FETISH-WORSHIP. same existence to all outward objects, he did so, as we have seen, without drawing any distinctions between consciousness and personality. The idea of their divinity in any sense would be an inference, not a sensation; and the analysis of language, which shows that all predicative words are the expression of general ideas, does not show us that the human mind was immediately exercised by any train of connected reasoning. If, however, this earliest state was not followed by one which invested outward things with a personal life, if in some way men could believe in a malignant yet unconscious and nonsentient power residing in stones and rocks, there would at once be developed a fetish worship, the most degrading and the most hopeless, which, if expanded at all, could issue only in a polytheism of devils. Yet even here some faint perceptions might remain of moral qualities, unless we believe that the Divine likeness might be wholly blotted out; but is it possible to account for the loathsome earthliness of some forms of heathenism, except by the hypothesis that on them the idea of Deity has never dawned? If, however, when gradually awakened, the consciousness of their own personality might lead others to attribute the same personal life to outward objects, the deification of these objects or powers would not follow as an immediate or even as a necessary consequence. For a long time they might scarcely be conscious of the degree to which they personified them; or they might continue to look upon them as beings condemned to the same life of toil and trouble with themselves. Such a thought, it is obvious, might lead at once to the idea of One (distinct from all that they saw or heard), who ordained this life of labour; and the conviction of a supreme God, the Maker of all things, might take possession of the mind. But it is not less clear that such a conviction would not necessarily affect their ideas as to what they saw in the world around them. The Sun in all his various aspects, the Morning, the Evening, and the Night, might become more and more personal, even while the belief in a God exalted high above all might continue to gain strength. In other words, the foundation of their moral belief would at once be distinct from the foundation of their future mythology. Still, except to the thoughtful few, the personality of the great objects of the natural world would be more and more 1 This state might also easily pass into Eastern dualism. The developement of the Hellenic mind was more wholesome. The prevalence of evil never led it to regard evil as co-ordinate with good. For the parallel growth of Hebrew idolatry with that of the reli- CHAP. IV. 45 I. BOOK exalted, even while it assumed more and more a strictly human form. The result would be a polytheism of anthropomorphous gods, in which the chief divinities would be the heaven and the sun. To the former, as covering and shielding all things, would be assigned those attributes which almost make us look on the Olympian Zeus and the Teutonic Alfadir as faint reflexions of Him who has made and loves mankind. But neither for the majesty of Zeus or Odin, nor for the unsullied purity of Phoibos Apollôn, of Athênê, or of Artemis, need we look further than to mythical phrases, which spoke once of Dyaus, Varuna, or Indra. CHAPTER V. DIFFUSION OF MYTHS. CHAP. V. ment in IF in the legends of any people we find a number of names which explain themselves, if further the exploits of the gods or heroes who The combear these names are in strict accordance with those meanings, then mon eleat once we are warranted in conjecturing that other names in the Aryan mysame legends not yet interpreted may be of the same nature, while thology. at the same time a basis is furnished for classifying the several stories. If further we find that in the traditions of different Aryan tribes, or even of the same tribe, the same characters reappear with no other difference than that of title and local colouring, the inference is justified that a search into the mythical stores of all the Aryan tribes would disclose the same phenomenon. If here too our conjectures are verified, it will be impossible to withstand the conclusion that these tribes must have started from a common centre, and that from their ancient home they must have carried away, if not the developed myth, yet the quickened 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. These variations in the names, it may be, of all the actors, as well as in the minor details of their career, would prove, in exact proportion to the fidelity with which the essential type was preserved, that this germ was furnished by the every-day speech of the people, or, in other words, by their way of regarding the phenomena of the outward world. If these facts are established, two important consequences follow: I. The hypothesis of any conscious borrowing or adaptation of myths on a large scale by one tribe from another after their separation from the common home becomes untenable, unless we assume an amount of intercourse between them far in excess of any for which we have the evidence of history; and the clearest proof of direct importation in the case of any given story or fable which does not belong to the genuine mythology of a people fails to throw any suspicion on the latter. I. BOOK II. The process of analysis and comparison will have deprived these legends of all claim to the character of historical traditions; and even if it were maintained in the last resort that the myth as brought from the common home grew up from some historical fact or facts, still no such title can be made out for the same incidents when we find them repeated in the same order and with the same issue in different ages and different lands. If in the primæval home there was a war brought about by the carrying off of a beautiful woman, a strife between two chieftains, and a time of inaction for the hero of the story followed by his signal victory and his early death, then unquestionably these incidents, with a hundred others common to the background of these legends, did not repeat themselves at Ilion and Delphoi, in Ithaka and Norway, in Lykia and Iran. The Greek mythology of itself explains the nature of this common element. This is the goal to which we must be brought if the track be of this kind; and the matter may perhaps be soonest brought to an issue if we take the most complicated myths of the Hellenic tribes as our starting-point. We can scarcely read the legends of Heraklês and Dêmêtêr, of Theseus, Kadmos, Perseus, and a host of other mythical heroes, without feeling that a few simple phrases might well have supplied the germ for the most intricate of these traditions. Every incident in the myth of the Eleusinian Dêmêtêr may be accounted for, if only men once said (with the conviction that the things of which they spoke had a conscious life), "The earth mourns for the dead summer. The summer lies shut up in the prison of Hades, the unseen "-or, as in the language of the Northman, "She sleeps in the land of the Niflungs, the cold mists, guarded by the serpent Fafnir; and the dwarf Andvari keeps watch over her buried treasures." The tale of Endymion seems to speak for itself; "The moon comes to gaze on her beloved, the sun, as he lies down to sleep in the evening." In the story of Niobê, we seem to see the sun in his scorching power, consuming those who dare to face his dazzling brightness; in that of Orpheus, we seem to hear his lamentation for the beautiful evening which has been stung by the serpent of the night, and which he brings back to life only to lose her at the gates of day. In the myth of Eurôpê we have the journey of the sun from the far East to the Western land, until Têlephassa, the farshining, sinks down wearied on the Thessalian plain. Still more transparent appear the tales of Kephalos and Daphnê. Prokris, even in the mouth of the Greek, is still the child of Hersê, the dew: Eôs is still the morning, Kephalos still the head of the bright sun. In Daphnê we seem to behold the dawn flying from her lover and shrinking before his splendour. In the Homeric Hymn, Lêtô, the COMMON ELEMENTS OF ARYAN MYTHS. 49 V. night, dark and still as death, promises that Phoibos shall long abide CHAP. in Delos, the bright land. Doubtless she made the same promise to Lykians, Argives, Arkadians, Athenians, and all others who called themselves the children of the light; but the sun cannot tarry, and in spite of her plighted word he hastens onward to slay the serpent of darkness. In Heraklês we see the sun in other guise, loving and beloved wherever he goes, seeking to benefit the sons of men, yet sometimes harming them in the exuberance of his boisterous strength. In the tale of Althaia we read the sentence that the bright sun must die when the torch of day is burnt out. In Phaethon we seem to see the plague of drought which made men say, "Surely another, who cannot guide the horses, is driving the chariot of the sun." The beautiful herds, which the bright and glistening daughters of early morning feed in the pastures of Thrinakia, seem to tell us of the violet-coloured clouds which the dawn spreads over the fields of the blue sky. In Bellerophôn, as in Perseus, Theseus, Phoibos, and Heraklês, we find again the burden laid on the sun, who must toil for others, although the forms of that toil may vary. Perseus goes to the dwelling of the Graiai, as men might have said, "The sun has departed to the land of the pale gloaming." When Perseus slays Medousa, the sun has killed the night in its solemn and death-like beauty, while the wild pursuit of the immortal Gorgons seems to be the chase of Darkness after the bright Sun who, with his golden sandals, just escapes their grasp as he soars into the peaceful morning sky, the Hyperborean gardens, which sorrow, strife, and death can never enter. In the death of Akrisios we have the old tale which comes up in many another legend, where Oidipous and Theseus mourn that they have unwittingly slain their fathers. the same If the Greek legends by themselves thus exhibit, or seem to The Norse exhibit, their ancient framework, the Norse tradition points with at mythology points in the least equal clearness in the same direction. If any now can be precisely found to assert that the one set of legends were copied from the direction. other, he not only maintains a theory which hangs on a single thread,1 but he displays a credulity which needs not to shrink from the avowal that the whole of the Arabian Nights' Entertainments is a genuine and veracious history. The wildest prejudice can scarcely shelter itself behind these treacherous and crumbling barriers, although it may urge that, whether in Teutonic or in Greek mythology, the dawn, the evening, and the night, the toiling and capricious sun, are already persons with human forms and a fixed local habitation. But even this position would be greatly strained. Mr. Grote himself 'Dasent, Popular Tales from the Norse, introduction, p. xliii. E |