THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGIONS. 157 



bring all the myths under a single process of formation is to pretend 

 to open all doors with the same key. There is no pass-key in my- 

 thology. 



We have still stronger reasons for being on our guard against see- 

 ing myths in everything. Our century has witnessed numerous at- 

 tempts to reduce, not only the great religious initiators, Moses, Jesus, 

 and Buddha, to myths, but all the persons who have played a consid- 

 erable part in the traditions of history, from Lycurgus to Charle- 

 magne. A sportive essay has even been made to show that Napoleon 

 I was a solar hero, and sustained by arguments the force of which is 

 hardly exceeded by their wit.* 



Even the knowledge that some students have of a particular relig- 

 ion may become a cause of errors. Every one has not the sure glance 

 and the fullness of information that have permitted Max Miiller to 

 study the origin of religions "in the light of the religions of India." 

 Read the captivating work on " The Science of Religions," by a writer 

 to whom the Sanskrit antiquities were a kind of family heritage, M. 

 ifimile Burnouf. The author sets out to show that *' the center from 

 which have radiated all the great religions of the earth, is the theory of 

 Agni, of which Jesus Chi'ist is the most complete incarnation." f This 

 theory, as it is laid down in the Vedas, is nothing else than the scien- 

 tific doctrine of the identity of the principle of fire and motion, of life 

 and thought. How does the author fill the gap between the Yedic 

 ages and that of the composition of the gospel of St. John ? He sup- 

 poses that this theory, formulated previously to the dispersion of the 

 Indo-Iranians, was transmitted by the Persians to the Jews in cap- 

 tivity at Babylon, and that Jesus, having received it from the latest 

 prophets, communicated it to his disciples, to be divulged only after 

 the formation of the Church. Is it necessary to stop to show that this 

 is simply a hierographic romance ? 



To still another category of preconceived ideas, calculated to falsify 

 the results of religious criticism, belong the preferences arising from 

 the isolated study of a single science. Such preferences give rise to a 

 natural predilection for the field of investigations we have chosen, and 

 to a tendency to refer to it all the problems we are called upon to re- 

 solve. Kow, when a student applies the processes of one science to 

 another, he runs a strong risk of erring on the one side by approach- 

 ing facts with an insufiicient method, and on the other by perceiving 

 only the phase corresponding to his order of habitual preoccupations. 

 I will draw my example from the two sciences which have perhaps 

 rendered the most service to the history of religions — linguistics and 

 anthropology. 



* This joke has been renewed by some students of Oxford, who have demonstrated, at 

 length and sagaciously, that Max Miiller never existed. (See the magazine " Melusine," 

 July 5, 1884.) 



f "La Science des Religions," Paris, 1S76, p. 259. 



