The Project Gutenberg eBook, Modern Mythology, by Andrew Lang

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Title: Modern Mythology

Author: Andrew Lang

Release Date: January 3, 2005 [eBook #14576]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MODERN MYTHOLOGY***

Transcribed from the 1897 Longmans, Green, and Co. edition by David
Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk

MODERN MYTHOLOGY

DEDICATION

Dedicated to the memory of John Fergus McLennan.

INTRODUCTION

It may well be doubted whether works of controversy serve any useful
purpose. 'On an opponent,' as Mr. Matthew Arnold said, 'one never does
make any impression,' though one may hope that controversy sometimes
illuminates a topic in the eyes of impartial readers. The pages which
follow cannot but seem wandering and desultory, for they are a reply to a
book, Mr. Max Muller's Contributions to the Science of Mythology, in
which the attack is of a skirmishing character. Throughout more than
eight hundred pages the learned author keeps up an irregular fire at the
ideas and methods of the anthropological school of mythologists. The
reply must follow the lines of attack.

Criticism cannot dictate to an author how he shall write his own book.
Yet anthropologists and folk-lorists, 'agriologists' and 'Hottentotic'
students, must regret that Mr. Max Muller did not state their general
theory, as he understands it, fully and once for all. Adversaries rarely
succeed in quite understanding each other; but had Mr. Max Muller made
such a statement, we could have cleared up anything in our position which
might seem to him obscure.

Our system is but one aspect of the theory of evolution, or is but the
application of that theory to the topic of mythology. The archaeologist
studies human life in its material remains; he tracks progress (and
occasional degeneration) from the rudely chipped flints in the ancient
gravel beds, to the polished stone weapon, and thence to the ages of
bronze and iron. He is guided by material 'survivals'--ancient arms,
implements, and ornaments. The student of Institutions has a similar
method. He finds his relics of the uncivilis