With regard to the enigma which these ancient mythes present us with, I have said that the researches of modern science teach us to look for the true solution of it in a direction quite different from that which Bacon took. And without affecting to offer anything that can be called an opinion on the subject for myself, I am fortunately able to illustrate my meaning by an example of a modern solution, derived from one whose information includes probably everything that is known with reference to the question at issue, up to the latest dates. I allude to Professor Max Müller's paper on Comparative Mythology in the Oxford Essays of 1856. The difficulty to be explained, as stated by him, is substantially the same as that which Bacon puts forward most prominently among his reasons for concluding that these old fables involved an allegorical meaning. "Let us think," says Professor Müller, "of the times which could bear a Lykurgos and a Solon, which could found an Areopagos and the Olympic Games, and how can we imagine that, a few generations before that time, the highest notions of the Godhead among the Greeks were adequately expressed by the story of Uranos maimed by Kronos, of Kronos eating his children, swallowing a stone, and vomiting out alive his whole progeny? . . . . The difficulty is, how at first the human mind was led to such imaginings, how the names and the tales arose; and unless this question can be answered, our belief in a regular and consistent progress of the human intellect, through all ages and in all countries, must be given up as a false theory." "A fable that is probable," says Bacon, "may be thought to have been composed merely for pleasure, in 1 Essay on Comparative Mythology, pp. 8. 11. 1 imitation of history. But when a story is told which could never have entered into any man's head either to conceive or relate on its own account, we must presume that it had some further reach. What a fiction (for instance) is that of Jupiter and Metis! Jupiter took Metis to wife: as soon as he saw that she was with child, he ate her up: whereupon he grew to be with child himself, and so brought forth out of his head Pallas in armour! Surely I think no man had ever a dream so monstrous, and extravagant, and out of all natural ways of thinking." 1 Both agree likewise in concluding that the original story must have involved another meaning; that the names and incidents must have survived after that meaning had been forgotten; and that they have suffered in the hands of poets a variety of alterations, applications, and corruptions. So far the two speculations go together; but at this point they part, and part in opposite directions. Bacon, having only the Greek language and mythology to interpret the Greek fables by, conceived it possible that a generation of wise men had once flourished upon the earth, who taught the mysteries of nature in parables; that they died and their wisdom with them; the parables remaining in memory, merely as tales without meaning. Professor Müller, furnished with materials for a wider induction in the languages and mythologies of all the Eastern nations and races, and finding similar traditions flourishing among them all,-"stories identical in form and in character, whether we find them on Indian, Persian, Greek, Italian, Slavonic, or Teutonic soil," and being able likewise to trace the names which figure in many of these stories through their 1 De Sap. Vet. Præfatio, p. 429. of this volume. -- Greek corruptions to their original meaning in the language from which they came, -able, for instance, by help of the Veda to identify Daphne with the Dawn (see p. 57) is led, through a course of reasoning too long for quotation and yet too close for abridgement, to a conclusion much more in accordance with all we know of the progress and vicissitudes of human things; yet one which, if accepted, will be held, I think, to justify me in treating the ideas which Bacon finds in these fables as valuable only for the truth and sense they contain, and not as illustrating antiquity. He traces the origin of these mythes to a time when abstract nouns had not been invented; when men had not learnt to express by single words collective or abstract ideas; when therefore everything was spoken of as a person, with a name and a sex. He conceives that they were in fact merely descriptions of the great phenomena of nature; conveying to those who first uttered them the ideas of morning and evening, summer and winter, dawn, twilight, darkness, &c.; indicating the relations between them by words expressing human relations, human feelings and passions; and thus making every metaphor a story; which, passing into another language in which the original name no longer suggested the original image, lost its metaphorical signification, came to be received and repeated as a story simply, and so grew into what we call a mythe. It would not be difficult to suggest analogies even from our own experience, by which it would be seen that the process is a natural one; but I should do injustice to Professor Müller's argument if I attempted to give an idea of the evidence which he brings to support his view. I have said enough, how ever, to enable the reader to enter into his exposition. of the fable of Endymion, which will sufficiently illustrate his theory; and which, as we have Bacon's exposition to contrast it with, will serve better than anything else to exhibit the difference between the rival methods of interpretation. "We can best enter," says he, "into the original meaning of a Greek mythe, when some of the persons who act in it have preserved names intelligible in Greek. When we find the names of Eos, Selene, Helios, or Herse, we have words which tell their own. story, and we have a оù σr for the rest of the mythe. Let us take the beautiful mythe of Selene and Endymion. Endymion is the son of Zeus and Kalyke, but he is also the son of Aethlios, a king of Elis, who is himself called a son of Zeus, and whom Endymion is said to have succeeded as King of Elis. This localises our mythe, and shows, at least, that Elis is its birth place, and that, according to Greek custom, the reigning race of Elis derived its origin from Zeus. The same custom prevailed in India, and gave rise to the two great royal families of ancient India-the so-called Solar and the Lunar races; and Purûravas, of whom more by and by, says of himself, — The great king of day, And monarch of the night are my progenitors; There may, then, have been a King of Elis, Aethlios, and he may have had a son, Endymion; but what the mythe tells of Endymion could not have happened to the King of Elis. The mythe transfers Endymion into Karia, to Mount Latmos, because it was in the Latmian cave that Selene saw the beautiful sleeper, loved him and lost him. Now about the meaning of Selene, there can be no doubt; but even if tradition had only preserved her other name, Asterodia, we should have had to translate this synonyme, as Moon, as 'Wanderer among the stars.' But who is Endymion? It is one of the many names of the sun, but with special reference to the setting or dying sun. It is derived from év-dów, a verb which, in classical Greek, is never used for setting, because the simple verb dów had become the technical term for sunset. Δυσμαὶ ἡλίου, the setting of the Sun, is opposed to ¿varóλa, the rising. Now, duw meant, originally, to dive into; and expressions like news d' ŭp' tov, the sun dived, presupposes an earlier conception of ědu TóνTOV, he dived into the sea. Thus Thetis addresses her companions, Il. xviii. 140. Ὑμεῖς μὲν νῦν δῦτε θαλάσσης εὐρέα κόλπον, You may now dive into the broad bosom of the sea. Other dialects, particularly of maritime nations, have the same expression. In Lat. we find Cur mergat seras æquore flammas.' In Old Norse, Sôl gengr i aegi.' Slavonic nations represent the sun as a woman stepping into her bath in the evening, and rising refreshed and purified in the morning; or they speak of the Sea as the mother of the Sun, and of the Sun as sinking into her mother's arms at night. We may suppose, therefore, that in some Greek dialect ¿vdów was used in the same sense; and that from ἐνδύω, ἐνδύμα was formed to express sunset. From this was formed ἐνδυμίων, like οὐρανίων from οὐρανός, and like most of the names of the Greek months. If ¿vdúμa had become a common name for sunset, the mythe of Endymion could never have arisen. But the original meaning of Endymion being once forgotten, what was told |