t scholars is in itself presumptuous;
the least that an innovator can do is to give his reasons for
advancing in a novel direction. If this were a question of scholarship
merely, it would be simply foolhardy to differ from men like Max
Mueller, Adalbert Kuhn, Breal, and many others. But a revolutionary
mythologist is encouraged by finding that these scholars frequently
differ from each other. Examples will be found chiefly in the essays
styled 'The Myth of Cronus,' 'A Far-Travelled Tale,' and 'Cupid and
Psyche.' Why, then, do distinguished scholars and mythologists reach
such different goals? Clearly because their method is so precarious.
They all analyse the names in myths;[1] but, where one scholar decides
that the name is originally Sanskrit, another holds that it is purely
Greek, and a third, perhaps, is all for an Accadian etymology, or a
Semitic derivation. Again, even when scholars agree as to the original
root from which a name springs, they differ as much as ever as to the
meaning of the name in its present place. The inference is that the
analysis of names, on which the whole edifice of philological
'comparative mythology' rests, is a foundation of shifting sand. The
method is called 'orthodox,' but, among those who practise it, there
is none of the beautiful unanimity of orthodoxy.

These objections are not made by the unscholarly anthropologist alone.
Curtius has especially remarked the difficulties which beset the
'etymological operations' in the case of proper names. 'Peculiarly
dubious and perilous is mythological etymology. Are we to look for the
sources of the divine names in aspects of nature, or in moral
conceptions; in special Greek geographical conditions, or in natural
circumstances which are everywhere the same: in dawn with her rays, or
in clouds with their floods; are we to seek the origin of the names of
heroes in things historical and human, or in physical phenomena?'[2]
Professor Tiele, of Leyden, says much the same thing: 'The
uncertainties are great, and there is a constant risk of taking mere
_jeux d'esprit_ for scientific results.'[3] Every name has, if we can
discover or conjecture it, a meaning. That meaning--be it 'large' or
'small,' 'loud' or 'bright,' 'wise' or 'dark,' 'swift' or 'slow'--is
always capable of being explained as an epithet of the sun, or the
cloud, or of both. Whatever, then, a name may signify, some scholars
will find that it originally denoted the cloud, if they belo