Christianity and Mythology

Robertson, J. M. Christianity and Mythology. Rationalist Press. London: Watts, 1900.

(excerpted by Clifford Stetner)

PART I.

THE PROGRESS OF MYTHOLOGY.

CHAP. I—THE SCIENCE AND ITS HISTORY.

§ 1 The Problem 1

§ 2. The Scientific Beginnings 3

§ 3. The Relation to Christianity 12

CHAP. II.—MODERN SYSTEMS.

§ 1. The Etymological and Solar Schools 19

§ 2. The Movement of Anthropology: Tylor 25

§ 3. A Priori Evolutionism: Spencer 28

§ 4. The Biological Correction 30

§ 5. Fresh Constructions, Reversions, Omissions, Evasions 34

§ 6. Mr. Lang and Anthropology 40

CHAP. III.—THE SEPARATIST FALLACY.

§ 1. The Theistic Presupposition 52

§ 2. The Metaphysic of Religion 65

§ 3. Mr. Grant Allen's Theorem 71

CHAP. IV.—THE STAND FOR THE BIBLE.

§ 1. Hebrew Mythology 79

§ 2. Christianity and" Degeneration" 95

§ 3. The Psychological Resistance to Evidence 101

§ 4. The Problem of Non-Miraculous Myth 111

§ 5. The Problem of Priority 117

PART II.

CHRIST AND KRISHNA.

I. THE NATURE OF THE PROBI.EM.

Standpoint of the Investigation. Current Presuppositions.

Vice of Christian Method. Rationalism committed to no

Historical Presupposition. . . . . . 129

II. THE QUESTION OF PRIORITY.

Old Date of Orthodox Hypothesis. Theories of Giorgi. Hyde.

Missionaries. Jones. Maurice. Jones's Presuppositions. Polier.

Paulinus. Kleuker. Moor. Creuzer. Reactionary Spirit of English

Religious Archaeology. Suppression of Evidence 131

III. AGE OF INDIAN DOCUMENTS.

Ritter's Criticism. Oldest Inscriptions. Oral Preservation of Druids.

Extravagance of Indian Chronology. Origin of Writing. Muller

and Tiele. Lore. Brahman Method of Study. The Druids 135

IV. THE SPECIAL DOCUMENTS.

Age of Vedas. Developments of Indian Religion. Vogue of

Krishnaism. Its Documentary Bases. Phases of Krishna. 138

V. THE KRISHNA LEGEND.

Barth's Synopsis. Solar Significance. Krishna Black, Hiding,

or Night Sun. Black Deities in other Systems. The Vegetal Spirit

Theory. Krishna and Arjuna. Osiris and Typhon. Krishna

originally a "Demon." Supersedes Indra. Contrary Christian View.

Note on the Black Osiris 141

VI. THE CHRISTIAN ARGUMENT.

Wheeler's History. Thesis of its Athenaeum Critic. His

Presuppositions. Professor Miller's Apologetics. Superior

Candour of Continental Scholarship. Weber's Attitude. General

View of Sanskritists. Wheeler on Question of Imitation 148

VII. THE CENTRAL DISPROOF.

Antiquity of Kansa Myth. Bhandarkar on Patanjali. Weber's

Admissions. The Main Question Settled. . . . 154

VIII. ANTIQUITY OF KRISHNAISM.

Further Proofs. Bhitari Pillar Inscription. Bayley's Inscriptions.

Khandogya Upanishad. Muller and Weber 156

IX. INVALID EVIDENCE.

Lassen on the Hercules of Megasthenes. Criticism of Tiele.

Wilson's Position. Upheld by Weber and Senart. Bala Rama's

Characteristics. His Close Correspondence with the Hercules of

Megasthenes. Rama Chandra. . . . . 160

X. WEBER'S THEORY.

His General Attitude; Theory of Early Greek Influence and Imitation

of Christianity; Doctrine of Faith; Festival Details. § 1. Criticism of

his Positions; The Kansa Myth; Problem of Christian Origins; Virgin

and Child derived from Isis and Horos; De Rossi on the Catacomb

Madonnas; Pre-Christian Childcarrying Goddesses; Juno; Demeter;

Venus; Alitta; Aphrodite; British Museum Nomenclature; India and

Egypt; Tiele's Criticism of' Weber; Buddha Virgin-born;

Jerome's Testimony;

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Krishnaite Name-giving; Early Christian Placing of Nativity on

Epiphany; Christmas a Pre-Christian Festival; Name-day in Hercules

Worship; Name-day in Mazdeism; Baptizing on Epiphany; Abyssinian

Usage. § 2. The Birth-Festival and the Puranas; Weber's Explanation

Accepted; Purana Legends not necessarily Late; Birthdays of Gods

Astrological; Krishna and Star Rohini; Krishna Nativity in July;

Significance of this; Birthday of Horus in July; Hindu Festivals;

Mattu Pongal and St. Anthony's Day; Myth Derived from Ritual;

Krishnaite and Roman Festivals; The "Swinging" Festival 163

XI. THE SOLAR-CHILD MYTH.

Connection of Kansa Legend with Legend of Cyrus. Parallel

Legends. The Coat of Many Colours. Dangers Run by the Divine

Child. The Myths of Sargon, Horos, and Moses. Confucius

Miraculously Born. The Messianic Cyrus and Jesus. The

Massacre of the Innocents. The Child Speaking at Birth.

The Birth in a Cave. The Child Born on a Journey. Maya and Mary.

The Mythological River.

The "Taxing" Journey. The Myth of the Seven Gates. 183

XII. THE STABLE AND MANGER.

Weber and Senart on the Krishna Ritual. The Manger-basket of

Dionysos, Hermes, Zeus, and Ion. Bas-reliefs in the Catacombs.

Ox and Ass. Cows and Stable. Isis and the Virgin Cow.

Horus Born on Christmas Eve. Virgin, Child, and Manger Myth

pre-Christian in Egypt. Cow Myth in Mithraism. Ox and Ass

Symbolic. The Christian Legend. The Text in Habbakkuk.

The Cave Motive. Agni the Babe God in the Veda. Myths

concerning Him. Agni and Dionysos twice Born. The Cow-shed

in the Krishna Ritual and in Catacomb Sculpture. The Symbolic Ass.

Images in Christism and Krishnaism. Joseph and the Ass.

Virgin-Myth Ritualized in Egypt. The Magi.

Antiquity of the Babe-Sun-God.

Dramatic Ritual in Krishnaism and Christism 197

XIII.

THE MYTH OF ST. CHRISTOPHER

The name Christophoroi. Cognate Terms. The Pastophoroi.

The Charge of Child-eating. The Christian Mysteries Secret.

Testimonies of Clarkson, Palmer, Trollope, and Hatch.

Childcarrying in Pagan Cults.

The Sacramental Eating of Baked Images.

General Use of such Images. The Principle of Eating the God.

The Krishna 'Myth and the Christian. St. Christopher's Day 215

XIV. INDIAN AND CHRISTIAN RELIGIOUS DRAMA.

Weber's View. Wilson's. Buddhist Testimony.

"The Toy Cart." Devaki and Vasudeva.

Dramatic Ritual in Early Christism.

Evidence of St. Proclus.

Dramatic Origin of the Eucharist and the Mass.

Early Christian Religious Drama.

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The Liturgies.

The Greek Mysteries.

Persistence of the Pagan Drama 227

XV. THE SEVEN MYTH.

§ 1. The Seven Brother Martyrs; The Seven Sleepers;

The Seven Priests; Contact of Mithraism and Christism;

The Banquet of Seven; Cox on the Seven Myth;

The Sleepers and Martyrs = the Seasons and Pleiads.

§ 2. The Seventh Month; Devaki's Children;

Vedic Myth of the Eighth Child; The Younger Brother;

The Seven Planetary Spirits; Eight Egyptian Cosmic Powers;

The Week Myth; Semitic Usage; Saturn; Possible Myth Connections;

Alteration in Order of Months; Birthday Festival Dates 235

XVI. THE DESCENT INTO HELL.

Introduction of the Dogma. Pagan Precedents.

Osiris, Hermes, Dionysos, Adonis, Orpheus, Zamolus, Mithra, Apollo.

Balder and Arthur. Krishna's Descent. Cerberus.

The "Two" rescued "Sons" in both Legends. Also in Legend of Buddha,

The Dragon. Christian Borrowings from Buddhism 249

XVII. SPURIOUS AND REMOTE MYTH-PARALLELS.

The Address to the Fig-tree. Doctrine of Immortality. Transfiguration.

Feet-washing. Raising the Widow's Son. Anointing the God.

Judas and his Bag 258

XVIII. EXPLANATION OF THE KRISHNA MYTH.

§ 1. Its Obviously Solar Character; Repetitions in Solar Mythology;

Krishna and Agni; Cox's Analysis; Krishnaite Syncretism;

The Three Ramas—One; The Cult of Bala Rama.

§ 2. Weber's Chronological Scheme; Senart's Refutation;

Weber's Answer: Its Insufficiency.

§3. Buddhist and Other Parallels. 261

XIX. KRISHNAITE AND CHRISTIST DOCTRINE.

§ 1. Weber's Misconception of Wilson; Wilson's Real Opinion.

§ 2. Lorenser on the Bhagavat Gita; His Error as to "India";

Vague Early Use of the Name; Chrysostom's Evidence;

No Early Hindu Translation of Gospels.

§ 3. Date of the Gita; Telang's Suggestion; Lorinser's Parallels;

Their Futility; Pagan and New Testament Parallels;

Universal Theology and Ethics; Brahman and Christian Pantheism.

§ 4. Bhakti and Sraddha; Christian Doctrine of Faith from Judaism;

Its Universality; Muir, Telang, and Tiele, on the Indian Doctrine;

Position of Senart and Barth 274

XX. THE "WHITE ISLAND."

Weber's Thesis. Lassen's Argument. Telang's Refutation.

Tiele's Endorsement. Senart and Barth Take Same Ground.

Christian Tritheism and Monotheism. 290

XXI. THE CRUCIFIXION MYTH.

The Error of Moor and Higgins. Was there an Asiatic Crucifixion Myth?

Andrade and Giorgi on the Crucifixion Myth in Tibet.

Indra Crucified. Dr. Oldfieid's Corroboration. Krishna on the Tree.

The "Two Thieves." Frauds on Wilford. Wilson on Gnostic

Borrowings from India. Epiphanius' Testimony.

Difficulty of the Question. Orthodox Criticism. Jacolliot 294

XXII: SUMMARY.

These Positive and Negative. The Christian Hypotheses Found

Untenable and Absurd. All the Evidence Against It. Presumption

of Some Christian Borrowing from Krishnaism

as well as from Buddhism . . 299

PART III

THE GOSPEL MYTHS.

PREAMBLE.

FIRST DIVISION. MYTHS OF ACTION.

§ 1. The Virgin Birth. 317

§ 2. The Mythic Maries 319

§ 3. The Myth of Joseph . 326

§ 4. The Annunciation . 328

§ 5. The Cave and Stable Birth 329

§ 6. The Birthday 331

§ 7. The Massacre of the Innocents 332

Note on the Moses Myth. 333

§ 8. The Boy Jesus in the Temple 334

§ 9. The Upbringing at Nazareth 335

§ 10. The Temptation. . 343

§ 11. The Water-Wine Miracle. 356

§ 12. The Scourging of the Money-Changers 358

§ 13. The Walking on the Water. 358

§ 14. The Healing of Two Blind Men. 359

§ 15. Other Myths of Healing and Resurrection 360

§ 16. The Feeding of the Five Thousand 362

§ 17. The Anointing. . . 363

§ 18. The Riding on the Ass and Foal. 366

§ 19. The Myth of the Twelve Apostles. 370

§ 20. The Characteristics of Peter 378

§ 21. The Myth of Judas Iscariot 384

§ 22. The Last Supper. 386

§ 23. The Transfiguration and the Passion 392

§ 24. The Crucifixion. 394

§ 25. The Seamless Robe 414

§ 26. The Burial and Resurrection 416

§ 27. The Banquet of Seven 418

§ 28. The Ascension 420

SECOND DIVISION, MYTHS OF DOCTRINE.

§ 1. The Jesuine Discourses in General 423

§ 2. The Preaching of John the Baptist 432

§ 3. Jesus as a Preacher of Universalism 433

§ 4. Jesus as Messiah . . 434

§ 5. Jesus as Preparing the Kingdom of God. 437

§ 6. The Sermon on the Mount 440

§ 7. The Lord's Prayer. . 450

§ 8. The Woman Taken in Adultery. 457

§ 9. Gnostic and Cryptic Parables. 460

§ 10. The Late Ethical Parables in Luke 462

§ 11. The Discourses of the Fourth Gospel 463

Epilogue. 470

PREAMBLE.

THE three treatises making up this volume stand for a process of inquiry which began to take written form nearly fifteen years ago. It set out with a certain scientific principle and a certain historical purpose: the principle being that Christian Origins should be studied with constant precaution against the common assumption that all myths of action and doctrine must be mere accretions round the biography of a great teacher, broadly figured by "the" Gospel Jesus; while the practical purpose was to exhibit" The Rise of Christianity, Sociologically Considered." To that end I was prepared to assume a primitive cult, arising in memory not of a great teacher but (perhaps) of an obscure thaumaturg, concerning whom there is preserved, in the Epistles of Paul, only the tradition of his crucifixion. But the first independent explorations, the first rigorous attempts to identify the first Jesuists, led to a series of fresh exposures of myth. "Jesus of Nazareth" turned out to be a compound of an already composite Gospel Jesus, an interposed Jesus the Nazarite, and a superimposed Jesus born at Nazareth. And none of the three aspects equated with the primary Jesus of Paul. Each in turn was, in Paul's words, "another Jesus whom we have not preached." And the Twelve Apostles were demonstrably mythical.

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While, therefore, a sociological foundation was in a measure reached, it was plain that the ground had not yet been cleared of mythology; and at that stage I even surmised that, in view of the known frequency alike of Messiahs and Jesuses in Jewry, an actual succession of Jesuses might be the historical solution. Such a theorem represented a still imperfect appreciation of the scope and dominion of the principle of Myth; and it fitly chanced that the sociological inquiry was arrested for the time as a literary task, though continued as a study. Soon after, at the request of the late Mr. Bradlaugh, I undertook the research concerning "Christ and Krishna" by way of salving scientifically and objectively a simpler general problem in mythology and hierology; and about the same time the undertaking of an independent research into Mithraism further enabled me to see the Christian problem in a fuller scientific light. Thus the original inquiry, never discontinued as a subject of thought, led gradually to a conception of Mythology as a more catholic science, or a more scientific classification of certain knowledge, than it has yet been shown to be in the hands of its cultivators, admirable as much of their work is. That view I have now tried to set forth critically and historically in the opening treatise on "The Progress of Mythology." The study on "Christ and Krishna," which first appeared serially in Mr. Bradlaugh's journal and was reprinted (1889) with additions and corrections, is now again a good deal expanded, and. in parts rewritten. It seeks on one hand to illustrate, in detail, what seems to me the right method of dealing with certain problems glanced at in the opening treatise; and on the other hand to lead organically into the general problem of Christian mythology. Finally, the survey of "The Gospel Myths," portions of which were also published serially, is recast, and greatly enlarged, by way of finally clearing the mythological ground far sociology "proper."

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As regards the theoretic problem, I cannot better prepare a reader to catch my point of view than by indicating it critically as against the diverging doctrine of the recently-published work of Dr. Percy Gardner entitled "Exploratio Evangelica," a treatise in many respects wise and stimulating, which came into my hands only when the bulk of this volume was in type. As I regard it, Dr. Gardner's treatise relies unduly on the old, untested, metaphysical conception of mythology. Consider, for instance, the proposition that "probably at that time [early Christian age] in all the Levant the true myth making age was over. But the faculties which had been employed in the construction of myth were still at work. And they found their natural field in the adaptation of history to national and ethical purpose" [n1 Work cited, p. 149.]. Such language seems to me to confute itself: in any case, the whole drift of the present work is a gainsaying of such divisions as the one thus sought to be drawn. Dr. Gardner speaks again [n2 Id. p. 108.] of "the vague and childish character of the true myth." I submit that there are all degrees of vagueness and childishness in myth, from the grossest to the slightest, and that though there may be classification there can be no scientific sunderance. A myth commonly so-called, when all is said, is simply a false hypothesis (whether framed in bad faith or in good faith) which once found easy credence; and when inadequate or illusory hypotheses find acceptance in our own time, we see exemplified at once the play of the myth-making faculty and that of the normal credulity on which it lives. Any "explanation" which is but an a priori formula to account for an uncomprehended and unanalyzed process of phenomena is a "true myth" in so far as it finds utterance and acceptance. Some myths are less fortuitous, more purposive, than others; and a question might fairly be raised as to whether there is not here a true psychological distinction.

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My answer is that we can never demonstrate the entire absence of purpose: it is always a question of degree; and it makes little scientific difference in our elucidation whether we impute more or less of ignorant good faith, provided we recognize variation. A quite primitive myth may have been a conscious fiction on the part of its first framer; but the credulity of its acceptors assimilated it in exactly the same way as others framed in better faith.

Even if, however, we restricted ourselves to false hypotheses framed in absolute good faith, the old conception of myth remains a stumbling-block to be got rid of. It obscures our comprehension of the psychological process even of myths commonly so-called. Dr. Gardner, for instance, writes that "the Phoenician kinsmen of the Jews retained down to quite late times the terrible custom of human sacrifice. Its abolition very early among the Hebrews was a mark of their unique religious consciousness, and a sign of their lofty destiny" [n1 Work cited, p. 105.]. This proposition I should describe as the quasi-explanation of an uncomprehended process in terms of the phenomena themselves; as in the propositions that opium has a dormitive virtue, and that nature abhors a vacuum. And such explanations, I submit, so far as they are accepted, are myths, made in just the old way, though with far higher intellectual faculties. Even as the movement of the sun and planets was not scientifically accounted for by supposing them to be tenanted by Gods or guiding spirits, so the evolution of a community and its culture is not accounted for by crediting the community with "unique consciousness" and. "lofty destiny." The old explanation was a myth; the other is only myth on a different plane of instruction.

The effect of this change of theoretic standpoint must needs be considerable, at least as regards phraseology. I will merely say that, conceiving myth thus comprehensively, I have sought to track and elucidate it by lines of evidence not usually made to co-operate. Myth in the Gospels, on the view, here taken, is to be detected not merely by means of the data of comparative mythology, but also by means. of analysis of the texts. As Baur argued long ago, from criticism of the history we must come to criticism of the documents. But the later criticism of the documents, prepossessed by old conceptions of myth, has often made little account of concrete mythology, and has so fallen back on Hegelian formulas—that is, on philosophical myths where real solutions were quite feasible. At the same time, students of mythology have often taken myth for biography, for lack of analysis of the texts. As illustrating my idea of what is to be gained by the concurrent use of both procedures, I may point to the subsections of "Gospel Myths" dealing with (a) the Myth of the Temptation, and (b) the Myth of the Upbringing at Nazareth. The first undertakes to trace an ostensibly fortuitous myth by various methods of comparative mythology, in particular by colligating clues in art and in literature; the second undertakes to trace a relatively purposive myth by analysis, of the texts which gradually construct it, leaving part of the, problem of the motives, in the latter case, for a wider historical inquiry. And here we have cases which test the old theory of myth—Baur's and Dr. Gardner's conception of "the true myth." The first myth, we say, is ostensibly fortuitous, the second ostensibly purposive. But neither assumption is susceptible of proof. The first myth, in its Christian aspect, may have originated in a deliberate fiction by a priest who gave what he knew to be a false explanation of a picture or sculpture; the second may have originated in good faith, with a theorist who did not believe that the first Christian Nazarenes were so called in the sense of Nazarites.

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In fine, what makes a myth "truly" so is not the state of mind of the man who first framed it, but the state of mind of those who adopted it. And that state of mind is simply uncritical credulity.

It may be that in some process of textual criticism in the treatise on "The Gospel Myths" I have unknowingly put forward theses already advanced by other critics. The German literature in that department is so immense that I have not sought to compass even the bulk of it, having read a good deal with little decisive gain. Much of it is a mere prolongation of dispute over the more problematical, leaving the less problematical line of demonstration unoccupied. It seems in every way more profitable to put the case afresh from my own standpoint, on the lines of my own chosen approach, which is the result or sequel of a survey of previous methods; and to do this without even criticising a whole series of such methods which strike me as finally fallacious. Not that they were not meritorious in their circumstances; on the contrary, they frequently convey a melancholy impression of a great expenditure of intellectual power to no effectual end. In comparing Bruno Bauer, for instance, with "safe" modern practitioners like Bernhard Weiss, one cannot but be struck by the greater originality and acuteness of the free-lance. But the bulk of the work of Bruno Bauer is practically thrown away by reason of his false Hegelian or quasi-Hegelian method; for he is more Hegelian than Strauss, and constantly frames his solutions in terms of the more problematical rather than in terms of the less.

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Every phenomenon in the text is by him accounted for through an a priori abstraction of the constructive consciousness of the early Christian community, acting as it theoretically needs must; so that we get psychological and sociological myth in place of theological. The negation is right; the affirmation is wrong. Broadly speaking, such work as Bruno Bauer's, and much of that of Strauss, answers to Comte's conception of the normal rise of a metaphysical mode of thought as the first departure from a theological; this though Bauer thought that he and Weiss and Wilke and others had reached the true "positive" standpoint. The truth is that none, of us—certainly not Comte—could make the transition so promptly as he supposed himself to have done; at best we grow less and less metaphysical (or, as I should prefer to put it, less a priori), more and more" positive."

This appears even in the weighty performance of F. C. Baur, a much more "positive" thinker and investigator than Bruno Bauer, whose error of method he exposed with perfect precision. Common prudence, therefore, dictates the admission that the method of the following treatises is likely to suffer in some degree from survivals of the "metaphysical" method. I claim only that, so far as it goes, it is in general more "positive," more inductive, less a priori, more obedient to scientific canons, than that of the 'previous critics' known to me who have reached similar anti-traditional results. It substitutes an anthropological basis, in terms of the concrete phenomena of mythology,

for a pseudo-philosophical presupposition.

That this will give it any advantage as against the ecclesiastical defence would be too much to look for. I have suggested that that defence represents, however unconsciously, the organization of an economic interest; that the ostensible course of criticism is not a matter of the logical evolution of discovery, as in a disinterested science; but of the social selection of types of teacher.

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No stronger brain than Baur has dealt with historical theology in Germany since his day: either through their own choice of other careers or the official selection of other candidates, the stronger German brains have mostly wrought in other fields. So, in the Church of England, we see no continuous advance in the application of clerical ability, from Milman onwards, to the problems of Christian Origins. If the capable men are there, they are mostly gagged or obstructed. The late Dr. Edwin Hatch, the one Churchman who in our time has done original and at the same time valid and important service in that field, appears to have been in a measure positively ostracised in his profession, though the sale of his works shows their wide acceptability even within its limits. The corporate interest and organization avail to override unorganized liberalism, there as elsewhere.

When then Dr. Percy Gardner, writing as a layman, avows that he cannot hope "to escape the opposition and anger which have always greeted any attempt to apply to the Christian creed the principles which are applied freely to other forms of faith" [n1 Work cited, p, 118.], I may well count on a worse if more cursory reception for a book which in places represents him as unwarrantably conservative of tradition. Such treatises properly appeal to serious and open-minded laymen. Unfortunately the open-minded laity are in large part satisfied to think that traditionalism is discredited, and so take up an attitude of indifference to works which any longer join issue with it. None the less, those who realize the precariousness of modern gains in the battle against the tyranny of the past must continue the campaign, so doing what they can to save the optimists from, it may be, a rude awakening.

J. M. R.

June, 1900.

CHRISTIANITY AND MYTHOLOGY.

PART 1.

THE PROGRESS OF MYTHOLOGY.

CHAPTER I.—THE SCIENCE AND ITS HISTORY.

§ 1. The Problem.

THERE are stages in the history of every science when its progress can be seen to consist in applying to its subject-matter a wider conception of relations. Scientific progress, indeed, mainly consists in such resorts to larger syntheses. In geology, as Mr. Spencer points out, "when the igneous and aqueous hypotheses were united, a rapid advance took place"; in Biology progress came through "the fusion of the doctrine of types with the doctrine of adaptations"; and in Psychology, similarly, an evolutionary conception partly harmonized the doctrines of the Lockian and Kantian schools [n1 First Principles, p. 22.]. It is true that Mr. Spencer proceeds to turn the generalization to the account of his theorem of a "Reconciliation" between "Religion" and "Science," on a ground which he declares to be outside both—that is, to belong to no science whatever. Nevertheless, the general proposition as above illustrated is just; and there is an obvious presumption that it will hold good of any science in particular.

It is proposed in the present inquiry to try whether the renewed application of the principle may not give light and leading in the science—if we can agree so to call it—of mythology. By some the title may be positively withheld, on the ground that mythology so-called is seen in recent discussions to be only a collection of certain lore, to which are applied conflicting theories; and it is not to be denied that there is enough of conflict and confusion to give colour to such an account of the matter. But inasmuch as there has been progress in course of centuries towards scientific agreement as to certain classifications of the phenomena; and as this progress can be shown to consist in successive extensions of the relations under which they are contemplated, there is reason to conclude that mythology is a science like another, though latterly retarded more than others by the persistence of pre-scientific assumptions.

Myth, broadly speaking, is a form of traditionary error; and while the definition of mythology turns upon the recognition of the special form, the bane of the science has been the more or less complete isolation of it in thought from all the other forms. The best analogy for our purpose is perhaps not any of those cited from Mr. Spencer, but rather the case of Astronomy, where Newton's great hypothesis was by way of seeing planetary motions as cases of motion in general. Any form of traditionary error, it seems clear, must occur in terms of the general conditions of traditionary error; and such error in general must be conceived in terms of men's efforts at explanation or classification of things in general, at successive stages of thought. Yet in our own time, under the ostensible reign of Naturalism, after ages in which men looked at myth from a point of view that made almost invisible the psychological continuity between myth-makers' mental processes and their own, we find accomplished students of the science still much occupied in setting up walls of utter division between the mythopoeic and all other mental processes; between the different aspects of early classification; between the aspects of myth; between myth and "religion," religion and magic, myth and early morals, myth and legend, myth and allegory, myth and tradition, myth and supernaturalist biography.

If past scientific experience can yield us any guidance, it would seem that such a tendency is frustrative of scientific progress.

§ 2. The Scientific Beginnings.

Gains there have certainly been, in the past half century. When we compare its results with those of the previous ten or even four centuries, as sketched in the Introduction à l'Etude de la Mythologie of Eméric-David [n1 Paris, 1833.], we must admit a considerable progress; though if we should chronicle as he did the backward treatises as well as the others we could make a rather chequered narrative. The definite gain is that the naturalist method, often broached but not accepted before our time, is now nearly though not quite as generally employed in this as in the other sciences, whereas in past times there was an overpowering tendency to handle it from the point of view of that belief in "revelation" which so completely vitiated the study of Greek mythology in the hands of Mr. Gladstone, the last eminent practitioner on the old basis. How effectively that belief has retarded this science in particular may be partly gathered from Eméric-David's historical sketch.

Beginning with Albric in the eighth century, Maimonides in the twelfth, and Boccaccio in the fourteenth, the learned academician makes out a list of between seventy and eighty scholarly writers on mythology down to Benjamin Constant. He might have extended the list to a hundred; but it is duly representative, save in that it oddly omits all mention of Fontenelle, whose essay De l'origine des fables, as Mr. Lang points out, substantially anticipated the modern anthropological and evolutionary point of view [n2 As does his Histoire des Oracles, 1686.]. This was of all previous treatises the one which could best have enlarged and rectified the French historian's own method, and he either overlooks or wilfully ignores it, taking note only of the very one-sided view of the anthropological principle presented later by De Brosses and his disciple Benjamin Constant.

It may be helpful at this point, however, to note the manner of the progression, as very fairly set forth in the main by Eméric-David, and in part by Karl Ottfried Mliller, in his earlier Prolegomena [n1 Neither supplies a complete survey; and the present sketch is of course only a bird's-eye view. For others, see Preller, Griechische Mythologie, Einleitung, §7; Decharme, Mythologie de la Grèce Antique, Introd., pp. vi.-xx.; and Father Cara, Esame critico del sistema philolologico e linguistico, applicata alla mitologia e alla scienza delle religione, Prato, 1884.].

The movements of advance and reaction in the history of mythological science, then, may be thus summarily and formally stated.

1. In rationalistic antiquity, the principle of evolution was barely glimpsed; and on the one hand the professed mythologists aimed at multiplying symbolical or allegorical meanings rather than tracing development, while on the other the school of Evemeros framed a set of false "naturalistic" explanations, being equally devoid of the requisite historical knowledge. The mythologists sank the fabulous personalities of the Gods in symbols; the sceptics sank them in actual human personages.

2. A substantially scientific beginning was made by the late school which reduced the symbolism of the older schools to a recognition of the large part played by sun and moon in most systems. In the hands of Macrobius (4th c.) this key is applied very much on the lines of the modern solar theory, with results which are still in large part valid. But that step of science, like nearly every other, was lost under Christianity and the resurgence of barbarism.

3. The Christian Fathers, when not disposing of Pagan Gods as demons, had no thought save to ridicule the old mythologies, failing to realize the character of their own.

4. The scholars of the Renaissance recognized the principle of Nature-symbolism, as set forth by Macrobius; but when, in the sixteenth century, scholarship began to classify the details of the pagan systems, it had no general guiding principle, and only accumulated data.

5. Bacon, who made symbolism his general principle of interpretation, applied it fancifully, slightly, and without method. Selden and others, with much wider knowledge, applied the old principle that the pagan deities were personalized nature-forces, as sun and moon. But others, as Leibnitz, Vossius, Bochart, and Mosheim, confused all by the theological presupposition (adopted from the ancient atheists) that the pagan deities were deified men, and by assuming further that the early life of antiquity was truly set forth only in the Bible.

6. Other earlier and later theologians, as Huet, though opposed by critical scholars such as Selden, Basnage, and Vico, went still further astray on the theory that pagan Gods were perversions of Biblical personages; and that all pagan theologies were perversions of an earlier monotheism. Such an application of comparative method as was made

by Spencer of Cambridge (De Legibus Hebraerorum, 1685) was far in advance of the powers of assimilation of the time.

7. Sceptics like Bayle derided all explanations alike, and ridiculed the hope of reaching any better.

8. New attempts were in large part a priori, and some went back to Evemerism, as that of Banier, who saw myth origins in perversions both of historical fact and of Biblical

narratives. The sound theorem of personalized forces was reiterated by Vico and others, and that of savage origins was thrown out by Fontenelle, but the theological method and premisses overrode scientific views. Other rationalists failed to apply the clue of evolution from savagery, and wrongly staked all on purposive allegorizing.

9. The Naturalism of De Brosses (Du Culte des Fetiches, 1760), while rightly pointing towards savage life, ignored the many grades between fetichism and the higher paganism,

and thus failed in the main to win even rationalistic students. On the other hand, the great astronomical and symbolical system of Dupuis (chief work, 1795), a development from the ancient positions of Macrobius, carefully applied to the Gospels and to the Apocalypse, did not account for the obscurer primitive elements of myth, though it rightly carried the mythological principle into the surviving religions. This was effectively done also in the slighter but more brilliant work of Volney, Les Ruines (1791), which proceeds on an earlier research by Dupuis.

In England and Germany the deistic movement of last century also led to the recognition of myths in the Old Testament [n1 Preller (Griech. Mythol. ed. 1860, i. 20) finds a predilection to particular points of view in the different nations—the Italians arguing for allegory, the Dutch for perversion of the Bible, the French for Evemerism and other pragmatic principles, and the Germans standing for an original monotheism. But this classification, as Preller implicitly admits, is only loosely true; and it no longer holds good in any degree.].

10. In the same period, Heyne developed a view that was in large part scientific, recognizing that myth is "the infant language of the race," lacking "the morality and delicacy of a later age," and that in later periods early myths were embellished, altered, and poeticized. He radically erred, however, in assuming that the early mythmakers only provisionally albeit "necessarily" personified natural forces, and always knew that what they said had not really happened. On the other hand, while teaching that their myths came to be literally believed by posterity, he erred in ascribing to the Homeric bards a conception of these myths as pure symbol; this conception having originated with the theosophic priests of Asia and Egypt, whence it reached the post-Homeric Greek rationalists. Voss [n2 Mythologische Briefe, 1794.], opposing Heyne as he later did Creuzer, did not improve on Heyne's positions, leaning unduly to the belief that primeval man allegorized reflectively, and making too much of the theory of deified ancestors, later insisted on by Mr. Herbert Spencer.

11. A distinct advance in breadth of view was made by Buttmann[n3 Treatises between 1794 and 1828, collected in Mythologus, 2 Bde. 1828-9.], who purified Heyne's doctrine as to the essential primitiveness or aboriginality of typical myth, and freshly laid the foundations of Comparative Mythology, recognizing that the same primitive mode of thinking could give rise to similar myths in different nations independently of intercourse, and calling for a comprehensive collocation. He thus naturally made too little of the special local significance of many myths.

12. Creuzer [n4 Symbolik und Mythologie der alten Volker, besonders der Griechen, 4 Bde. 1810-12.], on the other hand, while rightly recognizing that personification was a fundamental law of early thought, nevertheless founded on the false assumption of a "pure monotheistic primitive religion," and so stressed the idea of reflective allegory as to obscure his own doctrine that primeval man personified forces quite spontaneously.

Yet he introduced real clues—as that of the derivation of some myths from ritual, and that of verbal misconception, a theory later carried to excess by F. G. Welcker, and still later by Max Muller. He also noted the fact—fallaciously stressed by Mr. Lang in our own day—that the primitive mind made no such distinction between spirits and bodies as is made in later theology. Hermann, proceeding on similar fundamental lines, likewise conceived myth too much in terms of the constructive allegorizing of priesthoods, overlooking the spontaneous and relatively fantastic beginnings of savagery.

Alongside of these later German writers, whom he does not mention, Eméric-David does not innovate in any effective fashion. His own interpretative principle, further set forth in his treatise Jupiter (1832), is that laid down with caution but applied without any by Bacon—that myths are symbolical attempts to explain Nature; and to make his treatise broadly scientific it needed that he should have recognized how the principle of so-called fetichism, or the actual primitive personalizing of nature-forces, preceded and conditioned the systems which the writer handled as purposively symbolical, and symbolical only. The anthropological method had been indicated by Heyne, whose

system he admitted to be "true at bottom"; but on this side he made no use of it. As it was, he partly rectified the bias towards a single astronomical point of view which

narrows the great treatise of Dupuis, De l’Origine de tous les Cultes (1795). Concerning that, he rightly admitted that with all its limitations" it still constitutes the most

luminous treatise that has been written on mythology" [n1 Introduction cited, p. lxv.];

and his own contribution may be said to have consisted in adding several wards to Dupuis's key, or new keys to Dupuis's two or three, letting it be seen that the old symbolical interpretation of nature was at once a simpler and a more complicated matter than Dupuis had supposed. At the same time, he made no attempt to carry on the great

practical service of Dupuis and his school, the application of the pagan keys to the Christian religion, but confines himself to the Greek. The same thing falls to be said in some degree of the earlier Prolegomena of Karl Ottfried Muller (1828) [n1 Translated in English in 1844, under the title Introduction to a Scientific System of Mythology, by J. Leitch.], of which Eméric-David makes no mention, on his principle of not criticising living writers. But none the less had Muller brought to the study of Greek mythology a learning, a genius, and a method which give a really scientific character to his work. Of the school of Dupuis he shows no knowledge. Whether this came of policy or of nonacquaintance we cannot well divine; but it is much to be regretted that he thus failed to come in touch with the most vital problem of his study. On the other hand, he did much to clear up the scientific ground so far as he did go. One of the most intellectual and most alert German scholars of that great period, he brought to bear on all Greek matters an exact and critical knowledge such as had hardly ever before been vigilantly applied to mythology; and though he did not escape the bane of all pioneers—indefiniteness and contradiction—he did not a little to reduce previous confusions. Good samples of his services as a first-hand investigator are his statement [n2 Introduction, Eng. tr., p. 58.]

of the grounds for holding that the complete myth of Prometheus and Epimetheus is late, and his analysis of the myth of the transformation of Callisto into a bear.

In the latter case, by strict scrutiny of all the sources—a thing too seldom thought

of before his day—he arrived at the clear demonstration that "Callisto is nothing else than the Goddess and her sacred animal combined in one idea," and that Callisto became a bear, in the original legend, for this reason only, that the animal was sacred to Arcadian Artemis" [n1 Id. pp. 16-17.]. His deficiency on the concrete side appears in the same connection, when he observes that to Artemis as a Nature-Goddess "the most powerful creatures in nature, such as the bear, were sacred." This is unduly vague, and leaves us asking, in the light of later anthropology, whether the bear is not traceable further, and, in the light even of previous explanation, whether the bear was not after all associated with the Goddess because of the verbal resemblance between the names arktos (bear) and Artemis.

As regards general principles, Ottfried Muller is perhaps only at two points open to serious criticism. He rightly controverted the view, implicit in Dupuis and explicit in Creuzer (though Creuzer also implied the contrary), that systematic symbolism and allegory were the main and primary sources of myth; arguing with Schelling that myths were at the outset essentially spontaneous and unartificial At the same time, when dealing with the substantially sound thesis of Heyne, that "the mythus [in its early forms] was the infant language of the race," and that "poverty and necessity are its parents" [n2 Cited by Muller, p. 256. Schelling had said the same thing (Ueber Mythen, 1793), cited by Strauss, Leben Jesu, Einleit. § 8.], he is led by his passion for classical antiquity to put an unreasonably flat contradiction [n3 Muller, p. 20.], and thus seems to set his face against the fundamental truth that all religion begins in savagery. Thus he inconsistently lays stress [n4 P. 18.] on the conscious moral purpose of the myth of Zeus and Lycaon, which he holds to be very early, while disregarding the immorality of others, both earlier and later. The difficulty becomes acute when, making a needless verbal strife over the term "allegory," he insists that, if a certain worship were "allegorical in the strict sense, it could be no worship at all" [n5 P. 61.]; He goes on:—

"Here we have to deal with a mode of contemplating the world which is quite foreign to our notions, and in which it is difficult for us to enter. It is not incumbent on the historical investigation of mythology to ascertain the foundations on which it rests. This must be left to the highest of all historical sciences—one whose internal relations are scarcely yet dreamt of—the history of the human mind."

On which one at once answers, first, that mythology, as distinguished from mere mythography, must be of itself a part of the history of the human mind, if it is anything, and that it must in some sort settle its bases as it goes along; and, secondly, that MUller himself, in the next breath, goes on to specify such a foundation when he speaks of a "certain necessity of intuition" as underlying the formation of mythi. But indeed he is thus reasoning out psychological foundations all through his treatise, and we are entitled to say that the deliverance above cited is in plain contradiction of his practice, as well as of his later and really sound decision, given in comment on Creuzer, that "mythology is still an historical science like every other. For can we call a mere compilation of facts history? and must we not, in every field of the science of history, ascend on the ladder of facts to the knowledge of internal being and life" [n1 Id. p. 273.]?

That is the most serious contradiction in the book; and we can but say on the other hand that the reasoner enables us to correct him when he errs. His frequent protests (echoed by Grote) against the attribution of "allegory" to myths in general, do but point to the confessed imperfection of the "history of the human mind"—a consideration which should have made him more circumspect verbally. We are left asking, What is allegory? and while we can all agree that early Greeks certainly did not allegorize as did Spenser and Bunyan, and that the Prometheus story in its complete form is clearly late, we are none the less forced to surmise that something of the nature of allegory may enter even into the earliest myths—that at times even the myth-making savage in a dim way necessarily distinguishes at the outset between his myth and his other credences, or at least is often in a manner allegorizing when he makes his story to explain facts of nature. Where he differs from the scientific man—though not from the religious—is in his power of passing from the half-allegoric conception to the literalist.

In any case, it is not historically or psychologically true that, as Muller puts it, "mythus and allegory are ideas lying [necessarily] far apart" [n1 Id. p. 272.]; and we may, I think, be sure that some of the writers he antagonized were using the word "allegory" in a sense of which the practical fitness is tacitly admitted by his repeated use of the phrase "strictly allegorical." All the while he admitted [n2 Id. pp. 18, 58.], as does Grote after him [n3 History of Greece, second par.], that an allegorical explanation frequently holds good of parts even of early myths; which is really a surrender of the essentials in the dispute.

As against these minor confusions, however, we must place to the credit of Ottfried Muller a general lucidity and catholicity of method that make him still a valuable instructor. While he avoided the extravagances of the symbolists, he sensibly recognized and explained many symbols [n4 E.g. that of the Dog Star, p. 135.]; and while he objected to allegoric systems he gave the sound advice: "Let us therefore, without rejecting anything of that kind, merely hold back, and wait for the development of individual cases" [n5 P. 18: cp. p. 19.]. Without laying down the anthropological method, he prepares us for it, especially by his keen attention to the geography of Greek myth; and while disclaiming all-round interpretation he helps us to many. The most helpful of his many luminous thoughts is perhaps his formulation [n6. Pp. 171, 175, 206, and previously in his Orchomenos (1820).] of the principle, implicitly to be gathered from Creuzer [n7 Cited by Muller, p. 270, from the introduction to the Symbolik.], that in many cases "the whole mythus sprang from the worship, and not the worship from the mythus"—a principle accepted from him by Grote [n8 History, end of ch. i.] and by a number of recent students, including Professor Robertson Smith and Mr. J. G. Frazer, and likely in the future to yield results of the first importance when applied to living as it has been to dead problems [n9 It must always be kept in mind that the worship which has given rise to a given mythus has itself arisen out of a previous mythus, on a different plane of conception. See below, ch. iii. §1, end, and compare Bergmann, Le Message de Skirnir et les Dits de Grimnir, 1871, p. 3.].

But thereby hangs, as we shall see, a tale to the effect that the course of true mythology does not run smooth. The application of the science to living problems is the weakest point in its present development. Thus far, then, we may round our summary of progress;

13. Karl Ottfried Muller and Eméric-David, proceeding on earlier studies and laying down general principles for myth interpretation (the former looking narrowly to documentary evidences and the latter putting stress on general symbolic values), alike failed on the one hand to explain the barbarous and primeval element in mythology, and on the other hand to connect mythology with the surviving religions. Each, however, gave sound general guidance, and Muller in particular established some rules of great importance.

§3. The Relation to Christianity.

So close on the publication of Ottfried Muller's Prolegomena as not to be fundamentally affected by it, came Strauss's epoch-marking Leben Jesu (1835), after Dupuis the first systematic application of mythological science to the Christian system. For several generations the mythical principle had been partially applied by German scholars to matters of current belief; the stimulus of the English deistical school having borne fruit more continuously among them than elsewhere. Deistical in spirit the movement remained; but it had all the easier a course; and the line of thought entered on by the school of Eichhorn, following on Heyne and Reimarus, was not even blocked, as was the case in England and France, by the reaction against the French Revolution. The Old Testament narratives, of course, were first dealt with; but so fast did criticism go that as early as 1802 there was published by G. L. Bauer a treatise on the Hebrew Mythology of the Old and New Testaments; a work which is noteworthy as already laying down the principle that it is of the highest importance to compare the myths of different races, thereby to learn how parallels may stand not for identity of matter, but for similarity of experience and way of thought among men of a given culture-stage [n1 Hebraische Mythologie, 1802, Vorrede, pp. iv. v.].

It also affirms in so many words that "the savage animizes all things (denkt sich alles belebt), for only what lives can act, and thus he personifies all" [n2 Id. i. 17.]. But in his interpretations Bauer follows the early rationalist method of reducing mythic episodes to exaggerations or misconceptions of actual events; and he makes little advance on Semler, who had connected the Samson myth with that of Hercules as early as 1773 [n3 Id. ii. 81.].

A generation later, whereas Keightley in producing the first edition of his Mythology of Ancient Greece and Italy (1831) could say that" in selecting mythology" he "took

possession of a field which lay totally unoccupied" [n4 Pref. to 2nd edition, 1838.], the Germans had a whole library of treatises compared with which even his much improved second edition was but a respectable and prejudiced manual. So far had free scholarship travelled at a time when the teachers of the insular and stipendiary Church of England [n5 "The priest-ridden kingdom of the leopards" was Alexander Humboldt's. label for England in the early part of the century.] were declaring that "infidelity" was no longer associated with scholarly names. While English theology and philosophy, under ecclesiastical auspices, were at an absolute standstill, German thought was applying rational tests, strenuously if imperfectly, to nearly every department of traditional knowledge. The progress, of course, was halting and uncertain at best. Strauss has shown [n6 Leben Jesu, Einleitung, § 6, 8-11.] how vacillating and inconsistent were most of the innovators in their advance; how they were always trying to limit their concession, attempting first to explain miracles as natural events, then admitting myth to a certain extent, seeking for each myth a historical basis, striving to limit the field of myth to early times, trying later to draw a line between the Old Testament and the New, and next to admit myth as regards only the infancy of Jesus—always compromising in the interests of faith, or of simple peace and quietness.

Yet so early as 1799 an anonymous. writer on "Revelation and Mythology" had substantially set forth Strauss's own thesis, that "the whole life of Jesus, all that he should and would do, had an ideal existence in the Jewish mind long prior to his birth"; and between this and the more limited treatment of details by intermediate writers the world was partly prepared for Strauss's own massive critical machine.

And yet, though the formidable character and effect of that is the theme of an abundant literature, it was not a decisive force, even for theoretical purposes. On the side of mythological science it was defective in that it overlooked many of the Pagan myth-elements in the Christian cult, above all those bound up with the very central doctrine of the anthropic sacrifice and eucharist; and this by reason of a too exclusive attention to Judaic sources. It dealt with the salient item of the Virgin-birth in the light of general mythology; but it ignored the connecting clue of the numerous ancient ritual cults of a Divine Child. It showed the incredibility and the irreconcilable confusions of the resurrection story; but it did not bring forward the mythic parallels. As regards the process of mythic accretion, it did not properly apply the decisive documentary test that lay to hand in the Pauline epistles. At many points Strauss is Evemeristic even in condemning Evemerism, as when he decides the historic reality of John the Baptist to be certain, and the story of the Sermon on the Mount to be in the main genuine, though manipulated by Matthew in one way and by Luke in another. Dealing with the obviously mythical story of the betrayal by Judas, he never realizes the central preposterousness of the narrative [n1 Cp. The Myth of Judas Iscariot, in the author's Studies in Religious Fallacy.], and treats it as history. On the side of philosophy, again, he strikes a scientific reader dumb by his stupendously naive assurance that his long investigation of the life of Christ need have no effect on Christian doctrine. "The inner kernel of the Christian faith," he writes in his preface, "the author knows to be entirely independent of his critical researches.

Christ's supernatural birth, his miracles, his resurrection and ascension, remain eternal truths, however far their reality as historical facts may be put in doubt. Only the certainty of this can give calmness and weight to our criticism, and distinguish it from the naturalistic criticism of previous centuries, which aimed at upsetting the religious truth along with the historical fact, and so necessarily came to conduct itself frivolously. The dogmatic import (Gehalt) of the Life of Jesus will be shown by a dissertation at the end of the work to be uninjured." There are different conceptions of what constitutes frivolity; and it would have been pleasant to have Voltaire's estimate of the seriousness of a scholar and theologian who produced an enormously laborious treatise of fifteen hundred pages to disprove every supernatural occurrence connected with the life of Jesus, and at the beginning and end assured everybody that it all made no difference to religion, and that those must be frivolous who thought otherwise. Only in Germany, it may be decided, can such supernatural flimsiness of theory be conceived as solid philosophy; and even in Germany, in the generation of Hegel, there was a good deal of serious [n1 E.g. Julius Muller On the Theory of Myths, tr. in Voices of the Church agaimt Strauss, 1845, pp. 176-7.] if not frivolous comment on Strauss's final advice to the clergy to keep on telling the mythical stories to the people with due attention to the spiritual application, thereby furthering the "endless" progress towards the dissolution of the forms in the consciousness of the community—this in a work in the vernacular. Mr. Arnold gravely if not bitterly complained that Colenso ought to have written in Latin, though Colenso's avowed purpose was to put an end to deception. He might a good deal more relevantly have given the advice to Strauss, whose work he not very ingenuously exalted in comparison.

It was not unnatural that such a teaching should leave the practice of Christendom very much where it found it. If the "rational" critic felt as Strauss did after fifteen hundred pages of destructive argument, there was small call for the priest to alter his course.

And what has happened in regard to the mythology of both the Judaic and the Christian systems is roughly this, that after the mythical character of the quasi-supernatural narratives had been broadly demonstrated, specialist criticism, instead of carrying out the demonstration and following it up to its conclusions in all directions, has fallen back on the textual analysis of the documents, leaving the question of truth and reason as much as possible in the background. Later work on Hebrew mythology there has been but not, as before, on the part of professed theologians; and even that, as we shall see, is to a considerable extent unconvincing, thus failing to counteract the arrest of the study. On the professional Biblicists it seems to have had no practical effect, their lore being at least kept free of any specific acknowledgment. One is inclined to surmise that this process of restriction turns upon one of selection in the personalities of the men concerned. It would seem impossible that after Strauss and Baur and Renan and Colenso the stronger and more original minds could deliberately take up theology as of old; and as a matter of fact no minds of similar energy have appeared in the Churches since that generation completed their work. For Baur we have Harnack; for Bishop Colen so Bishop Barry; the Bishop Creightons meddling with none of these things. The powerful minds of the new generation do not take up orthodox theology at all; the business is for them too factitious, too unreal, too essentially frivolous. So we get a generation of specialists devoutly bent on settling whether a given passage be by P or P², by the Yahwist or the Elohist, the Deuteronomist or the Redactor, the Jerusalem Davidian, or the other, or the Saulist or the Samuel-Saulist—an interesting field of inquiry, well worth clearing up, but forming a singular basis on which to re-establish the practice of taking that mosaic of forgery and fiction as the supreme guide to human conduct. Of course this is the only species of rational criticism that can be pursued in theological chairs even in Germany; so that even if a professor recognizes the need for a moral and intellectual criticism of the Judaic literature, he must be fain to confine himself to documentary analysis and platitudes.

But the dyer's hand 'seems to be subdued to what it works in. Even in our own day, men engaged in the analysis tell us that the scribes and interpolators dealt-with really had supernatural qualifications after all [n1 See Canon Driver's Introduction to the Study of the Old Testament, 1st ed. pref. p. xv.]. It thus appears that when the higher criticism has done its work, the higher common-sense will have to take up the dropped clues of mythology and conduct us to a scientific sociologico-historical view of religious development. The textual analysis is a great gain; but to end with textual analysis is to leave much of the human significance of the phenomena unnoticed.

So with the mythology of the New Testament and the ritual usages of the Churches. In that regard also we now hear little of the element of myth, but a good deal of the

composition of the Gospels; and men supposed to know the results of that analysis are found treating as great spiritual truths, special to Christianity, data and doctrines which entirely appertain to the systems and credences of buried Paganism. The men capable of realizing the seriousness of the fact either remain outside the Church or follow Strauss's counsel inside. The undertaking to frame a psychological presentment of the "real Jesus" is still seriously pursued, albeit the documentary analysis does not leave even a skeleton for the accepted historical figure, wherewith to materialize the silent spectre of Paul's epistles. Thus Evemerism is still the order of the day as regards the Christian mythus; and people who are supposed to have the elements of a sound culture, including the results of mythological science, are often almost entirely ignorant of any bearings of Comparative Mythology on the Gospels, even though they may have learned to disbelieve in miracles. Mythological science has been prudently restricted to other fields, spiritually remote from modern faith and ritual.

The principle seems to be that of the legendary preacher who, when arranging with a brother cleric to take his place, warned him against speaking on capital and labour, as the congregation included some large employers, or on temperance, as there were some brewers; but added that "for a perfectly safe subject he might take the conversion of the Jews." Mythology is kept perfectly safe, and made to figure as an academic science, by being kept to the themes of the Dawn, the Tree, the Storm-Cloud, and the heathen Sun-God; to Sanskrit, savagery, totems, fairies, and Folk-Lore.

CHAPTER II.—MODERN SYSTEMS.

§ I.—The Etymological and Solar Schools.

WHILE, however, our science has thus faltered and turned back on those of its paths which come the straightest and the nearest to living interests, it has not been idle or altogether ill-employed. Even as the textual analysis of the Jewish and Christian sacred books lays a solid foundation for the mythologist of the future, so the modern schools of mythology, in building up the Comparative Method, with whatever laxities of logic and psychology, have been making the way easier for successors who will not submit to any restriction of their field. While Strauss, Colenso, and Renan were successively disturbing the peace of the Church without much resort to the mass of mythological lore, new and professed mythologists were beginning anew, and with on the whole a scientific bias, the presentment of mythological science so-called, with hardly any avowed recognition of its bearing on current creeds. Unfortunately the new schools are thus far much at issue among themselves, by reason mainly of their differing ways of restricting the application of the Comparative Method. Kuhn, who in Germany began the new investigation on the basis of the Vedas, was an acute or rather ingenious theorist along particular lines of myth-phenomena, his tendency being to reduce all myths to those of the phenomena of storm-cloud, wind, rain, and lightning. To Kuhn, however, belongs the honour of inaugurating the new Comparative Mythology in terms of the affiliation of Greek God-names to Sanskrit [n1 Steinthal, The Original Form of the Legend of Prometheus, Eng. tr. With Goldziher, pp. 363-5; E. H. Meyer, Indoger. Mythen, 1883, i. 1.]; and his brother-in-law Schwartz, who had collaborated with him in collecting the Norddeutsche Sagen (1848), did real service to the science by his analyses and explanations of nature-myths in his Ursprnng der Mythologie (1860).

About the same period in England, Mr. Max Muller founded a separate "Aryan" school, standing mainly on the solar principle as against the storm-system of Kuhn; and inasmuch as this was but a setting of one myth-type in place of another, the scientific advance was not great. On one side, indeed, there was retrogression. At the very outset of his work in 1856, Muller thought fit to insist that

"As far as we can trace back the footsteps of man. . . . we see that the divine gift of a sound and sober intellect belonged to him from the very first; and the idea of a humanity emerging slowly from the depths of an animal brutality can never be maintained again" [n1 Comparative Mythology, in Oxford Essays, 1856, p. 5; cp. Chips from a German Workshop, ed. 1880, ii. 8. The passage ends with the phrase "such unhallowed imputations." In the reprint the adjective becomes "gratuitous."].

Three years later was published The Origin of Species, followed in 1871 by The Descent of Man. But Professor Muller's conception of mythology was now fully shaped. Proceeding further mainly on the supposed primordiality of Sanskrit, and preoccupied with the philological problems set up by any comparison of Sanskrit and Greek God-names, he elaborated the theory of Creuzer and Welcker as to verbal confusions, putting it that myths in general originated in a "disease of language" [n2 "Mythology, which was the bane of the ancient world, is in truth a disease of language." Lectures on the Science of Language, 3^rd ed., p. 11. Cp. p. 240.], and that, the disease once developed—like the pearl in the oyster or the wart on the skin—it remained fixed in the languages derived from the given stem. The disease consisted in the primitive tendency to make proper names out of names for phenomena, the embodiment of genders in all names having the effect of setting up the habit of thinking of natural objects as animate and sexual. It is surprising that such a theory should ever be formulated without the theorist's seeing that the problem is shifted further back at once by the bare fact that the genders were attached to the words to begin with.

Had Professor Muller merely claimed that in some cases a myth arose as it were at second-hand by the misunderstanding of a name, he might have made out a reasonable case enough; for certain racial and geographical and other myths can best be so explained. And when he wrote that

"Nothing is excluded from mythological expression; neither morals nor philosophy, neither history nor religion, have escaped the spell of that ancient sibyl. But mythology is neither philosophy, nor history, nor religion, nor ethics" [n1 Essay on Comparative Mythology, end.],

he was putting a true conception which transcends the limitary principle of "disease of language." At the same time he declared that "mythology is only a dialect, an ancient form of language." Yet in the previous sentence he had, like his namesake Ottfried, repudiated Heyne's formula, "ab ingenii humani imbecillitate et a dictionis egestate"; substituting the anti-evolutionary "ab ingenii humani sapientia et a dictionis abundantia;"—as if it were sapientia to confuse the meanings of words. Thus the false principle overrides the true: sound conceptions passed on by Professor Muller himself have received development at other hands; and for lack of correlation in thinking he has repeatedly assailed his own positions; though, conscious of having held them, he is ready to resume them. Hence his attempts, under stress of controversy, to show that his doctrine was not what opponents represented it, have not only brought upon him some criticisms of much asperity, but have plunged the subject in extreme confusion. At times he has seemed to concede that the philological position is too narrow. After describing comparative mythology as "an integral part of comparative philology" [n2 Id. as first cited, p. 86.], he protested that he had "never said that the whole of mythology can be explained" as "disease of language," claiming only that "some parts of mythology" are "soluble by means of linguistic tests" [n3 Introd. to Science of Religion, ed. 1882, p. 252.]. Yet he later seems to oscillate between the extreme view and the broader [n4 Natural Religion, 1889, pp. 22, 24.]; and he says in so many words that it is a pity that Comparative Mythology has got into any hands save those of Sanskrit scholars [n5 Id, p. 484.].

Nor have his attempts to subsume Schleiermacher’s philosophy of religion into his mythology been more fortunate; the philosophy and the psychology are alike inexpert; and not a little of his philological mythology is unsatisfying in detail, apart from all other issues. In particular, certain etymologies which Dr. Muller represented as scientifically certain—e.g., the equations between gandharva and kentauro (Kuhn), Erinnys and saranyu, Daphne and Ahana—have been rejected as unsound by Mannhardt and others, as Mr. Lang is always reminding us.

In all probability this reaction has in turn gone too far; and latterly we find E. H. Meyer, in his Indogermanische Mythen, holding to the gandharra-kentauros equation against his master, Mannhardt. Pure philology was after all Dr. Muller's specialty; and he will probably stand on that when he has fallen on other issues. Next to his metaphysic and his psychology, it is his confidence of concrete myth-interpretation in terms of names that most weakens his authority. Most careful mythologists will admit that they are apt to put too much faith in their own explanatory theories: that they can hardly help coming at times to conclusions on a very incomplete induction. But Professor Muller has never lost the confidence with which he solved his early problems, while his readers, on the other hand, have in many cases lost the contagion. And this criticism applies in some degree to the brilliant performance of his most powerful English disciple, the Rev. Sir George Cox. That excellent scholar's Mythology of the Aryan Nations (1st ed. 1870), the most vivid and eloquent work in mythological science, was constructed on the assumption that the "Aryan" heredity was all decisively made out once for all on the old lines; and that the whole mythology of the races covered by the name is a development from one germ, or at least from a family of germs, found in the "Vedic and Homeric poets." In his second edition he admitted that since he wrote fresh proof had been given of the" influence of Semitic theology on the theology and religion of the Greeks"; but such an admission does not scientifically rectify the theoretic error embodied in his original thesis.

Anthropological as well as mythological research, following on the lines marked out by Fontenelle and De Brosses, had been showing not merely Semitic influences on Greeks, but (1) an interplay of many other influences, and (2) a singular parallelism in the mythology of races not known to have had any intercommunication [n1 See Schirren's Die Wandersagen der Neuseelander und der Mauimythos 1856, and Tylor's Researches into the Early History of Mankind, 1865, p. 326.]. These facts supplied a reason for a recasting of the mythological scheme, by way of recognizing that there is more than "one story" in hand, and that though "the course of the day and the year" covers a great deal of the matter, there are some other principles also at work. Further, Sir George Cox has quite needlessly grafted Dr. Muller's overbalanced theory of "disease of language" on his exposition. Dr. Muller on his part had classed his disciple as belonging to another school than his own—the Analogical as distinct from the Etymological [n2 Natural Religion, pp. 484, 492.]—and Sir George might profitably have made the same discrimination. For his own part he had rightly represented the primitive "savage" as necessarily personifying the things and forces of nature: to him they "were all living beings: could he help thinking that, like himself, they were conscious beings also? His very words would, by an inevitable necessity, express this conviction" [n3 Mythology of the Aryan Nations, ed. 1882, p. 21.]. For this "necessity" Sir George could quote Dr. Muller; but instead of noting that such a proposition dismissed a fortiori the theorem of "disease of language," he went on to include the latter, a propos of the principle of Polyonymy (or multiplying of names for the natural elements), which needed no such backing. With his usual candour he proceeded to cite the trenchant comment of M. Baudry, who in his essay De l'interprétation mythologique [n4 Published in the Revue Germanique, Fév, 1, 1868.] countered Dr. Muller before the "Hottentotic" school did. As M. Baudry pointed out, there was no "disease of language" in the case of secondary myths arising out of polyonymy, but simply failure of memory or loss of knowledge, such as may happen in the case of a symbolic sculpture as well as of an epithet.

Sir George's solution was that "after all there is no real antagonism" between the two accounts of the matter—a mode of reconciliation rather too often resorted to by Dr. Muller on his own account. There is certainly "no real antagonism" if only Dr. Muller's erroneous formula be dropped, and M. Baudry's substituted; but as it happens Dr. Muller's, instead of undergoing that euthanasia, is still made to cover far more ground than M. Baudry's pretends to touch.