthe Sun, as explicitly named, when he plays his part in myth, or popular\ntale (Marchen).  He thinks that even when the Sun is not named, his\npresence, and reference to him, and derivation of the incidents in\nMarchen from solar myth, may sometimes be detected with great probability\n(pp. 326, 327).  But he adds, 'not that every Marchen contains a\nreference to Nature; that I am far from asserting' (p. 327).\n\nNow perhaps nobody will deny that some incidents in Marchen may have been\noriginally suggested by nature-myths.  The all-swallowing and\nall-disgorging beast, wolf, or ogre, may have been derived from a view of\nNight as the all-swallower.  But to disengage natural phenomena,\nmythically stated, from the human tangle of Marchen, to find natural\nphenomena in such a palimpsest as Perrault's courtly and artificial\nversion of a French popular tale, is a delicate and dangerous task.  In\nmany stories a girl has three balls--one of silver, one of gold, one of\ndiamond--which she offers, in succession, as bribes.  This is a perfectly\nnatural invention.  It is perilous to connect these balls, gifts of\nascending value, with the solar apple of iron, silver, and gold (p. 103\nand note 5).  It is perilous, and it is quite unnecessary.  Some\none--Gubernatis, I think--has explained the naked sword of Aladdin, laid\nbetween him and the Sultan's daughter in bed, as the silver sickle of the\nMoon.  Really the sword has an obvious purpose and meaning, and is used\nas a symbol in proxy-marriages.  The blood shed by Achilles in his latest\nvictories is elsewhere explained as red clouds round the setting Sun,\nwhich is conspicuously childish.  Mannhardt leans, at least, in this\ndirection.\n\n\n\n'The Two Brothers'\n\n\nMannhardt takes the old Egyptian tale of 'The Two Brothers,' Bitiou and\nAnepou.  This fable, as old, in actual written literature, as Moses, is a\ncomplex of half the Marchen plots and incidents in the world.  It opens\nwith the formula of Potiphar's Wife.  The falsely accused brother flies,\nand secretes his life, or separable soul, in a flower of the mystic Vale\nof Acacias.  This affair of the separable soul may be studied in Mr.\nHartland's Perseus, and it animates, as we shall see, Mr. Frazer's theory\nof the Origin of Totemism.  A golden lock of the wicked wife's hair is\nthen borne by the Nile to the king's palace in Egypt.  He will insist on\nmarrying the lady of the lock.  Here we are in the Cinderella formula, en\nplein, which may be studied, in African and Santhal shapes, in Miss\nCoxe's valuable Cinderella. {60}  Pharaoh's wise men decide that the\nowner of the lock of hair is (like Egyptian royalty at large) a daughter\nof the Sun-god (p. 239).  Here is the Sun, in all his glory; but here we\nare dealing with a literary version of the Marchen, accommodated to royal\ntastes and Egyptian ideas of royalty by a royal scribe, the courtly\nPerrault of the Egyptian Roi-Soleil.  Who can say what he\nintroduced?--while we _can_ say that the Sun-god is absent in South\nAfrican and Santhal and other variants.  The Sun may have slipped out\nhere, may have been slipped in there; the faintest glimmer of the\nhistorical sense prevents us from dogmatising.\n\nWedded to Pharaoh, the wicked wife, pursuing her vengeance on Bitiou,\ncuts down his life-tree.  Anepou, his brother, however, recovers his\nconcealed heart (life), and puts it in water.  Bitiou revives.  He\nchanges himself into the sacred Bull, Apis--a feature in the story which\nis practically possible in Egypt alone.  The Bull tells the king his\nstory, but the wicked wife has the Bull slain, as by Cambyses in\nHerodotus.  Two of his blood-drops become two persea trees.  One of them\nconfesses the fact to the wicked wife.  She has them cut down; a chip\nflies into her mouth, she becomes a mother by the chip, the boy (Bitiou)\nagain becomes king, and slays his mother, the wicked wife.\n\nIn the tree, any tree, acacia or persea, Mannhardt wishes to recognise\nthe Sun-tree of the Lett songs.  The red blossoms of the persea tree are\na symbol of the Sun-tree: of Horus.  He compares features, not always\nvery closely analogous, in European Marchen.  For example, a girl hides\nin a tree, like Charles II. at Boscobel.  That is not really analogous\nwith Bitiou's separable life in the acacia!  'Anepou' is like 'Anapu,'\nAnubis.  The Bull is the Sun, is Osiris--dead in winter.  Mr. Frazer,\nMannhardt's disciple, protests a grands cris against these\nidentifications when made by others than Mannhardt, who says, 'The\nMarchen is an old obscure solar myth' (p. 242).  To others the story of\nBitiou seems an Egyptian literary complex, based on a popular set of\ntales illustrating furens quid femina possit, and illustrating the world-\nwide theory of the separable life, dragging in formulas from other\nMarchen, and giving to all a thoroughly classical Egyptian colouring.\n{61a}  Solar myths, we think, have not necessarily anything to make in\nthe matter.\n\n\n\nThe Golden Fleece\n\n\nMannhardt reasons in much the same way about the Golden Fleece.  This is\na peculiarly Greek feature, interwoven with the world-wide Marchen of the\nLad, the Giant's helpful daughter, her aid in accomplishing feats\notherwise impossible, and the pursuit of the pair by the father.  I have\nstudied the story--as it occurs in Samoa, among Red Indian tribes, and\nelsewhere--in 'A Far-travelled Tale.' {61b}  In our late Greek versions\nthe Quest of the Fleece of Gold occurs, but in no other variants known to\nme.  There is a lamb (a boy changed into a lamb) in Romaic.  His fleece\nis of no interest to anybody.  Out of his body grows a tree with a golden\napple.  Sun-yarns occur in popular songs.  Mannhardt (pp. 282, 283)\nabounds in solar explanations of the Fleece of Gold, hanging on the oak-\ntree in the dark AEaean forest.  Idyia, wife of the Colchian king, 'is\nclearly the Dawn.'  Aia is the isle of the Sun.  Helle=Surya, a Sanskrit\nSun-goddess; the golden ram off whose back she falls, while her brother\nkeeps his seat, is the Sun.  Her brother, Phrixus, may be the Daylight.\nThe oak-tree in Colchis is the Sun-tree of the Lettish songs.  Perseus is\na hero of Light, born in the Dark Tower (Night) from the shower of gold\n(Sun-rays).\n\n'We can but say \"it may be so,\"' but who could explain all the complex\nPerseus-saga as a statement about elemental phenomena?  Or how can the\nFar-travelled Tale of the Lad and the Giant's Daughter be interpreted to\nthe same effect, above all in the countless examples where no Fleece of\nGold occurs?  The Greek tale of Jason is made up of several Marchen, as\nis the Odyssey, by epic poets.  These Marchen have no necessary\nconnection with each other; they are tagged on to each other, and\nlocalised in Greece and on the Euxine. {62a}  A poetic popular view of\nthe Sun may have lent the peculiar, and elsewhere absent, incident of the\nquest of the Fleece of Gold on the shores of the Black Sea.  The old epic\npoets may have borrowed from popular songs like the Lettish chants (p.\n328).  A similar dubious adhesion may be given by us in the case of\nCastor and Polydeuces (Morning and Evening Stars?), and Helen (Dawn),\n{62b} and the Hesperides (p. 234).  The germs of the myths _may_ be\npopular poetical views of elemental phenomena.  But to insist on\nelemental allegories through all the legends of the Dioskouroi, and of\nthe Trojan war, would be to strain a hypothesis beyond the\nbreaking-point.  Much, very much, is epic invention, unverkennbar das\nwerk der Dichter (p. 328).\n\n\n\nMannhardt's Approach to Mr. Max Muller\n\n\nIn this essay on Lettish Sun-songs (1875) Mannhardt comes nearest to Mr.\nMax Muller.  He cites passages from him with approval (cf. pp. 314, 322).\nHis explanations, by aid of Sun-songs, of certain features in Greek\nmythology are plausible, and may be correct.  But we turn to Mannhardt's\nexplicit later statement of his own position in 1877, and to his\nposthumous essays, published in 1884; and, on the whole, we find, in my\nopinion, much more difference from than agreement with the Oxford\nProfessor, whose Dawn-Daphne and other equations Mannhardt dismisses, and\nto whose general results (in mythology) he assigns a value so restricted.\nIt is a popular delusion that the anthropological mythologists deny the\nexistence of solar myths, or of nature-myths in general.  These are\nextremely common.  What we demur to is the explanation of divine and\nheroic myths at large as solar or elemental, when the original sense has\nbeen lost by the ancient narrators, and when the elemental explanation\nrests on conjectural and conflicting etymologies and interpretations of\nold proper names--Athene, Hera, Artemis, and the rest.  Nevertheless,\nwhile Mannhardt, in his works on Tree-cult, and on Field and Wood Cult,\nand on the 'Corn Demon,' has wandered far from 'his old colours'--while\nin his posthumous essays he is even more of a deserter, his essay on\nLettish Sun-myths shows an undeniable tendency to return to Mr. Max\nMuller's camp.  This was what made his friends so anxious.  It is\nprobably wisest to form our opinion of his final attitude on his preface\nto his last book published in his life-time.  In that the old colours are\nnot exactly his chosen banner; nor can the flag of the philological\nschool be inscribed tandem triumphans.\n\nIn brief, Mannhardt's return to his old colours (1875-76) seems to have\nbeen made in a mood from which he again later passed away.  But either\nmodern school of mythology may cite him as an ally in one or other of his\nphases of opinion.\n\n\n\n\nPHILOLOGY AND DEMETER ERINNYS\n\n\nMr. Max Muller on Demeter Erinnys.\n\n\nLike Mannhardt, our author in his new treatise discusses the strange old\nArcadian myth of the horse-Demeter Erinnys (ii. 537).  He tells the\nunseemly tale, and asks why the Earth goddess became a mare?  Then he\ngives the analogous myth from the Rig-Veda, {65} which, as it stands, is\n'quite unintelligible.'  But Yaska explains that Saranyu, daughter of\nTvashtri, in the form of a mare, had twins by Vivasvat, in the shape of a\nstallion.  Their offspring were the Asvins, who are more or less\nanalogous in their helpful character to Castor and Pollux.  Now, can it\nbe by accident that Saranyu in the Veda is Erinnys in Greek?  To this\n'equation,' as we saw, Mannhardt demurred in 1877.  Who was Saranyu?\nYaska says 'the Night;' that was Yaska's idea.  Mr. Max Muller adds, 'I\nthink he is right,' and that Saranyu is 'the grey dawn' (ii. 541).\n\n'But,' the bewildered reader exclaims, 'Dawn is one thing and Night is\nquite another.'  So Yaska himself was intelligent enough to observe,\n'Night is the wife of Aditya; she vanishes at sunrise.'  However, Night\nin Mr. Max Muller's system 'has just got to be' Dawn, a position proved\nthus: 'Yaska makes this clear by saying that the time of the Asvins, sons\nof Saranyu, is after midnight,' but that 'when darkness prevails over\nlight, that is Madhyama; when light prevails over darkness, that is\nAditya,' both being Asvins.  They (the Asvins) are, in fact, darkness and\nlight; and _therefore_, I understand, Saranyu, who is Night, and not an\nAsvin at all, is Dawn!  To make this perfectly clear, remember that the\nhusband of Saranyu, whom she leaves at sunrise, is--I give you three\nguesses--is the Sun!  The Sun's wife leaves the Sun at sunrise. {66}  This\nis proved, for Aditya is Vivasvat=the Sun, and is the husband of Saranyu\n(ii. 541).  These methods of proving Night to be Dawn, while the\nsubstitute for both in the bed of the Sun 'may have been meant for the\ngloaming' (ii. 542), do seem to be geistvolle Spiele des Witzes,\ningenious jeux d'esprit, as Mannhardt says, rather than logical\narguments.\n\nBut we still do not know how the horse and mare came in, or why the\nstatue of Demeter had a horse's head.  'This seems simply to be due to\nthe fact that, quite apart from this myth, the sun had, in India at\nleast, often been conceived as a horse . . . . and the dawn had been\nlikened to a mare.'  But how does this explain the problem?  The Vedic\npoets cited (ii. 542) either referred to the myth which we have to\nexplain, or they used a poetical expression, knowing perfectly well what\nthey meant.  As long as they knew what they meant, they could not make an\nunseemly fable out of a poetical phrase.  Not till after the meaning was\nforgotten could the myth arise.  But the myth existed already in the\nVeda!  And the unseemliness is precisely what we have to account for;\nthat is our enigma.\n\nOnce more, Demeter is a goddess of Earth, not of Dawn.  How, then, does\nthe explanation of a hypothetical Dawn-myth apply to the Earth?  Well,\nperhaps the story, the unseemly story, was first told of Erinnys (who\nalso is 'the inevitable Dawn') or of Deo, 'and this name of Deo, or\nDyava, was mixed up with a hypokoristic form of Demeter, Deo, and thus\nled to the transference of her story to Demeter.  I know this will sound\nvery unlikely to Greek scholars, yet I see no other way out of our\ndifficulties' (ii. 545).  Phonetic explanations follow.\n\n'To my mind,' says our author, 'there is no chapter in mythology in which\nwe can so clearly read the transition of an auroral myth of the Veda into\nan epic chapter of Greece as in the chapter of Saranyu (or Surama) and\nthe Asvins, ending in the chapter of Helena and her brothers, the\n[Greek]' (ii. 642).  Here, as regards the Asvins and the Dioskouroi,\nMannhardt may be regarded as Mr. Max Muller's ally; but compare his note,\nA. F. u. W. K. p. xx.\n\n\n\nMy Theory of the Horse Demeter\n\n\nMannhardt, I think, ought to have tried at an explanation of myths so\nclosely analogous as those two, one Indian, one Greek, in which a\ngoddess, in the shape of a mare, becomes mother of twins by a god in the\nform of a stallion.  As Mr. Max Muller well says, 'If we look about for\nanalogies we find nothing, as far as I know, corresponding to the well-\nmarked features of this barbarous myth among any of the uncivilised\ntribes of the earth.  If we did, how we should rejoice!  Why, then,\nshould we not rejoice when we find the allusion in Rig Veda?' (x 17, 1).\n\nI do rejoice!  The 'song of triumph,' as Professor Tiele says, will be\nfound in M. R. R. ii. 266 (note), where I give the Vedic and other\nreferences.  I even asked why Mr. Max Muller did not produce this proof\nof the identity of Saranyu and Demeter Erinnys in his Selected Essays\n(pp. 401, 492).\n\nI cannot explain why this tale was told both of Erinnys and of Saranyu.\nGranting the certainty of the etymological equation, Saranyu=Erinnys\n(which Mannhardt doubted), the chances against fortuitous coincidence may\nbe reckoned by algebra, and Mr. Edgeworth's trillions of trillions feebly\nexpress it.  Two goddesses, Indian and Greek, have, ex hypothesi, the\nsame name, and both, as mares, are mothers of twins.  Though the twins\n(in India the Asvins, in Greek an ideal war-horse and a girl) differ in\ncharacter, still the coincidence is evidential.  Explain it I cannot,\nand, clearly as the confession may prove my lack of scientific exactness,\nI make it candidly.\n\nIf I must offer a guess, it is that Greeks, and Indians of India,\ninherited a very ordinary savage idea.  The gods in savage myths are\nusually beasts.  As beasts they beget anthropomorphic offspring.  This is\nthe regular rule in totemism.  In savage myths we are not told 'a god'\n(Apollo, or Zeus, or Poseidon) 'put on beast shape and begat human sons\nand daughters' (Helen, the Telmisseis, and so on).  The god in savage\nmyths was a beast already, though he could, of course, shift shapes like\nany 'medicine-man,' or modern witch who becomes a hare.  This is not the\nexception but the rule in savage mythology.  Anyone can consult my Myth,\nRitual, and Religion, or Mr. Frazer's work Totemism, for abundance of\nevidence.  To Loki, a male god, prosecuting his amours as a female horse,\nI have already alluded, and in M. R. R. give cases from the Satapatha\nBrahmana.\n\nThe Saranyu-Erinnys myth dates, I presume, from this savage state of\nfancy; but why the story occurred both in Greece and India, I protest\nthat I cannot pretend to explain, except on the hypothesis that the\nancestors of Greek and Vedic peoples once dwelt together, had a common\nstock of savage fables, and a common or kindred language.  After their\ndispersion, the fables admitted discrepancies, as stories in oral\ncirculation occasionally do.  This is the only conjecture which I feel\njustified in suggesting to account for the resemblances and incongruities\nbetween the myths of the mare Demeter-Erinnys and the mare Saranyu.\n\n\n\n\nTOTEMISM\n\n\nTotemism\n\n\nTo the strange and widely diffused institution of 'Totemism' our author\noften returns.  I shall deal here with his collected remarks on the\ntheme, the more gladly as the treatment shows how very far Mr. Max Muller\nis from acting with a shadow of unfairness when he does not refer to\nspecial passages in his opponent's books.  He treats himself and his own\nearlier works in the same fashion, thereby, perhaps, weakening his\nargument, but also demonstrating his candour, were any such demonstration\nrequired.\n\nOn totems he opens (i. 7)--\n\n'When we come to special cases we must not imagine that much can be\ngained by using such general terms as Animism, Totemism, Fetishism, &c.,\nas solvents of mythological problems.  To my mind, all such general\nterms, not excluding even Darwinism or Puseyism, seem most objectionable,\nbecause they encourage vague thought, vague praise, or vague blame.\n\n'It is, for instance, quite possible to place all worship of animal gods,\nall avoidance of certain kinds of animal food, all adoption of animal\nnames as the names of men and families, under the wide and capacious\ncover of totemism.  All theriolatry would thus be traced back to\ntotemism.  I am not aware, however, that any Egyptologists have adopted\nsuch a view to account for the animal forms of the Egyptian gods.\nSanskrit scholars would certainly hesitate before seeing in Indra a totem\nbecause he is called vrishabha, or bull, or before attempting to explain\non this ground the abstaining from beef on the part of orthodox Hindus\n[i. 7].'\n\n\n\nTotemism Defined\n\n\nI think I have defined totemism, {71} and the reader may consult Mr.\nFrazer's work on the subject, or Mr. MacLennan's essays, or 'Totemism' in\nthe Encyclopaedia Britannica.  However, I shall define totemism once\nmore.  It is a state of society and cult, found most fully developed in\nAustralia and North America, in which sets of persons, believing\nthemselves to be akin by blood, call each such set by the name of some\nplant, beast, or other class of objects in nature.  One kin may be\nwolves, another bears, another cranes, and so on.  Each kin derives its\nkin-name from its beast, plant, or what not; pays to it more or less\nrespect, usually abstains from killing, eating, or using it (except in\noccasional sacrifices); is apt to claim descent from or relationship with\nit, and sometimes uses its effigy on memorial pillars, carved pillars\noutside huts, tattooed on the skin, and perhaps in other ways not known\nto me.  In Australia and North America, where rules are strict, a man may\nnot marry a woman of his own totem; and kinship is counted through\nmothers in many, but not in all, cases.  Where all these notes are\ncombined we have totemism.  It is plain that two or three notes of it may\nsurvive where the others have perished; may survive in ritual and\nsacrifice, {72a} and in bestial or semi-bestial gods of certain nomes, or\ndistricts, in ancient Egypt; {72b} in Pictish names; {72c} in claims of\ndescent from beasts, or gods in the shape of beasts; in the animals\nsacred to gods, as Apollo or Artemis, and so on.  Such survivals are\npossible enough in evolution, but the evidence needs careful examination.\nAnimal attributes and symbols and names in religion are not necessarily\ntotemistic.  Mr. Max Muller asks if 'any Egyptologists have adopted' the\ntotem theory.  He is apparently oblivious of Professor Sayce's reference\nto a prehistoric age, 'when the religious creed of Egypt was still\ntotemism.'\n\nDr. Codrington is next cited for the apparent absence of totemism in the\nSolomon Islands and Polynesia, and Professor Oldenberg as denying that\n'animal names of persons and clans [necessarily?] imply totemism.'  Who\nsays that they do?  'Clan Chattan,' with its cat crest, may be based, not\non a totem, but on a popular etymology.  Animal names of _individuals_\nhave nothing to do with totems.  A man has no business to write on\ntotemism if he does not know these facts.\n\n\n\nWhat a Totem is\n\n\nThough our adversary now abandons totems, he returns to them elsewhere\n(i. 198-202).  'Totem is the corruption of a term used by North American\nIndians in the sense of clan-mark or sign-board (\"ododam\").'  The totem\nwas originally a rude emblem of an animal or other object 'placed by\nNorth American Indians in front of their settlements.'\n\n\n\nThe Evidence for Sign-boards\n\n\nOur author's evidence for sign-boards is from an Ottawa Indian, and is\npublished from his MS. by Mr. Hoskyns Abrahall. {73}  The testimony is of\nthe greatest merit, for it appears to have first seen the light in a\nCanadian paper of 1858.  Now in 1858 totems were only spoken of in\nLafitau, Long, and such old writers, and in Cooper's novels.  They had\nnot become subjects of scientific dispute, so the evidence is\nuncontaminated by theory.  The Indians were, we learn, divided into\n[local?] tribes, and these 'into sections or families according to their\nododams'--devices, signs, in modern usage 'coats of arms.'  [Perhaps\n'crests' would be a better word.]  All people of one ododam (apparently\nunder male kinship) lived together in a special section of each village.\nAt the entrance to the enclosure was the figure of an animal, or some\nother sign, set up on the top of one of the posts.  Thus everybody knew\nwhat family dwelt in what section of the village.  Some of the families\nwere called after their ododam.  But the family with the bear ododam were\ncalled Big Feet, not Bears.  Sometimes parts of different animals were\n'quartered' [my suggestion], and one ododam was a small hawk and the fins\nof a sturgeon.\n\nWe cannot tell, of course, on the evidence here, whether 'Big Feet'\nsuggested 'Bear,' or vice versa, or neither.  But Mr. Frazer has remarked\nthat periphrases for sacred beasts, like 'Big Feet' for Bear, are not\nuncommon.  Nor can we tell 'what couple of ancestors' a small hawk and a\nsturgeon's fins represent, unless, perhaps, a hawk and a sturgeon. {74a}\n\nFor all this, Mr. Max Muller suggests the explanation that people who\nmarked their abode with crow or wolf might come to be called Wolves or\nCrows. {74b}  Again, people might borrow beast names from the prevalent\nbeast of their district, as Arkades, [Greek], Bears, and so evolve the\nmyth of descent from Callisto as a she-bear.  'All this, however, is only\nguesswork.'  The Snake Indians worship no snake.  [The Snake Indians are\nnot a totem group, but a local tribe named from the Snake River, as we\nsay, 'An Ettrick man.']  Once more, the name-giving beast, say, 'Great\nHare,' is explained by Dr. Brinton as 'the inevitable Dawn.' {74c}  'Hasty\nwriters,' remarks Dr. Brinton, 'say that the Indians claim descent from\ndifferent wild beasts.'  For evidence I refer to that hasty writer, Mr.\nFrazer, and his book, Totemism.  For a newly sprung up modern totem our\nauthor alludes to a boat, among the Mandans, 'their totem, or tutelary\nobject of worship.'  An object of worship, of course, is not necessarily\na totem!  Nor is a totem by the definition (as a rule one of a _class_ of\nobjects) anything but a _natural_ object.  Mr. Max Muller wishes that\n'those who write about totems and totemism would tell us exactly what\nthey mean by these words.'  I have told him, and indicated better\nsources.  I apply the word totemism to the widely diffused savage\ninstitution which I have defined.\n\n\n\nMore about Totems\n\n\nThe origin of totemism is unknown to me, as to Mr. McLennan and Dr.\nRobertson Smith, but Mr. Max Muller knows this origin.  'A totem is a\nclan-mark, then a clan-name, then the name of the ancestor of a clan, and\nlastly the name of something worshipped by a clan' (i. 201).  'All this\napplies in the first instance to Red Indians only.'  Yes, and 'clan'\napplies in the first instance to the Scottish clans only!  When Mr. Max\nMuller speaks of 'clans' among the Red Indians, he uses a word whose\nconnotation differs from anything known to exist in America.  But the\nanalogy between a Scottish clan and an American totem-kin is close enough\nto justify Mr. Max Muller in speaking of Red Indian 'clans.'  By parity\nof reasoning, the analogy between the Australian Kobong and the American\ntotem is so complete that we may speak of 'Totemism' in Australia.  It\nwould be childish to talk of 'Totemism' in North America, 'Kobongism' in\nAustralia, 'Pacarissaism' in the realm of the Incas: totems, kobongs, and\npacarissas all amounting to the same thing, except in one point.  I am\nnot aware that Australian blacks erect, or that the subjects of the\nIncas, or that African and Indian and Asiatic totemists, erected 'sign-\nboards' anywhere, as the Ottawa writer assures us that the Ottawas do, or\nused to do.  And, if they don't, how do we know that kobongs and\npacarissas were developed out of sign-boards?\n\n\n\nHeraldry and Totems\n\n\nThe Ottawas are armigeri, are heraldic; so are the natives of Vancouver's\nIsland, who have wooden pillars with elaborate quarterings.  Examples are\nin South Kensington Museum.  But this savage heraldry is not nearly so\ncommon as the institution of totemism.  Thus it is difficult to prove\nthat the heraldry is the origin of totemism, which is just as likely, or\nmore likely, to have been the origin of savage heraldic crests and\nquarterings.  Mr. Max Muller allows that there may be other origins.\n\n\n\nGods and Totems\n\n\nOur author refers to unnamed writers who call Indra or Ammon a totem (i.\n200).\n\nThis is a foolish liberty with language.  'Why should not all the gods of\nEgypt with their heads of bulls and apes and cats be survivals of\ntotemisms?'  Why not, indeed?  Professor Sayce remarks, 'They were the\nsacred animals of the clans,' survivals from an age 'when the religion of\nEgypt was totemism.'  'In Egypt the gods themselves are totem-deities,\ni.e. personifications or individual representations of the sacred\ncharacter and attributes which in the purely totem stage of religion were\nascribed without distinction to all animals of the holy kind.'  So says\nDr. Robertson Smith.  He and Mr. Sayce are 'scholars,' not mere\nunscholarly anthropologists. {76}\n\n\n\nAn Objection\n\n\nLastly (ii. 403), when totems infected 'even those who ought to have been\nproof against this infantile complaint' (which is not even a 'disease of\nlanguage' of a respectable type), then 'the objection that a totem meant\noriginally a clan-mark was treated as scholastic pedantry.'  Alas, I fear\nwith justice!  For if I call Mr. Arthur Balfour a Tory will Mr. Max\nMuller refute my opinion by urging that 'a Tory meant originally an Irish\nrapparee,' or whatever the word _did_ originally mean?\n\nMr. Max Muller decides that 'we never find a religion consisting\nexclusively of a belief in fetishes, or totems, or ancestral spirits.'\nHere, at last, we are in absolute agreement.  So much for totems and sign-\nboards.  Only a weak fanatic will find a totem in every animal connected\nwith gods, sacred names, and religious symbols.  But totemism is a fact,\nwhether 'totem' originally meant a clan-mark or sign-board in America or\nnot.  And, like Mr. Sayce, Mr. Frazer, Mr. Rhys, Dr. Robertson Smith, I\nbelieve that totemism has left marks in civilised myth, ritual, and\nreligion, and that these survivals, not a 'disease of language,' explain\ncertain odd elements in the old civilisations.\n\n\n\nA Weak Brother\n\n\nOur author's habit of omitting references to his opponents has here\ncaused me infinite inconvenience.  He speaks of some eccentric person who\nhas averred that a 'fetish' is a 'totem,' inhabited by 'an ancestral\nspirit.'  To myself it seems that you might as well say 'Abracadabra is\ngas and gaiters.'  As no reference was offered, I invented 'a wild\nsurmise' that Mr. Max Muller had conceivably misapprehended Mr. Frazer's\ntheory of the origin of totems.  Had our author only treated himself\nfairly, he would have referred to his own Anthropological Religion (pp.\n126 and 407), where the name of the eccentric definer is given as that of\nHerr Lippert. {78}  Then came into my mind the words of Professor Tiele,\n'Beware of weak brethren'--such as Herr Lippert seems, as far as this\ndefinition is concerned, to be.\n\nNobody knows the origin of totemism.  We find no race on its way to\nbecoming totemistic, though we find several in the way of ceasing to be\nso.  They are abandoning female kinship for paternity; their rules of\nmarriage and taboo are breaking down; perhaps various totem kindreds of\ndifferent crests and names are blending into one local tribe, under the\nname, perhaps, of the most prosperous totem-kin.  But we see no race on\nits way to becoming totemistic, so we have no historical evidence as to\nthe origin of the institution.  Mr. McLennan offered no conjecture,\nProfessor Robertson Smith offered none, nor have I displayed the spirit\nof scientific exactitude by a guess in the dark.  To gratify Mr. Max\nMuller by defining totemism as Mr. McLennan first used the term is all\nthat I dare do.  Here one may remark that if Mr. Max Muller really wants\n'an accurate definition' of totemism, the works of McLennan, Frazer,\nRobertson Smith, and myself are accessible, and contain our definitions.\nHe does not produce these definitions, and criticise them; he produces\nDr. Lippert's and criticises that.  An argument should be met in its\nstrongest and most authoritative form.  'Define what you mean by a\ntotem,' says Professor Max Muller in his Gifford Lectures of 1891 (p.\n123).  He had to look no further for a definition, an authoritative\ndefinition, than to 'totem' in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, or to\nMcLennan.  Yet his large and intelligent Glasgow audience, and his\nreaders, may very well be under the impression that a definition of\n'totem' is 'still to seek,' like Prince Charlie's religion.  Controversy\nsimply cannot be profitably conducted on these terms.\n\n'The best representatives of anthropology are now engaged not so much in\ncomparing as in discriminating.' {79}  Why not refer, then, to the\nresults of their discriminating efforts?  'To treat all animal worship as\ndue to totemism is a mistake.'  Do we make it?\n\n\n\nMr. Frazer and Myself\n\n\nThere is, or was, a difference of opinion between Mr. Frazer and myself\nas to the causes of the appearance of certain sacred animals in Greek\nreligion.  My notions were published in Myth, Ritual, and Religion\n(1887), Mr. Frazer's in The Golden Bough (1890).  Necessarily I was\nunaware in 1887 of Mr. Frazer's still unpublished theory.  Now that I\nhave read it, he seems to me to have the better logic on his side; and if\nI do not as yet wholly agree with him, it is because I am not yet certain\nthat both of our theories may not have their proper place in Greek\nmythology.\n\n\n\nGreek Totemism\n\n\nIn C. and M. (p. 106) I describe the social aspects of totemism.  I ask\nif there are traces of it in Greece.  Suppose, for argument's sake, that\nin prehistoric Greece the mouse had been a totem, as it is among the\nOraons of Bengal. {80}  In that case (1) places might be named from a\nmouse tribe; (2) mice might be held sacred per se; (3) the mouse name\nmight be given locally to a god who superseded the mouse in pride of\nplace; (4) images of the mouse might be associated with that of the god,\n(5) and used as a local badge or mark; (6) myths might be invented to\nexplain the forgotten cause of this prominence of the mouse.  If all\nthese notes occur, they would raise a presumption in favour of totemism\nin the past of Greece.  I then give evidence in detail, proving that all\nthese six facts do occur among Greeks of the Troads and sporadically\nelsewhere.  I add that, granting for the sake of argument that these\ntraces may point to totemism in the remote past, the mouse, though\noriginally a totem, '_need not have been an Aryan totem_' (p. 116).\n\nI offer a list of other animals closely connected with Apollo, giving him\na beast's name (wolf, ram, dolphin), and associated with him in myth and\nart.  In M. R. R. I apply similar arguments in the case of Artemis and\nthe Bear, of Dionysus and the Bull, Demeter and the Pig, and so forth.\nMoreover, I account for the myths of descent of Greek human families from\ngods disguised as dogs, ants, serpents, bulls, and swans, on the\nhypothesis that kindreds who originally, in totemistic fashion, traced to\nbeasts sans phrase, later explained their own myth to themselves by\nsaying that the paternal beast was only a god in disguise and en bonne\nfortune.\n\nThis hypothesis at least 'colligates the facts,' and brings them into\nintelligible relationship with widely-diffused savage institutions and\nmyths.\n\n\n\nThe Greek Mouse-totem?\n\n\nMy theory connecting Apollo Smintheus and the place-names derived from\nmice with a possible prehistoric mouse-totem gave me, I confess,\nconsiderable satisfaction.  But in Mr. Frazer's Golden Bough (ii. 129-\n132) is published a group of cases in which mice and other vermin are\nworshipped for prudential reasons--to get them to go away.  In the\nClassical Review (vol. vi. 1892) Mr. Ward Fowler quotes Aristotle and\nAElian on plagues of mice, like the recent invasion of voles on the\nBorder sheep-farms.  He adopts the theory that the sacred mice were\nadored by way of propitiating them.  Thus Apollo may be connected with\nmice, not as a god who superseded a mouse-totem, but as an expeller of\nmice, like the worm-killing Heracles, and the Locust-Heracles, and the\nLocust-Apollo. {81a}  The locust is still painted red, salaamed to, and\nset free in India, by way of propitiating his companions. {81b}  Thus the\nMouse-Apollo (Smintheus) would be merely a god noted for his usefulness\nin getting rid of mice, and any worship given to mice (feeding them,\nplacing their images on altars, their stamp on coins, naming places after\nthem, and so on) would be mere acts of propitiation.\n\nThere would be no mouse-totem in the background.  I do not feel quite\nconvinced--the mouse being a totem, and a sacred or tabooed animal, in\nIndia and Egypt. {82a}  But I am content to remain in a balance of\nopinion.  That the Mouse is the Night (Gubernatis), or the Lightning\n(Grohmann), I am disinclined to believe.  Philologists are very apt to\njump at contending meteorological explanations of mice and such small\ndeer without real necessity, and an anthropologist is very apt to jump at\nan equally unnecessary and perhaps equally undemonstrated totem.\n\n\n\nPhilological Theory\n\n\nPhilological mythologists prefer to believe that the forgotten meaning of\nwords produced the results; that the wolf-born Apollo ([Greek])\noriginally meant 'Light-born Apollo,' {82b} and that the wolf came in\nfrom a confusion between [Greek], 'Light,' and [Greek], a wolf.  I make\nno doubt that philologists can explain Sminthian Apollo, the Dog-Apollo,\nand all the rest in the same way, and account for all the other\npeculiarities of place-names, myths, works of art, local badges, and so\nforth.  We must then, I suppose, infer that these six traits of the\nmouse, already enumerated, tally with the traces which actual totemism\nwould or might leave surviving behind it, or which propitiation of mice\nmight leave behind it, by a chance coincidence, determined by forgotten\nmeanings of words.  The Greek analogy to totemistic facts would be\nexplained, (1) either by asking for a definition of totemism, and not\nlistening when it is given; or (2) by maintaining that savage totemism is\nalso a result of a world-wide malady of language, which, in a hundred\ntongues, produced the same confusions of thought, and consequently the\nsame practices and institutions.  Nor do I for one moment doubt that the\ningenuity of philologists could prove the name of every beast and plant,\nin every language under heaven, to be a name for the 'inevitable dawn'\n(Max Muller), or for the inevitable thunder, or storm, or lightning (Kuhn-\nSchwartz).  But as names appear to yield storm, lightning, night, or dawn\nwith equal ease and certainty, according as the scholar prefers dawn or\nstorm, I confess that this demonstration would leave me sceptical.  It\nlacks scientific exactitude.\n\n\n\nMr. Frazer on  Animals in Greek Religion\n\n\nIn The Golden Bough (ii. 37) Mr. Frazer, whose superior knowledge and\nacuteness I am pleased to confess, has a theory different from that which\nI (following McLennan) propounded before The Golden Bough appeared.\nGreece had a bull-shaped Dionysus. {83a}  'There is left no room to doubt\nthat in rending and devouring a live bull at his festival, his\nworshippers believed that they were killing the god, eating his flesh,\nand drinking his blood.' {83b}  Mr. Frazer concludes that there are two\npossible explanations of Dionysus in his bull aspect. (1)  This was an\nexpression of his character as a deity of vegetation, 'especially as the\nbull is a common embodiment of the corn-spirit in Northern Europe.' {84a}\n(2)  The other possible explanation 'appears to be the view taken by Mr.\nLang, who suggests that the bull-formed Dionysus \"had either been\ndeveloped out of, or had succeeded to, the worship of a bull-totem.\"'\n{84b}\n\nNow, anthropologists are generally agreed, I think, that occasional\nsacrifices of and communion in the flesh of the totem or other sacred\nanimals do occur among totemists. {84c}  But Mr. Frazer and I both admit,\nand indeed are eager to state publicly, that the evidence for sacrifice\nof the totem, and communion in eating him, is very scanty.  The fact is\nrather inferred from rites among peoples just emerging from totemism (see\nthe case of the Californian buzzard, in Bancroft) than derived from\nactual observation.  On this head too much has been taken for granted by\nanthropologists.  But I learn that direct evidence has been obtained, and\nis on the point of publication.  The facts I may not anticipate here, but\nthe evidence will be properly sifted, and bias of theory discounted.\n\nTo return to my theory of the development of Dionysus into a totem, or of\nhis inheritance of the rites of a totem, Mr. Frazer says, 'Of course this\nis possible, but it is not yet certain that Aryans ever had totemism.'\n{84d}  Now, in writing of the mouse, I had taken care to observe that, in\norigin, the mouse as a totem need not have been Aryan, but adopted.\nPeople who think that the Aryans did not pass through a stage of\ntotemism, female kin, and so forth, can always fall back (to account for\napparent survivals of such things among Aryans) on 'Pre-Aryan conquered\npeoples,' such as the Picts.  Aryans may be enticed by these bad races\nand become Pictis ipsis Pictiores.\n\n\n\nAryan Totems (?)\n\n\nGenerally speaking (and how delightfully characteristic of us all is\nthis!), I see totems in Greek sacred beasts, where Mr. Frazer sees the\ncorn-spirit embodied in a beast, and where Mr. Max Muller sees (in the\ncase of Indra, called the bull) 'words meaning simply male, manly,\nstrong,' an 'animal simile.' {85a}  Here, of course, Mr. Max Muller is\nwholly in the right, when a Vedic poet calls Indra 'strong bull,' or the\nlike.  Such poetic epithets do not afford the shadow of a presumption for\nVedic totemism, even as a survival.  Mr. Frazer agrees with me and Mr.\nMax Muller in this certainty.  I myself say, 'If in the shape of Indra\nthere be traces of fur and feather, they are not very numerous nor very\ndistinct, but we give them for what they may be worth.'  I then give\nthem. {85b}  To prove that I do not force the evidence, I take the Vedic\ntext. {85c}  'His mother, a cow, bore Indra, an unlicked calf.'  I then\ngive Sayana's explanation.  Indra entered into the body of Dakshina, and\nwas reborn of her.  She also bore a cow.  But this legend, I say, 'has\nrather the air of being an invention, apres coup, to account for the\nVedic text of calf Indra, born from a cow, than of being a genuine\nancient myth.'  The Vedic myth of Indra's amours in shape of a ram, I say\n'will doubtless be explained away as metaphorical.'  Nay, I will go\nfurther.  It is perfectly conceivable to me that in certain cases a\npoetic epithet applied by a poet to a god (say bull, ram, or snake)\n_might_ be misconceived, and _might_ give rise to the worship of a god as\na bull, or snake, or ram.  Further, if civilised ideas perished, and if a\nrace retained a bull-god, born of their degradation and confusion of\nmind, they might eat him in a ritual sacrifice.  But that _all_\ntotemistic races are totemistic, because they all first metaphorically\napplied animal names to gods, and then forgot what they had meant, and\nworshipped these animals, sans phrase, appears to me to be, if not\nincredible, still greatly in want of evidence.\n\n\n\nMr. Frazer and I\n\n\nIt is plain that where a people claim no connection by descent and blood\nfrom a sacred animal, are neither of his name nor kin, the essential\nfeature of totemism is absent.  I do not see that eaters of the bull\nDionysus or cultivators of the pig Demeter {86} made any claim to kindred\nwith either god.  Their towns were not allied in name with pig or bull.\nIf traces of such a belief existed, they have been sloughed off.  Thus\nMr. Frazer's explanation of Greek pigs and bulls and all their odd rites,\nas connected with the beast in which the corn-spirit is incarnate, holds\nits ground better than my totemistic suggestion.  But I am not sure that\nthe corn-spirit accounts for the Sminthian mouse in all his aspects, nor\nfor the Arcadian and Attic bear-rites and myths of Artemis.  Mouse and\nbear do appear in Mr. Frazer's catalogue of forms of the corn-spirits,\ntaken from Mannhardt. {87}  But the Arcadians, as we shall see, _claimed\ndescent_ from a bear, and the mouse place-names and badges of the Troad\nyield a hint of the same idea.  The many Greek family claims to descent\nfrom gods as dogs, bulls, ants, serpents, and so on, _may_ spring from\ngratitude to the corn-spirit.  Does Mr. Frazer think so?  Nobody knows so\nwell as he that similar claims of descent from dogs and snakes are made\nby many savage kindreds who have no agriculture, no corn, and, of course,\nno corn-spirits.  These remarks, I trust, are not undiscriminating, and\nnaturally I yield the bull Dionysus and the pig Demeter to the\ncorn-spirit, vice totem, superseded.  But I do hanker after the Arcadian\nbear as, at least, a possible survival of totemism.  The Scottish school\ninspector removed a picture of Behemoth, as a fabulous animal, from the\nwall of a school room.  But, not being sure of the natural history of the\nunicorn, 'he just let him bide, and gave the puir beast the benefit o'\nthe doubt.'\n\nWill Mr. Frazer give the Arcadian bear 'the benefit of the doubt'?\n\nI am not at all bigoted in the opinion that the Greeks may have once been\ntotemists.  The strongest presumption in favour of the hypothesis is the\nmany claims of descent from a god disguised as a beast.  But the\ninstitution, if ever it did exist among the ancestors of the Greeks, had\ndied out very long before Homer.  We cannot expect to find traces of the\nprohibition to marry a woman of the same totem.  In Rome we do find\ntraces of exogamy, as among totemists.  'Formerly they did not marry\nwomen connected with them by blood.' {88a}  But we do not find, and would\nnot expect to find, that the 'blood' was indicated by the common totem.\n\n\n\nMr. Frazer on Origin of Totemism\n\n\nMr. Frazer has introduced the term 'sex-totems,' in application to\nAustralia.  This is connected with his theory of the Origin of Totemism.\nI cannot quite approve of the term sex-totems.\n\nIf in Australia each sex has a protecting animal--the men a bat, the\nwomen an owl--if the slaying of a bat by a woman menaces the death of a\nman, if the slaying of an owl by a woman may cause the decease of a man,\nall that is very unlike totemism in other countries.  Therefore, I ask\nMr. Frazer whether, in the interests of definite terminology, he had not\nbetter give some other name than 'totem' to his Australian sex protecting\nanimals?  He might take for a _local_ fact, a _local_ name, and say 'Sex-\nkobong.'\n\nOnce more, for even we anthropologists have our bickerings, I would\n'hesitate dislike' of this passage in Mr. Frazer's work: {88b}\n\n'When a savage _names himself_ after an animal, calls it his brother, and\nrefuses to kill it, the animal is said to be his totem.'  Distinguo!  A\nsavage does not name _himself_ after his totem, any more than Mr. Frazer\nnamed himself by his clan-name, originally Norman.  It was not as when\nMiss Betty Amory named herself 'Blanche,' by her own will and fantasy.  A\nsavage _inherits_ his totem name, usually through the mother's side.  The\nspecial animal which protects an individual savage (Zapotec, tona;\nGuatemalan, nagual; North America, Manitou, 'medicine') is _not_ that\nsavage's totem. {89a}  The nagual, tona, or manitou is selected for each\nparticular savage, at birth or puberty, in various ways: in America,\nNorth and Central, by a dream in a fast, or after a dream.\n('Post-hypnotic suggestion.')  But a savage is born to his kin-totem.  A\nman is born a wolf of the Delawares, his totem is the wolf, he cannot\nhelp himself.  But after, or in, his medicine fast and sleep, he may\nchoose a dormouse or a squirrel for his manitou (tona, nagual) or\n_private_ protecting animal.  These are quite separate from totems, as\nMr. Max Muller also points out.\n\nOf totems, I, for one, must always write in the sense of Mr. McLennan,\nwho introduced totemism to science.  Thus, to speak of 'sex-totems,' or\nto call the protecting animal of each individual a 'totem,' is, I fear,\nto bring in confusion, and to justify Mr. Max Muller's hard opinion that\n'totemism' is ill-defined.  For myself, I use the term in the strict\nsense which I have given, and in no other.\n\nMr. McLennan did not profess, as we saw, to know the origin of totems.  He\nonce made a guess in conversation with me, but he abandoned it.  Professor\nRobertson Smith did not know the origin of totems.  'The origin of totems\nis as much a problem as the origin of local gods.' {89b}  Mr. Max Muller\nknows the origin: sign-boards are the origin, or one origin.  But what\nwas the origin of sign-boards?  'We carry the pictures of saints on our\nbanners because we worship them; we don't worship them because we carry\nthem as banners,' says De Brosses, an acute man.  Did the Indians worship\ntotems because they carved them on sign-boards (if they all did so), or\ndid they carve them on sign-boards because they worshipped them?\n\n\n\nMr. Frazer's Theory\n\n\nThe Australian respects his 'sex-totem' because the life of his sex is\nbound up in its life.  He speaks of it as his brother, and calls himself\n(as distinguished by his sex) by its name.  As a man he is a bat, as a\nwoman his wife is an owl.  As a member of a given human kin he may be a\nkangaroo, perhaps his wife may be an emu.  But Mr. Frazer derives\ntotemism, all the world over, from the same origin as he assigns to 'sex-\ntotems.'  In these the life of each sex is bound up, therefore they are\nby each sex revered.  Therefore totemism must have the same origin,\nsubstituting 'kin' or 'tribe' for sex.  He gives examples from Australia,\nin which killing a man's totem killed the man. {90}\n\nI would respectfully demur or suggest delay.  Can we explain an American\ninstitution, a fairly world-wide institution, totemism, by the local\npeculiarities of belief in isolated Australia?  If, in America, to kill a\nwolf was to kill Uncas or Chingachgook, I would incline to agree with Mr.\nFrazer.  But no such evidence is adduced.  Nor does it help Mr. Frazer to\nplead that the killing of an American's nagual or of a Zulu's Ihlozi\nkills that Zulu or American.  For a nagual, as I have shown, is one thing\nand a totem is another; nor am I aware that Zulus are totemists.  The\nargument of Mr. Frazer is based on analogy and on a special instance.\nThat instance of the Australians is so archaic that it _may_ show\ntotemism in an early form.  Mr. Frazer's may be a correct hypothesis, but\nit needs corroboration.  However, Mr. Frazer concludes: 'The totem, if I\nam right, is simply the receptacle in which a man keeps his life.'  Yet\nhe never shows that a Choctaw _does_ keep his life in his totem.  Perhaps\nthe Choctaw is afraid to let out so vital a secret.  The less reticent\nAustralian blurts it forth.  Suppose the hypothesis correct.  Men and\nwomen keep their lives in their naguals, private sacred beasts.  But why,\non this score, should a man be afraid to make love to a woman of the same\nnagual?  Have Red Indian _women_ any naguals?  I never heard of them.\n\nSince writing this I have read Miss Kingsley's Travels in West Africa.\nThere the 'bush-souls' which she mentions (p. 459) bear analogies to\ntotems, being inherited sacred animals, connected with the life of\nmembers of families.  The evidence, though vaguely stated, favours Mr.\nFrazer's hypothesis, to which Miss Kingsley makes no allusion.\n\n\n\n\nTHE VALIDITY OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL EVIDENCE\n\n\nAnthropological Evidence\n\n\nIn all that we say of totemism, as, later, of fetishism, we rely on an\nenormous mass of evidence from geographers, historians, travellers,\nsettlers, missionaries, explorers, traders, Civil Servants, and European\nofficers of native police in Australia and Burmah.  Our witnesses are of\nall ages, from Herodotus to our day, of many nations, of many creeds, of\ndifferent theoretical opinions.  This evidence, so world-wide, so\ndiversified in source, so old, and so new, Mr. Max Muller impugns.  But,\nbefore meeting his case, let us clear up a personal question.\n\n\n\n'Positions one never held'\n\n\n   'It is not pleasant [writes our author] to have to defend positions\n   which one never held, nor wishes to hold, and I am therefore all the\n   more grateful to those who have pointed out the audacious\n   misrepresentations of my real opinion in comparative mythology, and\n   have rebuked the flippant tone of some of my eager critics' [i. 26,\n   27].\n\nI must here confess to the belief that no gentleman or honest man ever\n_consciously_ misrepresents the ideas of an opponent.  If it is not too\nflippant an illustration, I would say that no bowler ever throws\nconsciously and wilfully; his action, however, may unconsciously develop\ninto a throw.  There would be no pleasure in argument, cricket, or any\nother sport if we knowingly cheated.  Thus it is always _unconsciously_\nthat adversaries pervert, garble, and misrepresent each other's opinions;\nunconsciously, not 'audaciously.'  If people would start from the major\npremise that misrepresentations, if such exist, are unconscious errors,\nmuch trouble would be spared.\n\n\n\nPositions which I never held\n\n\nThus Mr. Max Muller never dreamed of 'audaciously misrepresenting' me\nwhen, in four lines, he made two statements about my opinions and my\nmaterials which are at the opposite pole from the accurate (i. 12): 'When\nI speak of the Vedic Rishis as primitive, I do not mean what Mr. A. Lang\nmeans when he calls his savages primitive.'  But I have stated again and\nagain that I _don't_ call my savages 'primitive.'  Thus 'contemporary\nsavages may be degraded, they certainly are not primitive.' {93a}  'One\nthing about the past of [contemporary] savages we do know: it must have\nbeen a long past.' {93b}  'We do not wish to call savages primitive.'\n{93c}  All this was written in reply to the very proper caution of Dr.\nFairbairn that 'savages are not primitive.'  Of course they are not; that\nis of the essence of my theory.  I regret the use of the word 'primitive'\neven in Primitive Culture.  Savages, as a rule, are _earlier_, more\nbackward than civilised races, as, of course, Mr. Max Muller admits,\nwhere language is concerned. {94}  Now, after devoting several pages to\nshowing in detail how very far from primitive even the Australian tribes\nare, might I (if I were ill-natured) not say that Mr. Max Muller\n'audaciously misrepresents' me when he avers that I 'call my savages\nprimitive'?  But he never dreamed of misrepresenting me; he only happened\nnot to understand my position.  However, as he complains in his own case,\n'it is not pleasant to have to defend positions which one never held' (i.\n26), and, indeed, I shall defend no such position.\n\nMy adversary next says that my 'savages are of the nineteenth century.'\nIt is of the essence of my theory that my savages are of many different\ncenturies.  Those described by Herodotus, Strabo, Dio Cassius, Christoval\nde Moluna, Sahagun, Cieza de Leon, Brebeuf, Garoilasso de la Vega,\nLafitau, Nicholas Damascenus, Leo Africanus, and a hundred others, are\n_not_ of the nineteenth century.  This fact is essential, because the\nevidence of old writers, from Herodotus to Egede, corroborates the\nevidence of travellers, Indian Civil Servants, and missionaries of today,\nby what Dr. Tylor, when defending our materials, calls 'the test of\nrecurrence.'  Professor Millar used the same argument in his Origin of\nRank, in the last century.  Thus Mr. Max Muller unconsciously\nmisrepresents me (and my savages) when he says that my 'savages are of\nthe nineteenth century.'  The fact is the reverse.  They are of many\ncenturies.  These two unconscious misrepresentations occur in four\nconsecutive lines.\n\n\n\nAnthropological Evidence\n\n\nIn connection with this topic (the nature of anthropological evidence),\nMr. Max Muller (i. 205-207) repeats what he has often said before.  Thus\nhe cites Dr. Codrington's remarks, most valuable remarks, on the\ndifficulty of reporting correctly about the ideas and ways of savages.  I\nhad cited the same judicious writer to the same effect, {95} and had\ncompiled a number of instances in which the errors of travellers were\nexposed, and their habitual fallacies were detected.  Fifteen closely\nprinted pages were devoted by me to a criterion of evidence, and a reply\nto Mr. Max Muller's oft-repeated objections.\n\n   'When [I said] we find Dr. Codrington taking the same precautions in\n   Melanesia as Mr. Sproat took among the Ahts, and when his account of\n   Melanesian myths reads like a close copy of Mr. Sproat's account of\n   Aht legends, and when both are corroborated [as to the existence of\n   analogous savage myths] by the collections of Bleek, and Hahn, and\n   Gill, and Castren, and Rink, in far different corners of the world;\n   while the modern testimony of these scholarly men is in harmony with\n   that of the old Jesuit missionaries, and of untaught adventurers who\n   have lived for many years with savages, surely it will be admitted\n   that the difficulty of ascertaining savage opinion has been, to a\n   great extent, overcome.'\n\nI also cited at length Dr. Tylor's masterly argument to the same effect,\nan argument offered by him to 'a great historian,' apparently.\n\n\n\nMr. Max Muller's Method of Controversy\n\n\nNow no member of the reading public, perusing Mr. Max Muller on\nanthropological evidence (i. 24-26, 205-207), could guess that his\ncautions about evidence are not absolutely new to us.  He could not guess\nthat Dr. Tylor replied to them 'before they were made' by our present\ncritic (I think), and that I did the same with great elaboration.  Our\ndefence of our evidence is not noticed by Mr. Max Muller.  He merely\nrepeats what he has often said before on the subject, exactly as if\nanthropologists were ignorant of it, and had not carefully studied,\nassimilated, profited by it, and answered it.  Our critic and monitor\nmight have said, 'I have examined your test of _recurrences_, and what\nelse you have to urge, and, for such and such reasons, I must reject it.'\nThen we could reconsider our position in this new light.  But Mr. Max\nMuller does not oblige us in this way.\n\n\n\nMr. Max Muller on our Evidence\n\n\nIn an earlier work, The Gifford Lectures for 1891, {96} our author had\ndevoted more space to a criticism of our evidence.  To this, then, we\nturn (pp. 169-180, 413-436).  Passing Mr. Max Muller's own difficulties\nin understanding a Mohawk (which the Mohawk no doubt also felt in\nunderstanding Mr. Max Muller), we reach (p. 172) the fables about godless\nsavages.  These, it is admitted, are exploded among scholars in\nanthropology.  So we do, at least, examine evidence.  Mr. Max Muller now\nfixes on a flagrant case, some fables about the godless Mincopies of the\nAndaman Islands.  But _he_ relies on the evidence of Mr. Man.  So do I,\nas far as it seems beyond doubt. {97a}  Mr. Man is 'a careful observer, a\nstudent of language, and perfectly trustworthy.'  These are the reasons\nfor which I trust him.  But when Mr. Man says that the Mincopies have a\ngod, Puluga, who inhabits 'a stone house in the sky,' I remark, 'Here the\nidea of the stone house is necessarily borrowed from our stone houses at\nPort Blair.' {97b}  When Mr. Man talks of Puluga's only-begotten son, 'a\nsort of archangel,' medium between Puluga and the angels, I 'hesitate a\ndoubt.'  Did not this idea reach the Mincopie mind from the same quarter\nas the stone house, especially as Puluga's wife is 'a green shrimp or an\neel'?  At all events, it is right to bear in mind that, as the stone\nhouse of the Mincopie heaven is almost undeniably of European origin, the\nonly-begotten mediating son of Puluga and the green shrimp _may_ bear\ntraces of Christian teaching.  Caution is indicated.\n\nDoes Mr. Max Muller, so strict about evidence, boggle at the stone house,\nthe only son, the shrimp?  Not he; he never hints at the shrimp!  Does he\npoint out that one anthropologist has asked for caution in weighing what\nthe Mincopies told Mr. Man?  Very far from that, he complains that 'the\nold story is repeated again and again' about the godless Andamans. {97c}\nThe intelligent Glasgow audience could hardly guess that anthropologists\nwere watchful, and knew pretty well what to believe about the Mincopies.\nPerhaps in Glasgow they do not read us anthropologists much.\n\nOn p. 413 our author returns to the charge.  He observes (as I have also\nobserved) the often contradictory nature of our evidence.  Here I may\noffer an anecdote.  The most celebrated of living English philosophers\nheard that I was at one time writing a book on the 'ghostly' in history,\nanthropology, and society, old or new, savage or civilised.  He kindly\ndictated a letter to me asking how I could give time and pains to any\nsuch marvels.  For, he argued, the most unveracious fables were\noccasionally told about himself in newspapers and social gossip.  If\nevidence cannot be trusted about a living and distinguished British\nsubject, how can it be accepted about hallucinations?\n\nI replied, with respect, that on this principle nothing could be\ninvestigated at all.  History, justice, trade, everything would be\nimpossible.  We must weigh and criticise evidence.  As my friendly\nadviser had written much on savage customs and creeds, he best knew that\nconflicting testimony, even on his own chosen theme, is not peculiar to\nghost stories.  In a world of conflicting testimony we live by\ncriticising it.  Thus, when Mr. Max Muller says that I call my savages\n'primitive,' and when I, on the other hand, quote passages in which I\nexplicitly decline to do so, the evidence as to my views is\ncontradictory.  Yet the truth can be discovered by careful research.\n\nThe application is obvious.  We must not despair of truth!  As our\nmonitor says, 'we ought to discard all evidence that does not come to us\neither from a man who was able himself to converse with native races, or\nwho was at least an eye-witness of what he relates.'  Precisely, that is\nour method.  I, for one, do not take even a ghost story at second hand,\nmuch less anything so startling as a savage rite.  And we discount and\nallow for every bias and prejudice of our witnesses.  I have made a list\nof these idola in M. R. R. ii. 334-344.\n\nMr. Max Muller now gives a list of inconsistencies in descriptions of\nAustralian Blacks.  They are _not_ Blacks, they have a dash of copper\ncolour!  Well, I never said that they had 'the sooty tinge of the African\nnegro.'  Did anybody?\n\nMr. Ridley thinks that all natives are called 'Murri.'  Mr. Curr says\n'No.'  Important.  We must reserve our judgment.\n\nMissionaries say the Blacks are 'devoid of moral ideas.'  What\nmissionaries?  What anthropologist believes such nonsense?  There are\ndifferences of opinion about landed property, communal or private.  The\ndifference rages among historians of civilised races.  So, also, as to\nportable property.  Mr. Curr (Mr. Max Muller's witness) agrees here with\nthose whose works I chiefly rely on.\n\n'Mr. McLennan has built a whole social theory on the statement' (a single\nstatement) 'made by Sir George Grey, and contradicted by Mr. Curr.'  Mr.\nMcLennan would be, I think, rather surprised at this remark; but what\nwould he do?  Why, he would re-examine the whole question, decide by the\nbalance of evidence, and reject, modify, or retain his theory\naccordingly.\n\nAll sciences have to act in this way; therefore almost all scientific\ntheories are fluctuating.  Nothing here is peculiar to anthropology.  A\nsingle word, or two or three, will prove or disprove a theory of phonetic\nlaws.  Even phonetics are disputable ground.\n\nIn defence of my late friend Mr. McLennan, I must point out that if he\nbuilt a whole social theory on a single statement of Sir George Grey's,\nand if Mr. Curr denies the truth of the statement, Mr. Frazer has\nproduced six or seven witnesses to the truth of that very statement in\nother parts of the world than Australia. {100}  To this circumstance we\nmay return.\n\nMr. Max Muller next produces Mr. Curr's opinions about the belief in a\ngod and morality among Australians.  'Here he really contradicts\nhimself.'  The disputable evidence about Australian marriage laws is next\nshown to be disputable.  That is precisely why Dr. Tylor is applying to\nit his unrivalled diligence in accurate examination.  We await his\nresults.  Finally, the contradictory evidence as to Tasmanian religion is\nexposed.  We have no Codrington or Bleek for Tasmania.  The Tasmanians\nare extinct, and Science should leave the evidence as to their religion\nout of her accounts.  We cannot cross-examine defunct Tasmanians.\n\nFrom all this it follows that anthropologists must sift and winnow their\nevidence, like men employed in every other branch of science.  And who\ndenies it?  What anthropologist of mark accepts as gospel any casual\ntraveller's tale?\n\n\n\nThe Test of Recurrences\n\n\nEven for travellers' tales we have a use, we can apply to them Dr.\nTylor's 'Test of Recurrences.'\n\n   'If two independent visitors to different countries, say a mediaeval\n   Mahommedan in Tartary and a modern Englishman in Dahomey, or a Jesuit\n   missionary in Brazil and a Wesley an in the Fiji Islands, agree in\n   describing some analogous art, or rite, or myth among the people they\n   have visited, it becomes difficult or impossible to set down such\n   correspondence to accident or wilful fraud.  A story by a bushranger\n   in Australia may perhaps be objected to as a mistake or an invention,\n   but did a Methodist minister in Guinea conspire with him to cheat the\n   public by telling the same story there?'\n\nThe whole passage should be read: it was anticipated by Professor Millar\nin his Origin of Rank, and has been restated by myself. {101a}  Thus I\nwrote (in 1887) 'it is to be regretted that Mr. Max Muller entirely omits\nto mention . . . the corroboration which is derived from the undesigned\ncoincidence of independent testimony.'\n\nIn 1891-1892 he still entirely omits to mention, to his Glasgow audience,\nthe strength of his opponents' case.  He would serve us better if he\nwould criticise the test of recurrences, and show us its weak points.\n\n\n\nBias of Theory\n\n\nYes, our critic may reply, 'but Mr. Curr thinks that there is a strong\ntendency in observers abroad, if they have become acquainted with a new\nand startling theory that has become popular at home, to see\nconfirmations of it everywhere.'  So I had explicitly stated in\ncommenting on Dr. Tylor's test of recurrences. {101b}  'Travellers and\nmissionaries have begun to read anthropological books, and their evidence\nis, therefore, much more likely to be biassed now by anthropological\ntheories than it was of old.'  So Mr. McLennan, in the very earliest of\nall writings on totemism, said: 'As the totem has not till now got itself\nmixed up with speculations the observers have been unbiassed.'  Mr.\nMcLennan finally declined to admit any evidence as to the savage marriage\nlaws collected after his own theory, and other theories born from it, had\nbegun to bias observers of barbaric tribes.\n\nIt does not quite seem to me that Mr. Max Muller makes his audience\nacquainted with these precautions of anthropologists, with their sedulous\nsifting of evidence, and watchfulness against the theoretical bias of\nobservers.  Thus he assails the faible, not the fort of our argument, and\nmay even seem not to be aware that we have removed the faible by careful\ndiscrimination.\n\nWhat opinion must his readers, who know not Mr. McLennan's works,\nentertain about that acute and intrepid pioneer, a man of warm temper, I\nadmit, a man who threw out his daringly original theory at a heat, using\nat first such untrustworthy materials as lay at hand, but a man whom\ndisease could not daunt, and whom only death prevented from building a\nstately edifice on the soil which he was the first to explore?\n\nOur author often returns to the weakness of the evidence of travellers\nand missionaries.\n\n\n\nConcerning Missionaries\n\n\nHere is an example of a vivacite in our censor.  'With regard to ghosts\nand spirits among the Melanesians, our authorities, whether missionaries,\ntraders, or writers on ethnology, are troubled by no difficulties' (i.\n207).  Yet on this very page Mr. Max Muller has been citing the\n'difficulties' which _do_ 'trouble' a 'missionary,' Dr. Codrington.  And,\nfor my own part, when I want information about Melanesian beliefs, it is\nto Dr. Codrington's work that I go. {103}  The doctor, himself a\nmissionary, ex hypothesi 'untroubled by difficulties,' has just been\nquoted by Mr. Max Muller, and by myself, as a witness to the difficulties\nwhich trouble himself and us.  What can Mr. Max Muller possibly mean?  Am\nI wrong?  Was Dr. Codrington _not_ a missionary?  At all events, he is\nthe authority on Melanesia, a 'high' authority (i. 206).\n\n\n\n\nTHE PHILOLOGICAL METHOD IN ANTHROPOLOGY\n\n\nMr. Max Muller as Ethnologist\n\n\nOur author is apt to remonstrate with his anthropological critics, and to\nassure them that he also has made studies in ethnology.  'I am not such a\ndespairer of ethnology as some ethnologists would have me.'  He refers us\nto the assistance which he lent in bringing out Dr. Hahn's Tsuni-Goam\n(1881), Mr. Gill's Myths and Songs from the South Pacific (1876), and\nprobably other examples could be added.  But my objection is, not that we\nshould be ungrateful to Mr. Max Muller for these and other valuable\nservices to anthropology, but that, when he has got his anthropological\nmaterial, he treats it in what I think the wrong way, or approves of its\nbeing so treated.\n\nHere, indeed, is the irreconcilable difference between two schools of\nmythological interpretation.  Given Dr. Hahn's book, on Hottentot manners\nand religion: the anthropologist compares the Hottentot rites, beliefs,\nsocial habits, and general ideas with those of other races known to him,\nsavage or civilised.  A Hottentot custom, which has a meaning among\nHottentots, may exist where its meaning is lost, among Greeks or other\n'Aryans.'  A story of a Hottentot god, quite a natural sort of tale for a\nHottentot to tell, may be told about a god in Greece, where it is\ncontrary to the Greek spirit.  We infer that the Greeks perhaps inherited\nit from savage ancestors, or borrowed it from savages.\n\n\n\nNames of Savage Gods\n\n\nThis is the method, and if we can also get a scholar to analyse the\n_names_ of Hottentot gods, we are all the luckier, that is, if his\nprocesses and inferences are _logical_.  May we not decide on the _logic_\nof scholars?  But, just as Mr. Max Muller points out to us the dangers\nattending our evidence, we point out to him the dangers attending his\nmethod.  In Dr. Hahn's book, the doctor analyses the meaning of the name\nTsuni-Goam and other names, discovers their original sense, and from that\nsense explains the myths about Hottentot divine beings.\n\nHere we anthropologists first ask Mr. Max Muller, before accepting Dr.\nHahn's etymologies, to listen to other scholars about the perils and\ndifficulties of the philological analysis of divine names, even in Aryan\nlanguages.  I have already quoted his 'defender,' Dr. Tiele.  'The\nphilological method is inadequate and misleading, when it is a question\nof (1) discovering the origin of a myth, or (2) the physical explanation\nof the oldest myths, or (3) of accounting for the rude and obscene\nelement in the divine legends of civilised races.'\n\nTo the two former purposes Dr. Hahn applies the philological method in\nthe case of Tsuni-Goam.  Other scholars agree with Dr. Tiele.  Mannhardt,\nas we said, held that Mr. Max Muller's favourite etymological\n'equations,' Sarameya=Hermeias; Saranyu=Demeter-Erinnys;\nKentauros=Gandharvas and others, would not stand criticism.  'The method\nin its practical working shows a lack of the historical sense,' said\nMannhardt.  Curtius--a scholar, as Mr. Max Muller declares (i. 32)--says,\n'It is especially difficult to conjecture the meaning of proper names,\nand above all of local and mythical names.' {106a}  I do not see that it\nis easier when these names are not Greek, but Hottentot, or Algonquin!\n\nThus Achilles may as easily mean 'holder of the people' as 'holder of\nstones,' i.e. a River-god!  Or does [Greek] suggest aqua, Achelous the\nRiver?  Leto, mother of Apollo, cannot be from [Greek], as Mr. Max Muller\nholds (ii. 514, 515), to which Mr. Max Muller replies, perhaps not, as\nfar as the phonetic rules go 'which determine the formation of\nappellative nouns.  It, indeed, would be extraordinary if it were. . . .'\nThe phonetic rules in Hottentot may also suggest difficulties to a South\nAfrican Curtius!\n\nOther scholars agree with Curtius--agree in thinking that the etymology\nof mythical names is a sandy foundation for the science of mythology.\n\n'The difficult task of interpreting mythical names has, so far, produced\nfew certain results,' says Otto Schrader. {106b}\n\nWhen Dr. Hahn applies the process in Hottentot, we urge with a friendly\ncandour these cautions from scholars on Mr. Max Muller.\n\n\n\nA Hottentot God\n\n\nIn Custom and Myth (p. 207), I examine the logic by which Dr. Hahn proves\nTsuni-Goam to be 'The Red Dawn.'  One of his steps is to say that few\nmeans 'sore,' or 'wounded,' and that a wound is _red_, so he gets his\n'red' in Red Dawn.  But of tsu in the sense of 'red' he gives not one\nexample, while he does give another word for 'red,' or 'bloody.'  This\nmay be scholarly but it is not evidence, and this is only one of many\nperilous steps on ground extremely scabreux, got over by a series of\nlogical leaps.  As to our quarrel with Mr. Max Muller about his friend's\ntreatment of ethnological materials, it is this: we do not believe in the\nvalidity of the etymological method when applied to many old divine names\nin Greek, still less in Hottentot.\n\n\n\nCause of our Scepticism\n\n\nOur scepticism is confirmed by the extraordinary diversity of opinion\namong scholars as to what the right analysis of old divine names is.  Mr.\nMax Muller writes (i. 18): 'I have never been able to extract from my\ncritics the title of a single book in which my etymologies and my\nmythological equations had been seriously criticised by real scholars.'\nWe might answer, 'Why tell you what you know very well?'  For (i. 50) you\nsay that while Signer Canizzaro calls some of your 'equations'\n'irrefutably demonstrated,' 'other scholars declare these equations are\nfutile and impossible.'  Do these other scholars criticise your equations\nnot 'seriously'?  Or are you ignorant of the names of their works?\n\nAnother case.  Our author says that 'many objections were raised' to his\n'equation' of Athene=Ahana='Dawn' (ii. 378, 400, &c.).  Have the\nobjections ceased?  Here are a few scholars who do not, or did not,\naccept Athene=Ahana: Welcker, Benfey, Curtius, Preller, Furtwangler,\nSchwartz, and now Bechtel (i. 378).  Mr. Max Muller thinks that he is\nright, but, till scholars agree, what can we do but wait?\n\n\n\nPhonetic Bickerings\n\n\nThe evidence turns on theories of phonetic laws as they worked in pre-\nHomeric Greece.  But these laws, as they apply to common ordinary words,\nneed _not_, we are told, be applied so strictly to proper names, as of\ngods and heroes.  These are a kind of comets, and their changes cannot be\ncalculated like the changes of vulgar words, which answer to stars (i.\n298).  Mr. Max Muller 'formerly agreed with Curtius that phonetic rules\nshould be used against proper names with the same severity as against\nordinary nouns and verbs.'  Benfey and Welcker protested, so does\nProfessor Victor Henry.  'It is not fair to demand from mythography the\nrigorous observation of phonetics' (i. 387).  'This may be called\nbacksliding,' our author confesses, and it _does_ seem rather a 'go-as-\nyou-please' kind of method.\n\n\n\nPhonetic Rules\n\n\nMr. Max Muller argues at length (and, to my ignorance, persuasively) in\nfavour of a genial laxity in the application of phonetic rules to old\nproper names.  Do they apply to these as strictly as to ordinary words?\n'This is a question that has often been asked . . . but it has never been\nboldly answered' (i. 297).  Mr. Max Muller cannot have forgotten that\nCurtius answered boldly--in the negative.  'Without such rigour all\nattempts at etymology are impossible.  For this very reason ethnologists\nand mythologists should make themselves acquainted with the simple\nprinciples of comparative philology.' {109}\n\nBut it is not for us to settle such disputes of scholars.  Meanwhile\ntheir evidence is derived from their private interpretations of old\nproper names, and they differ among themselves as to whether, in such\ninterpretations, they should or should not be governed strictly by\nphonetic laws.  Then what Mr. Max Muller calls 'the usual bickerings'\nbegin among scholars (i. 416).  And Mr. Max Muller connects Ouranos with\nVedic Varuna, while Wackernagel prefers to derive it from [Greek], urine,\nand this from [Greek]=Sk. Varshayami, to rain (ii. 416, 417), and so it\ngoes on for years with a glorious uncertainty.  If Mr. Max Muller's\nequations are scientifically correct, the scholars who accept them not\nmust all be unscientific.  Or else, this is not science at all.\n\n\n\nBasis of a Science\n\n\nA science in its early stages, while the validity of its working laws in\napplication to essential cases is still undetermined, must, of course,\nexpect 'bickerings.'  But philological mythologists are actually trying\nto base one science, Mythology, on the still shifting and sandy\nfoundations of another science, Phonetics.  The philologists are\nquarrelling about their 'equations,' and about the application of their\nphonetic laws to mythical proper names.  On the basis of this shaking\nsoil, they propose to build _another_ science, Mythology!  Then, pleased\nwith the scientific exactitude of their evidence, they object to the\nlaxity of ours.\n\n\n\nPhilology in Action--Indra\n\n\nAs an example of the philological method with a Vedic god, take Indra.  I\ndo not think that science is ever likely to find out the whole origins of\nany god.  Even if his name mean 'sky,' Dyaus, Zeus, we must ask what mode\nof conceiving 'sky' is original.  Was 'sky' thought of as a person, and,\nif so, as a savage or as a civilised person; as a god, sans phrase; as\nthe inanimate visible vault of heaven; as a totem, or how?  Indra, like\nother gods, is apt to evade our observation, in his origins.  Mr. Max\nMuller asks, 'what should we gain if we called Indra . . . a totem?'  Who\ndoes?  If we derive his name from the same root as 'ind-u,' _raindrop_,\nthen 'his starting-point was the rain' (i. 131).  Roth preferred 'idh,'\n'indh,' _to kindle_; and later, his taste and fancy led him to 'ir,' or\n'irv,' _to have power over_.  He is variously regarded as god of 'bright\nfirmament,' of air, of thunderstorm personified, and so forth. {110}  His\nname is not detected among other Aryan gods, and his birth may be _after_\nthe 'Aryan Separation' (ii. 752).  But surely his name, even so, might\nhave been carried to the Greeks?  This, at least, should not astonish Mr.\nMax Muller.  One had supposed that Dyaus and Zeus were separately\ndeveloped, by peoples of India and Greece, from a common, pre-separation,\nAryan root.  One had not imagined that the Greeks _borrowed_ divine names\nfrom Sanskrit and from India.  But this, too, might happen! (ii. 506).\nMr. Max Muller asks, 'Why should not a cloud or air goddess _of India_,\nwhether called Svara or Urvasi, have supplied the first germs from which\n[Greek] descended?'  Why not, indeed, if prehistoric Greeks were in touch\nwith India?  I do not say they were not.  Why should not a Vedic or\nSanskrit goddess of India supply the first germs of a Greek goddess? (ii.\np. 506).  Why, because 'Greek gods have never been Vedic gods, but both\nGreek and Vedic gods have started from the same germs' (ii. 429).  Our\nauthor has answered his own question, but he seems at intervals to\nsuppose, contrary to his own principles, as I understand them, that Greek\n_may_ be 'derived from' Vedic divine names, or, at least, divine names in\nSanskrit.  All this is rather confusing.\n\n\n\nObscuring the Veda\n\n\nIf Indra is called 'bull,' that at first only meant 'strong' (ii. 209).\nYet 'some very thoughtful scholars' see traces of totemism in Indra!\n{111a}  Mr. Max Muller thinks that this theory is 'obscuring the Veda by\nthis kind of light from the Dark Continent' (America, it seems).  Indra\nis said to have been born from a cow, like the African Heitsi Eibib.\n{111b}  There are unholy stories about Indra and rams.  But I for one, as\nI have said already, would never deny that these _may_ be part of the\npleasant unconscious poetry of the Vedic hymnists.  Indra's legend is\nrich in savage obscenities; they may, or may not, be survivals from\nsavagery.  At all events one sees no reason why we should not freely\ncompare parallel savageries, and why this should 'obscure' the Veda.\nComparisons are illuminating.\n\n\n\n\nCRITICISM OF FETISHISM\n\n\nMischief of Comparisons in Comparative Mythology\n\n\nNot always are comparisons illuminating, it seems.  Our author writes,\n'It may be said--in fact, it has been said--that there can at all events\nbe no harm in simply placing the myths and customs of savages side by\nside with the myths and customs of Hindus and Greeks.'  (This, in fact,\nis the method of the science of institutions.)\n\n'But experience shows that this is not so' (i. 195).  So we must not,\nshould not, simply place the myths and customs of savages side by side\nwith those of Hindus and Greeks.  It is taboo.\n\n\n\nDr. Oldenberg\n\n\nNow Dr. Oldenberg, it seems, uses such comparisons of savage and Aryan\nfaiths.  Dr. Oldenberg is (i. 209) one of several '_very thoughtful\nscholars_' who do so, who break Mr. Max Muller's prohibition.  Yet (ii.\n220) '_no true scholar_ would accept any comparison' between savage\nfables and the folklore of Homer and the Vedas 'as really authoritative\n_until fully demonstrated on both sides_.'  Well, it _is_ 'fully\ndemonstrated,' or 'a very thoughtful scholar' (like Dr. Oldenberg) would\nnot accept it.  Or it is _not_ demonstrated, and then Dr. Oldenberg,\nthough 'a very thoughtful,' is not 'a true scholar.'\n\n\n\nComparisons, when odious\n\n\nOnce more, Mr. Max Muller deprecates the making of comparisons between\nsavage and Vedic myths (i. 210), and then (i. 220) he deprecates the\n_acceptance_ of these very comparisons 'as really authoritative until\nfully demonstrated.'  Now, how is the validity of the comparisons to be\n'fully demonstrated' if we are forbidden to make them at all, because to\ndo so is to 'obscure' the Veda 'by light from the Dark Continent'?\n\n\n\nA Question of Logic\n\n\nI am not writing 'quips and cranks;' I am dealing quite gravely with the\nauthor's processes of reasoning.  'No true scholar' does what 'very\nthoughtful scholars' do.  No comparisons of savage and Vedic myths should\nbe made, but yet, 'when fully demonstrated,' 'true scholars would accept\nthem' (i 209, 220).  How can comparisons be demonstrated before they are\nmade?  And made they must not be!\n\n\n\n'Scholars'\n\n\nIt would be useful if Mr. Max Muller were to define 'scholar,' 'real\nscholar,' 'true scholar,' 'very thoughtful scholar.'  The latter may err,\nand have erred--like General Councils, and like Dr. Oldenberg, who finds\nin the Veda 'remnants of the wildest and rawest essence of religion,'\ntotemism, and the rest (i. 210).  I was wont to think that 'scholar,' as\nused by our learned author, meant 'philological mythologist,' as\ndistinguished from 'not-scholar,' that is, 'anthropological mythologist.'\nBut now 'very thoughtful scholars,' even Dr. Oldenberg, Mr. Rhys, Dr.\nRobertson Smith, and so on, use the anthropological method, so 'scholar'\nneeds a fresh definition.  The 'not-scholars,' the anthropologists, have,\nin fact, converted some very thoughtful scholars.  If we could only catch\nthe _true_ scholar!  But that we cannot do till we fully demonstrate\ncomparisons which we may not make, for fear of first 'obscuring the Veda\nby this kind of light from the Dark Continent.'\n\n\n\nAnthropology and the Mysteries\n\n\nIt is not my affair to defend Dr. Oldenberg, whose comparisons of Vedic\nwith savage rites I have never read, I am sorry to say.  One is only\narguing that the _method_ of making such comparisons is legitimate.  Thus\n(i. 232) controversy, it seems, still rages among scholars as to 'the\nobject of the Eleusinian Mysteries.'  'Does not the scholar's conscience\nwarn us against accepting whatever in the myths and customs of the Zulus\nseems to suit our purpose'--of explaining features in the Eleusinia?  If\nZulu customs, and they alone, contained Eleusinian parallels, even the\nanthropologist's conscience would whisper caution.  But this is not the\ncase.  North American, Australian, African, and other tribes have\nmysteries very closely and minutely resembling parts of the rites of the\nEleusinia, Dionysia, and Thesmophoria.  Thus Lobeck, a scholar, describes\nthe Rhombos used in the Dionysiac mysteries, citing Clemens Alexandrinus.\n{114}  Thanks to Dr. Tylor's researches I was able to show (what Lobeck\nknew not) that the Rhombos (Australian turndun, 'Bull-roarer') is also\nused in Australian, African, American, and other savage religious\nmysteries.  Now should I have refrained from producing this well-attested\nmatter of fact till I knew Australian, American, and African languages as\nwell as I know Greek?  'What century will it be when there will be\nscholars who know the dialects of the Australian blacks as well as we\nknow the dialects of Greece?' (i. 232) asks our author.  And what in the\nname of Eleusis have dialects to do with the circumstance that savages,\nlike Greeks, use Rhombi in their mysteries?  There are abundant other\nmaterial facts, visible palpable objects and practices, which savage\nmysteries have in common with the Greek mysteries. {115}  If observed by\ndeaf men, when used by dumb men, instead of by scores of Europeans who\ncould talk the native languages, these illuminating rites of savages\nwould still be evidence.  They have been seen and described often, not by\n'a casual native informant' (who, perhaps, casually invented Greek rites,\nand falsely attributed them to his tribesmen), but by educated Europeans.\n\n\n\nAbstract Ideas of Savages\n\n\nMr. Max Muller defends, with perfect justice, the existence of abstract\nideas among contemporary savages.  It appears that somebody or other has\nsaid--'we have been told' (i. 291)--'that all this' (the Mangaian theory\nof the universe) 'must have come from missionaries.'  The ideas are as\nlikely to have come from Hegel as from a missionary!  Therefore, 'instead\nof looking for idols, or for totems and fetishes, we must learn and\naccept what the savages themselves are able to tell us. . . . '  Yes, we\n_must_ learn and accept it; so I have always urged.  But if the savages\ntell us about totems, are they not then 'casual native informants'?  If a\nMaori tells you, as he does, of traditional hymns containing ideas worthy\nof Heraclitus, is _that_ quite trustworthy; whereas, if he tells you\nabout his idols and taboos, _that_ cannot possibly be worthy of\nattention?\n\n\n\nPerception of the Infinite\n\n\nFrom these extraordinary examples of abstract thought in savages, our\nauthor goes on to say that his theory of 'the perception of the Infinite'\nas the origin of religion was received 'with a storm of unfounded\nobloquy' (i. 292).  I myself criticised the Hibbert Lectures, in Mind;\n{116} on reading the essay over, I find no obloquy and no storm.  I find,\nhowever, that I deny, what our author says that I assert, the\nprimitiveness of contemporary savages.\n\nIn that essay, which, of course, our author had no reason to read, much\nwas said about fetishism, a topic discussed by Mr. Max Muller in his\nHibbert Lectures.  Fetishism is, as he says, an ill word, and has caused\nmuch confusion.\n\n\n\nFetishism and Anthropological Method\n\n\nThroughout much of his work our author's object is to invalidate the\nanthropological method.  That method sets side by side the customs,\nideas, fables, myths, proverbs, riddles, rites, of different races.  Of\ntheir _languages_ it does not necessarily take account in this process.\nNobody (as we shall see) knows the languages of all, or of most, of the\nraces whose ideas he compares.  Now the learned professor establishes the\n'harm done' by our method in a given instance.  He seems to think that,\nif a method has been misapplied, therefore the method itself is\nnecessarily erroneous.  The case stands thus: De Brosses {117a} first\ncompared 'the so-called fetishes' of the Gold Coast with Greek and Roman\namulets and other material objects of old religions.  But he did this, we\nlearn, without trying to find out _why_ a negro made a fetish of a\npebble, shell, or tiger's tail, and without endeavouring to discover\nwhether the negro's motives really were the motives of his 'postulated\nfetish worship' in Greece, Rome, or Palestine.\n\n\n\nOrigin of Fetishes\n\n\nIf so, tant pis pour monsieur le President.  But how does the\nunscientific conduct attributed to De Brosses implicate the modern\nanthropologist?  Do _we_ not try to find out, and really succeed\nsometimes in finding out, _why_ a savage cherishes this or that scrap as\na 'fetish'?  I give a string of explanations in Custom and Myth (pp. 229-\n230).  Sometimes the so-called fetish had an accidental, which was taken\nto be a causal, connection with a stroke of good luck.  Sometimes the\nthing--an odd-shaped stone, say--had a superficial resemblance to a\ndesirable object, and so was thought likely to aid in the acquisition of\nsuch objects by 'sympathetic magic.' {117b}\n\nOther 'fetishes' are revealed in dreams, or by ghosts, or by spirits\nappearing in semblance of animals. {118a}\n\n\n\n'Telekinetic' Origin of Fetishism\n\n\nAs I write comes in Melusine, viii. 7, with an essay by M. Lefebure on\nLes Origines du Fetichisme.  He derives some fetishistic practices from\nwhat the Melanesians call Mana, which, says Mr. Max Muller, 'may often be\nrendered by supernatural or magic power, present in an individual, a\nstone, or in formulas or charms' (i. 294).  How, asks Mr. Lefebure, did\nmen come to attribute this vis vivida to persons and things?  Because, in\nfact, he says, such an unexplored force does really exist and display\nitself.  He then cites Mr. Crookes' observations on scientifically\nregistered 'telekinetic' performances by Daniel Dunglas Home, he cites\nDespine on Madame Schmitz-Baud, {118b} with examples from Dr. Tylor, P.\nde la Rissachere, Dr. Gibier, {118c} and other authorities, good or bad.\nGrouping, then, his facts under the dubious title of le magnetisme, M.\nLefebure finds in savage observation of such facts 'the chief cause of\nfetishism.'\n\nSome of M. Lefebure's 'facts' (of objects moving untouched) were\ncertainly frauds, like the tricks of Eusapia.  But, even if all the facts\nrecorded were frauds, such impostures, performed by savage conjurers, who\ncertainly profess {118d} to produce the phenomena, might originate, or\nhelp to originate, the respect paid to 'fetishes' and the belief in Mana.\nBut probably Major Ellis's researches into the religion of the\nTshi-speaking races throw most light on the real ideas of African\nfetishists.  The subject is vast and complex.  I am content to show that,\nwhatever De Brosses did, _we_ do not abandon a search for the motives of\nthe savage fetishist.  Indeed, De Brosses himself did seek and find at\nleast one African motive, 'The conjurers (jongleurs) persuade them that\nlittle instruments in their possession are endowed with a living spirit.'\nSo far, fetishism is spiritualism.\n\n\n\nCivilised 'Fetishism'\n\n\nDe Brosses did not look among civilised fetishists for the motives which\nhe neglected among savages (i. 196).  Tant pis pour monsieur le\nPresident.  But we and our method no more stand or fall with De Brosses\nand his, than Mr. Max Muller's etymologies stand or fall with those in\nthe Cratylus of Plato.  If, in a civilised people, ancient or modern, we\nfind a practice vaguely styled 'fetishistic,' we examine it in its\ndetails.  While we have talismans, amulets, gamblers' fetiches, I do not\nthink that, except among some children, we have anything nearly analogous\nto Gold Coast fetishism as a whole.  Some one seems to have called the\npalladium a fetish.  I don't exactly know what the palladium (called a\nfetish by somebody) was.  The hasta fetialis has been styled a fetish--an\napparent abuse of language.  As to the Holy Cross qua fetish, why discuss\nsuch free-thinking credulities?\n\nModern anthropologists--Tylor, Frazer, and the rest--are not under the\ncensure appropriate to the illogical.\n\n\n\nMore Mischiefs of Comparison\n\n\nThe 'Nemesis' (i. 196) of De Brosses' errors did not stay in her ravaging\nprogress.  Fetishism was represented as 'the very beginning of religion,'\nfirst among the negroes, then among all races.  As I, for one,\npersistently proclaim that the beginning of religion is an inscrutable\nmystery, the Nemesis has somehow left me scatheless, propitiated by my\npiety.  I said, long ago, 'the train of ideas which leads man to believe\nin and to treasure fetishes is _one among the earliest springs_ of\nreligious belief.' {120a}  But from even this rather guarded statement I\nwithdraw.  'No man can watch the idea of GOD in the making or in the\nbeginning.' {120b}\n\n\n\nStill more Nemesis\n\n\nThe new Nemesis is really that which I have just put far from me--namely,\nthat 'modern savages represent everywhere the Eocene stratum of\nreligion.'  They _probably_ represent an _early_ stage in religion, just\nas, teste.  Mr. Max Muller, they represent an early stage in language 'In\nsavage languages we see what we can no longer expect to see even in the\nmost ancient Sanskrit or Hebrew.  We watch the childhood of language,\nwith all its childish pranks.' {120c}\n\nNow, if the tongues spoken by modern savages represent the 'childhood'\nand 'childish pranks' of language, why should the beliefs of modern\nsavages not represent the childhood and childish pranks of religion?  I\nam not here averring that they do so, nor even that Mr. Max Muller is\nright in _his_ remark on language.  The Australian blacks have been men\nas long as the Prussian nobility.  Their language has had time to outgrow\n'childish pranks,' but apparently it has not made use of its\nopportunities, according to our critic.  Does he know why?\n\nOne need not reply to the charge that anthropologists, if they are meant,\nregard modern savages 'as just evolved from the earth, or the sky,' or\nfrom monkeys (i. 197).  'Savages have a far-stretching unknown history\nbehind them.'  'The past of savages, I say, must have been a long past.'\n{121}  So, once more, the Nemesis of De Brosses fails to touch me--and,\nof course, to touch more learned anthropologists.\n\nThere is yet another Nemesis--the postulate that Aryans and Semites, or\nrather their ancestors, must have passed through the savage state.  Dr.\nTylor writes:--'So far as history is to be our criterion, progression is\nprimary and degradation secondary.  _Culture must be gained before it can\nbe lost_.'  Now a person who has not gained what Dr. Tylor calls\n'culture' (_not_ in Mr. Arnold's sense) is a man without tools,\ninstruments, or clothes.  He is certainly, so far, like a savage; is very\nmuch lower in 'culture' than any race with which we are acquainted.  As a\nmatter of hypothesis, anyone may say that man was born 'with everything\nhandsome about him.'  He has then to account for the savage elements in\nGreek myth and rite.\n\n\n\nFor Us or Against Us?\n\n\nWe now hear that the worst and last penalty paid for De Brosses'\naudacious comparison of savage with civilised superstitions is the\npostulate that Aryan and Semitic peoples have passed through a stage of\nsavagery.  'However different the languages, customs and myths, the\ncolour and the skulls of these modern savages might be from those of\nAryan and Semitic people, the latter must once have passed through the\nsame stage, must once have been what the negroes of the West Coast of\nAfrica are to-day.  This postulate has not been, and, according to its\nvery nature, cannot be proved.  But the mischief done by acting on such\npostulates is still going on, and in several cases it has come to\nthis--that what in historical religions, such as our own, is known to be\nthe most modern, the very last outcome, namely, the worship of relics or\na belief in amulets, has been represented as the first necessary step in\nthe evolution of all religions' (i. 197).\n\nI really do not know who says that the prehistoric ancestors of Aryans\nand Semites were once in the same stage as the 'negroes of the West Coast\nof Africa are to-day.'  These honest fellows are well acquainted with\ncoined money, with the use of firearms, and other resources of\ncivilisation, and have been in touch with missionaries, Miss Kingsley,\ntraders, and tourists.  The ancestors of the Aryans and Semites enjoyed\nno such advantages.  Mr. Max Muller does not tell us who says that they\ndid.  But that the ancestors of all mankind passed through a stage in\nwhich they had to develop for themselves tools, languages, clothes, and\ninstitutions, is assuredly the belief of anthropologists.  A race without\ntools, language, clothes, pottery, and social institutions, or with these\nin the shape of undeveloped speech, stone knives, and 'possum or other\nskins, is what we call a race of savages.  Such we believe the ancestors\nof mankind to have been--at any rate after the Fall.\n\nNow when Mr. Max Muller began to write his book, he accepted this\npostulate of anthropology (i. 15).  When he reached i. 197 he abandoned\nand denounced this postulate.\n\nI quote his acceptance of the postulate (i. 15):--\n\n   'Even Mr. A. Lang has to admit that we have not got much beyond\n   Fontenelle, when he wrote in the last century:\n\n   '\"Why are the legends [myths] about men, beasts, and gods so wildly\n   incredible and revolting? . . .  The answer is that the earliest men\n   were in a state of almost inconceivable ignorance and savagery, and\n   that the Greeks inherited their myths from people in the same savage\n   stage (en un pareil etat de sauvagerie).  Look at the Kaffirs and\n   Iroquois if you want to know what the earliest men were like, and\n   remember that the very Iroquois and Kaffirs have a long past behind\n   them\"'--that is to say, are polite and cultivated compared to the\n   earliest men of all.\n\nHere is an uncompromising statement by Fontenelle of the postulate that\nthe Greeks (an Aryan people) must have passed through the same stage as\nmodern savages--Kaffirs and Iroquois--now occupy.  But (i. 15) Mr. Max\nMuller eagerly accepts the postulate:--\n\n   'There is not a word of Fontenelle's to which I should not gladly\n   subscribe; there is no advice of his which I have not tried to follow\n   in all my attempts to explain the myths of India and Greece by an\n   occasional reference to Polynesian or African folklore.'\n\nWell, if Mr. Max Muller 'gladly subscribes,' in p. 15, to the postulate\nof an original universal stage of savagery, whence civilised races\ninherit their incredibly repulsive myths, why, in pp. 197, 198, does he\ndenounce that very postulate as not proven, not capable of being proved,\nvery mischievous, and one of the evils resulting from our method of\ncomparing savage and civilised rites and beliefs?  I must be permitted to\ncomplain that I do not know which is Mr. Max Muller's real opinion--that\ngiven with such hearty conviction in p. 15, or that stated with no less\nearnestness in pp. 197, 198.  I trust that I shall not be thought to\nmagnify a mere slip of the pen.  Both passages--though, as far as I can\nsee, self-contradictory--appear to be written with the same absence of\nlevity.  Fontenelle, I own, speaks of Greeks, not Semites, as being\noriginally savages.  But I pointed out {124} that he considered it safer\nto 'hedge' by making an exception of the Israelites.  There is really\nnothing in Genesis against the contention that the naked, tool-less,\nmean, and frivolous Adam was a savage.\n\n\n\nThe Fallacy of 'Admits'\n\n\nAs the purpose of this essay is mainly logical, I may point out the\nexistence of a fallacy not marked, I think, in handbooks of Logic.  This\nis the fallacy of saying that an opponent 'admits' what, on the contrary,\nhe has been the first to point out and proclaim.  He is thus suggested\ninto an attitude which is the reverse of his own.  Some one--I am sorry\nto say that I forget who he was--showed me that Fontenelle, in De\nl'Origine des Fables, {125a} briefly stated the anthropological theory of\nthe origin of myths, or at least of that repulsive element in them which\n'makes mythology mythological,' as Mr. Max Muller says.  I was glad to\nhave a predecessor in a past less remote than that of Eusebius of\nCaesarea.  'A briefer and better system of mythology,' I wrote, 'could\nnot be devised; but the Mr. Casaubons of this world have neglected it,\nand even now it is beyond their comprehension.' {125b}  To say this in\nthis manner is not to '_admit_ that we have not got much beyond\nFontenelle.'  I do not want to get beyond Fontenelle.  I want to go back\nto his 'forgotten common-sense,' and to apply his ideas with method and\ncriticism to a range of materials which he did not possess or did not\ninvestigate.\n\nNow, on p. 15, Mr. Max Muller had got as far as accepting Fontenelle; on\npp. 197, 198 he burns, as it were, that to which he had 'gladly\nsubscribed.'\n\n\n\nConclusion as to our Method\n\n\nAll this discussion of fetishes arose out of our author's selection of\nthe subject as an example of the viciousness of our method.  He would not\npermit us 'simply to place side by side' savage and Greek myths and\ncustoms, because it did harm (i. 195); and the harm done was proved by\nthe Nemesis of De Brosses.  Now, first, a method may be a good method,\nyet may be badly applied.  Secondly, I have shown that the Nemesis does\nnot attach to all of us modern anthropologists.  Thirdly, I have proved\n(unless I am under some misapprehension, which I vainly attempt to\ndetect, and for which, if it exists, I apologise humbly) that Mr. Max\nMuller, on p. 15, accepts the doctrine which he denounces on p. 197.\n{126}  Again, I am entirely at one with Mr. Max Muller when he says (p.\n210) 'we have as yet really no scientific treatment of Shamanism.'  This\nis a pressing need, but probably a physician alone could do the work--a\nphysician double with a psychologist.  See, however, the excellent pages\nin Dr. Tylor's Primitive Culture, and in Mr. William James's Principles\nof Psychology, on 'Mediumship.'\n\n\n\n\nTHE RIDDLE THEORY\n\n\nWhat the Philological Theory Needs\n\n\nThe great desideratum of the philological method is a proof that the\n'Disease of Language,' ex hypothesi the most fertile source of myths, is\na vera causa.  Do simple poetical phrases, descriptive of heavenly\nphenomena, remain current in the popular mouth after the meanings of\nappellatives (Bright One, Dark One, &c.) have been forgotten, so that\nthese appellatives become proper names--Apollo, Daphne, &c.?  Mr. Max\nMuller seems to think some proof of this process as a vera causa may be\nderived from 'Folk Riddles.'\n\n\n\nThe Riddle Theory\n\n\nWe now come, therefore, to the author's treatment of popular riddles\n(devinettes), so common among savages and peasants.  Their construction\nis simple: anything in Nature you please is described by a poetical\nperiphrasis, and you are asked what it is.  Thus Geistiblindr asks,\n\n   What is the Dark One\n   That goes over the earth,\n   Swallows water and wood,\n   But is afraid of the wind? &c.\n\nOr we find,\n\n   What is the gold spun from one window to another?\n\nThe answers, the obvious answers, are (1) 'mist' and (2) 'sunshine.'\n\nIn Mr. Max Muller's opinion these riddles 'could not but lead to what we\ncall popular myths or legends.'  Very probably; but this does not aid us\nto accept the philological method.  The very essence of that method is\nthe presumed absolute loss of the meaning of, e.g. 'the Dark One.'  Before\nthere can be a myth, ex hypothesi the words Dark One must have become\nhopelessly unintelligible, must have become a proper name.  Thus suppose,\nfor argument's sake only, that Cronos once meant Dark One, and was\nunderstood in that sense.  People (as in the Norse riddle just cited)\nsaid, 'Cronos [i.e. the Dark One--meaning mist] swallows water and wood.'\nThen they forgot that Cronos was their old word for the Dark One, and was\nmist; but they kept up, and understood, all the rest of the phrase about\nwhat mist does.  The expression now ran, 'Cronos [whatever that may be]\nswallows water and wood.'  But water comes from mist, and water nourishes\nwood, therefore 'Cronos swallows his children.'  Such would be the\ndevelopment of a myth on Mr. Max Muller's system.  He would interpret\n'Cronos swallows his children,' by finding, if he could, the original\nmeaning of Cronos.  Let us say that he did discover it to mean 'the Dark\nOne.'  Then he might think Cronos meant 'night;' 'mist' he would hardly\nguess.\n\nThat is all very clear, but the point is this--in devinettes, or riddles,\nthe meaning of 'the Dark One' is _not_ lost:--\n\n   'Thy riddle is _easy_\n   Blind Gest,\n   To read'--\n\nHeidrick answers.\n\nWhat the philological method of mythology needs is to prove that such\npoetical statements about natural phenomena as the devinettes contain\nsurvived in the popular mouth, and were perfectly intelligible except\njust the one mot d'enigme--say, 'the Dark One.'  That (call it\nCronos='Dark One'), and that alone, became unintelligible in the changes\nof language, and so had to be accepted as a proper name, Cronos--a god\nwho swallows things at large.\n\nWhere is the proof of such endurance of intelligible phrases with just\nthe one central necessary word obsolete and changed into a mysterious\nproper name?  The world is full of proper names which have lost their\nmeaning--Athene, Achilles, Artemis, and so on but we need proof that\npoetical sayings, or riddles, survive and are intelligible except one\nword, which, being unintelligible, becomes a proper name.  Riddles, of\ncourse, prove nothing of this kind:--\n\n   Thy riddle is easy\n   Blind Gest\n   To read!\n\nYet Mr. Max Muller offers the suggestion that the obscurity of many of\nthese names of mythical gods and heroes 'may be due . . . to the riddles\nto which they had given rise, and which would have ceased to be riddles\nif the names had been clear and intelligible, like those of Helios and\nSelene' (i. 92).  People, he thinks, in making riddles 'would avoid the\nordinary appellatives, and the use of little-known names in most\nmythologies would thus find an intelligible explanation.'  Again, 'we can\nsee how essential it was that in such mythological riddles the principal\nagents should not be called by their regular names.'  This last remark,\nindeed, is obvious.  To return to the Norse riddle of the Dark One that\nswallows wood and water.  It would never do in a riddle to call the Dark\nOne by his ordinary name, 'Mist.'  You would not amuse a rural audience\nby asking 'What is the mist that swallows wood and water?'  That would be\neven easier than Mr. Burnand's riddle for very hot weather:--\n\n   My first is a boot, my second is a jack.\n\nConceivably Mr. Max Muller may mean that in riddles an almost obsolete\nword was used to designate the object.  Perhaps, instead of 'the Dark\nOne,' a peasant would say, 'What is the Rooky One?'  But as soon as\nnobody knew what 'the Rooky One' meant, the riddle would cease to\nexist--Rooky One and all.  You cannot imagine several generations asking\neach other--\n\n   What is the Rooky One that swallows?\n\nif nobody knew the answer.  A man who kept boring people with a mere\n'sell' would be scouted; and with the death of the answerless riddle the\ndifficult word 'Rooky' would die.  But Mr. Max Muller says, 'Riddles\nwould cease to be riddles if the names had been clear and intelligible.'\nThe reverse is the fact.  In the riddles he gives there are seldom any\n'names;' but the epithets and descriptions are as clear as words can be:--\n\n   Who are the mother and children in a house, all having bald heads?--The\n   moon and stars.\n\nLanguage cannot be clearer.  Yet the riddle has not 'ceased to be a\nriddle,' as Mr. Max Muller thinks it must do, though the words are 'clear\nand intelligible.'  On the other hand, if the language is _not_ clear and\nintelligible, the riddle would cease to exist.  It would not amuse if\nnobody understood it.  You might as well try to make yourself socially\nacceptable by putting conundrums in Etruscan as by asking riddles in\nwords not clear and intelligible in themselves, though obscure in their\nreference.  The difficulty of a riddle consists, not in the obscurity of\nwords or names, but in the description of familiar things by terms, clear\nas terms, denoting their appearance and action.  The mist is described as\n'dark,' 'swallowing,' 'one that fears the wind,' and so forth.  The\n_words_ are pellucid.\n\nThus 'ordinary appellatives' (i. 99) are _not_ 'avoided' in riddles,\nthough _names_ (sun, mist) cannot be used in the question because they\ngive the answer to the riddle.\n\nFor all these reasons ancient riddles cannot explain the obscurity of\nmythological names.  As soon as the name was too obscure, the riddle and\nthe name would be forgotten, would die together.  So we know as little as\never of the purely hypothetical process by which a riddle, or popular\npoetical saying, remains intelligible in a language, while the mot\nd'enigme, becoming unintelligible, turns into a proper name--say, Cronos.\nYet the belief in this process as a vera causa is essential to our\nauthor's method.\n\nHere Mr. Max Muller warns us that his riddle theory is not meant to\nexplain 'the obscurities of _all_ mythological names.  This is a\nstratagem that should be stopped from the very first.'  It were more\ngraceful to have said 'a misapprehension.'\n\nAnother 'stratagem' I myself must guard against.  I do not say that _no_\nunintelligible strings of obsolete words may continue to live in the\npopular mouth.  Old hymns, ritual speeches, and charms may and do\nsurvive, though unintelligible.  They are reckoned all the more potent,\nbecause all the more mysterious.  But an unintelligible riddle or\npoetical saying does not survive, so we cannot thus account for mythology\nas a disease of language.\n\n\n\nMordvinian Mythology\n\n\nStill in the very natural and laudable pursuit of facts which will\nsupport the hypothesis of a disease of language, Mr. Max Muller turns to\nMordvinian mythology.  'We have the accounts of real scholars' about\nMordvinian prayers, charms, and proverbs (i. 235).  The Mordvinians,\nUgrian tribes, have the usual departmental Nature-gods--as Chkai, god of\nthe sun (chi=sun).  He 'lives in the sun, or is the sun' (i. 236).  His\nwife is the Earth or earth goddess, Vediava.  They have a large family,\ngiven to incest.  The morals of the Mordvinian gods are as lax as those\nof Mordvinian mortals.  (Compare the myths and morals of Samos, and the\nSamian Hera.)  Athwart the decent god Chkai comes the evil god\nChaitan--obviously Shaitan, a Mahommedan contamination.  There are plenty\nof minor gods, and spirits good and bad.  Dawn was a Mordvinian girl; in\nAustralia she was a lubra addicted to lubricity.\n\n_How does this help philological mythology_?\n\nMr. Max Muller is pleased to find solar and other elemental gods among\nthe Mordvinians.  But the discovery in no way aids his special theory.\nNobody has ever denied that gods who are the sun or live in the sun are\nfamiliar, and are the centres of myths among most races.  I give examples\nin C. and M. (pp. 104, 133, New Zealand and North America) and in M. R.\nR. (i. 124-135, America, Africa, Australia, Aztec, Hervey Islands, Samoa,\nand so on).  Such Nature-myths--of sun, sky, earth--are perhaps\nuniversal; but they do not arise from disease of language.  These myths\ndeal with natural phenomena plainly and explicitly.  The same is the case\namong the Mordvinians.  'The few names preserved to us are clearly the\nnames of the agents behind the salient phenomena of Nature, in some cases\nquite intelligible, in others easily restored to their original meaning.'\nThe meanings of the names not being forgotten, but obvious, there is no\ndisease of language.  All this does not illustrate the case of Greek\ndivine names by resemblance, but by difference.  Real scholars know what\nMordvinian divine names mean.  They do not know what many Greek divine\nnames mean--as Hera, Artemis, Apollo, Athene; there is even much dispute\nabout Demeter.\n\nNo anthropologist, I hope, is denying that Nature-myths and Nature-gods\nexist.  We are only fighting against the philological effort to get at\nthe elemental phenomena which may be behind Hera, Artemis, Athene,\nApollo, by means of contending etymological conjectures.  We only oppose\nthe philological attempt to account for all the features in a god's myth\nas manifestations of the elemental qualities denoted by a name which may\nmean at pleasure dawn, storm, clear air, thunder, wind, twilight, water,\nor what you will.  Granting Chkai to be the sun, does that explain why he\npunishes people who bake bread on Friday? (237.)  Our opponent does not\nseem to understand the portee of our objections.  The same remarks apply\nto the statement of Finnish mythology here given, and familiar in the\nKalewala.  Departmental divine beings of natural phenomena we find\neverywhere, or nearly everywhere, in company, of course, with other\nelements of belief--totemism, worship of spirits, perhaps with monotheism\nin the background.  That is as much our opinion as Mr. Max Muller's.  What\nwe are opposing is the theory of disease of language, and the attempt to\nexplain, by philological conjectures, gods and heroes whose obscure\n_names_ are the only sources of information.\n\nHelios is the sun-god; he is, or lives in, the sun.  Apollo may have been\nthe sun-god too, but we still distrust the attempts to prove this by\ncontending guesses at the origin of his name.  Moreover, if all Greek\ngods could be certainly explained, by undisputed etymologies, as\noriginally elemental, we still object to such logic as that which turns\nSaranyu into 'grey dawn.'  We still object to the competing\ninterpretations by which almost every detail of very composite myths is\nexplained as a poetical description of some elemental process or\nphenomenon.  Apollo _may_ once have been the sun, but why did he make\nlove as a dog?\n\n\n\nLettish Mythology\n\n\nThese remarks apply equally well to our author's dissertation on Lettish\nmythology (ii. 430 et seq.).  The meaning of statements about the sun and\nsky 'is not to be mistaken in the mythology of the Letts.'  So here is no\ndisease of language.  The meaning is not to be mistaken.  Sun and moon\nand so on are spoken of by their natural unmistakable names, or in\nequally unmistakable poetical periphrases, as in riddles.  The daughter\nof the sun hung a red cloak on a great oak-tree.  This 'can hardly have\nbeen meant for anything but the red of the evening or the setting sun,\nsometimes called her red cloak' (ii. 439).  Exactly so, and the\nAustralians of Encounter Bay also think that the sun is a woman.  'She\nhas a lover among the dead, who has given her a red kangaroo skin, and in\nthis she appears at her rising.' {135}  This tale was told to Mr. Meyer\nin 1846, before Mr. Max Muller's Dawn had become 'inevitable,' as he\nsays.\n\nThe Lettish and Australian myths are folk-poetry; they have nothing to do\nwith a disease of language or forgotten meanings of words which become\nproper names.  All this is surely distinct.  We proclaim the abundance of\npoetical Nature-myths; we 'disable' the hypothesis that they arise from a\ndisease of language.\n\n\n\nThe Chances of Fancy\n\n\nOne remark has to be added.  Mannhardt regarded many or most of the\nphilological solutions of gods into dawn or sun, or thunder or cloud, as\nempty jeux d'esprit.  And justly, for there is no name named among men\nwhich a philologist cannot easily prove to be a synonym or metaphorical\nterm for wind or weather, dawn or sun.  Whatever attribute any word\nconnotes, it can be shown to connote some attribute of dawn or sun.  Here\nparody comes in, and gives a not overstrained copy of the method,\napplying it to Mr. Gladstone, Dr. Nansen, or whom you please.  And though\na jest is not a refutation, a parody may plainly show the absolutely\ncapricious character of the philological method.\n\n\n\n\nARTEMIS\n\n\nI do not here examine our author's constructive work.  I have often\ncriticised its logical method before, and need not repeat myself.  The\netymologies, of course, I leave to be discussed by scholars.  As we have\nseen, they are at odds on the subject of phonetic laws and their\napplication to mythological names.  On the mosses and bogs of this\nDebatable Land some of them propose to erect the science of comparative\nmythology.  Meanwhile we look on, waiting till the mosses shall support a\nponderous edifice.\n\nOur author's treatment of Artemis, however, has for me a peculiar\ninterest (ii. 733-743).  I really think that it is not mere vanity which\nmakes me suppose that in this instance I am at least one of the authors\nwhom Mr. Max Muller is writing _about_ without name or reference.  If so,\nhe here sharply distinguishes between me on the one hand and 'classical\nscholars' on the other, a point to which we shall return.  He says--I\ncite textually (ii. 732):--\n\n\n\nArtemis\n\n\n'The last of the great Greek goddesses whom we have to consider is\nArtemis.  Her name, we shall see, has received many interpretations, but\nnone that can be considered as well established--none that, even if it\nwere so, would help us much in disentangling the many myths told about\nher.  Easy to understand as her character seems when we confine our\nattention to Homer, it becomes extremely complicated when we take into\naccount the numerous local forms of worship of which she was the object.\n\n'We have here a good opportunity of comparing the interpretations put\nforward by _those who think that a study of the myths and customs of\nuncivilised tribes can help us towards an understanding of Greek deities,\nand the views advocated by classical scholars_ {138} who draw their\ninformation, first of all, from Greek sources, and afterwards only from a\ncomparison of the myths and customs of cognate races, more particularly\nfrom what is preserved to us in ancient Vedic literature, before they\nplunge into the whirlpool of ill-defined and unintelligible Kafir\nfolklore.  The former undertake to explain Artemis by showing us the\nprogress of human intelligence from the coarsest spontaneous and\nprimitive ideas to the most beautiful and brilliant conception of poets\nand sculptors.  They point out traces of hideous cruelties amounting\nalmost to cannibalism, and of a savage cult of beasts in the earlier\nhistory of the goddess, who was celebrated by dances of young girls\ndisguised as bears or imitating the movements of bears, &c.  She was\nrepresented as [Greek], and this idea, we are told, was borrowed from the\nEast, which is a large term.  We are told that her most ancient history\nis to be studied in Arkadia, where we can see the goddess still closely\nconnected with the worship of animals, a characteristic feature of the\nlowest stage of religious worship among the lowest races of mankind.  We\nare then told the old story of Lykaon, the King of Arkadia, who had a\nbeautiful daughter called Kallisto.  As Zeus fell in love with her, Hera\nfrom jealousy changed her into a bear, and Artemis killed her with one of\nher arrows.  Her child, however, was saved by Hermes, at the command of\nZeus; and while Kallisto was changed to the constellation of the Ursa,\nher son Arkas became the ancestor of the Arkadians.  Here, we are told,\nwe have a clear instance of men being the descendants of animals, and of\nwomen being changed into wild beasts and stars--beliefs well known among\nthe Cahrocs and the Kamilarois.'\n\n* * * * *\n\nHere I recognise Mr. Max Muller's version of my remarks on Artemis.\n{139a}  Our author has just remarked in a footnote that Schwartz 'does\nnot mention the title of the book where his evidence has been given.'  It\n_is_ an inconvenient practice, but with Mr. Max Muller this reticence is\nby no means unusual.  _He_ 'does not mention the book where 'my 'evidence\nis given.'\n\nAnthropologists are here (unless I am mistaken) contrasted with\n'classical scholars who draw their information, first of all, from Greek\nsources.'  I need not assure anyone who has looked into my imperfect\nworks that I also drew my information about Artemis 'first of all from\nGreek sources,' in the original.  Many of these sources, to the best of\nmy knowledge, are not translated: one, Homer, I have translated myself,\nwith Professor Butcher and Messrs. Leaf and Myers, my old friends.\n\nThe idea and representation of Artemis as [Greek] (many-breasted), 'we\nare told, was borrowed from the East, a large term.'  I say 'she is even\nblended in ritual with a monstrous many-breasted divinity of Oriental\nreligion.' {139b}  Is this 'large term' too vague?  Then consider the\nArtemis of Ephesus and 'the alabaster statuette of the goddess' in\nRoscher's Lexikon, p. 558.  Compare, for an Occidental parallel, the many-\nbreasted goddess of the maguey plant, in Mexico. {140}  Our author\nwrites, 'we are told that Artemis's most ancient history is to be studied\nin Arkadia.'  My words are, 'The Attic and Arcadian legends of Artemis\nare confessedly _among the oldest_.'  Why should 'Attic' and the\nqualifying phrase be omitted?\n\n\n\nOtfried Muller\n\n\nMr. Max Muller goes on--citing, as I also do, Otfried Muller:--'Otfried\nMuller in 1825 treated the same myth without availing himself of the\nlight now to be derived from the Cahrocs and the Kamilarois.  He quoted\nPausanias as stating that the tumulus of Kallisto was near the sanctuary\nof Artemis Kalliste, and he simply took Kallisto for an epithet of\nArtemis, which, as in many other cases, had been taken for a separate\npersonality.'  Otfried also pointed out, as we both say, that at Brauron,\nin Attica, Artemis was served by young maidens called [Greek] (bears);\nand he concluded, 'This cannot possibly be a freak of chance, but the\nmetamorphosis [of Kallisto] has its foundation in the fact that the\nanimal [the bear] was sacred to the goddess.'\n\nThus it is acknowledged that Artemis, under her name of Callisto, was\nchanged into a she-bear, and had issue, Arkas--whence the Arcadians.  Mr.\nMax Muller proceeds (ii. 734)--'He [Otfried] did not go so far as some\nmodern mythologists who want us to believe that originally the animal,\nthe she-bear, was the goddess, and that a later worship had replaced the\nancient worship of the animal pur et simple.'\n\nDid I, then, tell anybody that 'originally the she-bear was the goddess'?\nNo, I gave my reader, not a dogma, but the choice between two alternative\nhypotheses.  I said, 'It will become probable that the she-bear actually\n_was_ the goddess at an extremely remote period, or at all events that\nthe goddess succeeded to, and threw her protection over, an ancient\nworship of the animal' (ii. 212, 213).\n\nMr. Max Muller's error, it will be observed, consists in writing 'and'\nwhere I wrote 'or.'  To make such rather essential mistakes is human; to\ngive references is convenient, and not unscholarly.\n\nIn fact, this is Mr. Max Muller's own opinion, for he next reports his\nanonymous author (myself) as saying ('we are now told'), 'though without\nany reference to Pausanias or any other Greek writers, that the young\nmaidens, the [Greek], when dancing around Artemis, were clad in\nbearskins, and that this is a pretty frequent custom in the dances of\ntotemic races.  In support of this, however, we are not referred to\nreally totemic races . . . but to the Hirpi of Italy, and to the [Greek]\nin Egypt.'  Of course I never said that the [Greek] danced around\nArtemis!  I did say, after observing that they were described as 'playing\nthe bear,' 'they even in archaic ages wore bear-skins,' for which I cited\nClaus {141a} and referred to Suchier, {141b} including the reference in\nbrackets [ ] to indicate that I borrowed it from a book which I was\nunable to procure. {142a}  I then gave references for the classical use\nof a saffron vest by the [Greek].\n\n\n\nBeast Dances\n\n\nFor the use of beast-skins in such dances among totemists I cite Bancroft\n(iii. 168) and (M. R. R. ii. 107) Robinson {142b} (same authority).  I\nmay now also refer to Robertson Smith: {142c} 'the meaning of such a\ndisguise [a fish-skin, among the Assyrians] _is well known from many\nsavage rituals_; it means that the worshipper presents himself as a\nfish,' as a bear, or what not. {142d}  Doubtless I might have referred\nmore copiously to savage rituals, but really I thought that savage dances\nin beast-skins were familiar from Catlin's engravings of Mandan and\nNootka wolf or buffalo dances.  I add that the Brauronian rites 'point to\na time when the goddess was herself a bear,' having suggested an\nalternative theory, and added confirmation. {142e}  But I here confess\nthat while beast-dances and wearing of skins of sacred beasts are common,\nto prove these sacred beasts to be totems is another matter.  It is so\nfar inferred rather than demonstrated.  Next I said that the evolution of\nthe bear into the classical Artemis 'almost escapes our inquiry.  We find\nnothing more akin to it than the relation borne by the Samoan gods to the\nvarious totems in which they are supposed to be manifest.'  This Mr. Max\nMuller quotes (of course, without reference or marks of quotation) and\nadds, 'pace Dr. Codrington.'  Have I incurred Dr. Codrington's feud?  He\ndoubts or denies totems in Melanesia.  Is Samoa in Melanesia, par\nexemple? {143a}  Our author (i. 206) says that 'Dr. Codrington will have\nno totems in his islands.'  But Samoa is not one of the doctor's\nfortunate isles.  For Samoa I refer, not to Dr. Codrington, but to Mr.\nTurner. {143b}  In Samoa the 'clans' revere each its own sacred animals,\n'but combine with it the belief that the spiritual deity reveals itself\nin each separate animal.' {143c}  I expressly contrast the Samoan creed\nwith 'pure totemism.' {143d}\n\nSo much for our author's success in stating and criticising my ideas.  If\nhe pleases, I will not speak of Samoan totems, but of Samoan sacred\nanimals.  It is better and more exact.\n\n\n\nThe View of Classical Scholars\n\n\nThey (ii. 735) begin by pointing out Artemis's connection with Apollo and\nthe moon.  So do I!  'If Apollo soon disengages himself from the sun . .\n.  Artemis retains as few traces of any connection with the moon.' {143e}\n'If Apollo was of solar origin,' asks the author (ii. 735), 'what could\nhis sister Artemis have been, from the very beginning, if not some\ngoddess connected with the moon?'  Very likely; quis negavit?  Then our\nauthor, like myself (loc. cit.), dilates on Artemis as 'sister of\nApollo.'  'Her chapels,' I say, 'are in the wild wood; she is the abbess\nof the forest nymphs,' 'chaste and fair, the maiden of the precise life.'\nHow odd!  The classical scholar and I both say the same things; and I add\na sonnet to Artemis in this aspect, rendered by me from the Hippolytus of\nEuripides.  Could a classical scholar do more?  Our author then says that\nthe Greek sportsman 'surprised the beasts in their lairs' by night.  Not\nvery sportsmanlike!  I don't find it in Homer or in Xenophon.  Oh for\nexact references!  The moon, the nocturnal sportswoman, is Artemis: here\nwe have also the authority of Theodore de Banville (Diane court dans la\nnoire foret).  And the nocturnal hunt is Dian's; so she is protectress of\nthe chase.  Exactly what I said! {144a}\n\nAll this being granted by me beforehand (though possibly that might not\nbe guessed from my critic), our author will explain Artemis's human\nsacrifice of a girl in a fawn-skin--bloodshed, bear and all--with no aid\nfrom Kamilarois, Cahrocs, and Samoans.\n\n\n\nMr. Max Muller's Explanation\n\n\nGreek races traced to Zeus--usually disguised, for amorous purposes, as a\nbrute.  The Arcadians had an eponymous heroic ancestor, 'Areas;' they\nalso worshipped Artemis.  Artemis, as a virgin, could not become a mother\nof Areas by Zeus, or by anybody.  Callisto was also Artemis.  Callisto\nwas the mother of Areas.  But, to save the character of Artemis, Callisto\nwas now represented as one of her nymphs.  Then, Areas reminding the\nArcadians of [Greek] (a bear), while they knew the Bear constellation,\n'what was more natural than that Callisto should be changed into an\narktos, a she-bear . . . placed by Zeus, her lover, in the sky' as the\nBear?\n\nNothing could be more natural to a savage; they all do it. {144b}  But\nthat an Aryan, a Greek, should talk such nonsense as to say that he was\nthe descendant of a bear who was changed into a star, and all merely\nbecause 'Areas reminded the Arcadians of arktos,' seems to me an extreme\ntest of belief, and a very unlikely thing to occur.\n\n\n\nWider Application of the Theory\n\n\nLet us apply the explanation more widely.  Say that a hundred animal\nnames are represented in the known totem-kindreds of the world.  Then had\neach such kin originally an eponymous hero whose name, like that of Areas\nin Arcady, accidentally 'reminded' his successors of a beast, so that a\nhundred beasts came to be claimed as ancestors?  Perhaps this was what\noccurred; the explanation, at all events, fits the wolf of the Delawares\nand the other ninety-nine as well as it fits the Arcades.  By a curious\ncoincidence all the names of eponymous heroes chanced to remind people of\nbeasts.  But _whence come the names of eponymous heroes_?  From their\ntribes, of course--Ion from Ionians, Dorus from Dorians, and so on.\nTherefore (in the hundred cases) the names of the _tribes_ derive from\nnames of animals.  Indeed, the names of totem-kins _are_ the names of\nanimals--wolves, bears, cranes.  Mr. Max Muller remarks that the name\n'Arcades' _may_ come from [Greek], a bear (i. 738); so the Arcadians\n(Proselenoi, the oldest of races, 'men before the moon') may be--Bears.\nSo, of course (in this case), they would necessarily be Bears _before_\nthey invented Areas, an eponymous hero whose name is derived from the pre-\nexisting tribal name.  His name, then, could not, before they invented\nit, remind them of a bear.  It was from their name [Greek] (Bears) that\nthey developed _his_ name Areas, as in all such cases of eponymous\nheroes.  I slightly incline to hold that this is exactly what occurred.  A\nbear-kin claimed descent from a bear, and later, developing an eponymous\nhero, Areas, regarded him as son of a bear.  Philologically 'it is\npossible;' I say no more.\n\n\n\nThe Bear Dance\n\n\n'The dances of the maidens called [Greek], would receive an easy\ninterpretation.  They were Arkades, and why not [Greek] (bears)?'  And if\n[Greek], why not clad in bear-skins, and all the rest? (ii. 738).  This\nis our author's explanation; it is also my own conjecture.  The Arcadians\nwere bears, knew it, and possibly danced a bear dance, as Mandans or\nNootkas dance a buffalo dance or a wolf dance.  But all such dances are\nnot totemistic.  They have often other aims.  One only names such dances\ntotemistic when performed by people who call themselves by the name of\nthe animal represented, and claim descent from him.  Our author says\ngenially, 'if anybody prefers to say that the arctos was something like a\ntotem of the Arcadians . . . why not?'  But, if the arctos was a totem,\nthat fact explains the Callisto story and Attic bear dance, while the\nphilological theory--Mr. Max Muller's theory--does not explain it.  What\nis oddest of all, Mr. Max Muller, as we have seen, says that the bear-\ndancing girls were 'Arkades.'  Now we hear of no bear dances in Arcadia.\nThe dancers were Athenian girls.  This, indeed, is the point.  We have a\nbear Callisto (Artemis) in Arcady, where a folk etymology might explain\nit by stretching a point.  But no etymology will explain bear dances to\nArtemis in Attica.  So we find bears doubly connected with Artemis.  The\nAthenians were not Arcadians.\n\nAs to the meaning and derivation of Artemis, or Artamis, our author knows\nnothing (ii. 741).  I say, 'even [Greek] ([Greek], bear) has occurred to\ninventive men.'  Possibly I invented it myself, though not addicted to\netymological conjecture.\n\n\n\n\nTHE FIRE-WALK\n\n\nThe Method of Psychical Research\n\n\nAs a rule, mythology asks for no aid from Psychical Research.  But there\nare problems in religious rite and custom where the services of the\nCendrillon of the sciences, the despised youngest sister, may be of use.\nAs an example I take the famous mysterious old Fire-rite of the Hirpi, or\nwolf-kin, of Mount Soracte.  I shall first, following Mannhardt, and\nmaking use of my own trifling researches in ancient literature, describe\nthe rite itself.\n\n\n\nMount Soracte\n\n\nEveryone has heard of Mount Soracte, white with shining snow, the peak\nwhose distant cold gave zest to the blazing logs on the hearth of Horace.\nWithin sight of his windows was practised, by men calling themselves\n'wolves' (Hirpi), a rite of extreme antiquity and enigmatic character.  On\na peak of Soracte, now Monte di Silvestre, stood the ancient temple of\nSoranus, a Sabine sun-god. {148a}  Virgil {148b} identifies Soranus with\nApollo.  At the foot of the cliff was the precinct of Feronia, a Sabine\ngoddess.  Mr. Max Muller says that Feronia corresponds to the Vedic\nBhuranyu, a name of Agni, the Vedic fire-god (ii. 800).  Mannhardt\nprefers, of course, a derivation from _far_ (grain), as in confarreatio,\nthe ancient Roman bride-cake form of marriage.  Feronia Mater=Sanskrit\nbharsani mata, Getreide Mutter. {149a}  It is a pity that philologists so\nrarely agree in their etymologies.  In Greek the goddess is called\nAnthephorus, Philostephanus, and even Persephone--probably the Persephone\nof flowers and garlands. {149b}\n\n\n\nHirpi Sorani\n\n\nOnce a year a fete of Soranus and Feronia was held, in the precinct of\nthe goddess at Soracte.  The ministrants were members of certain local\nfamilies called Hirpi (wolves).  Pliny says, {149c} 'A few families,\nstyled Hirpi, at a yearly sacrifice, walk over a burnt pile of wood, yet\nare not scorched.  On this account they have a perpetual exemption, by\ndecree of the Senate, from military and all other services.'  Virgil\nmakes Aruns say, {149d} 'Highest of gods, Apollo, guardian of Soracte,\nthou of whom we are the foremost worshippers, thou for whom the burning\npile of pinewood is fed, while we, strong in faith, walk through the\nmidst of the fire, and press our footsteps in the glowing mass. . . .'\nStrabo gives the same facts.  Servius, the old commentator on Virgil,\nconfuses the Hirpi, not unnaturally, with the Sabine 'clan,' the Hirpini.\nHe says, {149e} 'Varro, always an enemy of religious belief, writes that\nthe Hirpini, when about to walk the fire, smear the soles of their feet\nwith a drug' (medicamentum).  Silius Italicus (v. 175) speaks of the\nancient rite, when 'the holy bearer of the bow (Apollo) rejoices in the\nkindled pyres, and the ministrant thrice gladly bears entrails to the god\nthrough the harmless flames.'  Servius gives an aetiological myth to\naccount for the practice.  'Wolves came and carried off the entrails from\nthe fire; shepherds, following them, were killed by mortal vapours from a\ncave; thence ensued a pestilence, because they had followed the wolves.\nAn oracle bade them \"play the wolf,\" i.e. live on plunder, whence they\nwere called Hirpi, wolves,' an attempt to account for a wolf clan-name.\nThere is also a story that, when the grave of Feronia seemed all on fire,\nand the people were about carrying off the statue, it suddenly grew green\nagain. {150a}\n\nMannhardt decides that the so-called wolves leaped through the sun-god's\nfire, in the interest of the health of the community.  He elucidates this\nby a singular French popular custom, held on St. John's Eve, at Jumieges.\nThe Brethren of the Green Wolf select a leader called Green Wolf, there\nis an ecclesiastical procession, cure and all, a souper maigre, the\nlighting of the usual St. John's fire, a dance round the fire, the\ncapture of next year's Green Wolf, a mimicry of throwing him into the\nfire, a revel, and next day a loaf of pain benit, above a pile of green\nleaves, is carried about. {150b}\n\nThe wolf, thinks Mannhardt, is the Vegetation-spirit in animal form.  Many\nexamples of the 'Corn-wolf' in popular custom are given by Mr. Frazer in\nThe Golden Bough (ii. 3-6).  The Hirpi of Soracte, then, are so called\nbecause they play the part of Corn-wolves, or Korndamonen in wolf shape.\nBut Mannhardt adds, 'this _seems_, at least, to be the explanation.'  He\nthen combats Kuhn's theory of Feronia as lightning goddess. {151a}  He\nnext compares the strange Arcadian cannibal rites on Mount Lycaeus.\n{151b}\n\n\n\nMannhardt's Deficiency\n\n\nIn all this ingenious reasoning, Mannhardt misses a point.  What the\nHirpi did was _not_ merely to leap through light embers, as in the Roman\nPalilia, and the parallel doings in Scotland, England, France, and\nelsewhere, at Midsummer (St. John's Eve).  The Hirpi would not be freed\nfrom military service and all other State imposts for merely doing what\nany set of peasants do yearly for nothing.  Nor would Varro have found it\nnecessary to explain so easy and common a feat by the use of a drug with\nwhich the feet were smeared.  Mannhardt, as Mr. Max Muller says, ventured\nhimself little 'among red skins and black skins.'  He read Dr. Tylor, and\nappreciated the method of illustrating ancient rites and beliefs from the\nliving ways of living savages. {151c}  But, in practice, he mainly\nconfined himself to illustrating ancient rites and beliefs by survival in\nmodern rural folk-lore.  I therefore supplement Mannhardt's evidence from\nEuropean folk-lore by evidence from savage life, and by a folk-lore case\nwhich Mannhardt did not know.\n\n\n\nThe Fire-walk\n\n\nA modern student is struck by the cool way in which the ancient poets,\ngeographers, and commentators mention a startling circumstance, the Fire-\nwalk.  The only hint of explanation is the statement that the drug or\njuice of herbs preserved the Hirpi from harm.  That theory may be kept in\nmind, and applied if it is found useful.  Virgil's theory that the\nministrants walk, pietate freti, corresponds to Mrs. Wesley's belief,\nwhen, after praying, she 'waded the flames' to rescue her children from\nthe burning parsonage at Epworth.  The hypothesis of Iamblichus, when he\nwrites about the ecstatic or 'possessed' persons who cannot be injured by\nfire, is like that of modern spiritualists--the 'spirit' or 'daemon'\npreserves them unharmed.\n\nI intentionally omit cases which are vaguely analogous to that of the\nHirpi.  In Icelandic sagas, in the Relations of the old Jesuit\nmissionaries, in the Travels of Pallas and Gmelin, we hear of medicine-\nmen and Berserks who take liberties with red-hot metal, live coals, and\nburning wood.  Thus in the Icelandic Flatey Book (vol. i. p. 425) we read\nabout the fighting evangelist of Iceland, a story of Thangbrandr and the\nforeign Berserkir.  'The Berserkir said: \"I can walk through the burning\nfire with my bare feet.\"  Then a great fire was made, which Thangbrandr\nhallowed, and the Berserkir went into it without fear, and burned his\nfeet'--the Christian spell of Thangbrandr being stronger than the heathen\nspell of the Berserkir.  What the saga says is not evidence, and some of\nthe other tales are merely traditional.  Others may be explained,\nperhaps, by conjuring.  The mediaeval ordeal by fire may also be left on\none side.  In 1826 Lockhart published a translation of the Church Service\nfor the Ordeal by Fire, a document given, he says, by Busching in Die\nVorzeit for 1817.  The accused communicates before carrying the red-hot\niron bar, or walking on the red-hot ploughshare.  The consecrated wafer\nis supposed to preserve him from injury, if he be guiltless.  He carries\nthe iron for nine yards, after which his hands are sealed up in a linen\ncloth and examined at the end of three days.  'If he be found clear of\nscorch or scar, glory to God.'  Lockhart calls the service 'one of the\nmost extraordinary records of the craft, the audacity, and the weakness\nof mankind.' {153}\n\nThe fraud is more likely to have lain in the pretended failure to find\nscorch or scar than in any method of substituting cold for hot iron, or\nof preventing the metal from injuring the subject of the ordeal.  The\nrite did not long satisfy the theologians and jurists of the Middle Ages.\nIt has been discussed by Lingard in his History of England, and by Dr. E.\nB. Tylor in Primitive Culture.\n\nFor the purpose of the present inquiry I also omit all the rites of\nleaping sportfully, and of driving cattle through light fires.  Of these\ncases, from the Roman Palilia, or Parilia, downwards, there is a useful\ncollection in Brand's Popular Antiquities under the heading 'Midsummer\nEve.'  One exception must be made for a passage from Torreblanca's\nDemonologia (p. 106).  People are said 'pyras circumire et transilire in\nfuturi mali averruncatione'--to 'go round about and leap over lighted\npyres for the purpose of averting future evils,' as in Mannhardt's theory\nof the Hirpi.  This may be connected with the Bulgarian rite, to be\ndescribed later, but, as a rule, in all these instances, the fire is a\nlight one of straw, and no sort of immunity is claimed by the people who\ndo not walk through, but leap across it.\n\nThese kinds of analogous examples, then, it suffices merely to mention.\nFor the others, in all affairs of this sort, the wide diffusion of a tale\nof miracle is easily explained.  The fancy craves for miracles, and the\nuniversal mode of inventing a miracle is to deny the working, on a given\noccasion, of a law of Nature.  Gravitation was suspended, men floated in\nair, inanimate bodies became agile, or fire did not burn.  No less\nnatural than the invention of the myth is the attempt to feign it by\nconjuring or by the use of some natural secret.  But in the following\nmodern instances the miracle of passing through the fire uninjured is\napparently feigned with considerable skill, or is performed by the aid of\nsome secret of Nature not known to modern chemistry.  The evidence is\ndecidedly good enough to prove that in Europe, India, and Polynesia the\nancient rite of the Hirpi of Soracte is still a part of religious or\ncustomary ceremony.\n\n\n\nFijian Fire-walk\n\n\nThe case which originally drew my attention to this topic is that given\nby Mr. Basil Thomson in his South Sea Yarns (p. 195).  Mr. Thomson\ninforms me that he wrote his description on the day after he witnessed\nthe ceremony, a precaution which left no room for illusions of memory.  Of\ncourse, in describing a conjuring trick, one who is not an expert\nrecords, not what actually occurred, but what he was able to see, and the\nchances are that he did not see, and therefore omits, an essential\ncircumstance, while he misstates other circumstances.  I am informed by\nMrs. Steel, the author of The Potter's Thumb and other stories of Indian\nlife, that, in watching an Indian conjurer, she generally, or frequently,\ndetects his method.  She says that the conjurer often begins by whirling\nrapidly before the eyes of the spectators a small polished skull of a\nmonkey, and she is inclined to think that the spectators who look at this\nare, in some way, more easily deluded.  These facts are mentioned that I\nmay not seem unaware of what can be said to impugn the accuracy of the\ndescriptions of the Fire Rite, as given by Mr. Thomson and other\nwitnesses.\n\nMr. Thomson says that the Wesleyan missionaries have nearly made a clean\nsweep of all heathen ceremonial in Fiji.  'But in one corner of Fiji, the\nisland of Nbengga, a curious observance of mythological origin has\nescaped the general destruction, probably because the worthy iconoclasts\nhad never heard of it.'  The myth tells how the ancestor of the clan\nreceived the gift of fire-walking from a god, and the existence of the\nmyth raises a presumption in favour of the antiquity of the observance.\n\n* * * * *\n\n'Once every year the masawe, a dracaena that grows in profusion on the\ngrassy hillsides of the island, becomes fit to yield the sugar of which\nits fibrous root is full.  To render it fit to eat, the roots must be\nbaked among hot stones for four days.  A great pit is dug, and filled\nwith large stones and blazing logs, and when these have burned down, and\nthe stones are at white heat, the oven is ready for the masawe.  It is at\nthis stage that the clan Na Ivilankata, favoured of the gods, is called\non to \"leap into the oven\" (rikata na lovo), and walk unharmed upon the\nhot stones that would scorch and wither the feet of any but the\ndescendants of the dauntless Tui Nkualita.  Twice only had Europeans been\nfortunate enough to see the masawe cooked, and so marvellous had been the\ntales they told, and so cynical the scepticism with which they had been\nreceived, that nothing short of another performance before witnesses and\nthe photographic camera would have satisfied the average \"old hand.\"\n\n'As we steamed up to the chiefs village of Waisoma, a cloud of blue smoke\nrolling up among the palms told us that the fire was newly lighted.  We\nfound a shallow pit, nineteen feet wide, dug in the sandy soil, a stone's\nthrow from high-water mark, in a small clearing among the cocoanuts\nbetween the beach and the dense forest.  The pit was piled high with\ngreat blazing logs and round stones the size of a man's head.  Mingled\nwith the crackling roar of the fire were loud reports as splinters flew\noff from the stones, warning us to guard our eyes.  A number of men were\ndragging up more logs and rolling them into the blaze, while, above all,\non the very brink of the fiery pit, stood Jonathan Dambea, directing the\nproceedings with an air of noble calm.  As the stones would not be hot\nenough for four hours, there was ample time to hear the tradition that\nwarrants the observance of the strange ceremony we were to see.\n\n'When we were at last summoned, the fire had been burning for more than\nfour hours.  The pit was filled with a white-hot mass shooting out little\ntongues of white flame, and throwing out a heat beside which the\nscorching sun was a pleasant relief.  A number of men were engaged, with\nlong poles to which a loop of thick vine had been attached, in noosing\nthe pieces of unburnt wood by twisting the pole, like a horse's twitch,\nuntil the loop was tight, and dragging the log out by main force.  When\nthe wood was all out there remained a conical pile of glowing stones in\nthe middle of the pit.  Ten men now drove the butts of green saplings\ninto the base of the pile, and held the upper end while a stout vine was\npassed behind the row of saplings.  A dozen men grasped each end of the\nvine, and with loud shouts hauled with all their might.  The saplings,\nlike the teeth of an enormous rake, tore through the pile of stones,\nflattening them out towards the opposite edge of the pit.  The saplings\nwere then driven in on the other side and the stones raked in the\nopposite direction, then sideways, until the bottom of the pit was\ncovered with an even layer of hot stones.  This process had taken fully\nhalf an hour, but any doubt as to the heat of the stones at the end was\nset at rest by the tongues of flame that played continually among them.\nThe cameras were hard at work, and a large crowd of people pressed\ninwards towards the pit as the moment drew near.  They were all excited\nexcept Jonathan, who preserved, even in the supreme moment, the air of\nholy calm that never leaves his face.  All eyes are fixed expectant on\nthe dense bush behind the clearing, whence the Shadrachs, Meshachs and\nAbednegos of the Pacific are to emerge.  There is a cry of \"Vutu!  Vutu!\"\nand forth from the bush, two and two, march fifteen men, dressed in\ngarlands and fringes.  They tramp straight to the brink of the pit.  The\nleading pair show something like fear in their faces, but do not pause,\nperhaps because the rest would force them to move forward.  They step\ndown upon the stones and continue their march round the pit, planting\ntheir feet squarely and firmly on each stone.  The cameras snap, the\ncrowd surges forward, the bystanders fling in great bundles of green\nleaves.  But the bundles strike the last man of the procession and cut\nhim off from his fellows; so he stays where he is, trampling down the\nleaves as they are thrown to line the pit, in a dense cloud of steam from\nthe boiling sap.  The rest leap back to his assistance, shouting and\ntrampling, and the pit turns into the mouth of an Inferno, filled with\ndusky frenzied fiends, half seen through the dense volume that rolls up\nto heaven and darkens the sunlight.  After the leaves, palm-leaf baskets\nof the dracaena root are flung to them, more leaves, and then bystanders\nand every one join in shovelling earth over all till the pit is gone, and\na smoking mound of fresh earth takes its place.  This will keep hot for\nfour days, and then the masawe will be cooked.\n\n'As the procession had filed up to the pit, by a preconcerted arrangement\nwith the noble Jonathan, a large stone had been hooked out of the pit to\nthe feet of one of the party, who poised a pocket-handkerchief over it,\nand dropped it lightly upon the stone when the first man leapt into the\noven, and snatched what remained of it up as the last left the stones.\nDuring the fifteen or twenty seconds it lay there every fold that touched\nthe stone was charred, and the rest of it scorched yellow.  So the stones\nwere not cool.  We caught four or five of the performers as they came\nout, and closely examined their feet.  They were cool, and showed no\ntrace of scorching, nor were their anklets of dried tree-fern leaf burnt.\nThis, Jonathan explained, is part of the miracle; for dried tree-fern is\nas combustible as tinder, and there were flames shooting out among the\nstones.  Sceptics had affirmed that the skin of a Fijian's foot being a\nquarter of an inch thick, he would not feel a burn.  Whether this be true\nor not of the ball and heel, the instep is covered with skin no thicker\nthan our own, and we saw the men plant their insteps fairly on the\nstone.'\n\n* * * * *\n\nMr. Thomson's friend, Jonathan, said that young men had been selected\nbecause they would look better in a photograph, and, being inexperienced,\nthey were afraid.  A stranger would share the gift if he went in with one\nof the tribe.  Some years ago a man fell and burned his shoulders.  'Any\ntrick?'  'Here Jonathan's ample face shrunk smaller, and a shadow passed\nover his candid eye.'  Mr. Thomson concludes: 'Perhaps the Na Ivilankata\nclan have no secret, and there is nothing wonderful in their performance;\nbut, miracle or not, I am very glad I saw it.'  The handkerchief dropped\non the stone is 'alive to testify to it.'  Mr. Thomson's photograph of\nthe scene is ill-developed, and the fumes of steam somewhat interfere\nwith the effect.  A rough copy is published in Folk-Lore for September,\n1895, but the piece could only be reproduced by a delicate drawing with\nthe brush.\n\nThe parallel to the rite of the Hirpi is complete, except that red-hot\nstones, not the pyre of pine-embers, is used in Fiji.  Mr. Thomson has\nheard of a similar ceremony in the Cook group of islands.  As in ancient\nItaly, so in Fiji, a certain _clan_ have the privilege of fire-walking.\nIt is far enough from Fiji to Southern India, as it is far enough from\nMount Soracte to Fiji.  But in Southern India the Klings practise the\nrite of the Hirpi and the Na Ivilankata.  I give my informant's letter\nexactly as it reached me, though it has been published before in\nLongman's Magazine:\n\n\n\nKling Fire-walk\n\n\n'Dear Sir,--Observing from your note in Longman's Magazine that you have\nmislaid my notes re fire-walking, I herewith repeat them.  I have more\nthan once seen it done by the \"Klings,\" as the low-caste Tamil-speaking\nHindus from Malabar are called, in the Straits Settlements.  On one\noccasion I was present at a \"fire-walking\" held in a large tapioca\nplantation in Province Wellesley, before many hundreds of spectators, all\nthe Hindu coolies from the surrounding estates being mustered.  A trench\nhad been dug about twenty yards long by six feet wide and two deep.  This\nwas piled with faggots and small wood four or five feet high.  This was\nlighted at midday, and by four p.m. the trench was a bed of red-hot\nashes, the heat from which was so intense that the men who raked and\nlevelled it with long poles could not stand it for more than a minute at\na time.  A few yards from the end of the trench a large hole had been dug\nand filled with water.  When all was ready, six men, ordinary coolies,\ndressed only in their \"dholis,\" or loin-cloths, stepped out of the crowd,\nand, amidst tremendous excitement and a horrible noise of conches and\ndrums, passed over the burning trench from end to end, in single file, at\na quick walk, plunging one after the other into the water.  Not one of\nthem showed the least sign of injury.  They had undergone some course of\npreparation by their priest, not a Brahman, but some kind of devil-doctor\nor medicine-man, and, as I understood it, they took on themselves and\nexpiated the sins of the Kling community for the past year (a big job, if\nthieving and lying count; probably not).  They are not, however, always\nso lucky, for I heard that on the next occasion one of the men fell and\nwas terribly burnt, thus destroying the whole effect of the ceremony.  I\ndo not think this to be any part of the Brahmanical religion, though the\nordeal by fire as a test of guilt is, or was, in use all over India.  The\nfact is that the races of Southern India, where the Aryan element is very\nsmall, have kept all their savage customs and devil-worship under the\nform of Brahmanism.\n\n'Another curious feat I saw performed at Labuan Deli, in Sumatra, on the\nChinese New Year.  A Chinaman of the coolie class was squatted stark\nnaked on the roadside, holding on his knees a brass pan the size of a\nwash-hand basin, piled a foot high with red-hot charcoal.  The heat\nreached one's face at two yards, but if it had been a tray of ices the\nman couldn't have been more unconcerned.  There was a crowd of Chinese\nround him, all eagerly asking questions, and a pile of coppers\naccumulating beside him.  A Chinese shopkeeper told me that the man \"told\nfortunes,\" but from the circumstance of a gambling-house being close by,\nI concluded that his customers were getting tips on a system.\n\n'Hoping these notes may be of service to you,\n'I remain,\n'Yours truly,\n'STEPHEN PONDER.'\n\n* * * * *\n\nIn this rite the fire-pit is thrice as long (at a rough estimate) as that\nof the Fijians.  The fire is of wooden embers, not heated stones.  As in\nFiji, a man who falls is burned, clearly suggesting that the feet and\nlegs, but not the whole body, are in some way prepared to resist the\nfire.  As we shall find to be the practice in Bulgaria, the celebrants\nplace their feet afterwards in water.  As in Bulgaria, drums are beaten\nto stimulate the fire-walkers.  Neither here nor in Fiji are the\nperformers said to be entranced, like the Bulgarian Nistinares. {161}  On\nthe whole, the Kling rite (which the Klings, I am informed, also practise\nin the islands whither they are carried as coolies) so closely resembles\nthe Fijian and the Tongan that one would explain the likeness by\ntransmission, were the ceremony not almost as like the rite of the Hirpi.\nFor the Tongan fire-ritual, the source is The Polynesian Society's\nJournal, vol. ii.  No. 2. pp. 105-108.  My attention was drawn to this by\nMr. Laing, writing from New Zealand.  The article is by Miss Tenira\nHenry, of Honolulu, a young lady of the island.  The Council of the\nSociety, not having seen the rite, 'do not guarantee the truth of the\nstory, but willingly publish it for the sake of the incantation.'  Miss\nHenry begins with a description of the ti-plant (Dracaena terminalis),\nwhich 'requires to be well baked before being eaten.'  She proceeds thus:\n\n'The ti-ovens are frequently thirty feet in diameter, and the large\nstones, heaped upon small logs of wood, take about twenty-four hours to\nget properly heated.  Then they are flattened down, by means of long\ngreen poles, and the trunks of a few banana-trees are stripped up and\nstrewn over them to cause steam.  The ti-roots are then thrown in whole,\naccompanied by short pieces of ape-root (Arum costatum), that are not\nquite so thick as the ti, but grow to the length of six feet and more.\nThe oven is then covered over with large leaves and soil, and left so for\nabout three days, when the ti and the ape are taken out well cooked, and\nof a rich, light-brown colour.  The ape prevents the ti from getting too\ndry in the oven.\n\n'There is a strange ceremony connected with the Uum Ti (or ti-oven), that\nused to be practised by the heathen priests at Raiatea, but can now be\nperformed by only two individuals (Tupua and Taero), both descendants of\npriests.  This ceremony consisted in causing people to walk in procession\nthrough the hot oven when flattened down, before anything had been placed\nin it, and without any preparation whatever, bare-footed or shod, and on\ntheir emergence not even smelling of fire.  The manner of doing this was\ntold by Tupua, who heads the procession in the picture, to Monsieur\nMorne, Lieutenant de Vaisseau, who also took the photograph {163} of it,\nabout two years ago, at Uturoa, Raiatea, which, being on bad paper, was\ncopied off by Mr. Barnfield, of Honolulu.  All the white residents of the\nplace, as well as the French officers, were present to see the ceremony,\nwhich is rarely performed nowadays.\n\n'No one has yet been able to solve the mystery of this surprising feat,\nbut it is to be hoped that scientists will endeavour to do so while those\nmen who practise it still live.\n\n\n\nTupua's Incantation used in Walking Over the Uum-Ti.--Translation\n\n\n'Hold the leaves of the ti-plant before picking them, and say: \"O hosts\nof gods! awake, arise!  You and I are going to the ti-oven to-morrow.\"\n\n'If they float in the air, they are gods, but if their feet touch the\nground they are human beings.  Then break the ti-leaves off and look\ntowards the direction of the oven, and say: \"O hosts of gods! go\nto-night, and to-morrow you and I shall go.\"  Then wrap the ti-leaves up\nin han (Hibiscus) leaves, and put them to sleep in the marae, where they\nmust remain until morning, and say in leaving:\n\n'\"Arise! awake!  O hosts of gods!  Let your feet take you to the ti-oven;\nfresh water and salt water come also.  Let the dark earth-worm and the\nlight earth-worm go to the oven.  Let the redness and the shades of fire\nall go.  You will go; you will go to-night, and to-morrow it will be you\nand I; we shall go to the Uum-Ti.\"  (This is for the night.)\n\n'When the ti-leaves are brought away, they must be tied up in a wand and\ncarried straight to the oven, and opened when all are ready to pass\nthrough; then hold the wand forward and say:\n\n'\"O men (spirits) who heated the oven! let it die out!  O dark\nearth-worms!  O light earthworms! fresh water and salt water, heat of the\noven and redness of the oven, hold up the footsteps of the walkers, and\nfan the heat of the bed.  O cold beings, let us lie in the midst of the\noven!  O Great-Woman-who-set-fire-to-the-skies! hold the fan, and let us\ngo into the oven for a little while!\"  Then, when all are ready to walk\nin, we say:\n\n   \"Holder of the first footstep!\n   Holder of the second footstep!\n   Holder of the third footstep!\n   Holder of the fourth footstep!\n   Holder of the fifth footstep!\n   Holder of the sixth footstep!\n   Holder of the seventh footstep!\n   Holder of the eighth footstep!\n   Holder of the ninth footstep!\n   Holder of the tenth footstep!\n   \"O Great-Woman-who-set-fire-to-the-skies! all is covered!\"\n\n'Then everybody walks through without hurt, into the middle and around\nthe oven, following the leader, with the wand beating from side to side.\n\n'The Great-Woman-who-set-fire-to-the-skies was a high-born woman in olden\ntimes, who made herself respected by the oppressive men when they placed\nwomen under so many restrictions.  She is said to have had the lightning\nat her command, and struck men with it when they encroached on her\nrights.\n\n'All the above is expressed in old Tahitian, and when quickly spoken is\nnot easily understood by the modern listener.  Many of the words, though\nfound in the dictionary, are now obsolete, and the arrangement of others\nis changed.  Oe and tana are never used now in place of the plural outou\nand tatou; but in old folk-lore it is the classical style of addressing\nthe gods in the collective sense.  Tahutahu means sorcery, and also to\nkindle a fire.'\n\n* * * * *\n\nSo far Miss Henry, on this occasion, and the archaic nature of the hymn,\nwith the reference to a mythical leader of the revolt of women, deserves\nthe attention of anthropologists, apart from the singular character of\nthe rite described.  In the third number of the Journal (vol. ii.) the\nfollowing editorial note is published:\n\n   'Miss Tenira Henry authorises us to say that her sister and her\n   sister's little child were some of those who joined in the Uum-Ti\n   ceremony referred to in vol. ii. p. 108, and in the preceding note,\n   and actually walked over the red-hot stones.  The illustration of the\n   performance given in the last number of the Journal, it appears, is\n   actually from a photograph taken by Lieutenant Morne, the original of\n   which Miss Henry has sent us for inspection.--EDITOR.'\n\n\n\nCorroborative Evidence\n\n\nThe following corroborative account is given in the Journal, from a\nsource vaguely described as 'a pamphlet published in San Francisco, by\nMr. Hastwell:'\n\n'The natives of Raiatea have some performances so entirely out of the\nordinary course of events as to institute (sic) inquiry relative to a\nproper solution.\n\n'On September 20, 1885, I witnessed the wonderful, and to me\ninexplicable, performance of passing through the \"fiery furnace.\"\n\n'The furnace that I saw was an excavation of three or four feet in the\nground, in a circular form (sloping upwards), and about thirty feet\nacross.  The excavation was filled with logs and wood, and then covered\nwith large stones.  A fire was built underneath, and kept burning for a\nday.  When I witnessed it, on the second day, the flames were pouring up\nthrough the interstices of the rocks, which were heated to a red and\nwhite heat.  When everything was in readiness, and the furnace still\npouring out its intense heat, the natives marched up with bare feet to\nthe edge of the furnace, where they halted for a moment, and after a few\npasses of the wand made of the branches of the ti-plant by the leader,\nwho repeated a few words in the native language, they stepped down on the\nrocks and walked leisurely across to the other side, stepping from stone\nto stone.  This was repeated five times, without any preparation whatever\non their feet, and without injury or discomfort from the heated stones.\nThere was not even the smell of fire on their garments.'\n\n* * * * *\n\nMr. N. J. Tone, in the same periodical (ii. 3,193), says that he arrived\njust too late to see the same rite at Bukit Mestajam, in Province\nWellesley, Straits Settlements; he did see the pit and the fire, and\nexamined the naked feet, quite uninjured, of the performers.  He\npublishes an extract to this effect from his diary.  The performers, I\nbelieve, were Klings.  Nothing is said to indicate any condition of\ntrance, or other abnormal state, in the fire-walkers.\n\n\n\nThe Fire-walk in Trinidad.\n\n\nMr. Henry E. St. Clair, writing on September 14. 1896, says: 'In\nTrinidad, British West Indies, the rite is performed annually about this\ntime of the year among the Indian coolie immigrants resident in the small\nvillage of Peru, a mile or so from Port of Spain.  I have personally\nwitnessed the passing, and the description given by Mr. Ponder tallies\nwith what I saw, except that, so far as I can remember, the number of\nthose who took part in the rite was greater than six.  In addition, there\nis this circumstance, which was not mentioned by that gentleman: each of\nthe \"passers\" carried one or two lemons, which they dropped into the fire\nas they went along.  These lemons were afterwards eagerly scrambled for\nby the bystanders, who, so far as I can recollect, attributed a healing\ninfluence to them.'\n\n\n\nBulgarian Fire-walk\n\n\nAs to the Bulgarian rite, Dr. Schischmanof writes to me:\n\n   'I am sure the observance will surprise you; I am even afraid that you\n   will think it rather fantastic, but you may rely on my information.\n   The danse de feu was described long ago in a Bulgarian periodical by\n   one of our best known writers.  What you are about to read only\n   confirms his account.  What I send you is from the Recueil de Folk\n   Lore, de Litterature et de Science (vol. vi. p. 224), edited, with my\n   aid and that of my colleague, Mastov, by the Minister of Public\n   Instruction.  How will you explain these hauts faits de l'extase\n   religieuse?  I cannot imagine!  For my part, I think of the\n   self-mutilations and tortures of Dervishes and Fakirs, and wonder if\n   we have not here something analogous.'\n\nThe article in the Bulgarian serial is called 'The Nistinares.'  The word\nis not Bulgarian; possibly it is Romaic.\n\nThe scene is in certain villages in Turkey, on the Bulgarian frontier,\nand not far from the town of Bourgas, on the Euxine, in the department of\nLozen Grad.  The ministrants (Nistinares) have the gift of fire-walking\nas a hereditary talent; they are specially _just_, and the gift is\nattributed as to a god in Fiji, in Bulgaria to St. Constantine and St.\nHelena.\n\n   'These _just ones_ feel a desire to dance in the flames during the\n   month of May; they are filled at the same time with some unknown\n   force, which enables them to predict the future.  The best Nistinare\n   is he who can dance longest in the live flame, and utter the most\n   truthful prophecies.'\n\nThe Nistinares may be of either sex.\n\nOn May 1 the Nistinares hold a kind of religious festival at the house of\none of their number.  Salutations are exchanged, and presents of food and\nraki are made to the chief Nistinare.  The holy icones of saints are\nwreathed with flowers, and perfumed with incense.  Arrangements are made\nfor purifying the holy wells and springs.\n\nOn May 21, the day of St. Helena and St. Constantine, the parish priest\nsays Mass in the grey of dawn.  At sunrise all the village meets in\nfestal array; the youngest Nistinare brings from the church the icones of\nthe two saints, and drums are carried behind them in procession.  They\nreach the sacred well in the wood, which the priest blesses.  This is\nparallel to the priestly benediction on 'Fountain Sunday' of the well\nbeneath the Fairy Tree at Domremy, where Jeanne d'Arc was accused of\nmeeting the Good Ladies. {169}  Everyone drinks of the water, and there\nis a sacrifice of rams, ewes, and oxen.  A festival follows, as was the\nuse of Domremy in the days of the Maid; then all return to the village.\nThe holy drum, which hangs all the year before St. Helena in the church,\nis played upon.  A mock combat between the icones which have visited the\nvarious holy wells is held.\n\nMeanwhile, in each village, pyres of dry wood, amounting to thirty,\nfifty, or even a hundred cartloads, have been piled up.  The wood is set\non fire before the procession goes forth to the hallowing of the\nfountains.  On returning, the crowd dances a horo (round dance) about the\nglowing logs.  Heaps of embers (Pineus acervus) are made, and water is\nthrown on the ground.  The musicians play the tune called 'L'Air\nNistinar.'  A Nistinare breaks through the dance, _turns blue_, trembles\nlike a leaf, and glares wildly with his eyes.  The dance ends, and\neverybody goes to the best point of view.  Then the wildest Nistinare\nseizes the icon, turns it to the crowd, and with naked feet climbs the\npyre of glowing embers.  The music plays, and the Nistinare dances to the\ntune in the fire.  If he is so disposed he utters prophecies.  He dances\ntill his face resumes its ordinary expression; then he begins to feel the\nburning; he leaves the pyre, and places his feet in the mud made by the\nlibations of water already described.  The second Nistinare then dances\nin the fire, and so on.  The predictions apply to villages and persons;\nsometimes sinners are denounced, or repairs of the church are demanded in\nthis queer parish council.  All through the month of May the Nistinares\ncall out for fire when they hear the Nistinare music playing.  They are\nvery temperate men and women.  Except in May they do not clamour for\nfire, and cannot dance in it.\n\nIn this remarkable case the alleged gift is hereditary, is of saintly\norigin, and is only exercised when the Nistinare is excited, and\n(apparently) entranced by music and the dance, as is the manner also of\nmedicine-men among savages.  The rite, with its sacrifices of sheep and\noxen, is manifestly of heathen origin.  They 'pass through the fire' to\nSt. Constantine, but the observance must be far older than Bulgarian\nChristianity.  The report says nothing as to the state of the feet of the\nNistinares after the fire-dance.  Medical inspection is desirable, and\nthe photographic camera should be used to catch a picture of the wild\nscene.  My account is abridged from the French version of the Bulgarian\nreport sent by Dr. Schischmanof.\n\n\n\nIndian Fire-walk\n\n\nSince these lines were written the kindness of Mr. Tawney, librarian at\nthe India Office, has added to my stock of examples.  Thus, Mr. Stokes\nprinted in the Indian Antiquary (ii. p. 190) notes of evidence taken at\nan inquest on a boy of fourteen, who fell during the fire-walk, was\nburned, and died on that day.  The rite had been forbidden, but was\nsecretly practised in the village of Periyangridi.  The fire-pit was 27\nfeet long by 7.5 feet broad and a span in depth.  Thirteen persons walked\nthrough the hot wood embers, which, in Mr. Stokes's opinion (who did not\nsee the performance), 'would hardly injure the tough skin of the sole of\na labourer's foot,' yet killed a boy.  The treading was usually done by\nmen under vows, perhaps vows made during illness.  One, at least, walked\n'because it is my duty as Pujari.'  Another says, 'I got down into the\nfire at the east end, meditating on Draupati, walked through to the west,\nand up the bank.'  Draupati is a goddess, wife of the Pandavas.  Mr.\nStokes reports that, according to the incredulous, experienced\nfire-walkers smear their feet with oil of the green frog.  No report is\nmade as to the condition of their feet when they emerge from the fire.\n\nAnother case occurs in Oppert's work, The Original Inhabitants of India\n(p. 480).  As usual, a pit is dug, filled with faggots.  When these have\nburned down 'a little,' and 'while the heat is still unbearable in the\nneighbourhood of the ditch, those persons who have made the vow . . .\nwalk . . . on the embers in the pit, without doing themselves as a rule\nmuch harm.'\n\nAgain, in a case where butter is poured over the embers to make a blaze,\n'one of the tribal priests, in a state of religious afflatus, walks\nthrough the fire.  It is said that the sacred fire is harmless, but some\nadmit that a certain preservative ointment is used by the performers.'  A\nchant used at Mirzapur (as in Fiji) is cited. {171}\n\nIn these examples the statements are rather vague.  No evidence is\nadduced as to the actual effect of the fire on the feet of the\nministrants.  We hear casually of ointments which protect the feet, and\nof the thickness of the skins of the fire-walkers, and of the\nunapproachable heat, but we have nothing exact, no trace of scientific\nprecision.  The Government 'puts down,' but does not really investigate\nthe rite.\n\n\n\nPsychical Parallels\n\n\nI now very briefly, and 'under all reserves,' allude to the only modern\nparallel in our country with which I am acquainted.  We have seen that\nIamblichus includes insensibility to fire among the privileges of Graeco-\nEgyptian 'mediums.' {172}  The same gift was claimed by Daniel Dunglas\nHome, the notorious American spiritualist.  I am well aware that as\nEusapia Paladino was detected in giving a false impression that her hands\nwere held by her neighbours in the dark, therefore, when Mr. Crookes\nasserts that he saw Home handle fire in the light, his testimony on this\npoint can have no weight with a logical public.  Consequently it is not\nas evidence to the _fact_ that I cite Mr. Crookes, but for another\npurpose.  Mr. Crookes's remarks I heard, and I can produce plenty of\nliving witnesses to the same experiences with D. D. Home:\n\n   'I several times saw the fire test, both at my own and at other\n   houses.  On one occasion he called me to him when he went to the fire,\n   and told me to watch carefully.  He certainly put his hand in the\n   grate and handled the red-hot coals in a manner which would have been\n   impossible for me to have imitated without being severely burnt.  I\n   once saw him go to a bright wood fire, and, taking a large piece of\n   red-hot charcoal, put it in the hollow of one hand, and, covering it\n   with the other, blow into the extempore furnace till the coal was\n   white hot, and the flames licked round his fingers.  No sign of\n   burning could be seen then or afterwards on his hands.'\n\nOn these occasions Home was, or was understood to be, 'entranced,' like\nthe Bulgarian Nistinares.  Among other phenomena, the white handkerchief\non which Home laid a red-hot coal was not scorched, nor, on analysis, did\nit show any signs of chemical preparation.  Home could also (like the\nFijians) communicate his alleged immunity to others present; for example,\nto Mr. S. C. Hall.  But it burned and marked a man I know.  Home,\nentranced, and handling a red-hot coal, passed it to a gentleman of my\nacquaintance, whose hand still bears the scar of the scorching endured in\n1867.  Immunity was not _always_ secured by experimenters.\n\nI only mention these circumstances because Mr. Crookes has stated that he\nknows no chemical preparation which would avert the ordinary action of\nheat.  Mr. Clodd (on the authority of Sir B. W. Richardson) has suggested\ndiluted sulphuric acid (so familiar to Klings, Hirpi, Tongans, and\nFijians).  But Mr. Clodd produced no examples of successful or\nunsuccessful experiment. {173}  The nescience of Mr. Crookes may be taken\nto cover these valuable properties of diluted sulphuric acid, unless Mr.\nClodd succeeds in an experiment which, if made on his own person, I would\nvery willingly witness.\n\nMerely for completeness, I mention Dr. Dozous's statement, {174} that he\ntimed by his watch Bernadette, the seer of Lourdes, while, for fifteen\nminutes, she, in an ecstatic condition, held her hands in the flame of a\ncandle.  He then examined her hands, which were not scorched or in any\nway affected by the fire.  This is called, at Lourdes, the Miracle du\nCierge.\n\nHere ends my list of examples, in modern and ancient times, of a rite\nwhich deserves, though it probably will not receive, the attention of\nscience.  The widely diffused religious character of the performance\nwill, perhaps, be admitted as demonstrated.  As to the method by which\nthe results are attained, whether by a chemical preparation, or by the\ninfluence of a certain mental condition, or by thickness of skin, or\nwhether all the witnesses fable with a singular unanimity (shared by\nphotographic cameras), I am unable even to guess.  On May 21, in\nBulgaria, a scientific observer might come to a conclusion.  At present I\nthink it possible that the Jewish 'Passing through the Fire' may have\nbeen a harmless rite.\n\n\n\nConclusion as to Fire-walk\n\n\nIn all these cases, and others as to which I have first-hand evidence,\nthere are decided parallels to the Rite of the Hirpi, and to Biblical and\necclesiastical miracles.  The savage examples are _rites_, and appear\nintended to secure good results in food supplies (Fiji), or general well-\nbeing, perhaps by expiation for sins, as in the Attic Thargelia.  The\nBulgarian rite also aims at propitiating general good luck.\n\n\n\nPsychical Research\n\n\nBut how is the Fire-walk done?  That remains a mystery, and perhaps no\nphilologist, folk-lorist, anthropologist, or physiologist, has seriously\nasked the question.  The medicamentum of Varro, the green frog fat of\nIndia, the diluted sulphuric acid of Mr. Clodd, are guesses in the air,\nand Mr. Clodd has made no experiment.  The possibility of plunging the\nhand, unhurt, in molten metal, is easily accounted for, and is not to the\npoint.  In this difficulty Psychical Research registers, and no more, the\nwell-attested performances of D. D. Home (entranced, like the\nNistinares); the well observed and timed Miracle du Cierge at\nLourdes--Bernadette being in an ecstatic condition; the Biblical story of\nShadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace; the researches of\nIamblichus; the case of Madame Shchapoff, carefully reported, {175} and\nother examples.  There is no harm in collecting examples, and the\nquestion remains, are all those rites, from those of Virgil's Hirpi to\nBulgaria of to-day, based on some actual but obscure and scientifically\nneglected fact in nature?  At all events, for the Soranus-Feronia rite\nphilology only supplies her competing etymologies, folk-lore her modern\nrural parallels, anthropology her savage examples, psychical research her\n'cases' at first-hand.  Anthropology had neglected the collection of\nthese, perhaps because the Fire-walk is 'impossible.'\n\n\n\n\nTHE ORIGIN OF DEATH\n\n\nYama\n\n\nThis excursus on 'The Fire-walk' has been introduced, as an occasion\narose, less because of controversy about a neglected theme than for the\npurpose of giving something positive in a controversial treatise.  For\nthe same reason I take advantage of Mr. Max Muller's remarks on Yama,\n'the first who died,' to offer a set of notes on myths of the Origin of\nDeath.  Yama, in our author's opinion, is 'the setting sun' (i. 45; ii.\n563).  Agni (Fire) is 'the first who was born;' as the other twin, Yama,\nhe was also the first who died (ii. 568).  As 'the setting sun he was the\nfirst instance of death.'  Kuhn and others, judging from a passage in the\nAtharva Veda (xviii. 3, 13), have, however, inferred that Yama 'was\nreally a human being and the first of mortals.'  He is described in the\nAtharva as 'the gatherer of men, who died the first of mortals, who went\nforward the first to that world.'  In the Atharva we read of 'reverence\nto Yama, to Death, who first approached the precipice, finding out the\npath for many.'  'The myth of Yama is perfectly intelligible, if we trace\nits roots back to the sun of evening' (ii. 573).  Mr. Max Muller then\nproposes on this head 'to consult the traditions of real Naturvolker'\n(savages).  The Harvey Islanders speak of dying as 'following the sun's\ntrack.'  The Maoris talk of 'going down with the sun' (ii. 574).  No more\nis said here about savage myths of 'the first who died.'  I therefore\noffer some additions to the two instances in which savages use a poetical\nphrase connecting the sun's decline with man's death.\n\n\n\nThe Origin of Death\n\n\nCivilised man in a scientific age would never invent a myth to account\nfor 'God's great ordinance of death.'  He regards it as a fact, obvious\nand necessarily universal; but his own children have not attained to his\nbelief in death.  The certainty and universality of death do not enter\ninto the thoughts of our little ones.\n\n   For in the thought of immortality\n   Do children play about the flowery meads.\n\nNow, there are still many childlike tribes of men who practically\ndisbelieve in death.  To them death is always a surprise and an\naccident--an unnecessary, irrelevant intrusion on the living world.\n'Natural deaths are by many tribes regarded as supernatural,' says Dr.\nTylor.  These tribes have no conception of death as the inevitable,\neventual obstruction and cessation of the powers of the bodily machine;\nthe stopping of the pulses and processes of life by violence or decay or\ndisease.  To persons who regard Death thus, _his_ intrusion into the\nworld (for Death, of course, is thought to be a person) stands in great\nneed of explanation.  That explanation, as usual, is given in myths.\n\n\n\nDeath, regarded as Unnatural\n\n\nBut before studying these widely different myths, let us first establish\nthe fact that death really is regarded as something non-natural and\nintrusive.  The modern savage readily believes in and accounts in a\nscientific way for _violent_ deaths.  The spear or club breaks or crushes\na hole in a man, and his soul flies out.  But the deaths he disbelieves\nin are _natural_ deaths.  These he is obliged to explain as produced by\nsome supernatural cause, generally the action of malevolent spirits\nimpelled by witches.  Thus the savage holds that, violence apart and the\naction of witches apart, man would even now be immortal.  'There are rude\nraces of Australia and South America,' writes Dr. Tylor, {178} 'whose\nintense belief in witchcraft has led them to declare that if men were\nnever bewitched, and never killed by violence, _they would never die at\nall_.  Like the Australians, the Africans will inquire of their dead\n\"what sorcerer slew them by his wicked arts.\"'  'The natives,' says Sir\nGeorge Grey, speaking of the Australians, 'do not believe that there is\nsuch a thing as death from natural causes.'  On the death of an\nAustralian native from disease, a kind of magical coroner's inquest is\nheld by the conjurers of the tribe, and the direction in which the wizard\nlives who slew the dead man is ascertained by the movements of worms and\ninsects.  The process is described at full length by Mr. Brough Smyth in\nhis Aborigines of Victoria (i. 98-102).  Turning from Australia to\nHindustan, we find that the Puwarrees (according to Heber's narrative)\nattribute all natural deaths to a supernatural cause--namely, witchcraft.\nThat is, the Puwarrees do not yet believe in the universality and\nnecessity of Death.  He is an intruder brought by magic arts into our\nliving world.  Again, in his Ethnology of Bengal (pp. 199, 200), Dalton\ntells us that the Hos (an aboriginal non-Aryan race) are of the same\nopinion as the Puwarrees.  'They hold that all disease in men or animals\nis attributable to one of two causes: the wrath of some evil spirit or\nthe spell of some witch or sorcerer.  These superstitions are common to\nall classes of the population of this province.'  In the New Hebrides\ndisease and death are caused, as Mr. Codrington found, by tamates, or\nghosts. {179}  In New Caledonia, according to Erskine, death is the\nresult of witchcraft practised by members of a hostile tribe, for who\nwould be so wicked as to bewitch his fellow-tribesman?  The Andaman\nIslanders attribute all natural deaths to the supernatural influence of e\nrem chaugala, or to jurn-win, two spirits of the jungle and the sea.  The\ndeath is avenged by the nearest relation of the deceased, who shoots\narrows at the invisible enemy.  The negroes of Central Africa entertain\nprecisely similar ideas about the non-naturalness of death.  Mr. Duff\nMacdonald, in Africana, writes: 'Every man who dies what we call a\nnatural death is really killed by witches.'  It is a far cry from the\nBlantyre Mission in Africa to the Eskimo of the frozen North; but so\nuniform is human nature in the lower races that the Eskimo precisely\nagree, as far as theories of death go, with the Africans, the aborigines\nof India, the Andaman Islanders, the Australians, and the rest.  Dr. Rink\n{180a} found that 'sickness or death coming about in an accidental manner\nwas always attributed to witchcraft, and it remains a question whether\ndeath on the whole was not originally accounted for as resulting from\nmagic.'  Pere Paul le Jeune, writing from Quebec in 1637, says of the Red\nMen: 'Je n'en voy mourir quasi aucun, qui ne pense estre ensorcele.'\n{180b}  It is needless to show how these ideas survived into\ncivilisation.  Bishop Jewell, denouncing witches before Queen Elizabeth,\nwas, so far, mentally on a level with the Eskimo and the Australian.  The\nfamiliar and voluminous records of trials for witchcraft, whether at\nSalem or at Edinburgh, prove that all abnormal and unwonted deaths and\ndiseases, in animals or in men, were explained by our ancestors as the\nresults of supernatural mischief.\n\nIt has been made plain (and the proof might be enlarged to any extent)\nthat the savage does not regard death as 'God's great ordinance,'\nuniversal and inevitable and natural.  But, being curious and\ninquisitive, he cannot help asking himself, 'How did this terrible\ninvader first enter a world where he now appears so often?'  This is,\nproperly speaking, a scientific question; but the savage answers it, not\nby collecting facts and generalising from them, but by inventing a myth.\nThat is his invariable habit.  Does he want to know why this tree has red\nberries, why that animal has brown stripes, why this bird utters its\npeculiar cry, where fire came from, why a constellation is grouped in one\nway or another, why his race of men differs from the whites--in all\nthese, and in all other intellectual perplexities, the savage invents a\nstory to solve the problem.  Stories about the Origin of Death are,\ntherefore, among the commonest fruits of the savage imagination.  As\nthose legends have been produced to meet the same want by persons in a\nvery similar mental condition, it inevitably follows that they all\nresemble each other with considerable closeness.  We need not conclude\nthat all the myths we are about to examine came from a single original\nsource, or were handed about--with flint arrow-heads, seeds, shells,\nbeads, and weapons--in the course of savage commerce.  Borrowing of this\nsort may--or, rather, must--explain many difficulties as to the diffusion\nof some myths.  But the myths with which we are concerned now, the myths\nof the Origin of Death, might easily have been separately developed by\nsimple and ignorant men seeking to discover an answer to the same\nproblem.\n\n\n\nWhy Men are Mortal\n\n\nThe myths of the Origin of Death fall into a few categories.  In many\nlegends of the lower races men are said to have become subject to\nmortality because they infringed some mystic prohibition or taboo of the\nsort which is common among untutored peoples.  The apparently\nuntrammelled Polynesian, or Australian, or African, is really the slave\nof countless traditions, which forbid him to eat this object or to touch\nthat, or to speak to such and such a person, or to utter this or that\nword.  Races in this curious state of ceremonial subjection often account\nfor death as the punishment imposed for breaking some taboo.  In other\ncases, death is said to have been caused by a sin of omission, not of\ncommission.  People who have a complicated and minute ritual (like so\nmany of the lower races) persuade themselves that Death burst on the\nworld when some passage of the ritual was first omitted, or when some\ncustom was first infringed.  Yet again, Death is fabled to have first\nclaimed us for his victims in consequence of the erroneous delivery of a\nfavourable message from some powerful supernatural being, or because of\nthe failure of some enterprise which would have resulted in the overthrow\nof Death, or by virtue of a pact or covenant between Death and the gods.\nThus it will be seen that death is often (though by no means invariably)\nthe penalty of infringing a command, or of indulging in a culpable\ncuriosity.  But there are cases, as we shall see, in which death, as a\ntolerably general law, follows on a mere accident.  Some one is\naccidentally killed, and this 'gives Death a lead' (as they say in the\nhunting-field) over the fence which had hitherto severed him from the\nworld of living men.  It is to be observed in this connection that the\nfirst of men who died is usually regarded as the discoverer of a hitherto\n'unknown country,' the land beyond the grave, to which all future men\nmust follow him.  Bin dir Woor, among the Australians, was the first man\nwho suffered death, and he (like Yama in the Vedic myth) became the\nColumbus of the new world of the dead.\n\n\n\nSavage Death-Myths\n\n\nLet us now examine in detail a few of the savage stories of the Origin of\nDeath.  That told by the Australians may be regarded with suspicion, as a\nrefraction from a careless hearing of the narrative in Genesis.  The\nlegend printed by Mr. Brough Smyth {183a} was told to Mr. Bulwer by 'a\nblack fellow far from sharp,' and this black fellow may conceivably have\ndistorted what his tribe had heard from a missionary.  This sort of\nrefraction is not uncommon, and we must always guard ourselves against\nbeing deceived by a savage corruption of a Biblical narrative.  Here is\nthe myth, such as it is:--'The first created man and woman were told' (by\nwhom we do not learn) 'not to go near a certain tree in which a bat\nlived.  The bat was not to be disturbed.  One day, however, the woman was\ngathering firewood, and she went near the tree.  The bat flew away, and\nafter that came Death.'  More evidently genuine is the following legend\nof how Death 'got a lead' into the Australian world.  'The child of the\nfirst man was wounded.  If his parents could heal him, Death would never\nenter the world.  They failed.  Death came.'  The wound in this legend\nwas inflicted by a supernatural being.  Here Death acts on the principle\nce n'est que le premier pas qui coute, and the premier pas was made easy\nfor him.  We may continue to examine the stories which account for death\nas the result of breaking a taboo.  The Ningphos of Bengal say they were\noriginally immortal. {183b}  They were forbidden to bathe in a certain\npool of water.  Some one, greatly daring, bathed, and ever since Ningphos\nhave been subject to death.  The infringement, not of a taboo, but of a\ncustom, caused death in one of the many Melanesian myths on this subject.\nMen and women had been practically deathless because they cast their old\nskins at certain intervals; but a grandmother had a favourite grandchild\nwho failed to recognise her when she appeared as a young woman in her new\nskin.  With fatal good-nature the grandmother put on her old skin again,\nand instantly men lost the art of skin-shifting, and Death finally seized\nthem. {184}\n\n\n\nThe Greek Myth\n\n\nThe Greek myth of the Origin of Death is the most important of those\nwhich turn on the breaking of a prohibition.  The story has unfortunately\nbecome greatly confused in the various poetical forms which have reached\nus.  As far as can be ascertained, death was regarded in one early Greek\nmyth as the punishment of indulgence in forbidden curiosity.  Men appear\nto have been free from death before the quarrel between Zeus and\nPrometheus.  In consequence of this quarrel Hephaestus fashioned a woman\nout of earth and water, and gave her to Epimetheus, the brother of the\nTitan.  Prometheus had forbidden his brother to accept any gift from the\ngods, but the bride was welcomed nevertheless.  She brought her tabooed\ncoffer: this was opened; and men--who, according to Hesiod, had hitherto\nlived exempt from 'maladies that bring down Fate'--were overwhelmed with\nthe 'diseases that stalk abroad by night and day.'  Now, in Hesiod (Works\nand Days, 70-100) there is nothing said about unholy curiosity.  Pandora\nsimply opened her casket and scattered its fatal contents.  But\nPhilodemus assures us that, according to a variant of the myth, it was\nEpimetheus who opened the forbidden coffer, whence came Death.\n\nLeaving the myths which turn on the breaking of a taboo, and reserving\nfor consideration the New Zealand story, in which the Origin of Death is\nthe neglect of a ritual process, let us look at some African myths of the\nOrigin of Death.  It is to be observed that in these (as in all the myths\nof the most backward races) many of the characters are not gods, but\nanimals.\n\nThe Bushman story lacks the beginning.  The mother of the little Hare was\nlying dead, but we do not know how she came to die.  The Moon then struck\nthe little Hare on the lip, cutting it open, and saying, 'Cry loudly, for\nyour mother will not return, as _I_ do, but is quite dead.'  In another\nversion the Moon promises that the old Hare shall return to life, but the\nlittle Hare is sceptical, and is hit in the mouth as before.  The\nHottentot myth makes the Moon send the Hare to men with the message that\nthey will revive as he (the Moon) does.  But the Hare 'loses his memory\nas he runs' (to quote the French proverb, which may be based on a form of\nthis very tale), and the messenger brings the tidings that men shall\nsurely die and never revive.  The angry Moon then burns a hole in the\nHare's mouth.  In yet another Hottentot version the Hare's failure to\ndeliver the message correctly caused the death of the Moon's mother\n(Bleek, Bushman Folklore). {185}  Compare Sir James Alexander's\nExpedition, ii. 250, where the Namaquas tell this tale.  The Fijians say\nthat the Moon wished men to die and be born again, like herself.  The Rat\nsaid, 'No, let them die, like rats;' and they do. {186}\n\n\n\nThe Serpent\n\n\nIn this last variant we have death as the result of a failure or\ntransgression.  Among the more backward natives of South India (Lewin's\nWild Races of South India) the serpent is concerned, in a suspicious way,\nwith the Origin of Death.  The following legend might so easily arise\nfrom a confused understanding of the Mohammedan or Biblical narrative\nthat it is of little value for our purpose.  At the same time, even if it\nis only an adaptation, it shows the characteristics of the adapting\nmind:--God had made the world, trees, and reptiles, and then set to work\nto make man out of clay.  A serpent came and devoured the still inanimate\nclay images while God slept.  The serpent still comes and bites us all,\nand the end is death.  If God never slept, there would be no death.  The\nsnake carries us off while God is asleep.  But the oddest part of this\nmyth remains.  Not being able always to keep awake, God made a dog to\ndrive away the snake by barking.  And that is why dogs always howl when\nmen are at the point of death.  Here we have our own rural superstition\nabout howling dogs twisted into a South Indian myth of the Origin of\nDeath.  The introduction of Death by a pure accident recurs in a myth of\nCentral Africa reported by Mr. Duff Macdonald.  There was a time when the\nman blessed by Sancho Panza had not yet 'invented sleep.'  A woman it was\nwho came and offered to instruct two men in the still novel art of\nsleeping.  'She held the nostrils of one, and he never awoke at all,' and\nsince then the art of dying has been facile.\n\n\n\nDualistic Myths\n\n\nA not unnatural theory of the Origin of Death is illustrated by a myth\nfrom Pentecost Island and a Red Indian myth.  In the legends of very many\nraces we find the attempt to account for the Origin of Death and Evil by\na simple dualistic myth.  There were two brothers who made things; one\nmade things well, the other made them ill.  In Pentecost Island it was\nTagar who made things well, and he appointed that men should die for five\ndays only, and live again.  But the malevolent Suque caused men 'to die\nright out.' {187}  The Red Indian legend of the same character is printed\nin the Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology (1879-80), p. 45.  The\nyounger of the Cin-au-av brothers, who were wolves, said, 'When a man\ndies, send him back in the morning and let all his friends rejoice.'  'Not\nso,' said the elder; 'the dead shall return no more.'  So the younger\nbrother slew the child of the elder, and this was the beginning of death.\n\n\n\nEconomic Myth\n\n\nThere is another and a very quaint myth of the Origin of Death in Banks\nIsland.  At first, in Banks Island, as elsewhere, men were immortal.  The\neconomical results were just what might have been expected.  Property\nbecame concentrated in the hands of the few--that is, of the first\ngenerations--while all the younger people were practically paupers.  To\nheal the disastrous social malady, Qat (the maker of things, who was more\nor less a spider) sent for Mate--that is, Death.  Death lived near a\nvolcanic crater of a mountain, where there is now a by-way into Hades--or\nPanoi, as the Melanesians call it.  Death came, and went through the\nempty forms of a funeral feast for himself.  Tangaro the Fool was sent to\nwatch Mate, and to see by what way he returned to Hades, that men might\navoid that path in future.  Now when Mate fled to his own place, this\ngreat fool Tangaro noticed the path, but forgot which it was, and pointed\nit out to men under the impression that it was the road to the _upper_,\nnot to the _under_, world.  Ever since that day men have been constrained\nto follow Mate's path to Panoi and the dead. {188}  Another myth is\nsomewhat different, but, like this one, attributes death to the\nimbecility of Tangaro the Fool.\n\n\n\nMaui and Yama\n\n\nThe New Zealand myth of the Origin of Death is pretty well known, as Dr.\nTylor has seen in it the remnants of a solar myth, and has given it a\n'solar' explanation.  It is an audacious thing to differ from so cautious\nand learned an anthropologist as Dr. Tylor, but I venture to give my\nreasons for dissenting in this case from the view of the author of\nPrimitive Culture (i. 335).  Maui is the great hero of Maori mythology.\nHe was not precisely a god, still less was he one of the early elemental\ngods, yet we can scarcely regard him as a man.  He rather answers to one\nof the race of Titans, and especially to Prometheus, the son of a Titan.\nMaui was prematurely born, and his mother thought the child would be no\ncredit to her already numerous and promising family.  She therefore (as\nnative women too often did in the South-Sea Islands) tied him up in her\nlong tresses and tossed him out to sea.  The gales brought him back to\nshore: one of his grandparents carried him home, and he became much the\nmost illustrious and successful of his household.  So far Maui had the\nluck which so commonly attends the youngest and least-considered child in\nfolklore and mythology.  This feature in his myth may be a result of the\nvery widespread custom of jungsten Recht (Borough English), by which the\nyoungest child is heir at least of the family hearth.  Now, unluckily, at\nthe baptism of Maui (for a pagan form of baptism is a Maori ceremony) his\nfather omitted some of the Karakias, or ritual utterances proper to be\nused on such occasions.  This was the fatal original mistake whence came\nman's liability to death, for hitherto men had been immortal.  So far,\nwhat is there 'solar' about Maui?  Who are the sun's brethren?--and Maui\nhad many.  How could the sun catch the sun in a snare, and beat him so as\nto make him lame?  This was one of Maui's feats, for he meant to prevent\nthe sun from running too fast through the sky.  Maui brought fire,\nindeed, from the under-world, as Prometheus stole it from the\nupper-world; but many men and many beasts do as much as the myths of the\nworld, and it is hard to see how the exploit gives Maui 'a solar\ncharacter.'  Maui invented barbs for hooks, and other appurtenances of\nearly civilisation, with which the sun has no more to do than with patent\nsafety-matches.  His last feat was to attempt to secure human immortality\nfor ever.  There are various legends on this subject.\n\n\n\nMaui Myths\n\n\nSome say Maui noticed that the sun and moon rose again from their daily\ndeath, by virtue of a fountain in Hades (Hine-nui-te-po) where they\nbathed.  Others say he wished to kill Hine-nui-te-po (conceived of as a\nwoman) and to carry off her heart.  Whatever the reason, Maui was to be\nswallowed up in the giant frame of Hades, or Night, and, if he escaped\nalive, Death would never have power over men.  He made the desperate\nadventure, and would have succeeded but for the folly of one of the birds\nwhich accompanied him.  This little bird, which sings at sunset, burst\nout laughing inopportunely, wakened Hine-nui-te-po, and she crushed to\ndeath Maui and all hopes of earthly immortality.  Had he only come forth\nalive, men would have been deathless.  Now, except that the bird which\nlaughed sings at sunset, what is there 'solar' in all this?  _The sun\ndoes daily what Maui failed to do_, {190a} passes through darkness and\ndeath back into light and life.  Not only does the sun daily succeed\nwhere Maui failed, but it was his observation of this fact which\nencouraged Maui to risk the adventure.  If Maui were the sun, we should\nall be immortal, for Maui's ordeal is daily achieved by the sun.  But Dr.\nTylor says: {190b} 'It is seldom that solar characteristics are more\ndistinctly marked in the several details of a myth than they are here.'\nTo us the characteristics seem to be precisely the reverse of solar.\nThroughout the cycle of Maui he is constantly set in direct opposition to\nthe sun, and the very point of the final legend is that what the sun\ncould do Maui could not.  Literally the one common point between Maui and\nthe sun is that the little bird, the tiwakawaka, which sings at the daily\ndeath of day, sang at the eternal death of Maui.\n\nWithout pausing to consider the Tongan myth of the Origin of Death, we\nmay go on to investigate the legends of the Aryan races.  According to\nthe Satapatha Brahmana, Death was made, like the gods and other\ncreatures, by a being named Prajapati.  Now of Prajapati, half was\nmortal, half was immortal.  With his mortal half he feared Death, and\nconcealed himself from Death in earth and water.  Death said to the gods,\n'What hath become of him who created us?'  They answered, 'Fearing thee,\nhath he entered the earth.'  The gods and Prajapati now freed themselves\nfrom the dominion of Death by celebrating an enormous number of\nsacrifices.  Death was chagrined by their escape from the 'nets and\nclubs' which he carries in the Aitareya Brahmana.  'As you have escaped\nme, so will men also escape,' he grumbled.  The gods appeased him by the\npromise that, _in the body_, no man henceforth for ever should evade\nDeath.  'Every one who is to become immortal shall do so by first parting\nwith his body.'\n\n\n\nYama\n\n\nAmong the Aryans of India, as we have already seen, Death has a\nprotomartyr, Tama, 'the first of men who reached the river, spying out a\npath for many.'  In spying the path Yama corresponds to Tangaro the Fool,\nin the myth of the Solomon Islands.  But Yama is not regarded as a\nmaleficent being, like Tangaro.  The Rig Veda (x. 14) speaks of him as\n'King Yama, who departed to the mighty streams and sought out a road for\nmany;' and again, the Atharva Veda names him 'the first of men who died,\nand the first who departed to the celestial world.'  With him the Blessed\nFathers dwell for ever in happiness.  Mr. Max Muller, as we said, takes\nYama to be 'a character suggested by the setting sun'--a claim which is\nalso put forward, as we have seen, for the Maori hero Maui.  It is Yama,\naccording to the Rig Veda, who sends the birds--a pigeon is one of his\nmessengers (compare the White Bird of the Oxenhams)--as warnings of\napproaching death.  Among the Iranian race, Yima appears to have been the\ncounterpart of the Vedic Yama.  He is now King of the Blessed; originally\nhe was the first of men over whom Death won his earliest victory.\n\n\n\nInferences\n\n\nThat Yama is mixed up with the sun, in the Rig Veda, seems certain\nenough.  Most phenomena, most gods, shade into each other in the Vedic\nhymns.  But it is plain that the conception of a 'first man who died' is\nas common to many races as it is natural.  Death was regarded as\nunnatural, yet here it is among us.  How did it come?  By somebody dying\nfirst, and establishing a bad precedent.  But need that somebody have\nbeen originally the sun, as Mr. Max Muller and Dr. Tylor think in the\ncases of Yama and Maui?  This is a point on which we may remain in doubt,\nfor death in itself was certain to challenge inquiry among savage\nphilosophers, and to be explained by a human rather than by a solar myth.\nHuman, too, rather than a result of 'disease of language' is, probably,\nthe myth of the Fire-stealer.\n\n\n\nThe Stealing of Fire\n\n\nThe world-wide myth explaining how man first became possessed of\nfire--namely, by _stealing_ it--might well serve as a touchstone of the\nphilological and anthropological methods.  To Mr. Max Muller the interest\nof the story will certainly consist in discovering connections between\nGreek and Sanskrit names of fire-gods and of fire bringing heroes.  He\nwill not compare the fire-myths of other races all over the world, nor\nwill he even try to explain why--in almost all of these myths we find a\nthief of fire, a Fire-stealer.  This does not seem satisfactory to the\nanthropologist, whose first curiosity is to know why fire is everywhere\nsaid to have been obtained for men by sly theft or 'flat burglary.'  Of\ncourse it is obvious that a myth found in Australia and America cannot\npossibly be the result of disease of Aryan languages not spoken in those\ntwo continents.  The myth of fire-stealing must necessarily have some\nother origin.\n\n\n\n'Fire Totems'\n\n\nMr. Max Muller, after a treatise on Agni and other fire-gods, consecrates\ntwo pages to 'Fire Totems.'  'If we are assured that there are some dark\npoints left, and that these might be illustrated and rendered more\nintelligible by what are called fire totems among the Red Indians of\nNorth America, let us have as much light as we can get' (ii. 804).  Alas!\nI never heard of fire totems before.  Probably some one has been writing\nabout them, somewhere, unless we owe them to Mr. Max Muller's own\nresearches.  Of course, he cites no authority for his fire totems.  'The\nfire totem, we are told, would thus naturally have become the god of the\nIndians.'  'We are told'--where, and by whom?  Not a hint is given on the\nsubject, so we must leave the doctrine of fire totems to its mysterious\ndiscoverer.  'If others prefer to call Prometheus a fire totem, no one\nwould object, if only it would help us to a better understanding of\nPrometheus' (ii. 810).  Who are the 'others' who speak of a Greek\n'culture-hero' by the impossibly fantastic name of 'a fire totem'?\n\n\n\nPrometheus\n\n\nMr. Max Muller 'follows Kuhn' in his explanation of Prometheus, the Fire-\nstealer, but he does not follow him all the way.  Kuhn tried to account\nfor the myth that Prometheus _stole_ fire, and Mr. Max Muller does not\ntry. {194}  Kuhn connects Prometheus with the Sanskrit pramantha, the\nstick used in producing fire by drilling a pointed into a flat piece of\nwood.  The Greeks, of course, made Prometheus mean 'foresighted,'\nprovidens; but let it be granted that the Germans know better.  Pramantha\nnext is associated with the verb mathnami, 'to rub _or_ grind;' and that,\nagain, with Greek [Greek], 'to learn.'  We too talk of a student as a\n'grinder,' by a coincidence.  The root manth likewise means 'to rob;' and\nwe can see in English how a fire-stick, a 'fire-rubber,' might become a\n'fire-robber,' a stealer of fire.  A somewhat similar confusion in old\nAryan languages converted the fire-stick into a person, the thief of\nfire, Prometheus; while a Greek misunderstanding gave to Prometheus\n(pramantha, 'fire-stick') the meaning of 'foresighted,' with the word for\nprudent foresight, [Greek].  This, roughly stated, is the view of Kuhn.\n{195a}  Mr. Max Muller concludes that Prometheus, the producer of fire,\nis also the fire-god, a representative of Agni, and necessarily 'of the\ninevitable Dawn'--'of Agni as the deus matutinus, a frequent character of\nthe Vedic Agni, the Agni aushasa, or the daybreak' (ii. 813).\n\nBut Mr. Max Muller does not say one word about Prometheus as the Fire-\nstealer.  Now, that he _stole_ fire is of the essence of his myth; and\nthis myth of the original procuring of fire by theft occurs all over the\nworld.  As Australian and American savages cannot conceivably have\nderived the myth of fire-stealing from the root manth and its double\nsense of stealing and rubbing, there must be some other explanation.  But\nthis fact could not occur to comparative mythologists who did not\ncompare, probably did not even know, similar myths wherever found.\n\n\n\nSavage Myths of Fire-stealing\n\n\nIn La Mythologie (pp. 185-195) I have put together a small collection of\nsavage myths of the theft of fire. {195b}  Our text is the line of Hesiod\n(Theogony, 566), 'Prometheus _stole_ the far-seen ray of unwearied fire\nin a hollow stalk of fennel.'  The same stalk is still used in the Greek\nisles for carrying fire, as it was of old--whence no doubt this feature\nof the myth. {195c}  How did Prometheus steal fire?  Some say from the\naltar of Zeus, others that he lit his rod at the sun. {196a}  The\nAustralians have the same fable; fire was obtained by a black fellow who\nclimbed by a rope to the sun.  Again, in Australia fire was the\npossession of two women alone.  A man induced them to turn their backs,\nand stole fire.  A very curious version of the myth occurs in an\nexcellent book by Mrs. Langloh Parker. {196b}  There was no fire when\nRootoolgar, the crane, married Gooner, the kangaroo rat.  Rootoolgar,\nidly rubbing two sticks together, discovered the art of fire-making.\n'This we will keep secret,' they said, 'from all the tribes.'  A fire-\nstick they carried about in their comebee.  The tribes of the Bush\ndiscovered the secret, and the fire-stick was stolen by Reeargar, the\nhawk.  We shall be told, of course, that the hawk is the lightning, or\nthe Dawn.  But in this savage Jungle Book all the characters are animals,\nand Reeargar is no more the Dawn than is the kangaroo rat.  In savage\nmyths animals, not men, play the leading roles, and the fire-stealing\nbird or beast is found among many widely scattered races.  In Normandy\nthe wren is the fire-bringer. {196c}  A bird brings fire in the Andaman\nIsles. {196d}  Among the Ahts a fish owned fire; other beasts stole it.\nThe raven hero of the Thlinkeets, Yehl, stole fire.  Among the Cahrocs\ntwo old women possessed it, and it was stolen by the coyote.  Are these\ntheftuous birds and beasts to be explained as Fire-gods?  Probably not.\nWill any philologist aver that in Cahroc, Thlinkeet.  Australian,\nAndaman, and so forth, the word for 'rub' resembled the word for 'rob,'\nand so produced by 'a disease of language' the myth of the Fire-stealer?\n\n\n\nOrigin of the Myth of Fire-stealing\n\n\nThe myth arose from the nature of savage ideas, not from unconscious\npuns.  Even in a race so civilised as the Homeric Greeks, to make fire\nwas no easy task.  Homer speaks of a man, in a lonely upland hut, who\ncarefully keeps the embers alive, that he may not have to go far afield\nin search of the seed of fire. {197}  Obviously he had no ready means of\nstriking a light.  Suppose, then, that an early savage loses his seed of\nfire.  His nearest neighbours, far enough off, may be hostile.  If he\nwants fire, as they will not give it, he must _steal_ it, just as he must\nsteal a wife.  People in this condition would readily believe, like the\nAustralian blacks, that the original discoverers or possessors of a\nsecret so valuable as fire would not give it away, that others who wanted\nit would be obliged to get it by theft.  In Greece, in a civilised race,\nthis very natural old idea survives, though fire is not the possession of\na crane, or of an old woman, but of the gods, and is stolen, not by a\nhawk or a coyote, but by Prometheus, the culture-hero and demiurge.\nWhether his name 'Foresighted' is a mistaken folk-etymology from the root\nmanth, or not, we have, in the ancient inevitable idea, that the original\npatentees of fire would not willingly part with their treasure, the\nobvious origin of the myth of the Fire-stealer.  And this theory does not\nleave the analogous savage myths of fire-stealing unexplained and out in\nthe cold, as does the philological hypothesis. {198}  In this last\ninstance, as in others, the origin of a world-wide myth is found, not in\na 'disease of language,' but in a form of thought still natural.  If a\nforeign power wants what answers among us to the exclusive possession of\nfire, or wants the secret of its rival's new explosive, it has to _steal_\nit.\n\n\n\n\nCONCLUSION\n\n\nHere ends this 'Gentle and Joyous Passage of Arms.'  I showed, first, why\nanthropological students of mythology, finding the philological school\noccupying the ground, were obliged in England to challenge Mr. Max\nMuller.  I then discoursed of some inconveniences attending his method in\ncontroversy.  Next, I gave a practical example, the affair of Tuna and\nDaphne.  This led to a comparison of the philological and the\nanthropological ways of treating the Daphne myth.  The question of our\nallies then coming up, I stated my reasons for regarding Prof. Tiele\n'rather as an ally than an adversary,' the reason being his own\nstatement.  Presently, I replied to Prof. Tiele's criticism of my\ntreatment of the myth of Cronos.  After a skirmish on Italian fields, I\ngave my reasons for disagreeing with Mr. Max Muller's view of Mannhardt's\nposition.  His theory of Demeter Erinnys was contrasted with that of Mr.\nMax Muller.  Totemism occupied us next, and the views of Mr. Max Muller\nand Mr. J. G. Frazer were criticised.  Then I defended anthropological\nand criticised philological evidence.  Our method of universal comparison\nwas next justified in the matter of Fetishism.  The Riddle Theory of Mr.\nMax Muller was presently discussed.  Then followed a review of our\ncontending methods in the explanation of Artemis, of the Fire-walk, of\nDeath Myths, and of the Fire-stealer.  Thus a number of points in\nmythological interpretation have been tested on typical examples.\n\nMuch more might be said on a book of nearly 900 pages.  Many points might\nbe taken, much praise (were mine worth anything) might be given; but I\nhave had but one object, to defend the method of anthropology from a\nrunning or dropping fire of criticism which breaks out in many points all\nalong the line, through Contributions to the Science of Mythology.  If my\nanswer be desultory and wandering, remember the sporadic sharpshooting of\nthe adversary!  For adversary we must consider Mr. Max Muller, so long as\nwe use different theories to different results.  If I am right, if he is\nwrong, in our attempts to untie this old Gordian knot, he loses little\nindeed.  That fame of his, the most steady and brilliant light of all\nwhich crown the brows of contemporary scholars, is the well-earned\nreward, not of mythological lore nor of cunning fence in controversy, but\nof wide learning and exquisitely luminous style.\n\nI trust that I have imputed no unfairness, made no charge of conscious\nmisrepresentation (to accidents of exposition we are all liable), have\nstruck no foul blow, hazarded no discourteous phrase.  If I have done so,\nI am thereby, even more than in my smattering of unscholarly learning, an\nopponent more absolutely unworthy of the Right Hon. Professor than I\nwould fain believe myself.\n\n\n\n\nAPPENDIX A: The Fire-walk in Spain\n\n\nOne study occasionally illustrates another.  In examining the history of\nthe Earl Marischal, who was exiled after the rising of 1715, I found, in\na letter of a correspondent of d'Alembert, that the Earl met a form of\nthe fire-walk in Spain.  There then existed in the Peninsula a hereditary\nclass of men who, by dint of 'charms' permitted by the Inquisition, could\nenter fire unharmed.  The Earl Marischal said that he would believe in\ntheir powers if he were allowed first to light the fire, and then to look\non.  But the fire-walkers would not gratify him, as not knowing what kind\nof fire a heretic might kindle.\n\n\n\n\nAPPENDIX B: Mr. Macdonell on Vedic Mythology\n\n\nToo late for use here came Vedic Mythology, from Grundriss der\nindo-arischen Philologie, {201} by Mr. A. Macdonell, the representative\nof the historic house of Lochgarry.  This even a non-scholar can perceive\nto be a most careful and learned work.  As to philological 'equations'\nbetween names of Greek and Vedic gods, Mr. Macdonell writes:\n'Dyaus=[Greek] is the only one which can be said to be beyond the range\nof doubt.'  As to the connection of Prometheus with Sanskrit Pramantha,\nhe says: '[Greek] has every appearance of being a purely Greek formation,\nwhile the Indian verb math, to twirl, is found compounded only with nis,\nnever with pra, to express the art of producing fire by friction.'  (See\nabove, p. 194.)  If Mr. Macdonell is right here, the Greek myth of the\nfire-stealer cannot have arisen from 'a disease of language.'  But\nscholars must be left to reconcile this last typical example of their\nceaseless differences in the matter of etymology of names.\n\n\n\n\nFOOTNOTES\n\n\n{0a}  Chips, iv. 62.\n\n{0b}  Chips, iv. p. xxxv.\n\n{0c}  Chips, iv. pp. vi. vii.\n\n{0d}  Ibid. iv. p. xv.\n\n{0e}  Cults of the Greek States, ii. 435-440.\n\n{0f}  Chips, iv. p. xiv.\n\n{0g}  Chips, iv. p. xiii.\n\n{5}  Suidas, s.v. [Greek]; he cites Dionysius of Chalcis, B.C. 200.\n\n{6a}  See Goguet, and Millar of Glasgow, and Voltaire.\n\n{6b}  Translated by M. Parmentier.\n\n{7}  See 'Totemism,' infra.\n\n{8}  Longmans.\n\n{10a}  M. R. R. i. 155-160.\n\n{10b}  Tylor's Prim. Cult. i. 145.\n\n{10c}  Turner's Samoa, p. 219.\n\n{10d}  Gill's Myths and Songs, p. 79.\n\n{11}  M. R. R. ii. 160.\n\n{14}  Metam. i. 567.\n\n{15a}  Grimm, cited by Liebrecht in Zur Volkskunde, p. 17.\n\n{15b}  Primitive Culture, i. 285.\n\n{15c}  Op. cit. i. 46-81.\n\n{16}  M. R. R. i. 160.\n\n{17}  Erratum: This is erroneous.  See Contributions, &c., vol. i. p. 6,\nwhere Mr. Max Muller writes, 'Tuna means eel.'  This shows why Tuna, i.e.\nEel, is the hero.  His connection, as an admirer, with the Moon, perhaps\nremains obscure.\n\n{18}  Phonetically there may be 'no possible objection to the derivation\nof [Greek] from a Sanskrit form, *Apa-var-yan, or *Apa-val-yan' (ii.\n692); but, historically, Greek is not derived from Sanskrit surely!\n\n{20a}  Mythologische Forschungen, p. 275.\n\n{20b}  Baumkultus, p. 297.  Berlin: 1875.\n\n{21a}  Antike Wald- und Feldkulte, p. 257.  Referring to Baumkultus, p.\n297.\n\n{21b}  Oriental and Linguistic Studies, second series, p. 160.  La\nReligion Vedique, iii. 293.\n\n{22}  1, viii. cf. i. 27.\n\n{23}  Riv. Crit. Mensile.  Geneva, iii. xiv. p. 2.\n\n{25a}  Custom and Myth, p. 3, citing Revue de l'Hist. des Religions, ii.\n136.\n\n{25b}  M. R. R. i. 24.\n\n{25c}  Revue de l'Hist. des Religions, xii. 256.\n\n{26}  Op. cit. p. 253.\n\n{27}  Op. cit. xii. 250.\n\n{28a}  P. 104, infra.\n\n{28b}  Revue de l'Hist. des Religions, xii. 259.\n\n{29a}  M. R. R. i. 25.\n\n{29b}  Rev. xii. 247.\n\n{30}  M. R. R. i. 24.\n\n{31a}  Rev. xii. 277.\n\n{31b}  Rev. xii. 264.\n\n{31c}  M. R. R. i. 44, 45.\n\n{32a}  Custom and Myth, p. 51.\n\n{32b}  Rev. xii. 262.\n\n{34}  Odyssey, book ix.\n\n{37}  C. and M. p. 56.\n\n{42a}  W. u. F. K. xxiii.\n\n{42b}  M. R. R. i. 23.\n\n{42c}  W. u. F. K. xvii.\n\n{46}  Golden Bough, 1. ix.\n\n{48}  [Greek].  Dionys. i. 80.\n\n{51a}  Pausanias, viii. 25.\n\n{51b}  Myth. Forsch. p. 244.\n\n{51c}  Iliad, xx. 226.\n\n{52}  Myth. Forsch, p. 265\n\n{54}  September 19, 1875.  Myth. Forsch. xiv.\n\n{55}  For undeniable solar myths see M. R. R. i. 124-135.\n\n{56}  Op. cit. p. xx.\n\n{60}  Folk Lore Society.\n\n{61a}  Von einem der vorzuglichsten Schiriftgelehrten, Annana, in\nklassischer Darstellung aufgezeichneten Marchens, p. 240.\n\n{61b}  Custom and Myth.\n\n{62a}  See Preface to Mrs. Hunt's translation of Grimm's Marchen.\n\n{62b}  P. 309.\n\n{65}  x. 17.  Cf. Muir, Sanskrit Texts, v. 277.\n\n{66}  As the Sun's wife is Dawn, and leaves him at dawn, she is not much\nof a bedfellow.  As _Night_, however, she _is_ a bedfellow of the\nnocturnal Sun.\n\n{71}  M. R. R. i. 58-81.\n\n{72a}  See Robertson Smith on 'Semitic Religion.'\n\n{72b}  See Sayce's Herodotus, p. 344.\n\n{72c}  See Rhys' Rhind Lectures; I am not convinced by the evidence.\n\n{73}  Academy, September 27, 1884.\n\n{74a}  Anth. Rel. p. 405.\n\n{74b}  Plantagenet, Planta genista.--A. L.\n\n{74c}  See M. R. R. ii. 56, for a criticism of this theory.\n\n{76}  Religion of the Semites, pp. 208, 209.\n\n{78}  Die Religionen, p. 12.\n\n{79}  Anth. Rel. p. 122.\n\n{80}  Dalton.\n\n{81a}  Strabo, xiii. 613.  Pausanias, i. 24, 8.\n\n{81b}  Crooke, Introduction to Popular Religion of North India, p. 380.\n\n{82a}  C. and M. p. 115.\n\n{82b}  Contributions, ii. 687.\n\n{83a}  Evidence in G. B. i. 325, 326.\n\n{83b}  Compare Liebrecht, 'The Eaten God,' in Zur Volkskunde, p. 436.\n\n{84a}  Cf. G. B. ii. 17, for evidence.\n\n{84b}  M. R. R. ii. 232.\n\n{84c}  G. B. ii. 90-113.\n\n{84d}  In Encyclop. Brit. he thinks it 'very probable.'\n\n{85a}  i. 200.\n\n{85b}  M. R. R. ii. 142, 148-149.\n\n{85c}  R. V. iv. 18, 10.\n\n{86}  G. B. ii. 44-49.\n\n{87}  G. B. ii. 33.\n\n{88a}  Plutarch, Quaest. Rom. vi.  McLennan, The Patriarchal Theory, p.\n207, note 2.\n\n{88b}  G. B. ii. 337.\n\n{89a}  See G. B. ii. 332-334.\n\n{89b}  Religion of the Semites, p. 118.\n\n{90}  G. B. ii. 337, 338.\n\n{93a}  Custom and Myth, p. 235.\n\n{93b}  M. R. R. ii. 327.\n\n{93c}  Op. cit. ii. 329.\n\n{94}  Lectures on Science of Language, Second Series, p. 41.\n\n{95}  M. R. R. ii. 336.\n\n{96}  Anthropological Religion.\n\n{97a}  M. R. R. i. 171-173.\n\n{97b}  Ibid. i. 172.\n\n{97c}  Anth. Rel. p. 180.\n\n{100}  'Totemism,' Encyclop. Brit.\n\n{101a}  M. R. R. ii. 333.\n\n{101b}  Ibid. ii. 335.\n\n{103}  M. R.. R.. i. 96, 127; ii. 22, 336.\n\n{106a}  Greek Etym.  Engl. transl. i. 147.\n\n{106b}  Sprachvergleichung und Urgeschichte, p. 431.\n\n{109}  Gr. Etym. i. 150.\n\n{110}  M. R. R. ii. 142.\n\n{111a}  ii. 210.  Cf. Oldenberg in Deutsche Rundschau, 1895, p. 205.\n\n{111b}  R. V. iv. 18, 10.\n\n{114}  Aglaophamus, i. 700.\n\n{115}  Custom and Myth, i. 29-44.  M. R. R. ii. 260-273.\n\n{116}  Custom and Myth, pp. 212-242.\n\n{117a}  Culte des Fetiches, 1760.\n\n{117b}  Codrington, Journal Anthrop. Inst., Feb. 1881.\n\n{118a}  C. and M. p. 230, note.\n\n{118b}  Rochas, Les Forces non definies, 1888, pp. 340-357, 411, 626.\n\n{118c}  Revue Bleue, 1890, p. 367.\n\n{118d}  De Brosses, p. 16.\n\n{120a}  C. and M. p. 214.\n\n{120b}  M. R. R. i. 327.\n\n{120c}  Lectures on the Science of Language, 2nd series, p. 41.\n\n{121}  M. R. R. ii. 327 and 329.\n\n{124}  M. R. R. ii. 324.\n\n{125a}  Paris: OEuvres, 1758, iii. 270.\n\n{125b}  M. R. R. ii. 324.\n\n{126}  I have no concern with his criticism of Mr. Herbert Spencer (p.\n203), as I entirely disagree with that philosopher's theory.  The defence\nof 'Animism' I leave to Dr. Tylor.\n\n{135}  Meyer, 1846, apud Brough Smyth, Aborigines of Victoria, i. 432.\n\n{138}  My italics.\n\n{139a}  M. R. R. ii. 208-221.\n\n{139b}  Ibid. ii. 209.\n\n{140}  M. R. R. ii. 218.\n\n{141a}  De Dianae Antiquissima apud Graecos Natura, p. 76.  Vratislaw,\n1881.\n\n{141b}  De Diane Brauron, p. 33.  Compare, for all the learning, Mr.\nFarnell, in Cults of the Greek States.\n\n{142a}  M. R. R. i. x.\n\n{142b}  Life in California, pp. 241, 303.\n\n{142c}  Religion of the Semites, p. 274.\n\n{142d}  See also Mr. Frazer, Golden Bough, ii. 90-94; and Robertson\nSmith, op. cit. pp. 416-418.\n\n{142e}  Apostolius, viii. 19; vii. 10.\n\n{143a}  Melanesians, p. 32.\n\n{143b}  Samoa, p. 17.\n\n{143c}  M. R. R. ii. 33.\n\n{143d}  See also Frazer, Golden Bough, ii. 92.\n\n{143e}  M. R. R. ii. 208.\n\n{144a}  M. R. R. ii. 209.\n\n{144b}  Custom and Myth, 'Star Myths.'\n\n{148a}  L. Preller, Rom. Myth. p. 239, gives etymologies.\n\n{148b}  AEn. xi. 785.\n\n{149a}  A. W. F. p. 328.\n\n{149b}  Dionys. Halic. iii. 32.\n\n{149c}  Hist. Nat. vii. 2.\n\n{149d}  AEn. xi. 784.\n\n{149e}  AEn. xi. 787.\n\n{150a}  Serv. AEn. vii. 800.\n\n{150b}  Authorities in A. F. W. K. p. 325.\n\n{151a}  Herabkunft, p. 30.\n\n{151b}  Pausanias, viii. 385.\n\n{151c}  A. W. F. K. xxii. xxiii.\n\n{153}  Janus, pp. 44-49.\n\n{161}  Home, the medium, was, or affected to be, entranced in his fire\ntricks, as was Bernadette, at Lourdes, in the Miracle du Cierge.\n\n{163}  The photograph referred to is evidently taken from a sketch by\nhand, and is not therefore a photograph from life.--EDITOR.  The original\nphotograph was hereon sent to the editor and acknowledged by him.--A. L.\n\n{169}  Proces, Quicherat, ii. 396, 397\n\n{171}  Introduction to Popular Religion and Folk-Lore in Northern India,\nby W. Crookes, B.A., p. 10.\n\n{172}  Iamblichus, De Myst. iii. 4.\n\n{173}  Folk-Lore, September 1895.\n\n{174}  Quoted by Dr. Boissarie in his book, Lourdes, p. 49, from a book\nby Dr. Dozous, now rare.  Thanks to information from Dr. Boissarie, I\nhave procured the book by Dr. Dozous, an eye-witness of the miracle, and\nhave verified the quotation.\n\n{175}  Predvestniki spiritizma za posleanie 250 lyet.  A. M. Aksakoff,\nSt. Petersburg, 1895.  See Mr. Leaf's review, Proceedings S. P. R. xii.\n329.\n\n{178}  Prim. Cult. i. 138.\n\n{179}  Journal of Anthrop. Institute, x. iii.\n\n{180a}  Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo, p. 42.\n\n{180b}  Relations, 1637, p. 49.\n\n{183a}  Abor. of Victoria, i. 429.\n\n{183b}  Dalton, op. cit.\n\n{184}  Codrington, Journal Anthrop. Institute, x. iii.  For America,\ncompare Relations de la Nouvelle France, 1674, p. 13.\n\n{185}  The connection between the Moon and the Hare is also found in\nSanskrit, in Mexican, in some of the South Sea Islands, and in German and\nBuddhist folklore.  Probably what we call 'the Man in the Moon' seemed\nvery like a hare to various races, roused their curiosity, and provoked\nexplanations in the shape of myths.\n\n{186}  Hahn, Tsuni-Goam, p. 150.\n\n{187}  Codrington, op. cit, p. 304.\n\n{188}  Codrington, op. cit.\n\n{190a}  Bastian, Heilige Sage.\n\n{190b}  Primitive Culture, i. 336.\n\n{194}  Kuhn, Die Herabkunft der Feuers und der Gottertranks.  Berlin,\n1859.\n\n{195a}  Herabkunft, pp. 16, 24.\n\n{195b}  Dupret, Paris, 1886.  Translation by M. Parmentier.\n\n{195c}  Pliny, Hist. Nat. xiii. 22.  Bent. Cyclades.\n\n{196a}  Servius ad Virg., Eclogue vi. 42.\n\n{196b}  Australian Legendary Tales.  Nutt: London, 1897.  Mrs. Parker\nknows Australian dialects, and gives one story in the original.  Her\ntribes live on the Narran River, in New South Wales.\n\n{196c}  Bosquet, La Normandie Merveilleuse.  Paris, 1845.\n\n{196d}  Journal Anthrop. Institute, November, 1884.\n\n{197}  Odyssey, v. 488-493.\n\n{198}  References for savage myths of the Fire-stealer will be found--for\nthe Ahts, in Sproat; for the tribes of the Pacific coast, in Bancroft;\nfor Australians in Brough Smyth's Aborigines of Victoria.\n\n{201}  Trubner, Strasburg, 1897.","title":"Modern Mythology","tradition":"myth-cosmogony","translated_text":null,"word_count":57051}