ction could
only work the most hopeless confusion. One of the earliest lessons to be
learned by the scientific student of linguistics is the uselessness of
comparing together directly the words contained in derivative languages.
For example, you might set the English twelve side by side with the
Latin duodecim, and then stare at the two words to all eternity without
any hope of reaching a conclusion, good or bad, about either of them:
least of all would you suspect that they are descended from the same
radical. But if you take each word by itself and trace it back to its
primitive shape, explaining every change of every letter as you go, you
will at last reach the old Aryan dvadakan, which is the parent of both
these strangely metamorphosed words. [130] Nor will it do, on the other
hand, to trust to verbal similarity without a historical inquiry into
the origin of such similarity. Even in the same language two words of
quite different origin may get their corners rubbed off till they look
as like one another as two pebbles. The French words souris, a "mouse,"
and souris, a "smile," are spelled exactly alike; but the one comes from
Latin sorex and the other from Latin subridere.

Now Max Muller tells us that this principle, which is indispensable
in the study of words, is equally indispensable in the study of myths.
[131] That is, you must not rashly pronounce the Norse story of the
Heartless Giant identical with the Hindu story of Punchkin, although the
two correspond in every essential incident. In both legends a magician
turns several members of the same family into stone; the youngest member
of the family comes to the rescue, and on the way saves the lives of
sundry grateful beasts; arrived at the magician's castle, he finds
a captive princess ready to accept his love and to play the part of
Delilah to the enchanter. In both stories the enchanter's life
depends on the integrity of something which is elaborately hidden in
a far-distant island, but which the fortunate youth, instructed by
the artful princess and assisted by his menagerie of grateful beasts,
succeeds in obtaining. In both stories the youth uses his advantage
to free all his friends from their enchantment, and then proceeds to
destroy the villain who wrought all this wickedness. Yet, in spite of
this agreement, Max Muller, if I understand him aright, would not have
us infer the identity of the two stories until we have taken each
one separately and ascer