GERMS OF EPIC POETRY. III. 25 might woo the deep blue sky, the bride of heaven itself, and an in- CHAP. evitable doom might bind his limbs on the blazing wheel for ever and ever. Nor in this crowd of phrases, all of which have borne their part in the formation of mythology, is there one which could not be used naturally by ourselves to describe the phenomena of the outward world, and there is scarcely one perhaps, which has not thus been used by our own poets. and con names. But in truth we need not go back to that early time for evidence Use of of the fact that language such as this comes naturally to mankind. abstract Abstract names are the result of long thought and effort, and they crete are never congenial to the mass of men. They belong to a dialect which can never be spoken by poets, for on such unsubstantial food poetry must starve and die. Some of us may know now that there is nothing in natural phenomena which has any positive relation with the impressions produced on our minds, that the difference between the temperatures of Baie and Nova Zembla is simply the difference of a few degrees more or less of solar heat, as indicated by Reaumur or Fahrenheit; that the beautiful tints of morning and evening are being produced every moment, and that they are mere results of the inclination which the earth at a particular moment may have to the We may know that the whispering breeze and the roaring storm are merely air moving with different degrees of force, that there is no generic difference between ice and water, between fluids and solids, between heat and cold. What if this knowledge were extended to all? Would it be a gain if the language of men and women, boys and girls, were brought into strict agreement with scientific facts, and made to exhibit the exactness of technical definitions? The question is superfluous, for so long as mankind remain what they are, such things are impossible. In one sense, the glorious hues which spread over the heavens at sunrise and sundown, the breeze and the hurricane, are to us nothing. The forces which produce the phenomena of the outward world take no notice of us. Shall it then be said that there is not One who does take note of the impressions which the sights or the sounds of nature make upon our minds? Must we not recognise the feelings which those phenomena irresistibly evoke in us as not less facts than the phenomena themselves? We cannot rid ourselves of these impressions. They are part of us; they grow with our growth, and it is best for us if they receive a wholesome culture. Modern science may show that our feelings are merely relative; but there is still that within us which answers to the mental condition from which the mythical language of our forefathers sprang. It is impossible for us to look on the I. BOOK changes of day and night, of light and darkness, of summer and winter, with the passionless equanimity which our philosophy requires; and he who from a mountain summit looks down in solitude on the long shadows as they creep over the earth, while the sun sinks down into the purple mists which deaden and enshroud his splendours, cannot shake off the feeling that he is looking on the conscious struggle of departing life. He is wiser if he does not attempt to shake it off. The peasant who still thinks that he hears the soft music of the piper of Hameln, as the leaves of the wood rustle in the summer air, will be none the better if he parts with this feeling for some cold technical expression. The result of real science is to enable us to distinguish between our impressions and the facts or phenomena which produce them, whenever it may be necessary to do so; but beyond this, science will never need to make any trespass on the domain of the poet and the condition of thought which finds its natural expression in the phrases that once grew up into a mythology.1 Myths arising from the use of equivocal words. To the primary myths which spring from phrases employed in their original meaning to express the phenomena of the outward world, and to the secondary myths which arose from a partial or complete forgetfulness of that meaning, must be added a third class, which came into existence from the use of equivocal words. If, as the tribes and families of men diverged from common centres, there was always a danger that words expressing sensuous ideas might be petrified into personal appellatives, there was also the more imminent danger that they might be confounded with other words most nearly resembling them in sound. The result would be, in grammatical phrase, false etymology: the practical consequence would be the growth of a mythology. Many of the tales belonging to the most complicated mythical systems arose simply from the misinterpretation of common words. From a root which meant to shine, the Seven Shiners received their name; possibly or probably to the same roots belongs the name of the Golden Bear (ρктоs and ursa), as the Germans gave to the lion, the title of Goldfusz; and thus, when the epithet had, by some tribes, been confined to the Bear, the Seven Shiners were transformed first into seven bears, then into one with Arktouros (Arcturus) for their bearward. In India, too, the meaning of riksha was forgotten; but instead of referring the word to bears, they confounded it with rishi, and the Seven Stars became the abode of the Seven Poets or Sages, who enter the ark with Menu Lectures on Language, second series, 303. See further Max Müller, "Comparative Mythology," Chips, ii. 96. THE SEVEN STARS AND THE SEVEN SAGES. 2 (Minos), and reappear as the Seven Wise Men of Hellas, the Seven Children of Rhodos and Helios,' and the Seven Champions of Christendom. The same lot, it would seem, befell another name for this constellation. They who spoke of the seven triones had long forgotten that their fathers spoke of the stars as taras (staras) or strewers of light, and converted the bearward into Boôtes, the ploughman, while the Teutonic nations, unconscious that they had retained the old root in their word stern or star, likewise embodied a false etymology in wagons or wains. But when we turn to the Arkadian tale, that Kallisto, the mother of the eponymous hero Arkas, was changed into a bear by the jealousy of Hêrê and imprisoned in the constellation, we find ourselves in that boundless region of mythology, the scenes of which are sometimes so exquisitely fair, sometimes so gloomy, hideous, and repulsive. The root vah, to convey (the Latin veho), gave a name to the horse, to the flame of fire, and to the rays of the sun. The magic wand of metaphor, without which there can be no growth or expansion of language, soon changed the rays of the sun into horses. But these horses, vahni, had yet another epithet, Harit, which signified at first the brilliancy produced by fat and ointment. Like the Greek words σiyadóes and Aapós, applied to things anointed with lard or oil, ghritâ-prishthâh (glittering with fat) furnished a title for the horses (or flames) of Agni, ignis, the fire. Thus the Harits became the immortal steeds who bear the chariot of Indra across the sky and the car of Archilleus over the plains of Ilion. The Greek carried away the name at an earlier stage; and the Charites, retaining simply the qualities of grace and brightness, became the lovely beings who, with Himeros and the Muses, charm earth and heaven with their song. But before the Hesiodic theogony had defined their numbers and fixed their attributes, Charis remained a mere name of Aphroditê, the radiant dawn who springs from the sea before the rising of the sun. Still, though even at that early time Aphroditê was the goddess of sensuous beauty and love, she was yet, with a strange adherence to the old meaning of her name, known as Enalia and Pontia, the child of the sea foam. For yet another title which she bore they could but frame a tale that Argynnis, the beloved of Agamemnon, had died at Kephisos. Yet that title, identified with the Sanskrit arjunî, spoke simply of dazzling loveliness. By a similar process of metaphor, the rays of the sun were changed into golden hair, into spears and lances, and robes of light. Over the shoulders of Phoibos Lykêgenês, the 1 Pind. Ol. vii. 132. ? See further Max Müller, Rig Veda Sanhitâ, vol. i. p. 26. 27 CHAP. III. I. BOOK light-born, flow the sacred locks which no razor might touch. On the head of Nisos, as on that of Samson,' they become a Palladion invested with a mysterious power. From Helios, the sun, who can scorch as well as warm, comes the robe of Medeia, which reappears in the poisoned garments of Deianeira. Under the form of spears and arrows the rays of the sun are seen in almost every page of all Aryan mythology. They are the invincible darts of Phoibos, Achilleus, and Meleagros, of Heraklês and Theseus, of Artemis, Perseus, and Bellerophôn, the poisoned arrows which Philoktêtês and Odysseus, the model, as some will have it, of Hellenic character, scruple not to use. Disinte gration of myths. Thus the disintegration of the primary myths would be insured by the wealth of synonyms which the earliest form of human thought had brought into existence. If the Greek mythographers had been conscious that Kephalos and Prokris meant only the sun and the dew, the legend would have continued to belong to the same class with the myths of Indra and his cloud-enemy Vritra. As it is, it stands midway between these primary legends and the later tales which sprung up when the meaning of such names as Lykâôn, Korônis, and Sarpêdon had been wholly forgotten. The form of thought which looked on all sensible phenomena as endowed with a conscious life, found utterance in a multiplicity of names for the same object, and each of these names became or might become the groundwork of a new myth, as in process of time they were confounded with words which most nearly resembled them in sound. 1 Dean Stanley (Lectures on the Jewish Church, i. 368) points out the likeness between the features of Samson and those of Herakles. See also Goldziher's Mythology among the Hebrews, p. 22. CHAPTER IV. THE DEVELOPEMENT OF MYTHOLOGY. WHEN in the Vedic songs we read of Indra, the sun-god, as fighting CHAP. with Vritra, the dark power who imprisons the rain in the storm- IV. cloud, or with Ahi, the throttling snake, or as pursuing the beautiful Elasticity of mythiDahanâ, of the dawn as the mother or the bride of the sun, or of the cal speech. sun as slaying the dark parent from whom he has sprung,1 we feel at once, that in such language we have an instrument of wonderful elasticity, that the form of thought which finds its natural utterance in such expressions must be capable of accommodating itself to every place and every climate, and that it would have as much room for its exercise among the frozen mountains of the North as under the most smiling sky and genial sun. But the time during which this mythical speech was the common language of mankind, would be a period of transition, in which the idea of existence would be sooner or later expanded into that of personality. Probably before this change had taken place, the yet unbroken Aryan family would be scattered to seek new homes in distant lands; and the gradual change of language, which that dispersion rendered inevitable, would involve a more momentous change in their belief. They would carry away with them the old words and expressions; but these would now be associated with new ideas, or else be imperfectly or wrongly understood. Henceforth, the words which had denoted the sun and moon would denote not merely living things but living persons. From personification to deification the steps would be but few; and the process of disintegration would at once furnish the materials for a vast fabric of mythology. All the expressions which had attached a living force to natural objects would remain as the description. of personal and anthropomorphous gods. Every word would become an attribute, and all ideas once grouped round a single object would branch off into distinct personifications. The sun had been the lord of light, the driver of the chariot of the day; he had toiled and |