Modern Mythology Part 4

Our Lack of Scientific Exactness

I do not here give at full length Professor Tiele's explanation of the meaning of a myth which I do not profess to explain myself. Thus, drops of the blood of Ouranos falling on Earth begat the Melies, usually rendered 'Nymphs of the Ash-trees.' But Professor Tiele says they were really _bees_ (Hesychius, [Greek]=[Greek])--'that is to say, stars.'

Everybody has observed that the stars rise up off the earth, like the bees sprung from the blood of Ouranos. In Myth, Ritual, and Religion (i.

299-315) I give the competing explanations of Mr. Max Muller, of Schwartz (Cronos=storm G.o.d), Preller (Cronos=harvest G.o.d), of others who see the sun, or time, in Cronos; while, with Professor Tiele, Cronos is the G.o.d of the upper air, and also of the underworld and harvest; he 'doubles the part.' 'Il est l'un et l'autre'--that is, 'le dieu qui fait murir le ble' and also 'un dieu des lieux souterrains.' 'Il habite les profondeurs sous la terre,' he is also le dieu du ciel nocturne.

It may have been remarked that I declined to add to this interesting collection of plausible explanations of Cronos. A selection of such explanations I offer in tabular form:--

Cronos was G.o.d of

Time (?)--Max Muller Sun--Sayce Midnight sky--Kuhn

Under-world } Midnight sky}--Tiele Harvest }

Harvest--Preller Storm--Schwartz Star-swallowing sky--Canon Taylor Sun scorching spring--Hartung

Cronos was by Race

Late Greek (?)--Max Muller Semitic--Bottiger Accadian (?)--Sayce

Etymology of Cronos

[Greek]=Time (?)--Max Muller Krana (Sanskrit)--Kuhn Karnos (Horned)--Brown [Greek]--Preller

The pleased reader will also observe that the phallus of Ouranos is the sun (Tiele), that Cronos is the sun (Sayce), that Cronos mutilating Ouranos is the sun (Hartung), just as the sun is the mutilated part of Ouranos (Tiele); _Or_ is, according to others, the stone which Cronos swallowed, and which acted as an emetic.

My Lack of Explanation of Cronos

Now, I have offered no explanation at all of who Cronos was, what he was G.o.d of, from what race he was borrowed, from what language his name was derived. The fact is that I do not know the truth about these important debated questions. Therefore, after speaking so kindly of our method, and rejecting the method of Mr. Max Muller, Professor Tiele now writes thus (and _this_ Mr. Max Muller does cite, as we have seen):--

'Mr. Lang and M. Gaidoz are not entirely wrong in claiming me as an ally. But I must protest, in the name of mythological science, and of the exactness as necessary to her as to any of the other sciences, against a method which only glides over questions of the first importance' (name, origin, province, race of Cronos), 'and which to most questions can only reply, with a smile, C'est chercher raison ou il n'y en a pas.'

My Crime

Now, what important questions was I gliding over? In what questions did I not expect to find reason? Why in this savage fatras about Cronos swallowing his children, about blood-drops becoming bees (Mr. Max Muller says 'Melian nymphs'), and bees being stars, and all the rest of a prehistoric Marchen worked over again and again by the later fancy of Greek poets and by Greek voyagers who recognised Cronos in Moloch. In all this I certainly saw no 'reason,' but I have given in tabular form the general, if inharmonious, conclusions of more exact and conscientious scholars, 'their variegated hypotheses,' as Mannhardt says in the case of Demeter. My error, rebuked by Professor Tiele, is the lack of that 'scientific exact.i.tude' exhibited by the explanations arranged in my tabular form.

My Reply to Professor Tiele

I would reply that I am not engaged in a study of the _Cult_ of Cronos, but of the revolting element in his _Myth_: his swallowing of his children, taking a stone emetic by mistake, and disgorging the swallowed children alive; the stone being on view at Delphi long after the Christian era. Now, such stories of divine feats of swallowing and disgorging are very common, I show, in savage myth and popular Marchen.

The bushmen have Kwai Hemm, who swallows the sacred Mantis insect. He is killed, and all the creatures whom he has swallowed return to light. Such stories occur among Australians, Kaffirs, Red Men, in Guiana, in Greenland, and so on. In some cases, among savages. Night (conceived as a person), or one star which obscures another star, is said to 'swallow'

it. Therefore, I say, 'natural phenomena, explained on savage principles, might give the data of the swallowing myth, of Cronos'

{37}--that is, the myth of Cronos may be, probably is, originally a nature-myth. 'On this principle Cronos would be (ad hoc) the Night.'

Professor Tiele does not allude to this effort at interpretation. But I come round to something like the view of Kuhn. Cronos (ad hoc) is the midnight [sky], which Professor Tiele also regards as one of his several aspects. It is not impossible, I think, that if the swallowing myth was originally a nature-myth, it was suggested by Night. But the question I tried to answer was, 'Why did the Greeks, of all people, tell such a disgusting story?' And I replied, with Professor Tiele's approval, that they inherited it from an age to which such follies were natural, an age when the ancestors of the Greeks were on (or under) the Maori stage of culture. Now, the Maoris, a n.o.ble race, with poems of great beauty and speculative power, were cannibals, like Cronos. To my mind, 'scientific exact.i.tude' is rather shown in confessing ignorance than in adding to the list of guesses.

Conclusion as to Professor Tiele

The learned Professor's remarks on being 'much more my ally than my opponent' were published before my Myth, Ritual, and Religion, in which (i. 24, 25) I cited his agreement with me in the opinion that 'the philological method' (Mr. Max Muller's) is 'inadequate and misleading, when it is a question of discovering the origin of a myth.' I also quoted his unhesitating preference of ours to Mr. Max Muller's method (i.

43, 44). I did not cite a t.i.the of what he actually did say to our credit. But I omitted to quote what it was inexcusable not to add, that Professor Tiele thinks us 'too exclusive,' that he himself had already, before us, combated Mr. Max Muller's method in Dutch periodicals, that he blamed our 'songs of triumph' and our levities, that he thought we might have ignorant camp-followers, that I glided over important questions (bees, blood-drops, stars, Melian nymphs, the phallus of Ouranos, &c.), and showed scientific inexact.i.tude in declining chercher raison ou il n'y en a pas.

None the less, in Professor Tiele's opinion, our method is new (or is _not_ new), illuminating, successful, and _alone_ successful, for the ends to which we apply it, and, finally, we have shown Mr. Max Muller's method to be a house builded on the sand. That is the gist of what Professor Tiele said.

Mr. Max Muller, like myself, quotes part and omits part. He quotes twice Professor Tiele's observations on my deplorable habit of gliding over important questions. He twice says that we have 'actually' claimed the Professor as 'an ally of the victorious army,' 'the ethnological students of custom and myth,' and once adds, 'but he strongly declined that honour.' He twice quotes the famous braves gens pa.s.sage, excepting only M. Gaidoz, as a scholar, from a censure explicitly directed at our possible camp-followers as distinguished from ourselves.

But if Mr. Max Muller quotes Professor Tiele's remarks proving that, in his opinion, the 'army' _is_ really victorious; if he cites the acquiescence in my opinion that _his_ mythological house is 'builded on the sands,' or Professor Tiele's preference for our method over his own, or Professor Tiele's volunteered remark that he is 'much more our ally than our adversary,' I have not detected the pa.s.sages in Contributions to the Science of Mythology.

The reader may decide as to the relative importance of what I left out, and of what Mr. Max Muller omitted. He says, 'Professor Tiele and I differ on several points, but we perfectly understand each other, and when we have made a mistake we readily confess and correct it' (i. 37).

The two scholars, I thought, differed greatly. Mr. Max Muller's war-cry, slogan, mot d'ordre, is to Professor Tiele 'a false hypothesis.' Our method, which Mr. Max Muller combats so bravely, is all that Professor Tiele has said of it. But, if all this is not conspicuously apparent in our adversary's book, it does not become me to throw the first stone. We are all, in fact, inclined unconsciously to overlook what makes against our argument. I have done it; and, to the best of my belief, Mr. Max Muller has not avoided the same error.

MANNHARDT

Mannhardt's Att.i.tude

Professor Tiele, it may appear, really 'fights for his own hand,' and is not a thorough partisan of either side. The celebrated Mannhardt, too, doubtless the most original student of folk-lore since Grimm, might, at different periods of his career, have been reckoned an ally, now by philologists, now by 'the new school.' He may be said, in fact, to have combined what is best in the methods of both parties. Both are anxious to secure such support as his works can lend.

Moral Character Impeached

Mr. Max Muller avers that his moral character seems to be 'aimed at' by critics who say that he has no right to quote Mannhardt or Oldenberg as his supporters (1. xvi.). Now, without making absurd imputations, I do not reckon Mannhardt a thorough partisan of Mr. Max Muller. I could not put _our_ theory so well as Mannhardt puts it. 'The study of the lower races is an invaluable instrument for the interpretation of the survivals from earlier stages, which we meet in the full civilisation of cultivated peoples, but which arose in the remotest fetishism and savagery.'

Like Mr. Max Muller, I do not care for the vague word 'fetishism,'

otherwise Mannhardt's remark exactly represents my own position, the anthropological position. {42a} Now, Mr. Max Muller does not like that position. That position he a.s.sails. It was Mannhardt's, however, when he wrote the book quoted, and, so far, Mannhardt was _not_ absolutely one of Mr. Max Muller's 'supporters'--unless I am one. 'I have even been accused,' says Mr. Max Muller, 'of intentionally ignoring or suppressing Mannhardt's labours. How charitable!' (1. xvii.) I trust, from our author's use of the word todtschweigen, that this uncharitable charge was made in Germany.

Mannhardt

Mannhardt, for a time, says Mr. Max Muller, 'expressed his mistrust in some of the results of comparative mythology' (1. xvii.). Indeed, I myself quote him to that very effect. {42b} Not only '_some_ of the results,' but the philological method itself was distrusted by Mannhardt, as by Curtius. 'The failure of the method in its practical working lies in a lack of the historical sense,' says Mannhardt. {42c} Mr. Max Muller may have, probably has, referred to these sayings of Mannhardt; or, if he has not, no author is obliged to mention everybody who disagrees with him. Mannhardt's method was mainly that of folklore, not of philology.