MULLER ON MYTHOLOGY.
A NOT unnatural prejudice has been created in many quarters by the false and tasteless view taken of mythi by many who have de- voted themselves to that branch of inquiry. Some will have it that " mythi are allegorical expressions, in which philosophers chose to propound their discoveries in physical or moral science ": and upon this assumption, the supposed allegories have been cried up for sources of wisdom; as if philosophy consisted in the invention of ingenious riddles—as if the human mind could be elevated or en- lightened by such laborious trifling. Others again have regarded them as dark sayings of a priestly caste, intended to rivet their power upon the vulgar mind. OTTFRIED MILLER took at once a truer and a nobler view of the mythi ; and, without exaggerating their intellectual character, vindicated their honesty, and assigned them their true place in history.
Mythus, indicating originally simply "a saying," had received among the Greeks the conventional meaning of "old saying." Looking exclusively to the outward form of the mythi, they may be defined as "a mass of narrations in which the deeds and des- tinies of individual personages are recorded, and which all relate, by the way they are connected and interwoven, to a period ante- cedent to the historical wra of Greece, and separated from it by a tolerably distinct boundary ." By this definition, MULLER does not mean that the facts on which a mythus rests must necessarily have preceded the historical period ; it is enough if it represents them as having occurred in that imaginary age : and he notices many in which incidents (the founding of cities and colonies, for example) happening within the range of historical annals, have been narrated in the mythological form. Looking again to the notions expressed in the " mythi, ' we find them combine two distinct ingredients— the statement of things done, and things imagined. Of the latter, MULLER gives the following example.
" When Hesiod mentions that the Earth gave birth to the Heavens, he does
not relate a fact ; but he at all events expresses a notion, opinion, or whatever it may be called. Of the former : — The Achtean tribe, within the his- torical period, dwelt on the Northern coast of the Peloponnesus. Now the mythus states that the Acbsean Prince Tisamenus, having been expelled by the Dorians from Argos, took refuge in that region. But perhaps it will be objected that this event stands on the confines of history, and the account of it must therefore be considered as historical. This once granted, we penetrate farther into mythology, and find that two sons of Achwus, who (to pass by whatever may admit of dispute) either denote the tribe or conducted it, re- moved to Argos from Phthiotis. We always find, therefore, a chain of facts leading from history into mythology."
In order to bring out into more distinct relief the real character of the mythus, MULLER passes in review the various sources of our knowledge of it—the epic, dramatic, and lyric, the Alexandrian and Roman poets, the logographers, the historians, and the philoso- phers. None of these invented the myth, which were handed down from a period anterior to writing and written records. The mythi were the material which all these artists used, each after a fashion of his own. HOMER, HESIOD, and the authors of what have been called the Cyclic Epopees, had for their " predominant aim to hand down legends undisguised by drapery ; their main object was the transmission of mythi." The taste of the poet may select the finest mythi; his imagination may render their expression more powerful and picturesque ; but all the marvellous in his narrative is compatible with his own faith in it—with his design to relate the actual and true. In one respect the lyric poets took greater liberties with the mythi. PINDAR, in particular, " altered a num- ber of mythi because they did not harmonize with his own pure and elevated conceptions of the dignity of gods and heroes, and must therefore in his judgment be untrue." It is apparent, however, that he never doubts in the least that the mythus relates to a fact, though he rejects what he assumes to have been after-additions. But this more free manner of dealing with the my thi on the part of the lyric poets is compensated by the preservation of their local origin and leading features.
Having passed in review the various classes of writers by whom
mythi have been more or less faithfully handed down, MULLER shows that in none of them have we arrived at the real original source of the mythus. " Mythi are frequently modified by poeti- cal and philosophical treatment ; but these modifications always forind a preexistent nucleus." They are legends of the olden time, which for no inconsiderable portion of Grecian history were re- ceived as truths; and it is justly observed by our author, that " by this view alone can we account for the predilection which was so long manifested for its mythus by the most intellectual people in the world, and which, notwithstanding all their vivacity of genius and all their natural talent for observation, so long prevented authentic history from making its appearance." The origin of the my thus is beautifully traced in the following passage.
" Now, if the peculiar mixture of idea and reality, which forms the charac- teristic feature of mythology, belongs to the original constitution of the my- thus, the question will naturally occur, How can this be reconciled with the fact just established, that it was held to be true, and became an object of faith ?
• This Ideal,' some one might say, is nothing else than poetic fiction and in- vention, clothed in the narrative form.' But an invention of this kind cannot without a miracle be simultaneously made by many individuals; for it would require a peculiar coincidence of design, conception, and execution. ' It was surely, therefore, the work of one person.' But how, then, did be convince all others of the reality, the substantiality of his invention ? Shall we suppose him to have been an impostor, who contrived to persuade them by all sorts of deceit and illusion—perhaps by forming a confederacy with others of the same stamp with himself, who would testify to the people, that what he had devised was verified by their observation ? Or shall we imagine him to have been a more highly-gifted person, a more exalted being, than his countrymen ; and that therefore they placed reliance on what he said; receiving from him as s. sacred revelation those mythi under which he veiled salutary truths designed for their instruction ? But it cannot possibly be proved that such a caste or sect either of cunning knaves or sublime personages existed in ancient Greece. Many, indeed, may point at the priests ; but they ought first to show that there really was a priesthood so widely separated from the laity, and so strongly contrasted with it, particularly in respect of knowledge. Besides, this artificial system of deception—whetber it was clumsy or refined, selfish or phi- lanthropic—is quite at variance with the noble simplicity of those ages, unless the impression made on our minds by the earliest productions of Greek genius be entirely illusory. We come therefore to the conclusion, that even a single inventor of a mythus, in the proper sense of the word, is out of the question. But whither does this reasoning lead ? Evidently to nothing else than that the idea altogether of invention—that is, of a free and deliberate treatment, by which something known to be untrue was clothed in the sem- blance of truth—must be left out of consideration, as quite inapplicable to the origin of a mythus; or in other words, that a species of necessity led to that combination of the Real and Imaginary which is observed in the mythus; that its framers were governed by impulses which operated alike on all; that these opposite elements grew up together; and that those who were instrumental to the union were themselves unconscious of the difference. It is this idea, of a certain necessity and unconsciousness in the formation of the ancient mythi, that we wish to impress. When that is once conceived, it will also be easy to see that the dispute as to whether the mythus proceeded from one or from many, from the poet or from the people, even where there is otherwise room for it, does not affect the main point. For if one individual—the relater—in de- vising a my thus only obeys the promptings which act equally on the minds of others—the listeners—he is merely the mouthpiece through which they all speak, the skilful exponent who first gives form and expression to what all de- sire to express. It is possible, however, that the idea of this necessity and un- consciousness may appear dark and even mystical to many of our archwolo- gists, for no other reason than because this tendency to form mythi has nothing analogous in our modern modes of thinking. But ought not history to recog- nize even what is strange, when we are led to it by dispassionate investigation? Perhaps the subject will be rendered more clear by an example. We shall give the one already quoted from the first book of the Iliad. Let us suppose that the story of Chr)ses was a genuine mythus, a received tradition ; and that the possible events contained in it—the rape of the priest's daughter, and the pestilence among the Greeks—were also real. In that case, it can readily be conceived, that all those who knew the facts, and had faith in Apollo's power to avenge and punish, would immediately and simultaneously connect them together, and would express their belief that Apollo sent the pestilence at the prayer of his priest, with as firm a conviction as if it were a thing which they had themselves known and witnessed. Here the myth-forming activity makes but a slight step ; but I have chosen this example for that very reason. Per- haps, however, it was in reality greater ; for the supposition that everything in this mythus that may be fact is fact was perfectly gratuitous."
The mythus is obviously from its nature the growth of an age preceding that in which men had learned to distinguish the work- ings of imagination from those of pure intellect. The habit of analyzing their own thoughts was necessarily fatal to the power of producing mythi. The habit destroyed creative mythology before it was itself sufficiently developed to substitute poetry and philo- sophy in its stead. Hence the interval between the mythological and the literary age of Greece, during which men merely preserved and repeated the wythi of their ancestors, and themselves origi- ginated nothing but a few meagre genealogies. The gulf which is thus placed between the mythological and literary ages of Greece would have rendered any attempt to trace the origin of the mythi, and to render them auxiliary to the history of society and the human mind, fruitless, had it not been for the unequal advances in civilization made by the inhabitants of different districts, and by different classes of society. This inequality caused in the first historic ages mythological and literary races to be coexistent ; and from their intercourse, feeble though its traces be, an explanation of the mythi has become possible.
The use to be made of the body of Grecian mythi, thus defined' and traced to their source, is twofold. In the first place, they may be made available in tracing the rise and combinations of the dif- ferent Grecian tribes, the constituent elements of Grecian society. Every mythus has a local origin, and is strongly marked by the characteristic features of this local origin. In many of what may be called the compound mythi—those in which colonists have en- grafted the incidents of the colony's foundation upon the old mythi conveyed from the aboriginal seat of their tribe—the glimmerings of early history enable us to resolve the legend into its component parts. This has been felicitously accomplished in the author's History of the Doriaus, ably translated by Messrs. TUFFNELL and LEWIS. Indeed, the work now before us may be considered in a great measure as the rationale of the process by which he arrived at the conclusions embodied in that history.
But the second use of an intimate acquaintance with the mythi is far more important. Without knowing them, we can scarcely hope to understand the poets, orators, and philosophers, whose minds have been cast in them as moulds. The ideas of the greatest Grecian authors have been suggested by—have derived their pe- culiar form and bias from—the national mythi. The influence of the mythi is felt in almost every conventional Greek phrase.
To aid the inquirer into Grecian mythology, MULLER has laid down canons for separating the mythus from the modifications superinduced upon it by poets and prose-writers; resolving the mythus itself into its original elements, interpreting the mythus, and applying it to illustrate Grecian history or explain Grecian religion. Ile subjoins examples of the method of applying these canons ; and concludes with a comparative statement of the views entertained of the my thus by the most eminent inquirers in this department with his own. His work is characterized throughout by rare candour and the modesty of true knowledge, and by a vein of strong healthy common sense, which keeps in check a lively fancy and delicate taste. This work, though not new in German literature, is now for the first time presented to the English reader, and is a valuable acquisition. Mr. LEITCH, the translator, deserves credit for the judgment he has shown in the selection of his task and the ability with which he has executed it. After carefully collating his trans- lation with the original, we have not found a single instance in which be has missed the sense of the author, and only four words to which the most fastidious English critic could object. He evidently possesses an intimate and accurate knowledge of the German language, and yet his style is perfectly free from Germanisms. It is seldom that we have met with a translator so successful in ren- dering his author's meaning with scrupulous fidelity, and writing at the same time perfectly idiomatic English.
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