'I am very far from looking upon all myths as psychical reflections of physical phenomena, still less as of exclusively solar or meteorological phenomena, like Kuhn, Schwartz, Max Muller and their school.' What a queer way of expressing his agreement with Mr. Max Muller!

The Professor expostulates with Mannhardt (1. xx.):—'Where has any one of us ever done this?' Well, when Mannhardt said 'all myths,' he wrote colloquially. Shall we say that he meant 'most myths,' 'a good many myths,' 'a myth or two here and there'? Whatever he meant, he meant that he was 'still more than very far removed from looking upon all myths' as Mr. Max Muller does.

Mannhardt's next passage I quote entire and textually from Mr. Max Muller's translation:—

'I have learnt to appreciate poetical and literary production as an essential element in the development of mythology, and to draw and utilise the consequences arising from this state of things. [Who has not?] But, on the other hand, I hold it as quite certain that a portion of the older myths arose from nature poetry which is no longer directly intelligible to us, but has to be interpreted by means of analogies. Nor does it follow that these myths betray any historical identity; they only testify to the same kind of conception and tendency prevailing on similar stages of development. Of these nature myths some have reference to the life and the circumstances of the sun, and our first steps towards an understanding of them are helped on by such nature poetry as the Lettish, which has not yet been obscured by artistic and poetical reflexion. In that poetry mythical personalities confessedly belonging to a solar sphere are transferred to a large number of poetical representatives, of which the explanation must consequently be found in the same (solar) sphere of nature. My method here is just the same as that applied by me to the Tree-cult.'

Mr. Max Muller asks, 'Where is there any difference between this, the latest and final system adopted by Mannhardt, and my own system which I put forward in 1856?' (1. xxi.)



How Mannhardt differs from Mr. Max Muller

I propose to show wherein the difference lies. Mannhardt says, 'My method is just the same as that applied by me to the Tree-cult.' What was that method?

Mannhardt, in the letter quoted by Mr. Max Muller, goes on to describe it; but Mr. Max Muller omits the description, probably not realising its importance. For Mannhardt's method is the reverse of that practised under the old colours to which he is said to have returned.



Mannhardt's Method

'My method is here the same as in the Tree-cult. I start from a given collection of facts, of which the central idea is distinct and generally admitted, and consequently offers a firm basis for explanation. I illustrate from this and from well-founded analogies. Continuing from these, I seek to elucidate darker things. I search out the simplest radical ideas and perceptions, the germ-cells from whose combined growth mythical tales form themselves in very different ways.'

Mr. Frazer gives us a similar description of Mannhardt's method, whether dealing with sun myths or tree myths. {46} 'Mannhardt set himself systematically to collect, compare, and explain the living superstitions of the peasantry.' Now Mr. Max Muller has just confessed, as a reason for incompetence to criticise Mannhardt's labours, 'my want of knowledge of the materials with which he dealt—the popular customs and traditions of Germany.' And yet he asks where there is any difference between his system and Mannhardt's. Mannhardt's is the study of rural survival, the system of folklore. Mr. Max Muller's is the system of comparative philology about which in this place Mannhardt does not say one single word. Mannhardt interprets some myths 'arising from nature poetry, no longer intelligible to us,' by analogies; Mr. Max Muller interprets them by etymologies.

The difference is incalculable; not that Mannhardt always abstains from etymologising.



Another Claim on Mannhardt

While maintaining that 'all comparative mythology must rest on comparison of names as its most certain basis' (a system which Mannhardt declares explicitly to be so far 'a failure'), Mr. Max Muller says, 'It is well known that in his last, nay posthumous essay, Mannhardt, no mean authority, returned to the same conviction.' I do not know which is Mannhardt's very last essay, but I shall prove that in the posthumous essays Mannhardt threw cold water on the whole method of philological comparative mythology.

However, as proof of Mannhardt's return to Mr. Max Muller's convictions, our author cites Mythologische Forschungen (pp. 86-113).



What Mannhardt said

In the passages here produced as proof of Mannhardt's conversion, he is not investigating a myth at all, or a name which occurs in mythology. He is trying to discover the meaning of the practices of the Lupercalia at Rome. In February, says Dionysius of Halicarnassus, the Romans held a popular festival, and lads ran round naked, save for skins of victims, whipping the spectators. Mannhardt, in his usual way, collects all the facts first, and then analyses the name Luperci. This does not make him a philological mythologist. To take a case in point, at Selkirk and Queensferry the bounds are ridden, or walked, by 'Burleymen' or 'Burrymen.' {48} After examining the facts we examine the words, and ask, 'Why Burley or Burry men?' At Queensferry, by a folk etymology, one of the lads wears a coat stuck over with burrs. But 'Borough-men' seems the probable etymology. As we examine the names Burley, or Burry men, so Mannhardt examines the name Luperci; and if a true etymology can be discovered, it will illustrate the original intention of the Lupercalia (p. 86).

He would like to explain the Lupercalia as a popular play, representing the spirits of vegetation opposing the spirits of infertility. 'But we do not forget that our whole theory of the development of the rite rests on a hypothesis which the lack of materials prevents us from demonstrating.' He would explain Luperci as Lupiherci—'wolf-goats.' Over this we need not linger; but how does all this prove Mannhardt to have returned to the method of comparing Greek with Vedic divine names, and arriving thence at some celestial phenomenon as the basis of a terrestrial myth? Yet he sometimes does this.



My Relations to Mannhardt

If anything could touch and move an unawakened anthropologist it would be the conversion of Mannhardt. My own relations with his ideas have the interest of illustrating mental coincidences. His name does not occur, I think, in the essay, 'The Method of Folklore,' in the first edition of my Custom and Myth. In that essay I take, as an example of the method, the Scottish and Northumbrian Kernababy, the puppet made out of the last gleanings of harvest. This I compared to the Greek Demeter of the harvest-home, with sheaves and poppies in her hands, in the immortal Seventh Idyll of Theocritus. Our Kernababy, I said, is a stunted survival of our older 'Maiden,' 'a regular image of the harvest goddess,' and I compared [Greek]. Next I gave the parallel case from ancient Peru, and the odd accidental coincidence that there the maize was styled Mama Cora ([Greek]!).

In entire ignorance of Mannhardt's corn-spirit, or corn-mother, I was following Mannhardt's track. Indeed, Mr. Max Muller has somewhere remarked that I popularise Mannhardt's ideas. Naturally he could not guess that the coincidence was accidental and also inevitable. Two men, unknown to each other, were using the same method on the same facts.



Mannhardt's Return to his old Colours

If, then, Mannhardt was re-converted, it would be a potent argument for my conversion. But one is reminded of the re-conversion of Prince Charles. In 1750 he 'deserted the errors of the Church of Rome for those of the Church of England.' Later he returned, or affected to return, to the ancient faith.

A certain Cardinal seemed contented therewith, and, as the historian remarks, 'was clearly a man not difficult to please.' Mr. Max Muller reminds me of the good Cardinal. I do not feel so satisfied as he does of Mannhardt's re-conversion.



Mannhardt's Attitude to Philology

We have heard Mannhardt, in a letter partly cited by Mr. Max Muller, describe his own method. He begins with what is certain and intelligible, a mass of popular customs. These he explains by analogies. He passes from the known to the obscure. Philological mythologists begin with the unknown, the name of a god. This they analyse, extract a meaning, and (proceeding to the known) fit the facts of the god's legend into the sense of his name. The methods are each other's opposites, yet the letter in which Mannhardt illustrates this fact is cited as a proof of his return to his old colours.



Irritating Conduct of Mannhardt

Nothing irritates philological mythologists so much, nothing has injured them so much in the esteem of the public which 'goes into these things a little,' as the statement that their competing etymologies and discrepant interpretations of mythical names are mutually destructive. I have been told that this is 'a mean argument.' But if one chemical analyst found bismuth where another found iridium, and a third found argon, the public would begin to look on chemistry without enthusiasm; still more so if one chemist rarely found anything but inevitable bismuth or omnipresent iridium. Now Mannhardt uses this 'mean argument.'



Mannhardt on Demeter Erinnys

In a posthumous work, Mythologische Forschungen (1884), the work from which Mr. Max Muller cites the letter to Mullenhoff, Mannhardt discusses Demeter Erinnys. She is the Arcadian goddess, who, in the form of a mare, became mother of Despoina and the horse Arion, by Poseidon. {51a} Her anger at the unhandsome behaviour of Poseidon caused Demeter to be called Erinnys—'to be angry' being [Greek] in Arcadian—a folk-etymology, clearly. Mannhardt first dives deep into the sources for this fable. {51b} Arion, he decides, is no mythological personification, but a poetical ideal (Bezeichnung) of the war-horse. Legend is ransacked for proof of this. Poseidon is the lord of wind and wave. Now, there are waves of corn, under the wind, as well as waves of the sea. When the Suabian rustic sees the wave running over the corn, he says, Da lauft das Pferd, and Greeks before Homer would say, in face of the billowing corn, [Greek], There run horses! And Homer himself {51c} says that the horses of Erichthonius, children of Boreas, ran over cornfield and sea. We ourselves speak of sea-waves as 'white horses.' So, to be brief, Mannhardt explains the myth of Demeter Erinnys becoming, as a mare, a mother by Poseidon as a horse, thus, 'Poseidon Hippies, or Poseidon in horse's form, rushes through the growing grain and weds Demeter,' and he cites peasant proverbs, such as Das Korn heirathet; das Korn feiert Hochzeit (p. 264). 'This is the germ of the Arcadian Saga.'

'The Arcadian myth of Demeter Erinnys is undeniably a blending of the epic tradition [of the ideal war-horse] with the local cult of Demeter. . . . It is a probable hypothesis that the belief in the wedding of Demeter and Poseidon comes from the sight of the waves passing over the cornfield. . . .' {52}

It is very neat! But a certain myth of Loki in horse-form comes into memory, and makes me wonder how Mannhardt would have dealt with that too liberal narrative.

Loki, as a mare (he being a male god), became, by the horse of a giant, the father of Sleipnir, Odin's eight-footed steed. Mr. W. A. Craigie supplies this note on Loki's analogy with Poseidon, as a horse, in the waves of corn:—

'In North Jutland, when the vapours are seen going with a wavy motion along the earth in the heat of summer, they say, "Loki is sowing oats today," or "Loki is driving his goats."

'N.B.—Oats in Danish are havre, which suggests O.N. hafrar, goats. Modern Icelandic has hafrar=oats, but the word is not found in the old language.'

Is Loki a corn-spirit?



Mannhardt's 'Mean Argument'

Mannhardt now examines the explanations of Demeter Erinnys, and her legend, given by Preller, E. Curtius, O. Muller, A. Kuhn, W. Sonne, Max Muller, E. Burnouf, de Gubernatis, Schwartz, and H. D. Muller. 'Here,' he cries, 'is a variegated list of hypotheses!' Demeter is

Storm-cloud Sun Goddess Earth and Moon Goddess Dawn Night.

Poseidon is

Sea Storm God Cloud-hidden Sun Rain God.

Despoina is

Rain Thunder Moon.

Arion, the horse, is

Lightning Sun Thunder-horse.

Erinnys is

Storm-cloud Red Dawn.

Mannhardt decides, after this exhibition of guesses, that the Demeter legends cannot be explained as refractions of any natural phenomena in the heavens (p. 275). He concludes that the myth of Demeter Erinnys, and the parallel Vedic story of Saranyu (who also had an amour as a mare), are 'incongruous,' and that neither sheds any light on the other. He protests against the whole tendency to find prototypes of all Aryan myths in the Veda, and to think that, with a few exceptions, all mythology is a terrestrial reflection of celestial phenomena (p. 280). He then goes into the contending etymologies of Demeter, and decides ('for the man was mortal and had been a' philologer) in favour of his own guess, [Greek]+[Greek]='Corn-mother' (p. 294).

This essay on Demeter was written by Mannhardt in the summer of 1877, a year after the letter which is given as evidence that he had 'returned to his old colours.' The essay shows him using the philological string of 'variegated hypotheses' as anything but an argument in favour of the philological method. On the other hand, he warns us against the habit, so common in the philological school, of looking for prototypes of all Aryan myths in the Veda, and of finding in most myths a reflection on earth of phenomena in the heavens, Erinnys being either Storm-cloud or Dawn, according to the taste and fancy of the inquirer. We also find Mannhardt, in 1877, starting from the known—legend and rural survival in phrase and custom—and so advancing to the unknown—the name Demeter. The philologists commence with the unknown, the old name, Demeter Erinnys, explain it to taste, and bring the legend into harmony with their explanation. I cannot say, then, that I share Mr. Max Muller's impression. I do not feel sure that Mannhardt did return to his old colours.



Why Mannhardt is Thought to have been Converted

Mannhardt's friend, Mullenhoff, had an aversion to solar myths. He said: {54} 'I deeply mistrust all these combinations of the new so-called comparative mythology.' Mannhardt was preparing to study Lithuanian solar myths, based on Lithuanian and Lettish marriage songs. Mullenhoff and Scherer seem to have thought this work too solar for their taste. Mannhardt therefore replied to their objections in the letter quoted in part by Mr. Max Muller. Mannhardt was not the man to neglect or suppress solar myths when he found them, merely because he did not believe that a great many other myths which had been claimed as celestial were solar. Like every sensible person, he knew that there are numerous real, obvious, confessed solar myths not derived from a disease of language. These arise from (1) the impulse to account for the doings of the Sun by telling a story about him as if he were a person; (2) from the natural poetry of the human mind. {55} What we think they are not shown to arise from is forgetfulness of meanings of old words, which, ex hypothesi, have become proper names.

That is the theory of the philological school, and to that theory, to these colours, I see no proof (in the evidence given) that Mannhardt had returned. But 'the scalded child dreads cold water,' and Mullenhoff apparently dreaded even real solar myths. Mr. Max Muller, on the other hand (if I do not misinterpret him), supposes that Mannhardt had returned to the philological method, partly because he was interested in real solar myths and in the natural poetry of illiterate races.



Mannhardt's Final Confession

Mannhardt's last work published in his life days was Antike Wald- und Feldkulte (1877). In the preface, dated November 1, 1876 (after the famous letter of May 1876), he explains the growth of his views and criticises his predecessors. After doing justice to Kuhn and his comparisons of European with Indian myths, he says that, in his opinion, comparative Indo-Germanic mythology has not yet borne the expected fruits. 'The assured gains shrink into very few divine names, such as Dyaus—Zeus—Tius, Parjany—Perkunas, Bhaga—Bug, Varuna—Uranus, &c.' I wish he had completed the list included in &c. Other equations, as Sarameya=Hermeias, Saranyu=Demeter Erinnys, he fears will not stand close criticism. He dreads that jeux d'esprit (geistvolle Spiele des Witzes) may once more encroach on science. Then, after a lucid statement of Mr. Max Muller's position, he says, 'Ich vermag dem von M. Muller aufgestellten Principe, wenn uberhaupt eine, so doch nur eine sehr beschrankte Geltung zuzugestehen.'

'To the principle of Max Muller I can only assign a very limited value, if any value at all.' {56}

'Taken all in all, I consider the greater part of the results hitherto obtained in the field of Indo-Germanic comparative mythology to be, as yet, a failure, premature or incomplete, my own efforts in German Myths (1858) included. That I do not, however, "throw out the babe with the bath," as the proverb goes, my essay on Lettish sun myths in Bastian-Hartmann's Ethnological Journal will bear witness.'

Such is Mannhardt's conclusion. Taken in connection with his still later essay on Demeter, it really leaves no room for doubt. There, I think, he does 'throw out the child with the bath,' throw the knife after the handle. I do not suppose that Mr. Max Muller ever did quote Mannhardt as one of his supporters, but such a claim, if really made, would obviously give room for criticism.



Mannhardt on Solar Myths

What the attitude of Mannhardt was, in 1877 and later, we have seen. He disbelieves in the philological system of explaining myths by etymological conjectures. He disbelieves in the habit of finding, in myths of terrestrial occurrences, reflections of celestial phenomena. But earlier, in his long essay Die lettischen Sonnenmythen (in Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie, 1875), he examines the Lettish popular songs about the Sun, the Sun's daughters, the god-sons, and so forth. Here, of course, he is dealing with popular songs explicitly devoted to solar phenomena, in their poetical aspect. In the Lettish Sun-songs and Sun-myths of the peasants we see, he says, a myth-world 'in process of becoming,' in an early state of development, as in the Veda (p. 325). But, we may reply, in the Veda, myths are already full-grown, or even decadent. Already there are unbelievers in the myths. Thus we would say, in the Veda we have (1) myths of nature, formed in the remote past, and (2) poetical phrases about heavenly phenomena, which resemble the nature-poetry of the Letts, but which do not become full-grown myths. The Lett songs, also, have not developed into myths, of which (as in the Apollo and Daphne story, by Mr. Max Muller's hypothesis) the original meaning is lost.

In the Lett songs we have a mass of nature-pictures—the boat and the apples of the Sun, the red cloak hung on the oak-tree, and so on; pictures by which it is sought to make elemental phenomena intelligible, by comparison with familiar things. Behind the phenomena are, in popular belief, personages—mythical personages—the Sun as 'a magnified non-natural man,' or woman; the Sun's mother, daughters, and other heavenly people. Their conduct is 'motived' in a human way. Stories are told about them: the Sun kills the Moon, who revives.

All this is perfectly familiar everywhere. Savages, in their fables, account for solar, lunar, and similar elemental processes, on the theory that the heavenly bodies are, and act like, human beings. The Eskimo myth of the spots on the Moon, marks of ashes thrown by the Sun in a love- quarrel, is an excellent example. But in all this there is no 'disease of language.' These are frank nature-myths, 'aetiological,' giving a fabulous reason for facts of nature.



Mannhardt on Marchen.

But Mannhardt goes farther. He not only recognises, as everyone must do, the Sun, as explicitly named, when he plays his part in myth, or popular tale (Marchen). He thinks that even when the Sun is not named, his presence, and reference to him, and derivation of the incidents in Marchen from solar myth, may sometimes be detected with great probability (pp. 326, 327). But he adds, 'not that every Marchen contains a reference to Nature; that I am far from asserting' (p. 327).

Now perhaps nobody will deny that some incidents in Marchen may have been originally suggested by nature-myths. The all-swallowing and all-disgorging beast, wolf, or ogre, may have been derived from a view of Night as the all-swallower. But to disengage natural phenomena, mythically stated, from the human tangle of Marchen, to find natural phenomena in such a palimpsest as Perrault's courtly and artificial version of a French popular tale, is a delicate and dangerous task. In many stories a girl has three balls—one of silver, one of gold, one of diamond—which she offers, in succession, as bribes. This is a perfectly natural invention. It is perilous to connect these balls, gifts of ascending value, with the solar apple of iron, silver, and gold (p. 103 and note 5). It is perilous, and it is quite unnecessary. Some one—Gubernatis, I think—has explained the naked sword of Aladdin, laid between him and the Sultan's daughter in bed, as the silver sickle of the Moon. Really the sword has an obvious purpose and meaning, and is used as a symbol in proxy-marriages. The blood shed by Achilles in his latest victories is elsewhere explained as red clouds round the setting Sun, which is conspicuously childish. Mannhardt leans, at least, in this direction.



'The Two Brothers'

Mannhardt takes the old Egyptian tale of 'The Two Brothers,' Bitiou and Anepou. This fable, as old, in actual written literature, as Moses, is a complex of half the Marchen plots and incidents in the world. It opens with the formula of Potiphar's Wife. The falsely accused brother flies, and secretes his life, or separable soul, in a flower of the mystic Vale of Acacias. This affair of the separable soul may be studied in Mr. Hartland's Perseus, and it animates, as we shall see, Mr. Frazer's theory of the Origin of Totemism. A golden lock of the wicked wife's hair is then borne by the Nile to the king's palace in Egypt. He will insist on marrying the lady of the lock. Here we are in the Cinderella formula, en plein, which may be studied, in African and Santhal shapes, in Miss Coxe's valuable Cinderella. {60} Pharaoh's wise men decide that the owner of the lock of hair is (like Egyptian royalty at large) a daughter of the Sun-god (p. 239). Here is the Sun, in all his glory; but here we are dealing with a literary version of the Marchen, accommodated to royal tastes and Egyptian ideas of royalty by a royal scribe, the courtly Perrault of the Egyptian Roi-Soleil. Who can say what he introduced?—while we can say that the Sun-god is absent in South African and Santhal and other variants. The Sun may have slipped out here, may have been slipped in there; the faintest glimmer of the historical sense prevents us from dogmatising.

Wedded to Pharaoh, the wicked wife, pursuing her vengeance on Bitiou, cuts down his life-tree. Anepou, his brother, however, recovers his concealed heart (life), and puts it in water. Bitiou revives. He changes himself into the sacred Bull, Apis—a feature in the story which is practically possible in Egypt alone. The Bull tells the king his story, but the wicked wife has the Bull slain, as by Cambyses in Herodotus. Two of his blood-drops become two persea trees. One of them confesses the fact to the wicked wife. She has them cut down; a chip flies into her mouth, she becomes a mother by the chip, the boy (Bitiou) again becomes king, and slays his mother, the wicked wife.

In the tree, any tree, acacia or persea, Mannhardt wishes to recognise the Sun-tree of the Lett songs. The red blossoms of the persea tree are a symbol of the Sun-tree: of Horus. He compares features, not always very closely analogous, in European Marchen. For example, a girl hides in a tree, like Charles II. at Boscobel. That is not really analogous with Bitiou's separable life in the acacia! 'Anepou' is like 'Anapu,' Anubis. The Bull is the Sun, is Osiris—dead in winter. Mr. Frazer, Mannhardt's disciple, protests a grands cris against these identifications when made by others than Mannhardt, who says, 'The Marchen is an old obscure solar myth' (p. 242). To others the story of Bitiou seems an Egyptian literary complex, based on a popular set of tales illustrating furens quid femina possit, and illustrating the world- wide theory of the separable life, dragging in formulas from other Marchen, and giving to all a thoroughly classical Egyptian colouring. {61a} Solar myths, we think, have not necessarily anything to make in the matter.



The Golden Fleece

Mannhardt reasons in much the same way about the Golden Fleece. This is a peculiarly Greek feature, interwoven with the world-wide Marchen of the Lad, the Giant's helpful daughter, her aid in accomplishing feats otherwise impossible, and the pursuit of the pair by the father. I have studied the story—as it occurs in Samoa, among Red Indian tribes, and elsewhere—in 'A Far-travelled Tale.' {61b} In our late Greek versions the Quest of the Fleece of Gold occurs, but in no other variants known to me. There is a lamb (a boy changed into a lamb) in Romaic. His fleece is of no interest to anybody. Out of his body grows a tree with a golden apple. Sun-yarns occur in popular songs. Mannhardt (pp. 282, 283) abounds in solar explanations of the Fleece of Gold, hanging on the oak- tree in the dark AEaean forest. Idyia, wife of the Colchian king, 'is clearly the Dawn.' Aia is the isle of the Sun. Helle=Surya, a Sanskrit Sun-goddess; the golden ram off whose back she falls, while her brother keeps his seat, is the Sun. Her brother, Phrixus, may be the Daylight. The oak-tree in Colchis is the Sun-tree of the Lettish songs. Perseus is a hero of Light, born in the Dark Tower (Night) from the shower of gold (Sun-rays).

'We can but say "it may be so,"' but who could explain all the complex Perseus-saga as a statement about elemental phenomena? Or how can the Far-travelled Tale of the Lad and the Giant's Daughter be interpreted to the same effect, above all in the countless examples where no Fleece of Gold occurs? The Greek tale of Jason is made up of several Marchen, as is the Odyssey, by epic poets. These Marchen have no necessary connection with each other; they are tagged on to each other, and localised in Greece and on the Euxine. {62a} A poetic popular view of the Sun may have lent the peculiar, and elsewhere absent, incident of the quest of the Fleece of Gold on the shores of the Black Sea. The old epic poets may have borrowed from popular songs like the Lettish chants (p. 328). A similar dubious adhesion may be given by us in the case of Castor and Polydeuces (Morning and Evening Stars?), and Helen (Dawn), {62b} and the Hesperides (p. 234). The germs of the myths may be popular poetical views of elemental phenomena. But to insist on elemental allegories through all the legends of the Dioskouroi, and of the Trojan war, would be to strain a hypothesis beyond the breaking-point. Much, very much, is epic invention, unverkennbar das werk der Dichter (p. 328).



Mannhardt's Approach to Mr. Max Muller

In this essay on Lettish Sun-songs (1875) Mannhardt comes nearest to Mr. Max Muller. He cites passages from him with approval (cf. pp. 314, 322). His explanations, by aid of Sun-songs, of certain features in Greek mythology are plausible, and may be correct. But we turn to Mannhardt's explicit later statement of his own position in 1877, and to his posthumous essays, published in 1884; and, on the whole, we find, in my opinion, much more difference from than agreement with the Oxford Professor, whose Dawn-Daphne and other equations Mannhardt dismisses, and to whose general results (in mythology) he assigns a value so restricted. It is a popular delusion that the anthropological mythologists deny the existence of solar myths, or of nature-myths in general. These are extremely common. What we demur to is the explanation of divine and heroic myths at large as solar or elemental, when the original sense has been lost by the ancient narrators, and when the elemental explanation rests on conjectural and conflicting etymologies and interpretations of old proper names—Athene, Hera, Artemis, and the rest. Nevertheless, while Mannhardt, in his works on Tree-cult, and on Field and Wood Cult, and on the 'Corn Demon,' has wandered far from 'his old colours'—while in his posthumous essays he is even more of a deserter, his essay on Lettish Sun-myths shows an undeniable tendency to return to Mr. Max Muller's camp. This was what made his friends so anxious. It is probably wisest to form our opinion of his final attitude on his preface to his last book published in his life-time. In that the old colours are not exactly his chosen banner; nor can the flag of the philological school be inscribed tandem triumphans.

In brief, Mannhardt's return to his old colours (1875-76) seems to have been made in a mood from which he again later passed away. But either modern school of mythology may cite him as an ally in one or other of his phases of opinion.



PHILOLOGY AND DEMETER ERINNYS

Mr. Max Muller on Demeter Erinnys.

Like Mannhardt, our author in his new treatise discusses the strange old Arcadian myth of the horse-Demeter Erinnys (ii. 537). He tells the unseemly tale, and asks why the Earth goddess became a mare? Then he gives the analogous myth from the Rig-Veda, {65} which, as it stands, is 'quite unintelligible.' But Yaska explains that Saranyu, daughter of Tvashtri, in the form of a mare, had twins by Vivasvat, in the shape of a stallion. Their offspring were the Asvins, who are more or less analogous in their helpful character to Castor and Pollux. Now, can it be by accident that Saranyu in the Veda is Erinnys in Greek? To this 'equation,' as we saw, Mannhardt demurred in 1877. Who was Saranyu? Yaska says 'the Night;' that was Yaska's idea. Mr. Max Muller adds, 'I think he is right,' and that Saranyu is 'the grey dawn' (ii. 541).

'But,' the bewildered reader exclaims, 'Dawn is one thing and Night is quite another.' So Yaska himself was intelligent enough to observe, 'Night is the wife of Aditya; she vanishes at sunrise.' However, Night in Mr. Max Muller's system 'has just got to be' Dawn, a position proved thus: 'Yaska makes this clear by saying that the time of the Asvins, sons of Saranyu, is after midnight,' but that 'when darkness prevails over light, that is Madhyama; when light prevails over darkness, that is Aditya,' both being Asvins. They (the Asvins) are, in fact, darkness and light; and therefore, I understand, Saranyu, who is Night, and not an Asvin at all, is Dawn! To make this perfectly clear, remember that the husband of Saranyu, whom she leaves at sunrise, is—I give you three guesses—is the Sun! The Sun's wife leaves the Sun at sunrise. {66} This is proved, for Aditya is Vivasvat=the Sun, and is the husband of Saranyu (ii. 541). These methods of proving Night to be Dawn, while the substitute for both in the bed of the Sun 'may have been meant for the gloaming' (ii. 542), do seem to be geistvolle Spiele des Witzes, ingenious jeux d'esprit, as Mannhardt says, rather than logical arguments.

But we still do not know how the horse and mare came in, or why the statue of Demeter had a horse's head. 'This seems simply to be due to the fact that, quite apart from this myth, the sun had, in India at least, often been conceived as a horse . . . . and the dawn had been likened to a mare.' But how does this explain the problem? The Vedic poets cited (ii. 542) either referred to the myth which we have to explain, or they used a poetical expression, knowing perfectly well what they meant. As long as they knew what they meant, they could not make an unseemly fable out of a poetical phrase. Not till after the meaning was forgotten could the myth arise. But the myth existed already in the Veda! And the unseemliness is precisely what we have to account for; that is our enigma.

Once more, Demeter is a goddess of Earth, not of Dawn. How, then, does the explanation of a hypothetical Dawn-myth apply to the Earth? Well, perhaps the story, the unseemly story, was first told of Erinnys (who also is 'the inevitable Dawn') or of Deo, 'and this name of Deo, or Dyava, was mixed up with a hypokoristic form of Demeter, Deo, and thus led to the transference of her story to Demeter. I know this will sound very unlikely to Greek scholars, yet I see no other way out of our difficulties' (ii. 545). Phonetic explanations follow.

'To my mind,' says our author, 'there is no chapter in mythology in which we can so clearly read the transition of an auroral myth of the Veda into an epic chapter of Greece as in the chapter of Saranyu (or Surama) and the Asvins, ending in the chapter of Helena and her brothers, the [Greek]' (ii. 642). Here, as regards the Asvins and the Dioskouroi, Mannhardt may be regarded as Mr. Max Muller's ally; but compare his note, A. F. u. W. K. p. xx.



My Theory of the Horse Demeter

Mannhardt, I think, ought to have tried at an explanation of myths so closely analogous as those two, one Indian, one Greek, in which a goddess, in the shape of a mare, becomes mother of twins by a god in the form of a stallion. As Mr. Max Muller well says, 'If we look about for analogies we find nothing, as far as I know, corresponding to the well- marked features of this barbarous myth among any of the uncivilised tribes of the earth. If we did, how we should rejoice! Why, then, should we not rejoice when we find the allusion in Rig Veda?' (x 17, 1).

I do rejoice! The 'song of triumph,' as Professor Tiele says, will be found in M. R. R. ii. 266 (note), where I give the Vedic and other references. I even asked why Mr. Max Muller did not produce this proof of the identity of Saranyu and Demeter Erinnys in his Selected Essays (pp. 401, 492).

I cannot explain why this tale was told both of Erinnys and of Saranyu. Granting the certainty of the etymological equation, Saranyu=Erinnys (which Mannhardt doubted), the chances against fortuitous coincidence may be reckoned by algebra, and Mr. Edgeworth's trillions of trillions feebly express it. Two goddesses, Indian and Greek, have, ex hypothesi, the same name, and both, as mares, are mothers of twins. Though the twins (in India the Asvins, in Greek an ideal war-horse and a girl) differ in character, still the coincidence is evidential. Explain it I cannot, and, clearly as the confession may prove my lack of scientific exactness, I make it candidly.

If I must offer a guess, it is that Greeks, and Indians of India, inherited a very ordinary savage idea. The gods in savage myths are usually beasts. As beasts they beget anthropomorphic offspring. This is the regular rule in totemism. In savage myths we are not told 'a god' (Apollo, or Zeus, or Poseidon) 'put on beast shape and begat human sons and daughters' (Helen, the Telmisseis, and so on). The god in savage myths was a beast already, though he could, of course, shift shapes like any 'medicine-man,' or modern witch who becomes a hare. This is not the exception but the rule in savage mythology. Anyone can consult my Myth, Ritual, and Religion, or Mr. Frazer's work Totemism, for abundance of evidence. To Loki, a male god, prosecuting his amours as a female horse, I have already alluded, and in M. R. R. give cases from the Satapatha Brahmana.

The Saranyu-Erinnys myth dates, I presume, from this savage state of fancy; but why the story occurred both in Greece and India, I protest that I cannot pretend to explain, except on the hypothesis that the ancestors of Greek and Vedic peoples once dwelt together, had a common stock of savage fables, and a common or kindred language. After their dispersion, the fables admitted discrepancies, as stories in oral circulation occasionally do. This is the only conjecture which I feel justified in suggesting to account for the resemblances and incongruities between the myths of the mare Demeter-Erinnys and the mare Saranyu.



TOTEMISM

Totemism

To the strange and widely diffused institution of 'Totemism' our author often returns. I shall deal here with his collected remarks on the theme, the more gladly as the treatment shows how very far Mr. Max Muller is from acting with a shadow of unfairness when he does not refer to special passages in his opponent's books. He treats himself and his own earlier works in the same fashion, thereby, perhaps, weakening his argument, but also demonstrating his candour, were any such demonstration required.

On totems he opens (i. 7)—

'When we come to special cases we must not imagine that much can be gained by using such general terms as Animism, Totemism, Fetishism, &c., as solvents of mythological problems. To my mind, all such general terms, not excluding even Darwinism or Puseyism, seem most objectionable, because they encourage vague thought, vague praise, or vague blame.

'It is, for instance, quite possible to place all worship of animal gods, all avoidance of certain kinds of animal food, all adoption of animal names as the names of men and families, under the wide and capacious cover of totemism. All theriolatry would thus be traced back to totemism. I am not aware, however, that any Egyptologists have adopted such a view to account for the animal forms of the Egyptian gods. Sanskrit scholars would certainly hesitate before seeing in Indra a totem because he is called vrishabha, or bull, or before attempting to explain on this ground the abstaining from beef on the part of orthodox Hindus [i. 7].'



Totemism Defined

I think I have defined totemism, {71} and the reader may consult Mr. Frazer's work on the subject, or Mr. MacLennan's essays, or 'Totemism' in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. However, I shall define totemism once more. It is a state of society and cult, found most fully developed in Australia and North America, in which sets of persons, believing themselves to be akin by blood, call each such set by the name of some plant, beast, or other class of objects in nature. One kin may be wolves, another bears, another cranes, and so on. Each kin derives its kin-name from its beast, plant, or what not; pays to it more or less respect, usually abstains from killing, eating, or using it (except in occasional sacrifices); is apt to claim descent from or relationship with it, and sometimes uses its effigy on memorial pillars, carved pillars outside huts, tattooed on the skin, and perhaps in other ways not known to me. In Australia and North America, where rules are strict, a man may not marry a woman of his own totem; and kinship is counted through mothers in many, but not in all, cases. Where all these notes are combined we have totemism. It is plain that two or three notes of it may survive where the others have perished; may survive in ritual and sacrifice, {72a} and in bestial or semi-bestial gods of certain nomes, or districts, in ancient Egypt; {72b} in Pictish names; {72c} in claims of descent from beasts, or gods in the shape of beasts; in the animals sacred to gods, as Apollo or Artemis, and so on. Such survivals are possible enough in evolution, but the evidence needs careful examination. Animal attributes and symbols and names in religion are not necessarily totemistic. Mr. Max Muller asks if 'any Egyptologists have adopted' the totem theory. He is apparently oblivious of Professor Sayce's reference to a prehistoric age, 'when the religious creed of Egypt was still totemism.'

Dr. Codrington is next cited for the apparent absence of totemism in the Solomon Islands and Polynesia, and Professor Oldenberg as denying that 'animal names of persons and clans [necessarily?] imply totemism.' Who says that they do? 'Clan Chattan,' with its cat crest, may be based, not on a totem, but on a popular etymology. Animal names of individuals have nothing to do with totems. A man has no business to write on totemism if he does not know these facts.



What a Totem is

Though our adversary now abandons totems, he returns to them elsewhere (i. 198-202). 'Totem is the corruption of a term used by North American Indians in the sense of clan-mark or sign-board ("ododam").' The totem was originally a rude emblem of an animal or other object 'placed by North American Indians in front of their settlements.'



The Evidence for Sign-boards

Our author's evidence for sign-boards is from an Ottawa Indian, and is published from his MS. by Mr. Hoskyns Abrahall. {73} The testimony is of the greatest merit, for it appears to have first seen the light in a Canadian paper of 1858. Now in 1858 totems were only spoken of in Lafitau, Long, and such old writers, and in Cooper's novels. They had not become subjects of scientific dispute, so the evidence is uncontaminated by theory. The Indians were, we learn, divided into [local?] tribes, and these 'into sections or families according to their ododams'—devices, signs, in modern usage 'coats of arms.' [Perhaps 'crests' would be a better word.] All people of one ododam (apparently under male kinship) lived together in a special section of each village. At the entrance to the enclosure was the figure of an animal, or some other sign, set up on the top of one of the posts. Thus everybody knew what family dwelt in what section of the village. Some of the families were called after their ododam. But the family with the bear ododam were called Big Feet, not Bears. Sometimes parts of different animals were 'quartered' [my suggestion], and one ododam was a small hawk and the fins of a sturgeon.

We cannot tell, of course, on the evidence here, whether 'Big Feet' suggested 'Bear,' or vice versa, or neither. But Mr. Frazer has remarked that periphrases for sacred beasts, like 'Big Feet' for Bear, are not uncommon. Nor can we tell 'what couple of ancestors' a small hawk and a sturgeon's fins represent, unless, perhaps, a hawk and a sturgeon. {74a}

For all this, Mr. Max Muller suggests the explanation that people who marked their abode with crow or wolf might come to be called Wolves or Crows. {74b} Again, people might borrow beast names from the prevalent beast of their district, as Arkades, [Greek], Bears, and so evolve the myth of descent from Callisto as a she-bear. 'All this, however, is only guesswork.' The Snake Indians worship no snake. [The Snake Indians are not a totem group, but a local tribe named from the Snake River, as we say, 'An Ettrick man.'] Once more, the name-giving beast, say, 'Great Hare,' is explained by Dr. Brinton as 'the inevitable Dawn.' {74c} 'Hasty writers,' remarks Dr. Brinton, 'say that the Indians claim descent from different wild beasts.' For evidence I refer to that hasty writer, Mr. Frazer, and his book, Totemism. For a newly sprung up modern totem our author alludes to a boat, among the Mandans, 'their totem, or tutelary object of worship.' An object of worship, of course, is not necessarily a totem! Nor is a totem by the definition (as a rule one of a class of objects) anything but a natural object. Mr. Max Muller wishes that 'those who write about totems and totemism would tell us exactly what they mean by these words.' I have told him, and indicated better sources. I apply the word totemism to the widely diffused savage institution which I have defined.



More about Totems

The origin of totemism is unknown to me, as to Mr. McLennan and Dr. Robertson Smith, but Mr. Max Muller knows this origin. 'A totem is a clan-mark, then a clan-name, then the name of the ancestor of a clan, and lastly the name of something worshipped by a clan' (i. 201). 'All this applies in the first instance to Red Indians only.' Yes, and 'clan' applies in the first instance to the Scottish clans only! When Mr. Max Muller speaks of 'clans' among the Red Indians, he uses a word whose connotation differs from anything known to exist in America. But the analogy between a Scottish clan and an American totem-kin is close enough to justify Mr. Max Muller in speaking of Red Indian 'clans.' By parity of reasoning, the analogy between the Australian Kobong and the American totem is so complete that we may speak of 'Totemism' in Australia. It would be childish to talk of 'Totemism' in North America, 'Kobongism' in Australia, 'Pacarissaism' in the realm of the Incas: totems, kobongs, and pacarissas all amounting to the same thing, except in one point. I am not aware that Australian blacks erect, or that the subjects of the Incas, or that African and Indian and Asiatic totemists, erected 'sign- boards' anywhere, as the Ottawa writer assures us that the Ottawas do, or used to do. And, if they don't, how do we know that kobongs and pacarissas were developed out of sign-boards?



Heraldry and Totems

The Ottawas are armigeri, are heraldic; so are the natives of Vancouver's Island, who have wooden pillars with elaborate quarterings. Examples are in South Kensington Museum. But this savage heraldry is not nearly so common as the institution of totemism. Thus it is difficult to prove that the heraldry is the origin of totemism, which is just as likely, or more likely, to have been the origin of savage heraldic crests and quarterings. Mr. Max Muller allows that there may be other origins.



Gods and Totems

Our author refers to unnamed writers who call Indra or Ammon a totem (i. 200).

This is a foolish liberty with language. 'Why should not all the gods of Egypt with their heads of bulls and apes and cats be survivals of totemisms?' Why not, indeed? Professor Sayce remarks, 'They were the sacred animals of the clans,' survivals from an age 'when the religion of Egypt was totemism.' 'In Egypt the gods themselves are totem-deities, i.e. personifications or individual representations of the sacred character and attributes which in the purely totem stage of religion were ascribed without distinction to all animals of the holy kind.' So says Dr. Robertson Smith. He and Mr. Sayce are 'scholars,' not mere unscholarly anthropologists. {76}



An Objection

Lastly (ii. 403), when totems infected 'even those who ought to have been proof against this infantile complaint' (which is not even a 'disease of language' of a respectable type), then 'the objection that a totem meant originally a clan-mark was treated as scholastic pedantry.' Alas, I fear with justice! For if I call Mr. Arthur Balfour a Tory will Mr. Max Muller refute my opinion by urging that 'a Tory meant originally an Irish rapparee,' or whatever the word did originally mean?

Mr. Max Muller decides that 'we never find a religion consisting exclusively of a belief in fetishes, or totems, or ancestral spirits.' Here, at last, we are in absolute agreement. So much for totems and sign- boards. Only a weak fanatic will find a totem in every animal connected with gods, sacred names, and religious symbols. But totemism is a fact, whether 'totem' originally meant a clan-mark or sign-board in America or not. And, like Mr. Sayce, Mr. Frazer, Mr. Rhys, Dr. Robertson Smith, I believe that totemism has left marks in civilised myth, ritual, and religion, and that these survivals, not a 'disease of language,' explain certain odd elements in the old civilisations.



A Weak Brother

Our author's habit of omitting references to his opponents has here caused me infinite inconvenience. He speaks of some eccentric person who has averred that a 'fetish' is a 'totem,' inhabited by 'an ancestral spirit.' To myself it seems that you might as well say 'Abracadabra is gas and gaiters.' As no reference was offered, I invented 'a wild surmise' that Mr. Max Muller had conceivably misapprehended Mr. Frazer's theory of the origin of totems. Had our author only treated himself fairly, he would have referred to his own Anthropological Religion (pp. 126 and 407), where the name of the eccentric definer is given as that of Herr Lippert. {78} Then came into my mind the words of Professor Tiele, 'Beware of weak brethren'—such as Herr Lippert seems, as far as this definition is concerned, to be.

Nobody knows the origin of totemism. We find no race on its way to becoming totemistic, though we find several in the way of ceasing to be so. They are abandoning female kinship for paternity; their rules of marriage and taboo are breaking down; perhaps various totem kindreds of different crests and names are blending into one local tribe, under the name, perhaps, of the most prosperous totem-kin. But we see no race on its way to becoming totemistic, so we have no historical evidence as to the origin of the institution. Mr. McLennan offered no conjecture, Professor Robertson Smith offered none, nor have I displayed the spirit of scientific exactitude by a guess in the dark. To gratify Mr. Max Muller by defining totemism as Mr. McLennan first used the term is all that I dare do. Here one may remark that if Mr. Max Muller really wants 'an accurate definition' of totemism, the works of McLennan, Frazer, Robertson Smith, and myself are accessible, and contain our definitions. He does not produce these definitions, and criticise them; he produces Dr. Lippert's and criticises that. An argument should be met in its strongest and most authoritative form. 'Define what you mean by a totem,' says Professor Max Muller in his Gifford Lectures of 1891 (p. 123). He had to look no further for a definition, an authoritative definition, than to 'totem' in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, or to McLennan. Yet his large and intelligent Glasgow audience, and his readers, may very well be under the impression that a definition of 'totem' is 'still to seek,' like Prince Charlie's religion. Controversy simply cannot be profitably conducted on these terms.

'The best representatives of anthropology are now engaged not so much in comparing as in discriminating.' {79} Why not refer, then, to the results of their discriminating efforts? 'To treat all animal worship as due to totemism is a mistake.' Do we make it?



Mr. Frazer and Myself

There is, or was, a difference of opinion between Mr. Frazer and myself as to the causes of the appearance of certain sacred animals in Greek religion. My notions were published in Myth, Ritual, and Religion (1887), Mr. Frazer's in The Golden Bough (1890). Necessarily I was unaware in 1887 of Mr. Frazer's still unpublished theory. Now that I have read it, he seems to me to have the better logic on his side; and if I do not as yet wholly agree with him, it is because I am not yet certain that both of our theories may not have their proper place in Greek mythology.



Greek Totemism

In C. and M. (p. 106) I describe the social aspects of totemism. I ask if there are traces of it in Greece. Suppose, for argument's sake, that in prehistoric Greece the mouse had been a totem, as it is among the Oraons of Bengal. {80} In that case (1) places might be named from a mouse tribe; (2) mice might be held sacred per se; (3) the mouse name might be given locally to a god who superseded the mouse in pride of place; (4) images of the mouse might be associated with that of the god, (5) and used as a local badge or mark; (6) myths might be invented to explain the forgotten cause of this prominence of the mouse. If all these notes occur, they would raise a presumption in favour of totemism in the past of Greece. I then give evidence in detail, proving that all these six facts do occur among Greeks of the Troads and sporadically elsewhere. I add that, granting for the sake of argument that these traces may point to totemism in the remote past, the mouse, though originally a totem, 'need not have been an Aryan totem' (p. 116).

I offer a list of other animals closely connected with Apollo, giving him a beast's name (wolf, ram, dolphin), and associated with him in myth and art. In M. R. R. I apply similar arguments in the case of Artemis and the Bear, of Dionysus and the Bull, Demeter and the Pig, and so forth. Moreover, I account for the myths of descent of Greek human families from gods disguised as dogs, ants, serpents, bulls, and swans, on the hypothesis that kindreds who originally, in totemistic fashion, traced to beasts sans phrase, later explained their own myth to themselves by saying that the paternal beast was only a god in disguise and en bonne fortune.

This hypothesis at least 'colligates the facts,' and brings them into intelligible relationship with widely-diffused savage institutions and myths.



The Greek Mouse-totem?

My theory connecting Apollo Smintheus and the place-names derived from mice with a possible prehistoric mouse-totem gave me, I confess, considerable satisfaction. But in Mr. Frazer's Golden Bough (ii. 129- 132) is published a group of cases in which mice and other vermin are worshipped for prudential reasons—to get them to go away. In the Classical Review (vol. vi. 1892) Mr. Ward Fowler quotes Aristotle and AElian on plagues of mice, like the recent invasion of voles on the Border sheep-farms. He adopts the theory that the sacred mice were adored by way of propitiating them. Thus Apollo may be connected with mice, not as a god who superseded a mouse-totem, but as an expeller of mice, like the worm-killing Heracles, and the Locust-Heracles, and the Locust-Apollo. {81a} The locust is still painted red, salaamed to, and set free in India, by way of propitiating his companions. {81b} Thus the Mouse-Apollo (Smintheus) would be merely a god noted for his usefulness in getting rid of mice, and any worship given to mice (feeding them, placing their images on altars, their stamp on coins, naming places after them, and so on) would be mere acts of propitiation.

There would be no mouse-totem in the background. I do not feel quite convinced—the mouse being a totem, and a sacred or tabooed animal, in India and Egypt. {82a} But I am content to remain in a balance of opinion. That the Mouse is the Night (Gubernatis), or the Lightning (Grohmann), I am disinclined to believe. Philologists are very apt to jump at contending meteorological explanations of mice and such small deer without real necessity, and an anthropologist is very apt to jump at an equally unnecessary and perhaps equally undemonstrated totem.



Philological Theory

Philological mythologists prefer to believe that the forgotten meaning of words produced the results; that the wolf-born Apollo ([Greek]) originally meant 'Light-born Apollo,' {82b} and that the wolf came in from a confusion between [Greek], 'Light,' and [Greek], a wolf. I make no doubt that philologists can explain Sminthian Apollo, the Dog-Apollo, and all the rest in the same way, and account for all the other peculiarities of place-names, myths, works of art, local badges, and so forth. We must then, I suppose, infer that these six traits of the mouse, already enumerated, tally with the traces which actual totemism would or might leave surviving behind it, or which propitiation of mice might leave behind it, by a chance coincidence, determined by forgotten meanings of words. The Greek analogy to totemistic facts would be explained, (1) either by asking for a definition of totemism, and not listening when it is given; or (2) by maintaining that savage totemism is also a result of a world-wide malady of language, which, in a hundred tongues, produced the same confusions of thought, and consequently the same practices and institutions. Nor do I for one moment doubt that the ingenuity of philologists could prove the name of every beast and plant, in every language under heaven, to be a name for the 'inevitable dawn' (Max Muller), or for the inevitable thunder, or storm, or lightning (Kuhn- Schwartz). But as names appear to yield storm, lightning, night, or dawn with equal ease and certainty, according as the scholar prefers dawn or storm, I confess that this demonstration would leave me sceptical. It lacks scientific exactitude.



Mr. Frazer on Animals in Greek Religion

In The Golden Bough (ii. 37) Mr. Frazer, whose superior knowledge and acuteness I am pleased to confess, has a theory different from that which I (following McLennan) propounded before The Golden Bough appeared. Greece had a bull-shaped Dionysus. {83a} 'There is left no room to doubt that in rending and devouring a live bull at his festival, his worshippers believed that they were killing the god, eating his flesh, and drinking his blood.' {83b} Mr. Frazer concludes that there are two possible explanations of Dionysus in his bull aspect. (1) This was an expression of his character as a deity of vegetation, 'especially as the bull is a common embodiment of the corn-spirit in Northern Europe.' {84a} (2) The other possible explanation 'appears to be the view taken by Mr. Lang, who suggests that the bull-formed Dionysus "had either been developed out of, or had succeeded to, the worship of a bull-totem."' {84b}

Now, anthropologists are generally agreed, I think, that occasional sacrifices of and communion in the flesh of the totem or other sacred animals do occur among totemists. {84c} But Mr. Frazer and I both admit, and indeed are eager to state publicly, that the evidence for sacrifice of the totem, and communion in eating him, is very scanty. The fact is rather inferred from rites among peoples just emerging from totemism (see the case of the Californian buzzard, in Bancroft) than derived from actual observation. On this head too much has been taken for granted by anthropologists. But I learn that direct evidence has been obtained, and is on the point of publication. The facts I may not anticipate here, but the evidence will be properly sifted, and bias of theory discounted.

To return to my theory of the development of Dionysus into a totem, or of his inheritance of the rites of a totem, Mr. Frazer says, 'Of course this is possible, but it is not yet certain that Aryans ever had totemism.' {84d} Now, in writing of the mouse, I had taken care to observe that, in origin, the mouse as a totem need not have been Aryan, but adopted. People who think that the Aryans did not pass through a stage of totemism, female kin, and so forth, can always fall back (to account for apparent survivals of such things among Aryans) on 'Pre-Aryan conquered peoples,' such as the Picts. Aryans may be enticed by these bad races and become Pictis ipsis Pictiores.



Aryan Totems (?)

Generally speaking (and how delightfully characteristic of us all is this!), I see totems in Greek sacred beasts, where Mr. Frazer sees the corn-spirit embodied in a beast, and where Mr. Max Muller sees (in the case of Indra, called the bull) 'words meaning simply male, manly, strong,' an 'animal simile.' {85a} Here, of course, Mr. Max Muller is wholly in the right, when a Vedic poet calls Indra 'strong bull,' or the like. Such poetic epithets do not afford the shadow of a presumption for Vedic totemism, even as a survival. Mr. Frazer agrees with me and Mr. Max Muller in this certainty. I myself say, 'If in the shape of Indra there be traces of fur and feather, they are not very numerous nor very distinct, but we give them for what they may be worth.' I then give them. {85b} To prove that I do not force the evidence, I take the Vedic text. {85c} 'His mother, a cow, bore Indra, an unlicked calf.' I then give Sayana's explanation. Indra entered into the body of Dakshina, and was reborn of her. She also bore a cow. But this legend, I say, 'has rather the air of being an invention, apres coup, to account for the Vedic text of calf Indra, born from a cow, than of being a genuine ancient myth.' The Vedic myth of Indra's amours in shape of a ram, I say 'will doubtless be explained away as metaphorical.' Nay, I will go further. It is perfectly conceivable to me that in certain cases a poetic epithet applied by a poet to a god (say bull, ram, or snake) might be misconceived, and might give rise to the worship of a god as a bull, or snake, or ram. Further, if civilised ideas perished, and if a race retained a bull-god, born of their degradation and confusion of mind, they might eat him in a ritual sacrifice. But that all totemistic races are totemistic, because they all first metaphorically applied animal names to gods, and then forgot what they had meant, and worshipped these animals, sans phrase, appears to me to be, if not incredible, still greatly in want of evidence.



Mr. Frazer and I

It is plain that where a people claim no connection by descent and blood from a sacred animal, are neither of his name nor kin, the essential feature of totemism is absent. I do not see that eaters of the bull Dionysus or cultivators of the pig Demeter {86} made any claim to kindred with either god. Their towns were not allied in name with pig or bull. If traces of such a belief existed, they have been sloughed off. Thus Mr. Frazer's explanation of Greek pigs and bulls and all their odd rites, as connected with the beast in which the corn-spirit is incarnate, holds its ground better than my totemistic suggestion. But I am not sure that the corn-spirit accounts for the Sminthian mouse in all his aspects, nor for the Arcadian and Attic bear-rites and myths of Artemis. Mouse and bear do appear in Mr. Frazer's catalogue of forms of the corn-spirits, taken from Mannhardt. {87} But the Arcadians, as we shall see, claimed descent from a bear, and the mouse place-names and badges of the Troad yield a hint of the same idea. The many Greek family claims to descent from gods as dogs, bulls, ants, serpents, and so on, may spring from gratitude to the corn-spirit. Does Mr. Frazer think so? Nobody knows so well as he that similar claims of descent from dogs and snakes are made by many savage kindreds who have no agriculture, no corn, and, of course, no corn-spirits. These remarks, I trust, are not undiscriminating, and naturally I yield the bull Dionysus and the pig Demeter to the corn-spirit, vice totem, superseded. But I do hanker after the Arcadian bear as, at least, a possible survival of totemism. The Scottish school inspector removed a picture of Behemoth, as a fabulous animal, from the wall of a school room. But, not being sure of the natural history of the unicorn, 'he just let him bide, and gave the puir beast the benefit o' the doubt.'

Will Mr. Frazer give the Arcadian bear 'the benefit of the doubt'?

I am not at all bigoted in the opinion that the Greeks may have once been totemists. The strongest presumption in favour of the hypothesis is the many claims of descent from a god disguised as a beast. But the institution, if ever it did exist among the ancestors of the Greeks, had died out very long before Homer. We cannot expect to find traces of the prohibition to marry a woman of the same totem. In Rome we do find traces of exogamy, as among totemists. 'Formerly they did not marry women connected with them by blood.' {88a} But we do not find, and would not expect to find, that the 'blood' was indicated by the common totem.



Mr. Frazer on Origin of Totemism

Mr. Frazer has introduced the term 'sex-totems,' in application to Australia. This is connected with his theory of the Origin of Totemism. I cannot quite approve of the term sex-totems.

If in Australia each sex has a protecting animal—the men a bat, the women an owl—if the slaying of a bat by a woman menaces the death of a man, if the slaying of an owl by a woman may cause the decease of a man, all that is very unlike totemism in other countries. Therefore, I ask Mr. Frazer whether, in the interests of definite terminology, he had not better give some other name than 'totem' to his Australian sex protecting animals? He might take for a local fact, a local name, and say 'Sex- kobong.'

Once more, for even we anthropologists have our bickerings, I would 'hesitate dislike' of this passage in Mr. Frazer's work: {88b}

'When a savage names himself after an animal, calls it his brother, and refuses to kill it, the animal is said to be his totem.' Distinguo! A savage does not name himself after his totem, any more than Mr. Frazer named himself by his clan-name, originally Norman. It was not as when Miss Betty Amory named herself 'Blanche,' by her own will and fantasy. A savage inherits his totem name, usually through the mother's side. The special animal which protects an individual savage (Zapotec, tona; Guatemalan, nagual; North America, Manitou, 'medicine') is not that savage's totem. {89a} The nagual, tona, or manitou is selected for each particular savage, at birth or puberty, in various ways: in America, North and Central, by a dream in a fast, or after a dream. ('Post-hypnotic suggestion.') But a savage is born to his kin-totem. A man is born a wolf of the Delawares, his totem is the wolf, he cannot help himself. But after, or in, his medicine fast and sleep, he may choose a dormouse or a squirrel for his manitou (tona, nagual) or private protecting animal. These are quite separate from totems, as Mr. Max Muller also points out.

Of totems, I, for one, must always write in the sense of Mr. McLennan, who introduced totemism to science. Thus, to speak of 'sex-totems,' or to call the protecting animal of each individual a 'totem,' is, I fear, to bring in confusion, and to justify Mr. Max Muller's hard opinion that 'totemism' is ill-defined. For myself, I use the term in the strict sense which I have given, and in no other.

Mr. McLennan did not profess, as we saw, to know the origin of totems. He once made a guess in conversation with me, but he abandoned it. Professor Robertson Smith did not know the origin of totems. 'The origin of totems is as much a problem as the origin of local gods.' {89b} Mr. Max Muller knows the origin: sign-boards are the origin, or one origin. But what was the origin of sign-boards? 'We carry the pictures of saints on our banners because we worship them; we don't worship them because we carry them as banners,' says De Brosses, an acute man. Did the Indians worship totems because they carved them on sign-boards (if they all did so), or did they carve them on sign-boards because they worshipped them?



Mr. Frazer's Theory

The Australian respects his 'sex-totem' because the life of his sex is bound up in its life. He speaks of it as his brother, and calls himself (as distinguished by his sex) by its name. As a man he is a bat, as a woman his wife is an owl. As a member of a given human kin he may be a kangaroo, perhaps his wife may be an emu. But Mr. Frazer derives totemism, all the world over, from the same origin as he assigns to 'sex- totems.' In these the life of each sex is bound up, therefore they are by each sex revered. Therefore totemism must have the same origin, substituting 'kin' or 'tribe' for sex. He gives examples from Australia, in which killing a man's totem killed the man. {90}

I would respectfully demur or suggest delay. Can we explain an American institution, a fairly world-wide institution, totemism, by the local peculiarities of belief in isolated Australia? If, in America, to kill a wolf was to kill Uncas or Chingachgook, I would incline to agree with Mr. Frazer. But no such evidence is adduced. Nor does it help Mr. Frazer to plead that the killing of an American's nagual or of a Zulu's Ihlozi kills that Zulu or American. For a nagual, as I have shown, is one thing and a totem is another; nor am I aware that Zulus are totemists. The argument of Mr. Frazer is based on analogy and on a special instance. That instance of the Australians is so archaic that it may show totemism in an early form. Mr. Frazer's may be a correct hypothesis, but it needs corroboration. However, Mr. Frazer concludes: 'The totem, if I am right, is simply the receptacle in which a man keeps his life.' Yet he never shows that a Choctaw does keep his life in his totem. Perhaps the Choctaw is afraid to let out so vital a secret. The less reticent Australian blurts it forth. Suppose the hypothesis correct. Men and women keep their lives in their naguals, private sacred beasts. But why, on this score, should a man be afraid to make love to a woman of the same nagual? Have Red Indian women any naguals? I never heard of them.

Since writing this I have read Miss Kingsley's Travels in West Africa. There the 'bush-souls' which she mentions (p. 459) bear analogies to totems, being inherited sacred animals, connected with the life of members of families. The evidence, though vaguely stated, favours Mr. Frazer's hypothesis, to which Miss Kingsley makes no allusion.



THE VALIDITY OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL EVIDENCE

Anthropological Evidence

In all that we say of totemism, as, later, of fetishism, we rely on an enormous mass of evidence from geographers, historians, travellers, settlers, missionaries, explorers, traders, Civil Servants, and European officers of native police in Australia and Burmah. Our witnesses are of all ages, from Herodotus to our day, of many nations, of many creeds, of different theoretical opinions. This evidence, so world-wide, so diversified in source, so old, and so new, Mr. Max Muller impugns. But, before meeting his case, let us clear up a personal question.



'Positions one never held'

'It is not pleasant [writes our author] to have to defend positions which one never held, nor wishes to hold, and I am therefore all the more grateful to those who have pointed out the audacious misrepresentations of my real opinion in comparative mythology, and have rebuked the flippant tone of some of my eager critics' [i. 26, 27].

I must here confess to the belief that no gentleman or honest man ever consciously misrepresents the ideas of an opponent. If it is not too flippant an illustration, I would say that no bowler ever throws consciously and wilfully; his action, however, may unconsciously develop into a throw. There would be no pleasure in argument, cricket, or any other sport if we knowingly cheated. Thus it is always unconsciously that adversaries pervert, garble, and misrepresent each other's opinions; unconsciously, not 'audaciously.' If people would start from the major premise that misrepresentations, if such exist, are unconscious errors, much trouble would be spared.



Positions which I never held

Thus Mr. Max Muller never dreamed of 'audaciously misrepresenting' me when, in four lines, he made two statements about my opinions and my materials which are at the opposite pole from the accurate (i. 12): 'When I speak of the Vedic Rishis as primitive, I do not mean what Mr. A. Lang means when he calls his savages primitive.' But I have stated again and again that I don't call my savages 'primitive.' Thus 'contemporary savages may be degraded, they certainly are not primitive.' {93a} 'One thing about the past of [contemporary] savages we do know: it must have been a long past.' {93b} 'We do not wish to call savages primitive.' {93c} All this was written in reply to the very proper caution of Dr. Fairbairn that 'savages are not primitive.' Of course they are not; that is of the essence of my theory. I regret the use of the word 'primitive' even in Primitive Culture. Savages, as a rule, are earlier, more backward than civilised races, as, of course, Mr. Max Muller admits, where language is concerned. {94} Now, after devoting several pages to showing in detail how very far from primitive even the Australian tribes are, might I (if I were ill-natured) not say that Mr. Max Muller 'audaciously misrepresents' me when he avers that I 'call my savages primitive'? But he never dreamed of misrepresenting me; he only happened not to understand my position. However, as he complains in his own case, 'it is not pleasant to have to defend positions which one never held' (i. 26), and, indeed, I shall defend no such position.

My adversary next says that my 'savages are of the nineteenth century.' It is of the essence of my theory that my savages are of many different centuries. Those described by Herodotus, Strabo, Dio Cassius, Christoval de Moluna, Sahagun, Cieza de Leon, Brebeuf, Garoilasso de la Vega, Lafitau, Nicholas Damascenus, Leo Africanus, and a hundred others, are not of the nineteenth century. This fact is essential, because the evidence of old writers, from Herodotus to Egede, corroborates the evidence of travellers, Indian Civil Servants, and missionaries of today, by what Dr. Tylor, when defending our materials, calls 'the test of recurrence.' Professor Millar used the same argument in his Origin of Rank, in the last century. Thus Mr. Max Muller unconsciously misrepresents me (and my savages) when he says that my 'savages are of the nineteenth century.' The fact is the reverse. They are of many centuries. These two unconscious misrepresentations occur in four consecutive lines.



Anthropological Evidence

In connection with this topic (the nature of anthropological evidence), Mr. Max Muller (i. 205-207) repeats what he has often said before. Thus he cites Dr. Codrington's remarks, most valuable remarks, on the difficulty of reporting correctly about the ideas and ways of savages. I had cited the same judicious writer to the same effect, {95} and had compiled a number of instances in which the errors of travellers were exposed, and their habitual fallacies were detected. Fifteen closely printed pages were devoted by me to a criterion of evidence, and a reply to Mr. Max Muller's oft-repeated objections.

'When [I said] we find Dr. Codrington taking the same precautions in Melanesia as Mr. Sproat took among the Ahts, and when his account of Melanesian myths reads like a close copy of Mr. Sproat's account of Aht legends, and when both are corroborated [as to the existence of analogous savage myths] by the collections of Bleek, and Hahn, and Gill, and Castren, and Rink, in far different corners of the world; while the modern testimony of these scholarly men is in harmony with that of the old Jesuit missionaries, and of untaught adventurers who have lived for many years with savages, surely it will be admitted that the difficulty of ascertaining savage opinion has been, to a great extent, overcome.'

I also cited at length Dr. Tylor's masterly argument to the same effect, an argument offered by him to 'a great historian,' apparently.



Mr. Max Muller's Method of Controversy

Now no member of the reading public, perusing Mr. Max Muller on anthropological evidence (i. 24-26, 205-207), could guess that his cautions about evidence are not absolutely new to us. He could not guess that Dr. Tylor replied to them 'before they were made' by our present critic (I think), and that I did the same with great elaboration. Our defence of our evidence is not noticed by Mr. Max Muller. He merely repeats what he has often said before on the subject, exactly as if anthropologists were ignorant of it, and had not carefully studied, assimilated, profited by it, and answered it. Our critic and monitor might have said, 'I have examined your test of recurrences, and what else you have to urge, and, for such and such reasons, I must reject it.' Then we could reconsider our position in this new light. But Mr. Max Muller does not oblige us in this way.



Mr. Max Muller on our Evidence

In an earlier work, The Gifford Lectures for 1891, {96} our author had devoted more space to a criticism of our evidence. To this, then, we turn (pp. 169-180, 413-436). Passing Mr. Max Muller's own difficulties in understanding a Mohawk (which the Mohawk no doubt also felt in understanding Mr. Max Muller), we reach (p. 172) the fables about godless savages. These, it is admitted, are exploded among scholars in anthropology. So we do, at least, examine evidence. Mr. Max Muller now fixes on a flagrant case, some fables about the godless Mincopies of the Andaman Islands. But he relies on the evidence of Mr. Man. So do I, as far as it seems beyond doubt. {97a} Mr. Man is 'a careful observer, a student of language, and perfectly trustworthy.' These are the reasons for which I trust him. But when Mr. Man says that the Mincopies have a god, Puluga, who inhabits 'a stone house in the sky,' I remark, 'Here the idea of the stone house is necessarily borrowed from our stone houses at Port Blair.' {97b} When Mr. Man talks of Puluga's only-begotten son, 'a sort of archangel,' medium between Puluga and the angels, I 'hesitate a doubt.' Did not this idea reach the Mincopie mind from the same quarter as the stone house, especially as Puluga's wife is 'a green shrimp or an eel'? At all events, it is right to bear in mind that, as the stone house of the Mincopie heaven is almost undeniably of European origin, the only-begotten mediating son of Puluga and the green shrimp may bear traces of Christian teaching. Caution is indicated.

Does Mr. Max Muller, so strict about evidence, boggle at the stone house, the only son, the shrimp? Not he; he never hints at the shrimp! Does he point out that one anthropologist has asked for caution in weighing what the Mincopies told Mr. Man? Very far from that, he complains that 'the old story is repeated again and again' about the godless Andamans. {97c} The intelligent Glasgow audience could hardly guess that anthropologists were watchful, and knew pretty well what to believe about the Mincopies. Perhaps in Glasgow they do not read us anthropologists much.

On p. 413 our author returns to the charge. He observes (as I have also observed) the often contradictory nature of our evidence. Here I may offer an anecdote. The most celebrated of living English philosophers heard that I was at one time writing a book on the 'ghostly' in history, anthropology, and society, old or new, savage or civilised. He kindly dictated a letter to me asking how I could give time and pains to any such marvels. For, he argued, the most unveracious fables were occasionally told about himself in newspapers and social gossip. If evidence cannot be trusted about a living and distinguished British subject, how can it be accepted about hallucinations?

I replied, with respect, that on this principle nothing could be investigated at all. History, justice, trade, everything would be impossible. We must weigh and criticise evidence. As my friendly adviser had written much on savage customs and creeds, he best knew that conflicting testimony, even on his own chosen theme, is not peculiar to ghost stories. In a world of conflicting testimony we live by criticising it. Thus, when Mr. Max Muller says that I call my savages 'primitive,' and when I, on the other hand, quote passages in which I explicitly decline to do so, the evidence as to my views is contradictory. Yet the truth can be discovered by careful research.

The application is obvious. We must not despair of truth! As our monitor says, 'we ought to discard all evidence that does not come to us either from a man who was able himself to converse with native races, or who was at least an eye-witness of what he relates.' Precisely, that is our method. I, for one, do not take even a ghost story at second hand, much less anything so startling as a savage rite. And we discount and allow for every bias and prejudice of our witnesses. I have made a list of these idola in M. R. R. ii. 334-344.

Mr. Max Muller now gives a list of inconsistencies in descriptions of Australian Blacks. They are not Blacks, they have a dash of copper colour! Well, I never said that they had 'the sooty tinge of the African negro.' Did anybody?

Mr. Ridley thinks that all natives are called 'Murri.' Mr. Curr says 'No.' Important. We must reserve our judgment.

Missionaries say the Blacks are 'devoid of moral ideas.' What missionaries? What anthropologist believes such nonsense? There are differences of opinion about landed property, communal or private. The difference rages among historians of civilised races. So, also, as to portable property. Mr. Curr (Mr. Max Muller's witness) agrees here with those whose works I chiefly rely on.

'Mr. McLennan has built a whole social theory on the statement' (a single statement) 'made by Sir George Grey, and contradicted by Mr. Curr.' Mr. McLennan would be, I think, rather surprised at this remark; but what would he do? Why, he would re-examine the whole question, decide by the balance of evidence, and reject, modify, or retain his theory accordingly.

All sciences have to act in this way; therefore almost all scientific theories are fluctuating. Nothing here is peculiar to anthropology. A single word, or two or three, will prove or disprove a theory of phonetic laws. Even phonetics are disputable ground.

In defence of my late friend Mr. McLennan, I must point out that if he built a whole social theory on a single statement of Sir George Grey's, and if Mr. Curr denies the truth of the statement, Mr. Frazer has produced six or seven witnesses to the truth of that very statement in other parts of the world than Australia. {100} To this circumstance we may return.

Mr. Max Muller next produces Mr. Curr's opinions about the belief in a god and morality among Australians. 'Here he really contradicts himself.' The disputable evidence about Australian marriage laws is next shown to be disputable. That is precisely why Dr. Tylor is applying to it his unrivalled diligence in accurate examination. We await his results. Finally, the contradictory evidence as to Tasmanian religion is exposed. We have no Codrington or Bleek for Tasmania. The Tasmanians are extinct, and Science should leave the evidence as to their religion out of her accounts. We cannot cross-examine defunct Tasmanians.

From all this it follows that anthropologists must sift and winnow their evidence, like men employed in every other branch of science. And who denies it? What anthropologist of mark accepts as gospel any casual traveller's tale?



The Test of Recurrences

Even for travellers' tales we have a use, we can apply to them Dr. Tylor's 'Test of Recurrences.'

'If two independent visitors to different countries, say a mediaeval Mahommedan in Tartary and a modern Englishman in Dahomey, or a Jesuit missionary in Brazil and a Wesley an in the Fiji Islands, agree in describing some analogous art, or rite, or myth among the people they have visited, it becomes difficult or impossible to set down such correspondence to accident or wilful fraud. A story by a bushranger in Australia may perhaps be objected to as a mistake or an invention, but did a Methodist minister in Guinea conspire with him to cheat the public by telling the same story there?'

The whole passage should be read: it was anticipated by Professor Millar in his Origin of Rank, and has been restated by myself. {101a} Thus I wrote (in 1887) 'it is to be regretted that Mr. Max Muller entirely omits to mention . . . the corroboration which is derived from the undesigned coincidence of independent testimony.'

In 1891-1892 he still entirely omits to mention, to his Glasgow audience, the strength of his opponents' case. He would serve us better if he would criticise the test of recurrences, and show us its weak points.



Bias of Theory

Yes, our critic may reply, 'but Mr. Curr thinks that there is a strong tendency in observers abroad, if they have become acquainted with a new and startling theory that has become popular at home, to see confirmations of it everywhere.' So I had explicitly stated in commenting on Dr. Tylor's test of recurrences. {101b} 'Travellers and missionaries have begun to read anthropological books, and their evidence is, therefore, much more likely to be biassed now by anthropological theories than it was of old.' So Mr. McLennan, in the very earliest of all writings on totemism, said: 'As the totem has not till now got itself mixed up with speculations the observers have been unbiassed.' Mr. McLennan finally declined to admit any evidence as to the savage marriage laws collected after his own theory, and other theories born from it, had begun to bias observers of barbaric tribes.

It does not quite seem to me that Mr. Max Muller makes his audience acquainted with these precautions of anthropologists, with their sedulous sifting of evidence, and watchfulness against the theoretical bias of observers. Thus he assails the faible, not the fort of our argument, and may even seem not to be aware that we have removed the faible by careful discrimination.

What opinion must his readers, who know not Mr. McLennan's works, entertain about that acute and intrepid pioneer, a man of warm temper, I admit, a man who threw out his daringly original theory at a heat, using at first such untrustworthy materials as lay at hand, but a man whom disease could not daunt, and whom only death prevented from building a stately edifice on the soil which he was the first to explore?

Our author often returns to the weakness of the evidence of travellers and missionaries.



Concerning Missionaries

Here is an example of a vivacite in our censor. 'With regard to ghosts and spirits among the Melanesians, our authorities, whether missionaries, traders, or writers on ethnology, are troubled by no difficulties' (i. 207). Yet on this very page Mr. Max Muller has been citing the 'difficulties' which do 'trouble' a 'missionary,' Dr. Codrington. And, for my own part, when I want information about Melanesian beliefs, it is to Dr. Codrington's work that I go. {103} The doctor, himself a missionary, ex hypothesi 'untroubled by difficulties,' has just been quoted by Mr. Max Muller, and by myself, as a witness to the difficulties which trouble himself and us. What can Mr. Max Muller possibly mean? Am I wrong? Was Dr. Codrington not a missionary? At all events, he is the authority on Melanesia, a 'high' authority (i. 206).



THE PHILOLOGICAL METHOD IN ANTHROPOLOGY

Mr. Max Muller as Ethnologist

Our author is apt to remonstrate with his anthropological critics, and to assure them that he also has made studies in ethnology. 'I am not such a despairer of ethnology as some ethnologists would have me.' He refers us to the assistance which he lent in bringing out Dr. Hahn's Tsuni-Goam (1881), Mr. Gill's Myths and Songs from the South Pacific (1876), and probably other examples could be added. But my objection is, not that we should be ungrateful to Mr. Max Muller for these and other valuable services to anthropology, but that, when he has got his anthropological material, he treats it in what I think the wrong way, or approves of its being so treated.

Here, indeed, is the irreconcilable difference between two schools of mythological interpretation. Given Dr. Hahn's book, on Hottentot manners and religion: the anthropologist compares the Hottentot rites, beliefs, social habits, and general ideas with those of other races known to him, savage or civilised. A Hottentot custom, which has a meaning among Hottentots, may exist where its meaning is lost, among Greeks or other 'Aryans.' A story of a Hottentot god, quite a natural sort of tale for a Hottentot to tell, may be told about a god in Greece, where it is contrary to the Greek spirit. We infer that the Greeks perhaps inherited it from savage ancestors, or borrowed it from savages.



Names of Savage Gods

This is the method, and if we can also get a scholar to analyse the names of Hottentot gods, we are all the luckier, that is, if his processes and inferences are logical. May we not decide on the logic of scholars? But, just as Mr. Max Muller points out to us the dangers attending our evidence, we point out to him the dangers attending his method. In Dr. Hahn's book, the doctor analyses the meaning of the name Tsuni-Goam and other names, discovers their original sense, and from that sense explains the myths about Hottentot divine beings.

Here we anthropologists first ask Mr. Max Muller, before accepting Dr. Hahn's etymologies, to listen to other scholars about the perils and difficulties of the philological analysis of divine names, even in Aryan languages. I have already quoted his 'defender,' Dr. Tiele. 'The philological method is inadequate and misleading, when it is a question of (1) discovering the origin of a myth, or (2) the physical explanation of the oldest myths, or (3) of accounting for the rude and obscene element in the divine legends of civilised races.'

To the two former purposes Dr. Hahn applies the philological method in the case of Tsuni-Goam. Other scholars agree with Dr. Tiele. Mannhardt, as we said, held that Mr. Max Muller's favourite etymological 'equations,' Sarameya=Hermeias; Saranyu=Demeter-Erinnys; Kentauros=Gandharvas and others, would not stand criticism. 'The method in its practical working shows a lack of the historical sense,' said Mannhardt. Curtius—a scholar, as Mr. Max Muller declares (i. 32)—says, 'It is especially difficult to conjecture the meaning of proper names, and above all of local and mythical names.' {106a} I do not see that it is easier when these names are not Greek, but Hottentot, or Algonquin!

Thus Achilles may as easily mean 'holder of the people' as 'holder of stones,' i.e. a River-god! Or does [Greek] suggest aqua, Achelous the River? Leto, mother of Apollo, cannot be from [Greek], as Mr. Max Muller holds (ii. 514, 515), to which Mr. Max Muller replies, perhaps not, as far as the phonetic rules go 'which determine the formation of appellative nouns. It, indeed, would be extraordinary if it were. . . .' The phonetic rules in Hottentot may also suggest difficulties to a South African Curtius!

Other scholars agree with Curtius—agree in thinking that the etymology of mythical names is a sandy foundation for the science of mythology.

'The difficult task of interpreting mythical names has, so far, produced few certain results,' says Otto Schrader. {106b}

When Dr. Hahn applies the process in Hottentot, we urge with a friendly candour these cautions from scholars on Mr. Max Muller.



A Hottentot God

In Custom and Myth (p. 207), I examine the logic by which Dr. Hahn proves Tsuni-Goam to be 'The Red Dawn.' One of his steps is to say that few means 'sore,' or 'wounded,' and that a wound is red, so he gets his 'red' in Red Dawn. But of tsu in the sense of 'red' he gives not one example, while he does give another word for 'red,' or 'bloody.' This may be scholarly but it is not evidence, and this is only one of many perilous steps on ground extremely scabreux, got over by a series of logical leaps. As to our quarrel with Mr. Max Muller about his friend's treatment of ethnological materials, it is this: we do not believe in the validity of the etymological method when applied to many old divine names in Greek, still less in Hottentot.