From The Contemporary Review. ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF MYTHOLOGY.

BY MAX MULLER.

modern philosophers cannot resist the at traction of these ancient problems. That stream of philosophic thought which, springing from Descartes (1596-1650), WHAT can be in our days the interest rolled on through the seventeenth and of mythology? What is it to us that eighteenth centuries in two beds - the Kronos was the son of Uranos and Gaia, idealistic, marked by the names of Maleand that he swallowed his children, Hes- branche (1638-1715), Spinoza (1632 – tia, Demeter, Hera, Pluton, and Poseidon, 1677), and Leibnitz (1618-1716); and as soon as they were born? What have the sensualistic, marked by the names of we to do with the stories of Rhea, the wife Locke (1632-1704), David Hume (1711 of Uranos, who, in order to save her-1776), and Condillac (1715-1780), till youngest son from being swallowed by his the two arms united again in Kant (1721 father, gave her husband a stone to swal--1804), and the full stream was carried low instead? And why should we be on by Schelling (1775-1854), and Hegel asked to admire the exploits of this (1770-1831), this stream of modern youngest son, who when he had grown up, philosophic thought has ended where made his father drink a draught, and thus ancient philosophy began in a Philosohelped to deliver the stone and his five phy of Mythology, which, as you know, brothers and sisters from their paternal forms the most important part of Schelprison? What shall we think if we readlings's final system, of what he called himin the most admired of classic poets that self his Positive Philosophy, given to the these escaped prisoners became after- world after the death of that great thinker wards the great gods of Greece, gods be- and poet in the year 1854. lieved in by Homer, worshipped by Sokrates, immortalized by Phidias? Why should we listen to such horrors as that Tantalos killed his own son, boiled him, and placed him before the gods to eat? or that the gods collected his limbs, threw them into a caldron, and thus restored Pelops to life, minus, however, his shoulder, which Demeter had eaten in a fit of absence, and which had therefore to be replaced by a shoulder made of ivory?

Can we imagine anything more silly, more savage, more senseless, anything more unworthy to engage our thoughts, even for a single moment? We may pity our children that, in order to know how to construe and understand the master-works of Homer and Virgil, they have to fill their memory with such idle tales; but we might justly suppose that men who have serious work to do in this world, would banish such subjects for ever from their thoughts.

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I do not mean to say that Schelling and Aristotle looked upon mythology in the same light, or that they found in it exactly the same problems; yet there is this common feature in all who have thought or written on mythology, that they look upon it as something which, whatever it may mean, does certainly not mean what it seems to mean; as something that requires an explanation, whether it be a system of religion, or a phase in the development of the human mind, or an inevitable catastrophe in the life of language. According to some, mythology is history changed into fable; according to others, fable changed into history. Some discover in it the precepts of moral philosophy ennunciated in the poetical language of antiquity; others see in it a picture of the great forms and forces of nature, particularly the sun, the moon, and the stars, the changes of day and night, the succession of the seasons, the return of the yearsAnd yet, how strange, from the very all this reflected by the vivid imagination childhood of philosophy, from the first of ancient poets and sages. Epicharmos, faintly-whispered Why? to our own time for instance, the pupil of Pythagoras, deof matured thought and fearless inquiry, clared that the gods of Greece were not mythology has been the ever-recurrent what, from the poems of Homer, we might subject of anxious wonder and careful suppose them to be -personal beings, enstudy. The ancient philosophers, who dowed with superhuman powers, though could pass by the petrified shells on moun- liable to many of the passions and frailties tain-tops and the fossil trees buried in of human nature. He maintained that their quarries, without ever asking the question how they came to be there, or what they signified, were ever ready with doubts and surmises when they came to listen to ancient stories of their gods and heroes. And, more curious still, even

these gods were really the Wind, the Water, the Earth, the Sun, the Fire, and the Stars. Not long after his time another philosopher, Empedokles, holding that the whole of nature consisted of a mixture and separation of the four elements, declared

that Zeus was the element of Fire. Here forgetful of their own Plato and Aris the element of Air, Aidoneus or Pluton, totle, seem to imagine that the idea the element of Earth, and Nestis the ele- of seeing in the gods and heroes of Greece ment of Water. In fact, whatever the anything beyond what they appear to be freethinkers of Greece discovered success- in the songs of Homer, was a mere fancy ively as the first principles of Being and and invention of the students of ComparaThought, whether the air of Anaximenes, tive Mythology. or the fire of Herakleitos, or the Nous or There were, no doubt, Greeks, and emMind of Anaxagoras, was readily identified inent Greeks too, who took the legends of with Zeus and the other divine persons of their gods and heroes in their literal sense. Olympian mythology. Metrodoros, the But what do these say of Homer and contemporary of Anaxagoras, went even Hesiod? Xenophanes, the contemporary further. While Anaxagoras would have of Pythagoras, holds Homer and Îlesiod been satisfied with looking upon Zeus as responsible for the popular superstitions but another name of his Nous, the highest of Greece. In this he agrees with Heintellect, the mover, the disposer, the gov-rodotus, when he declares that these two ernor of all things, Metrodoros resolved not poets made the theogony for the Greeks, only the persons of Zeus, Here, and Athene, and gave to the gods their names, and asbut likewise those of human kings and he-signed to them their honours and their roes such as Agamemnon, Achilles, and arts, and described their appearances. Hektor-into various combinations and But he then continues in a very different physical agencies, and treated the adven- strain from the pious historian. "Homer," tures ascribed to them as natural facts, he says, "and Hesiod ascribed to the hidden under a thin veil of allegory.

Sokrates, as is well known, looked upon such attempts at explaining all fables allegorically as too arduous and unprofitable; yet he, too, as well as Plato, pointed frequently to what they called the hypónoia, the under-current, if I may say so, or the under-meaning of ancient mythology.

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Aristotle speaks more explicitly:— "It has been handed down," he says, by early and very ancient people, and left to those who came after, in the form of myths, that these (the first principles of the world) are the gods, and that the divine embraces the whole of nature. The rest has been added mythically, in order to persuade the many, and in order to be used in support of laws and other interests. Thus they say that the gods have a human form, and that they are like to some of the other living beings, and other things consequent on this, and similar to what has been said. If one separated ont of these fables, and took only that first point, viz., that they believed the first essences to be gods, one would think that it had been divinely said, and that while every art and every philosophy was probably invented ever so many times and lost again, these opinions had, like fragments of them, been preserved until now. So far only is the opinion of our fathers, and that received from our first ancestors, clear to us."

I have quoted the opinions of these Greek philosophers, to which many more might have been added, partly in order to show how many of the most distinguished minds of ancient Greece agreed in demanding an interpretation, whether physical or metaphysical, of Greek mythology, partly in order to satisfy those classical scholars, who, forgetful of their own classics,

gods whatever is disgraceful and scandalous among men, yea, they declared that the gods had committed nearly all unlawful acts, such as theft, adultery, and fraud." "Men seem to have created their gods, and to have given to them their own mind, voice, and figure. The Ethiopians made their gods black and flat-nosed; the Thracians red-haired and blue-eyed; just as oxen or lions, if they could but draw, would draw their gods like oxen and lions." This was spoken about 500 B.C. Herakleitos, about 460 B.C., one of the boldest thinkers of ancient Greece, declared that Homer deserved to be ejected from public assemblies and flogged; and a story is told that Pythagoras (about 540 B.C.) saw the soul of Homer in Hades, hanging on a tree and surrounded by serpents, as a punishment for what he had said of the gods. And what can be stronger than the condemnation passed on Homer by Plato? I shall read an extract from the " Republic," from the excellent translation lately published by Professor Jowett :

"First of all,' I said, there was that greatest of all lies in high places, which the poet told about Uranos, and which was an immoral lie too - I mean what Hesiod says that Uranos did, and what Kronos did to him. The fact is that the doings of Kronos, and the sufferings which his son inflicted upon him, even if they were true, ought not to be lightly told to young and simple persons; if possible, they had better be buried in silence. But if there is an absolute necessity for their mention, a very few might hear them in a mystery, and then let them sacrifice not a common (Eleusinian) pig, but some huge and unprocurable victim; this would have the effect of very greatly reducing the number of the hearers.'

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Why, yes,' said he, these stories are certainly objectionable.'

"Yes, Adeimantos, they are stories not to be narrated in our State; the young man should not be told that in committing the worst of crimes he is far from doing anything outrage ous, and that he may chastise his father when he does wrong in any manner that he likes, and in this will only be following the example of the first and greatest of the gods.'

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existence of all the mythological deities, and declared his belief in One God, neither in form nor in thought like unto mortals, was not therefore considered a heretic. He never suffered for uttering his honest convictions: on the contrary, as far as we know, he was honoured by the people among whom he lived and taught. Nor was Plato ever punished on account of his unbelief, and though he, as well as his master, Sokrates, became obnoxious to the dominant party at Athens, this was due to political far more than to theological motives. At all events, Plato, the pupil, the friend, the apologist of Sokrates, was allowed to teach at Athens to the end of his life, and few men commanded greater respect in all ranks of Greek society. But, although mythology was not religion in Iliad certainly never enjoyed among our sense of the word, and although the Greeks the authority either of the Bible, or even of the Veda among the Brahmans, or the Zend Avesta among the Parsis, yet I would not deny altogether that in a certain sense the mythology of the Greeks belonged to their religion. We must only be on our guard, here as everywhere else, against the misleading influence of words. The word Religion has, like most words, had its history; it has grown and changed with each century, and it cannot therefore have meant with the Greeks and Brah

I quite agree with you,' he said; in my opinion those stories are not fit to be repeated.' Neither, if we mean our future guardians to regard the habit of quarrelling as dishonourable, should anything be said of the wars in heaven, and of the plots and fightings of the gods against one another, which are quite untrue. Far be it from us to tell them of the battles of the giants, and embroider them on garments; or of all the innumerable other quarrels of gods and heroes with their friends and rela-mans what it means with us. Religions tions. If they would only believe us, we would have sometimes been divided into national tell them that quarrelling is unholy, and that or traditional, as distinguished from individunever up to this time has there been any quarrel between citizens; this is what old men and old women should begin by telling children, and the same when they grow up. And these are the sort of fictions which the poet should be required to compose. But the narrative of Hephaestos binding Here his mother, or how on another occasion Zeus sent him flying for taking her part when she was being beaten-such tales must not be admitted into our State, whether they are supposed to have an allegorical meaning or not. For the young man cannot judge what is allegorical and what is literal, and anything that he receives into his mind at that age is apt to become indelible and unalterable; and therefore the tales which they first hear should be models of virtuous thoughts."

To those who look upon mythology as an ancient form of religion, such freedom of language as is here used by Xenophanes and Plato, must seem startling. If the Iliad were really the Bible of the Greeks, as it has not unfrequently been called, such violent invectives would have been impossible. For let us bear in mind that Xenophanes, though he boldly denied the

al or statutable religion. The former are, like languages, home-grown, autochthonic, without an historical beginning, generally without any recognized founder, or even an authorized code; the latter have been founded by historical persons, generally in antagonism to traditional systems, and they always rest on the authority of a written code. I do not consider this division as very useful for a scientific study of religion, because in many cases it is extremely difficult, and sometimes impossible, to draw a sharp line of demarcation, and to determine whether a given religion may be considered as the work of one man, or as the combined work of those who came before him, who lived with him, nay, even of those who came after him. For our present purpose, however, for showing at once the salient difference between what the Grecks and what we ourselves should mean by Religion, this division is very serviceable. The Greek religion was clearly a national and traditional religion, and, as such, it shared both the advantages and disadvantages of this form

ligions assume in general a hostile attitude towards philosophy, ancient religions have either included philosophy as an integral part, or they have at least tolerated its growth in the very precincts of their temples.

After we have thus seen what limitations we must place on the meaning of the word religion, if we call mythology the religion of the ancient world, we may now advance another step.

of religious belief; the Christian religion | Hesiod, nay, their betters, and in no way is an historical, and to a great extent, an fettered by the popular legends about individual religion, and it possesses the gods and goddesses. While modern readvantage of an authorized code and of a settled system of faith. Let it not be supposed, however, that between traditional and individual religions the advantages are all on one, the disadvantages on the other side. As long as the ancient immemorial religions of the different branches of the human race remained in their natural state, and were not pressed into the service of political parties or an ambitious priesthood, they allowed great freedom of thought and a healthy growth of real We have glanced at the principal interpiety, and they were seldom disgraced by pretations which have been proposed by an intolerant or persecuting spirit. They the ancients themselves of the original were generally either honestly believed, or purpose and meaning of mythology. But as we have just seen, honestly attacked, there is one question which none, either of and a high tone of intellectual morality the ancient or of the modern interpreters was preserved untainted by hypocrisy, of mythology, has answered, or even asked equivocation, or unreasoning dogmatism. and on which, nevertheless, the whole The marvellous development of philosophy problem of mythology seems to turn. If in Greece, particularly in ancient Greece, mythology is history changed into fable, was chiefly due, I believe, to the absence of an established religion and an influential priesthood; and it is impossible to overrate the blessing which the fresh, pure, invigorating, and elevating air of that ancient Greek philosophy has conferred on all ages, not excepting our own. I shudder at the thought of what the world would have been without Plato and Aristotle, and I tremble at the idea that the youth of the future should ever be deprived of the teaching and the example of these true prophets of the absolute freedom of thought. Unfortunately we know but little of the earliest fathers of Greek philosophy; we have but fragments, and those not always trustworthy, not easily intelligible, of what they taught on the highest questions that can stir the heart We have been accustomed to call the oracular sayings of men like Thales, Pythagoras, Xenophanes, or Herakleitos, philosophy, but there was in them as much of religion as in the songs of Homer and Hesiod. Homer and Hesiod were great powers, but their poems were not the only feeders of the religious life of Greece. The stream of ancient wisdom and philosophy flowed parallel with the stream of legend and poetry; and both were meant to support the religious cravings of the soul. We have only to attend without prejudice to the utterances of these ancient prophets, such as Xenophanes and Herakleitos, in order to convince ourselves that these men spoke with authority to the people, that they considered themselves the equals of Homer and

of man.

why was it so changed? If it is fable represented as history, why were such fables invented? If it contains precepts of moral philosophy, whence their immoral disguise? If it is a picture of the great forms and forces of nature, the same question still returns, why were these forms and forces represented as heroes and heroines, as nymphs and shepherds, as gods and goddesses? It is easy enough to call the sun a god, or the dawn a goddess, after these predicates have once been framed. But how were these predicates formed? How did people come to know of gods and goddesses, heroes and nymphs, and what meaning did they originally connect with these terms? In fact, the real question which a philosophy of mythology has to answer is this. Is the whole of mythology an invention, the fanciful poetry of a Homer or Hesiod or is it a growth? Or to speak more definitely, Was mythology a mere accident, or was it inevitable? Was it only a false step, or was it a step that could not have been left out in the historical progress of the human mind?

The study of the history of language, which is only a part of the study of the history of thought, has enabled us to give a decisive answer to this question. Mythology is inevitable, it is natural, it is an inherent necessity of language, if we recognize in language the outward form and manifestation of thought: it is in fact the dark shadow which language throws on thought, and which can never disappear till language becomes altogether commensurate with thought, which it never will.

Mythology, no doubt, breaks out more that they stand to each other like soul fiercely during the early periods of the and body, like power and function, like history of human thought than at any substance and form. The objections other time, but it never disappears alto- which have been raised against this view gether. Depend upon it, there is mythol- arise generally from a mere misunderogy now as there was in the time of Ho- standing. If we speak of language as the mer, only we do not perceive it, because outward realization of thought, we do not we ourselves live in the very shadow of it, mean language as deposited in a dictionary, and because we all shrink from the full or sketched in a grammar, we mean lanmeridian light of truth. We are ready guage as an act, language as being spoken, enough to see that if the ancients called language as living and dying with every their kings and heroes Aloysveic, sprung of word that is uttered. We might perhaps Zeus, that expression, intended originally call this speech, as distinguished from lanto convey the highest praise which man guage. can bestow on man, was apt to lapse into Secondly, though if we speak of lanmythology. We easily perceive how such guage, we mean chiefly phonetic articulate a conception, compatible in its origin with language, we do not exclude the less perthe highest reverence for the gods, led al- fect symbols of thought, such as gestures, most inevitably to the growth of fables, signs, or pictures. They, too, are language which transferred to divine beings the in- in a certain sense, and they must be incidents of human paternity and sonship. cluded in language before we are justified But we are not so ready to see that it is in saying that discursive thought can be our fate, too, to move in allegories which realized in language only. One instance illustrate things intellectual by visions ex-will make this clear. We hold that we hibited to the fancy. In our religion, too, cannot think without language. But can the conceptions of paternity and sonship we not count without language? We have not always been free from all that is certainly can. We can form the concephuman, nor are we always aware that tion of three without any spoken word, by nearly every note that belongs to human simply holding up three fingers. In the paternity and sonship n.ust be taken out same manner, the hand might stand for of these terms, before they can be pro- five, both hands for ten, hands and feet for nounced safe against mythological infec- twenty. This is how people who possessed tion. Papal decisions on immaculate con- no organs of speech would speak; this is ception are of no avail against that my-how the deaf and dumb do speak. Three thology. The mind must become immacu- fingers are as good as three strokes, three late to rise superior to itself: or it must strokes are as good as three clicks of the close its eyes and shut its lips in the pres- tongue, three clicks of the tongue are as ence of the Divine. good as the sound three, or trois, or drei, or If then we want to understand mytholo-shalosh in Hebrew, or san in Chinese. All gy, in the ordinary and restricted sense of the word, we must discover the larger circle of mental phenomena to which it belongs. Greek mythology is but a small segment of mythology; the religious mythologies of all the races of mankind are again but a small segment of mytholo-ble realization of human thought. gy. Mythology, in the highest sense, is the power exercised by language on thought in every possible sphere of mental activity, and I do not hesitate to call the whole history of philosophy, from Thales down to Hegel, an uninterrupted battle against mythology, a constant protest of thought against language. This will require some explanation.

these are signs, more or less perfect, but being signs, they fall under the category of language; and all we maintain is, that without some kind of sign, discursive thought is impossible, and that in that sense, language, or 2óyos is the only possi

Another very common misunderstanding is this: people imagine that, if it be impossible to think, except in language, language and thought must be one and the same thing. But a true philosophy of language leads to the very opposite result. Every philosopher would say that substance cannot exist without form, nor form without substance, but no philosopher would say Ever since the time of Wilhelm von that therefore it is impossible to distinguish Humboldt, all who have seriously grappled between form and substance. In the same with the highest problems of the Science way, though we maintain that thought of Language, have come to the conviction cannot exist without language nor lanthat thought and language are inseparable, guage without thought, we do distinguish that language is as impossible without between thought and language, between thought as thought is without language; 'the inward and the outward hoyos, between

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