MATERIALS OF POPULAR TRADITION. 25 therefore, is left for the theory that they are simply fruits of a corrupt imagination deliberately bent on multiplying images of impure horrors; and with this theory must fall also the idea that these old stories contain the corrupted and misinterpreted fragments of a divine revelation once granted to the whole race of mankind. To suppose that these tales embody a number of beliefs capable of being stated in the form of propositions, and that a series of propositions should be laid before men which they could not fail to misunderstand, and which, it is admitted, are contained in the earliest records only by a dim and feeble foreshadowing, is to involve ourselves in a labyrinth of perplexities. Some of these tales, it has been well said, are as hideous and revolting as any which we find among the lowest tribes of Africa and America; and in order to prove that they had a direct and close connexion with a primitive religion, we should have to show that with the corruption of belief the moral character of the people underwent a corresponding debasement. But this picture seems to be the very reverse of the facts. If we take the Iliad and Odyssey, we shall find a number of gods who inhabit Olympos, and interfere in greater or less degree with the affairs of men. The descriptions given of these deities, if not absolutely and designedly immoral, certainly cannot be regarded as moral. Some of them are repulsive, some even revolting and foul. Along with these, we have a society which, however great may be its faults and vices, is still vastly better than that of the Olympian hierarchy; and this fact seems to be wholly inconsistent with the idea that a plan of redemption divinely imparted to man should have been constantly travestied until it assumed the form of society under which the gods live in the Iliad and Odyssey, as in other Hellenic literature. Of these deities Hermes is the messenger; but the story of Hermes is that 1 Max Müller, Chips from a German Workshop, ii. 13. of the Master Thief. In other words, it is a story which belongs to the class of popular tales which includes those of Sisyphos and Tantalos. One or two of these we have already traced to the phrases or sayings on which they grew up; and we have seen that these sayings referred simply to the sights or the sounds of the outward world. Our task, therefore, is to ascertain whether the stories told of Zeus, Apollo, Athênê and other deities, whether Olympian, or called by any other name, have not grown up in precisely the same way. If it should be proved that they have, the theory that the Olympian gods are an anthropomorphic representation of a series of truths divinely revealed to man falls to the ground. Both processes could not go on at the same time; and if the tales can in every instance be traced to phrases denoting sensible phenomena, the effort to assign them to any other source must be labour thrown away. The examples already examined may suffice to show that the wonderful changes which they underwent were due not to any wilful corruption of religious or moral truths, not to any weakness or disease of language,' but solely to failure of memory, caused by the disruption of tribes from their ancient home. So long as names retained their original meaning, anything like a story with a series of incidents could not be put together. When the Greek had either partially or wholly forgotten what his forefathers in Central Asia had meant by such words as Prokris, Erinys, Hephaistos, Hermes, the growth of tales which spoke of them as beings of human form with human feelings was inevitable; but although his memory was weakened, his language was as healthy and strong as ever." The term Mythology was explained by Professor Max Müller as diseased language; but as he added that this result was brought about only when the steps which led to the original metaphorical meaning of a word had been forgotten, and artificial steps had been put in their place, it is clear that the change is attributable not to language, but strictly to the defective memory of the speaker. There is, therefore, no controversy on the subject. 2 See Appendix I. CHAPTER II. THE HEAVENS AND THE LIGHT. pects of mythi THE impression that comparative mythology resolves everything into the sun is very widely spread, and maintains itself with singular pertinacity. Few im- Manifold aspressions are more thoroughly groundless. The cal tradition. science proves conclusively that the popular traditions which have come down to us in the form whether of myths strictly so called or of folklore generally, embody the whole thought of primitive man on the vast range of physical phenomena. There is scarcely an object of the outward world which has not been described or figured in these popular stories. We have myths and mythological beings belonging to the heavens and the light, to the sun, the moon, and the stars, to the fire and the winds, to the clouds and the waters, to the earth, the under-world, and the dark ness. Under all these heads we have a crowd of myths 1 Mr. Sayce, in his Introduction to the Science of Language, has dealt summarily with the objections commonly urged against the method and results of comparative mythology. These objections fall for the most part under two heads: (1) That there is no warrant for endowing primitive man with the high imagination of a poet; and (2) that the mythopoeic ages must have been marked by dull stupidity, if 'the phenomena of the atmosphere engrossed the whole attention of men who were yet too witless to understand the language in which they were described.' These objections, he remarks, are mutually destructive. The imagination of primitive man was neither too high nor too feeble. 'The gods they worshipped were the gods that brought them food and warmth, and these gods were the bright day and the burning sun. It was not stupidity, but the necessities of his daily existence, the conditions in which his lot was cast, that made man confine his thoughts and care to the powers which gave him the good gifts he desired. Winter, according to the disciples of Zoroaster, was the creation of the evil one, and among the first thanksgivings lisped by our race is praise of the gods as "givers of good things (ii. 268). which fall into distinct groups; but the phenomena of the universe do not all leave the same impression on the mind. Some are immeasurably more prominent than others, and more striking. Some are connected immediately and closely with the life and the well-being of man; others scarcely affect them at all. The most important of all are necessarily those of the seasons, and these are dependent directly on the sun, so that of the whole body of myths an immensely large proportion relates to the action of that brilliant orb which even we can seldom mention without running into mythology ourselves. But the myths belonging to other groups are not less marked and distinct, and we shall find in the clouds and water sources of popular stories as rich in thought and colouring as any which relate to the bridegroom who comes forth daily from his chamber in the East and rejoices as a giant to run his course. We can, then, only take these traditions under their several heads, without attempting to determine the exact Question of the priority of myths. order in which the conceptions set forth in them arose in the human mind. It is the ethereal heaven, and not the sun, which has been chosen in the language of myths as the abode of the supreme God, the dwelling of the All-father; but it would be rash, perhaps, to assign priority in order of time to myths of the heaven over those of the sun, or to the latter over the former. The Hesiodic Theogony, which gives a long ancestry to Zeus, the supreme god of the Hellenic tribes, and seems to make him younger than Aphroditê, is the growth of a later age which had acquired a love of systematic arrangement; and it is impossible to determine the order in which the ideas of the several beings springing from Chaos and Gaia took shape.1 1 We have a parallel case in what are called roots in language. We find that many groups of Aryan words can be reduced to a root mar or mal, this root denoting a gradation of ideas from grinding, crushing, and destroying, to those of languor, decay, softness, and sweetness; and we are apt to suppose that this root was used as a word in something like its naked shape before the several words of which it is regarded as the foundation took shape. The THE HEAVENS AND THE LIGHT. 29 But of the mode in which these ideas were formed we are left in no doubt. The book known as the Rig Veda in the sacred literature of the Hindus exhibits Language of the hymns of perhaps in their oldest shapes the thoughts of the Rig Veda. men on the phenomena of the outward world. It contains a multitude of hymns addressed to living powers on the earth and in the heavens; and to these powers the worshipper prays under names denoting what we call natural forces-wind, storm, frost, cold, heat, light and darkness. But for him all these are beings capable of hearing and understanding what he says. They can feel love and hatred; they may be cruel or merciful; and he may win from them by devout service the happiness for which he yearns, or he may ward off with their aid the evils which he dreads. On some he looks with awful fear; to others he can speak almost with affectionate familiarity. He pours out before them all the thoughts of his heart, and the words by which he gives expression to these thoughts describe with marvellous exactness all that they noticed in the world around them. Thus for him Ushas,' the Dawn, is a bright being whom age cannot touch, but who makes men old as she returns day after day and year after year in undiminished Hymns to the beauty. She is full of love, of gentleness, and Dawn. compassion. She thinks on the dwellings of men, and she notion is a mere guess, and, it can scarcely be doubted, an erroneous one. The root mar or mal is found also in the forms mardh, marg, mark, marp, mard, smar. It is thus safe to say that, as 'the vocables that embodied these roots underwent the wear and tear of phonetic decay, many of them passed out of the living speech and were replaced by others, and there was left at last a whole family of nouns and verbs, whose sole common possession was the syllable mar. That alone had resisted the attacks of time and change' (Sayce, Introd. ii. 17). Thus the words are necessarily older than the roots contained in them, these being 'due to the reflective analysis of the grammarian' (ib. p. 18). In the same way it is likely that the attention of primitive men was directed to the objects seen in the heavens before it was fixed on the heaven itself. The name Ushas is in Latin Aurora. In the Græco-Italian dialects it assumed the form ausos. In Latin a secondary noun was formed from the primary But both Greeks and Latins disliked the sound of s between vowels; and so with the former Ausos became Auos, Eos, the goddess of the morning; with the latter it became Aurora, the verb appearing in Greek as one, ausosa. |