like civilised people, are much more interested in making love, making war, making fun, and providing dinner, than in the phenomena of nature.[1] But in Sir George Cox's system of mythology the enormous majority of myths and of household tales are simply the reflections of the supposed absorbing and passionate early sympathy of savages with the processes of nature. For the existence to the necessary extent of that sympathy we find no evidence. In all ages men must have been more concerned about earthly gold and mortal young women than about the "dawn gold" or "the dawn maiden," yet in myths where gold or girls occur, Sir George sees the treasures of the light, or the radiant maiden of the morn. This is natural, while he is convinced that the makers of primary myths were so intensely absorbed in sympathy with clouds, and dew, and sunshine. But we ask again for sufficient evidence that these sentiments existed in a degree capable of exercising an exclusive influence on myths.
Turning from the theory of the primary to that of the secondary myths, we again note the absence of convincing testimony, or indeed of any valid testimony at all.
Primary myths arose, Sir George says, from thought; secondary myths from language. They came into existence because "a thousand phrases would be used to describe the action of the beneficent or consuming sun," and so forth, "and every word or phrase became the germ of a new story, as soon as the mind lost its hold on the original force of the name" (Myth. Ar. i. 42). This application of dozens of names and phrases to the same object is called Polyonymy by Mr. Max Müller, and the converse use of one name for a vast variety of
- ↑ Inferences drawn from the Vedas are not to the point,as the Vedas contain the elaborate hymns of an advanced society, not (except by way of survival) the ideas of early myth-makers.
