MYSTICISM 



MYTHOLOGY 



371 



ished more or less at different periods in most 

 religions li.y individuals or groups : the essential 

 element being the effort to attain to direct and 

 immediate communion with God or the divine. 

 The tendency appears in the Mysteries (<).v.) of 

 the Greeks, but is more marked in Buddhism, in 

 various Hindu sects, in Sufism, and is the most 

 prominent feature in Neoplatonism and some of 

 the Gnostic systems. But it is more especially to 

 Christian writers of the middle ages that the name 

 of mystics is wont to be given, one of the earliest 

 being Dionysius the Areopa<nte, followed by Scotus 

 Erigena ; and this mode of thought or inood of 

 mind developed itself specially in opposition to the 

 dry, cold, rationalistic formalism of scholastic theo- 

 logy. Among the great Catholic mystics are Bernard 

 of Clairvaux ; his contemporaries the Victorines 



Hugo, Richard, and Walter of St Victor near 

 Paris; Bonaventura; John of Clmr (died 1380); 

 and Thomas a Kempis. The German mystics are 

 specially Meister Eckhart, Suso, Tauler, Ruys- 

 broeck. Al>errant or fanatical forms are found 

 amongst the Fraticelli, Beghards, Beguines, the 

 Brethren of the Free Spirit, the Brethren of the 

 Common Life (to whom Thomas a Kempis be- 

 longed), and the AnalwiptistB. Less theological 

 ana more philosophical are Paracelsus, Bruno, 

 Campanella, Jacob Boehme, Schelling, and Swed- 

 enborg. In England William Law is a conspicuous 

 example ; and some of the Cambridge Platonists 

 like Henry More were to some extent mystical in 

 their religious teaching. Millenarianism has pro- 

 duced several types ; trom Jansenism sprang the 

 Convulsionaries. In modern Catholicism St Ther- 

 esa, Fenelon, Madame GIIVOII, Molinos, the Quiet- 

 UN, and liourignon may 1 specially mentioned. 

 _M'i-t of them are discussed in separate articles. 



See HOEHME, ECKHART, &<x, in this work ; also 

 ILLIJJUNATI, KOSICI'.UCIANS, THEOSOPHY ; Vaughan, 

 Hourt with the Af,i*lict (1850: 3d ed. 1H80); Du Prel, 

 The Pkilotophyof Mytticitm (trans, hy Masscy, 1W.M ; 

 ami German works on tiie subject by Giirrea (IWti), 

 Helfferich ( 184J ), Noack ( 1853 ), Preger ( 1881 ). 



Mythology. -^ myth is a story told about 

 gorls or heroe-. Mythology is a term sometimes 

 applied to the collected myths of a nation, some- 

 times to the scientitic study of myths. Myth- 

 ology in the latter sense of the term has for its 

 object not to ascertain why men Iwlieve in gods 

 that is rather the business of the science of religion 



but, granted the lielief, why men tell these (some- 

 times extraordinary) stories about them. The 

 first nation to busy itself with this enquiry was the 

 nation whose mythology had the most luxuriant 

 development, the Greeks. From very early times 

 they started their enquiry with the assumption 

 that there must be something behind the myths as 

 known to them that there was some meaning in a 

 myth. Thus far, they were as regards most myths 

 quite right. The mistake, however, which the 

 Greek philosophers who undertook to recover the 

 original meaning of various myths made was that 

 they imagined the authors o( these myths to be, 

 like themselves, philotopbcn. In other words, they 

 imagined that not only was there a meaning con- 

 cealed behind myths, but that that meaning had 



intentionally concealed, and that myths were 



the vehicles by which philosophical teaching had 

 been originally conveyed, and in which it might 

 still be detected. Myth was identifier! with alle- 

 gory. The particular branch of philosophy sup- 

 posed to be veiled bv mythology depended on the 

 taste of the particular mytliologist. Anaxajjoras 

 discovered psychological teaching behind the veil ; 

 Empedocles found his own theory of the four 

 elements capable of being stated in terms of myth- 

 ology ( s ,.,. I'.Mi'Kixici.ES), and he thus effected the 

 first reconciliation between science and relijjion. 



And speaking generally, we may say that from that 

 day to this the magic mirror of mythology has never 

 failed to show to every enquirer that which he 

 wished to see in it. The next attempt at inter- 

 pretation, which also proceeded from Greece, was 

 to strip myth of all that was supernatural and 

 affirm the residuum to lie history (see EUHEMERISM, 

 to which article it is only necessary here to add that 

 in the opinion of Gruppe, in Die yriecltischen Culte 

 vndMythen (vol. i. 1887 ), the work of Euhemerus was 

 not intended as an explanation of mythology, though 

 it was subsequently regarded as such, but was a 

 romance of much the same character as some of 

 Lucian's work or Gulliver's Travels). It is interest- 

 ing to note that in India an independent attempt was 

 made by the Aitihasika school to explain the myth- 

 ology of the Vedas as history clothed in the garb of 

 the supernatural. The two modes of interpretation 

 already descrited the allegorical and the Euhem- 

 eristic continued to be the only methods applied 

 throughout Roman and Christian times to the 

 present century, nor can they be said to be wholly 

 extinct even now. At Rome the Stoics, develop- 

 ing systematically what had been rather suggested 

 than definitely formulated by Empedocles, endeav- 

 oured to explain all myths as but allegorical 

 descriptions of physical facts. They failed, how- 

 ever, to explain just those myths which most 

 required explanation, the immoral, brutal, and 

 !>estial myths, for examples of which we may refer 

 to Vol. V. p. 385 of this work. Their failure wa 

 the more remarkable inasmuch as in India the 

 same key had been applied by the native gram- 

 marians with considerable apparent success : but 

 we must remember that the science of grammar 

 had been already carried to. great perfection in 

 India, and that some of the mythological figures 

 in the Vedas have names which are much more 

 obviously names of nature-powers than is the case 

 in Greek mythology. For instances of native 

 Indian interpretations we may refer to Max- 

 Miiller's History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, p. 

 529. Inadequate as was the allegorical interpreta- 

 tion of myth, it continued to enjoy an undisputed 

 mastery of the field of investigation in Europe for 

 many centuries. But, as it was sterile to the end, 

 we need here only mention the fact that the latest 

 and most learned form in which it appeared was 

 the Symbolik vnd Mythologie der alien Votker of 

 Creuzer (q.v.), published 1810-12. The effect of 

 the publication of this work was to overthrow the 

 mode of interpretation which it was designed to 

 prove and illustrate. It led to a thorough investi- 

 gation of the assumptions on which the allegory 

 theory was based ; and an era in the history of 

 mythology as a science is marked by the demon- 

 stration given by Lobeck in his Aglaophamus 

 (1829), of the utter untenability of these assump- 

 tions. What is implied in any theory which 

 explains myths as truths conveyed in the form of 

 allegories is the existence of a caste or class of 

 priests or philosophers, possessing a recondite 

 knowledge and teaching it by means of parables. 

 Now the existence of such a class or caste is a 

 matter which requires to be proved, and of which 

 the proof must satisfy the canons of historical 

 criticism. And it may safely be said that there is 

 alwolutely no evidence whatever to show that such 

 a class ever existed amongst the Greeks or any 

 other Indo-Germanic nation. 



The establishment of this negative conclusion 

 by Lobeck paved the way for the next step 

 forward in the science of mythology. Scholars had 

 hitherto assumed that the authors of myths were 

 men of learning, philosophers. After the exposure 

 of this error, the next step was to recognise 

 the necessity not only of throwing aside our 

 modern, civilised, artificial ideas, but also of 



