Called on the lovely Wanderer who bestowed That timely light to share his joyous sport; And hence a beaming goddess with her nymphs By echo multiplied from rock or cave) Swept in the storm of chase; as moon and stars When winds are blowing strong. The traveller slaked His thirst from rill or gushing fount, and thanked Gliding apace with shadows in their train, Might, with small help from fancy, be transformed The Zephyrs, fanning, as they passed, their wings, The simple shepherd's awe-inspiring god." The phases of significance and beauty through which the physical or natural myth may develop are expressed with poetic grace by Ruskin, in his "Queen of the Air." The reader must, however, guard against the supposition that any myth has sprung into existence fully equipped with physical, religious, and moral import. Ruskin himself says, "To the mean person the myth always meant little; to the noble person, much." Accordingly, as we know, to the savage the myth was savage; to the devotee it became religious; to the artist, beautiful; to the philosopher, recondite and significant in the course of centuries. 1 Concerning which may be accepted the verdict that Mr. Ruskin passes upon Payne Knight's Symbolical Language of Ancient Art, "Not trustworthy, being little more than a mass of conjectural memoranda; but the heap is suggestive, if well sifted." "If we seek," says Ruskin, "to ascertain the manner in which the story first crystallized into its shape, we shall find ourselves led back generally to one or other of two sources - either to actual historical events, represented by the fancy under figures personifying them, or else to natural phenomena similarly endowed with life by the imaginative power, usually more or less under the influence of terror. The historical myths we must leave the masters of history to follow; they, and the events they record, being yet involved in great, though attractive and penetrable, mystery. But the stars and hills and storms are with us now, as they were with others of old; and it only needs that we look at them with the earnestness of those childish eyes to understand the first words spoken of them by the children of men. And then, in all the most beautiful and enduring myths, we shall find not only a literal story of a real person- not only a parallel imagery of moral principle — but an underlying worship of natural phenomena, out of which both have sprung, and in which both forever remain rooted. Thus, from the real sun, rising and setting; from the real atmosphere, calm in its dominion of unfading blue and fierce in its descent of tempest― the Greek forms first the idea of two entirely personal and corporeal gods (Apollo and Athena), whose limbs are clothed in divine flesh, and whose brows are crowned with divine beauty; yet so real that the quiver rattles at their shoulder, and the chariot bends beneath their weight. And, on the other hand, collaterally with these corporeal images, and never for one instant separated from them, he conceives also two omnipresent spiritual influences, of which one illuminates, as the sun, with a constant fire, whatever in humanity is skilful and wise; an ́l the other, like the living air, breathes the calm of heavenly fortitude and strength of righteous anger into every human breast that pure and brave. is 66 Now, therefore, in nearly every myth of importance, . . . you have to discern these three structural parts — the root and the two branches. The root, in physical existence, sun, or sky, or cloud, or sea; then the personal incarnation of that, becoming a trusted and companionable deity, with whom you may walk hand in hand, as a child with its brother or its sister; and lastly, the moral significance of the image, which is in all the great myths eternally and beneficently true." Myth, in fine, “is not to be regarded as mere error and folly, but as an interesting product of the human mind. It is sham history, the fictitious narrative of events that never happened.” 1 But that is not the full statement of the case. Myth is also actual history of early and imperfect stages of thought and belief: it is the true narrative of unenlightened observation, of infantine gropings after truth. Whatever reservations scholars may make on other points, most of them will concur in these: that some myths came into existence by a "disease of language"; that some were invented to explain names of nations and of places, and some to explain the existence of fossils and bones that suggested prehistoric animals and men; that many were invented to gratify the ancestral pride of chieftains and clans, and that very many obtained consistency and form as explanations of the phenomena of nature, as expressions of the reverence felt for the powers of nature, and as personifications, in general, of the passions and the ideals of primitive mankind.2 1 E. B. Tylor, Anthropology, p. 387. New York, 1881. 2 See also L. Preller, Griechische Mythologie, I. 19. Max Müller, Comparative Mythology, Oxford Essays, 1856, p. 1-87; also Science of Religion, 1873, p. 335403; Philosophy of Mythology; and Sci. of Lang., 7th ed., II. 421-571. Hermann Paul, Grundriss d. Germ. Phil. Bd. 1, Lfg. 5, 982–995, Mythologie (von E. Mogk). CHAPTER II. THE DISTRIBUTION OF MYTHS. § 9. Several theories of the appearance of the same explanatory or æsthetic myth, under various guises, in lands remote one from another, have been advanced; but none of them fully unveils the mystery. The difficulty lies not so much in accounting for the similarity of thought or material in different stories, as for the resemblance in isolated incidents and in the arrangement of incidents or plot. The principal theories of the distribution of myths are as follows: (1) That the resemblances between the myths of different nations are purely accidental. This theory leaves us no wiser than we were. (2) That the stories have been borrowed by one nation from another. This will account for exchange only between nations historically acquainted with each other. It will not account for the existence of the same arrangement of incidents in a Greek myth and in a Polynesian romance. (3) That all myths, if traced chronologically backward, and geographically from land to land, will be found to have originated in India. This theory fails to account for numerous stories current among the modern nationalities of Europe, of Africa, and of India itself. It leaves also unexplained the existence of certain myths in Egypt many centuries before India had any known history: such as, in all probability, the Egyptian myth of Osiris. The theory, therefore, is open to the objection made to the theory of borrowing. (4) That similar myths are based upon historical traditions similar in various countries, or inherited from some mother coun 1 Benfey and Cosquin. See Lang's Myth, Ritual, and Religion, II. 299. try. But, although some historical myths may have descended from a mother race, it has already been demonstrated (§ 7. 1) that the historical (Euhemeristic) hypothesis is inadequate. It is, moreover, not likely that many historical incidents like those related in the Iliad and the Odyssey happened in the same order, and as actual history, in Asia Minor, Ithaca, Persia, and Norway. But we find myths containing such incidents in all these countries.1 112 (5) That the Aryan tribes (from which the Indians, Persians, Phrygians, Greeks, Romans, Germans, Norsemen, Russians, and Celts are descended) "started from a common centre" in the highlands of Northern India, “and that from their ancient home they must have carried away, if not the developed myth, yet the quickening germ from which might spring leaves and fruits, varying in form and hue according to the soil to which it should be committed and the climate under which the plant might reach maturity.' Against this theory, it may be urged that stories having only the undeveloped germ or idea in common would not, with any probability, after they had been developed independently of each other, possess the remarkable resemblance in details that many widely separated myths display. Moreover, the assumption of this common stock considers only Aryan tribes: it ignores Africans, Mongolians, American Indians, and other peoples whose myths resemble the Aryan, but are not traceable to the same original germ. The Aryan germ-theory has, however, the merit of explaining resemblances between many myths of different Aryan nations. (6) That the existence of similar incidents or situations is to be explained as resulting from the common facts of human thought, experience, and sentiment. This may be called the psychological theory. It was entertained by Grimm, and goes hand 1 Lang, Myth, Ritual, and Religion, II. 300; Cox, Mythology of the Aryan Nations, I. 100. 2 The Rev. Sir G. W. Cox, Mythology of Aryan Nations, I. 99; also, same theory, Max Müller's Chips from a German Workshop; Andrew Lang, Myth, Ritual, and Religion, II. 297. |