development of mythological science was
the rise of the modern critical study of history, begun by Voltaire and
Gibbon and carried on by Niebuhr and others. A vigorous group of writers
arose in Germany. Creuzer,[1522] indeed, holding that the myths of the
ancients must embody their best thought, and falling back on symbolism,
cannot be said to have advanced his subject except by his collection of
materials; there is some basis for his position if the ancient myths are
taken in the sense given them by the later poets and philosophers, but
the supposition of a primary symbolism in myths is set aside by an
examination of the ideas of undeveloped races. Creuzer's theory was
effectively combated by Voss.[1523] Other writers of the time adopted
exacter methods of inquiry,[1524] and K. O. Mueller,[1525] particularly,
laid the foundation for a scientific treatment of myths by
distinguishing between their real and their ideal elements, between the
actual phenomenon and the imaginative (the true mythical) explanation of
it.

+876+. The next generation witnessed two retrograde movements in the
interpretation of myths. F. Max Mueller, dazzled by the wealth of
Sanskrit mythological material, revived the solar theory, with a
peculiar appendage;[1526] the defects of his theory must not blind us to
the great service he performed in arousing interest in the comparative
study of myths and leading the way to a formulation of the conception of
the general history of religion. On another side the vast accumulation
of the religious ideas and usages of lower tribes led Herbert Spencer to
his euhemeristic view.[1527] Neither of these theories has seriously
affected the growth of the science of mythology.

+877+. A saner direction was given to investigation by the great
biological and sociological studies made in the second half of the
nineteenth century.[1528] E. B. Tylor definitely stated the view that
the origin of myths is to be found in all the ideas of early man. By a
very large collection of facts[1529] he showed that the same
representations that are familiar in Egyptian, Semitic, Hindu, Greek,
Roman, and other ancient myths occur also in the systems of
half-civilized and savage communities; and he pointed out how such
representations had their basis in the simple ideas of undeveloped men
and how their survival is to be traced through all periods of history.
This fruitful view has been illustrated and developed by later
writers,[1530]