EXPLANATION OF MYTHS. The example just cited (and analogous cases) led to the notion that all myths were to be interpreted in this way, a view held by some rationalists in India, and favored in Greece by many thinkers, but first reduced to an 'atheistic' philosophy of mythology by Euhemerus in the fourth century me. In op position to the older view that myths were to be interpreted allegorically, Euhemerus taught— whether seriously or not is now questioned by some scholars—that the gods were originally men, and that stories about men were transferred to gods, a method here and there countenanced by Plato. I ter bert Spencer, who also believes that gods were at first the ghosts of men, has adopted the Euhemeristic explanation in itscrudest form. lie believes, for example, that there was once a girl called Dawn, and that when she died the Vedic Aryans sang to her ghost the Vedic 'hymns to Dawn'—a view consonant neither with the content of the hymns nor with the practices of the poets. At present, if we pass by Spencer's theory with the brief criticism it deserves, there are two accepted schools of interpretation. The older view is that of Max Muller. lit its whole form it is quite as unhistorical as Spencer's, but it contains a truth ignored by the opposing school. Milner held that myths were nature-poetry, and that many of them in an advanced stage of evolution could be explained by what he called 'disease of language,' that is, mythology is the result of the misunder standing, on the part of a whole people, of their inherited phraseology. Where an old poet. re ferred to sunrise as 'the shining one' (feminine) being followed by 'the bright one' (masculine), his descendants interpreted the grammatical sex as implying sex in person and his phrase meant to them 'the (male god) Bright (sun) courts Miss Dawn,' and so, on the strength of countless errors of this sort, arose mythology, which can be analyzed into its component parts by com paring the names of gods in one language with cognate words in related languages. :Mailer's error lies in a too sweeping application of this theory, in his lack of appreciation of other causes leading to mythology, and in the- weakness of his etymologies. But there is truth in the dic tum that a misapprehension makes gods. A Vedic poet sings, "Who is the god whom we should revere?" and his sublime word is inter preted by a later generation as meaning "there is a god called Who, and we should make sacri fice to Who." Then later writers go still further and enjoin upon the priests to make two sets of offerings, one to Who and one to Whom, as dis tinct deities. The folk-lore explanation, which has obtained since Mannhardt and Tylor and is steadily gaining ground. rejects both Euhemerism and language-disease as factors of mythology, and seeks the explanation of the higher myth in the original conception of the lower. Kronos's brutality and Little Red Riding Hood are both stories popular in their day and paralleled by many like Vries among savage nations to-day. Such tales are retained, toned ,down, symbolically explained, but in origin they belong to the tales that please savages. 'There is no doubt that such is the state of the ease, and that Red Riding Hood is not a sun-myth (exposed to disease of lan guage), but a tale that pleasantly affected peas ants. The folk-lore explanation runs to accumu
lation of tales, however, without a radical ex planation, and it ignores too much what is true in Spencer's mythology. that many tales are simply ghost-stories. Nor can it be said that the folk-lore method is successful in explaining all myths, It is an error to suppose that all myths are psychical rellectioms of physical or of meteorological phenomena, for much must be at tributed, even among savages, to poetical fancy. But what Mannhardt has himself called 'nature poetry' and illustrated by modern examples among the Slays shows that personalities origi nally solar are sometimes transferred to poetical representatives explicable only in a solar light. The true explanation of mythology will combine the hitherto antagonistic explanations of Lang and Milner, and will also admit that Spencer's theory of ghost-mythology is at times applicable. No stereotyped formula can include all the phe nomena. In the last analysis will be found folk lore, language-change, and ghost-stories. All three principles are active to-day in India, and probably have always been active among all peo ples in proportion to their imaginative poWers. The fourth element of poetic fancy affects all the other three. Much that is looked upon as elaborated mythology is nothing but a naïve statement of what appears to the savage as every day facts, such as the birth of men from beasts or from the elements, the birth of animals from women, metempsychosis, the intimate relations between man and all natural objects.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. For the folk-lore theory, conBibliography. For the folk-lore theory, con- sult Tylor, Primitive Ciaturr (London. 1871) ; E. II. Meyer, Indogermanische dlgfAen (Berlin, 1883) ; nnha rdt, Myth o/ogisch e For-saAungc•>: (Strassburg, 1884) ; Lang, Custom and Myth (London, 1884) ; id., Myth, Ritaml, and Religion (2d, ed., ib., 1899) ; id., The Making of Re ligion (ib., 1898) ; Frazer, The Golden Bough (New York, 1900) ; for the comparative school, Kuhn, Herabkunft des Fcuers und des Cotter tra»ks (Berlin, 1859) ; Cox, Mythology of ,the Aryan Nations (2d ed., London, 1882) ; Schrader, Niraclverglcichuny ?old Urgeschichtc (2d ed., Jena, 1890) ; Max Muller, Contributions to the Science of Mythology (London, 1897) , which con tains the fullest and final statement of views. The ghost theory is given in Herbert Spencer's Principles of Sociology (London, 187d 96). Special mythologies are treated by Howson, A Classical Dictionary of Hindu Mythology (London, 1878) ; Flillebrandt, l'edisehe My thologie (Breslau, ISM ) ; Oldenberg, Die Re ligion des rola (Berlin, 1894) ; Hopkins. Re ligions of India (Boston, 1895) ; Renouf. Religion of .1ncient Egypt ( London. ISSO) ; ,Yastrow, Re ligion of Babylonia and Assyria (Boston, I898) ; Ilarton, Semitic Origins (New York, 1902) ; l'reller, Griechisehe Mythologic (Berlin. 1894) ; Gruppe, Gricchischr llythologie and Religions geschirhtc (Munich, 1898) ; Wbssowa, fle/igion, and Callus her Romer 1898) ; De la snye. Meligionsgeschiehte (Freiburg. 1897) : id., Re/igion of the Teutons ( Boston, 1903) Gill. Myths and Songs from the South Pacific (London, 1876) ; Brinton, Religion of Primitive Peoples (New York, 1897).