THE ORIGINS OF MYTHOLOGY.
By J. S. STUART-GLENNIE, M.A.
I must first thank the organisers of the Congress for generously giving me an opportunity to state certain conclusions and hypotheses which are, I believe, opposed to those generally held by folk-lorists. It is, indeed, just because of this opposition, that I value the opportunity now given to me. For I am most deeply sensible of how much is still wanting to make of my suggested hypotheses, verified hypotheses, and so to transform them into theories properly so called; and I cannot but hope that, in the criticism with which my hypotheses may be honoured, much will be said which will aid me in somewhat more nearly approximating to that accordance of Thought with Things which alone is Truth, and which alone is the aim of scientific research. But if I have been led to views opposed to those which have been so ably set forth by one of the most honoured members of the Folk-lore Society, Dr. Edward Tylor, let me bespeak your patience by saying that, on one main point of my hypothesis, I can support myself by an anticipation of it by Dr. Tylor himself. "It does not seem", said Dr. Tylor in his earlier Researches,[1] "to be an unreasonable or even an over-sanguine view that the mass of analogies in art and knowledge, mythology, and custom may already be taken to indicate that the Civilisations of many races have derived common material from a common source." This, however, was written nearly thirty years ago. And considering the available facts at that time. Dr. Tylor showed no more than due scientific caution in adding—"But that such lines of argument should ever enable the student to infer that the civilisation of the whole world has
- ↑ P. 368.
