Transcribed from the 1884 Longmans, Green and Co. edition by DavidPrice, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
To E. B. Tylor, author of ‘Primitive Culture,’ thesestudies of the oldest stories are dedicated.
Though some of the essays in this volume have appeared in variousserials, the majority of them were written expressly for their presentpurpose, and they are now arranged in a designed order. Duringsome years of study of Greek, Indian, and savage mythologies, I havebecome more and more impressed with a sense of the inadequacy of theprevalent method of comparative mythology. That method is basedon the belief that myths are the result of a disease of language, asthe pearl is the result of a disease of the oyster. It is arguedthat men at some period, or periods, spoke in a singular style of colouredand concrete language, and that their children retained the phrasesof this language after losing hold of the original meaning. Theconsequence was the growth of myths about supposed persons, whose nameshad originally been mere ‘appellations.’ In conformitywith this hypothesis the method of comparative mythology examines theproper names which occur in myths. The notion is that these namescontain a key to the meaning of the story, and that, in fact, of thestory the names are the germs and the oldest surviving part.
The objections to this method are so numerous that it is difficultto state them briefly. The attempt, however, must be made. To desert the path opened by the most eminent scholars is in itselfpresumptuous; the least that an innovator can do is to give his reasonsfor advancing in a novel direction. If this were a question ofscholarship merely, it would be simply foolhardy to differ from menlike Max Müller, Adalbert Kuhn, Bréal, and many others. But a revolutionary mythologist is encouraged by finding that thesescholars usually differ from each other. Examples will be foundchiefly in the essays styled ‘The Myth of Cronus,’ ‘AFar-travelled Tale,’ and ‘Cupid and Psyche.’ Why, then, do distinguished scholars and mythologists reach such differentgoals? Clearly because their method is so precarious. Theyall analyse the names in myths; but, where one scholar decides thatthe name is originally Sanskrit, another holds that it is purely Greek,and a third, perhaps, is all for an Accadian etymology, or a Semiticderivation. Again, even when scholars agree as to the originalroot from which a name springs, they differ as much as ever as to themeaning of the name in its present place. The inference is, thatthe analysis of names, on which the whole edifice of philological ‘comparativemythology’ rests, is a foundation of shifting sand. Themethod is called ‘orthodox,’ but, among those who practiseit, there is none of the beautiful unanimity of orthodoxy.
These objections are not made by the unscholarly anthropologist alone. Curtius has especially remarked the difficulties which beset the ‘etymologicaloperation’ in the case of proper names. ‘Peculiarlydubious and perilous is mythological etymology. Are we to seekthe sources of the divine names in aspects of nature, or in moral conceptions;in special Greek geographical conditions, or in natural circumstanceswhich are everywhere the same: in dawn with her rays, or in clouds withtheir floods; are we to seek the origin of the names of heroes in thingshistorical and human, or in physical phenomena?’ {3a} Professor Tiele, of Leyden, says much the same thing: ‘The uncertaintiesare great, and there is a constant risk of taking mere jeux d’espritfor scientific results.’ {3b} Every name has, if we can discover or conjecture it,