MYTO VYSOKE 



5616 



MZENSK 



and their stories lies, or a mere 

 parody of the facts preserved in 

 Holy Writ. At the revival of Learn- 

 ing the cudgels were taken up by 

 learned men on ...behalf of the 

 Greek mythology. In fact, even 

 during the Middle Ages, when the 

 gods of the heathen had ceased 

 to be serious competitors for belief 

 with the denizens of the Christian 

 Olympus, the theory that they 

 were devils proportionately weak- 

 ened, and men reverted to the ex- 

 planation that their stories were 

 parables, an explanation exploited 

 for the purpose of Christian instruc- 

 tion in the Oesta Romanorum and 

 other collections of tales. Bacon in 

 The Wisdom of the Ancients after 

 the Reformation attempted to 

 revive this method of exposition ; 

 but its difficulties were such that 

 no two interpreters agreed on the 

 same explanation. More recently 

 the Euhemeristic theory has been 

 taken up by Herbert Spencer, and 

 after him by Grant Allen in The 

 Evolution of the Idea of God, 1897. 

 It is relevant to observe that, if 

 every divinity were resolved into 

 the shade of a human being, the 

 problem of the origin and meaning 

 of the mythical tales told every 

 where on all sorts of themes would 

 remain as puzzling as ever. 



Interpretation of German School 



The adherents of another school 

 influential in the 19th century 

 sought the answer to the question 

 from philology. From Germany this 

 method of interpretation spread 

 wherever learned men expounded 

 philology. In England Max 

 Muller laid down " that the best 

 solvent of the old riddles of mytho- 

 logy is to be found in an etymolo- 

 gical analysis of the names of gods 

 and goddesses, heroes, and hero- 

 ines." Accordingly, he set himself to 

 investigate and interpret the names. 

 Philology as a scientific study was 

 the result of acquaintance with 

 Sanskrit, the eldest of the family 

 of Aryan tongues, and in the Rig- 

 veda, the earliest Sanskrit liter- 

 ature, the philological school of 

 mythologists thought they had 

 found the explanation of the names 

 and activities of the Aryan gods and 

 the meaning of Aryan mythology. 



Taking the Rigveda as his start- 

 ing-point. Max Muller tells us : 

 " The beginning of mythology 

 came from a poetical and philo- 

 sophical conception of nature and 

 its most prominent phenomena ; 

 or, if poetry and philosophy com- 

 bined may claim the name of re- 

 ligion, from a religious conception 

 of the universe." 



There are other elements taken 

 up into it as it developed, but this is 

 the beginning, the foundation. It 

 is discovered by an examination of 



the names and epithets of the gods 

 and of the deeds ascribed to them, 

 and then by equating the names 

 with names of gods and other words 

 in the sister tongues. Many of 

 these equations are contested ; it 

 is probably not going beyond the 

 facts to say that most of them are 

 quite uncertain. When the veda 

 was carefully examined, the myths 

 were practicably resolvable into 

 two : that of the conquest of the 

 darkness of night, and that of the 

 breaking of the prison of the rain. 



But the time came when people 

 could no longer accept the dog- 

 matism of the philologists. It be- 

 came incredible that the gods of 

 the Aryan-speaking nations (and 

 they were the only ones the philo- 

 logists seriously attempted to ex- 

 plain) were due to " a disease of 

 language," and one of the things 

 that made it incredible was the 

 wearisome monotone of the results. 

 Muller controverted by Lang 



Insurrection broke out first in 

 Germany, while in Great Britain the 

 researches and example of Tylor, 

 Lord Avebury, and J. F. Maclen- 

 nan had prepared the way. Andrew 

 Lang declared war in a number of 

 essays, culminating in Myth, Ritual 

 and Religion, published in 1887. 

 In those works he proved that the 

 irrationalities of Greek and Hindu 

 myths were phenomena common 

 to savage myths everywhere, and 

 that they arose out of a condition 

 of mind known to exist everywhere 

 among savages. He recognizes two 

 elements in all mythologies " the 

 factor we now regard as rational, 

 and that which we moderns re- 

 gard as irrational." 



The savage and the ancestors 

 of civilized people were on a par, 

 which means that the ancestors 

 of civilized people were once 

 savages, as even the Greeks 

 admitted. They endowed all ex- 

 ternal things with their own self- 

 consciousness. The lower animals, 

 trees, rocks, only differed from men 

 in shape, save that they were 

 often vastly stronger and vastly 

 cleverer. The savage knew not 

 the bounds of this cleverness ; 

 he had no standard save bis 

 imagination and his fears by which 

 to measure it. ' Naturally, there- 

 fore, his belief extended to the 

 grotesque and the impossible. 

 Shape-shifting was accepted as a 

 matter of course. The super- 

 human personages of his imagin- 

 ation wore the shape of beasts, 

 either permanently or at will. 



In the lower culture everywhere 

 many men believe themselves 

 possessed of extraordinary powers ; 

 and all men, if they do not believe 

 it of themselves, believe it of some. 

 Nay, they believe that, if not 



themselves magicians, at least they 

 can by means of word and rite 

 appropriate and exercise many 

 extraordinary powers ; they can 

 work their will by spell or amulet. 

 The gods and heroes are endowed 

 with the passions of men, with the 

 powers attributed to at all events 

 some men ; but both passions and 

 powers are idealised and magni- 

 fied indefinitely. 



Not that these are the sole ele- 

 ments of which myths are made. 

 They are merely the groundwork of 

 mythology they, and not hyper- 

 boles of poets, disease of language, 

 misinterpretation of current ex- 

 pressions. Such causes perhaps 

 play their part too ; but it is a 

 small one. Other subordinate 

 causes are distorted or imperfect 

 recollections of facts, the cluster of 

 traditions about a great name, the 

 complications of organized society, 

 and the abiding aetiological im- 

 pulse which we strive laboriously 

 to satisfy by methodical scientific 

 inquiry, but which in that child- 

 like condition is stayed by a tale. 



Lang's work had an immediate 

 and profound effect. In Britain 

 at all events the philological theory 

 of mythology was killed. The 

 anthropological method, which ex- 

 plains mythology not by a disease 

 of language, but by the universal 

 characteristics of the mental con- 

 dition of the lower culture, was 

 accepted by all serious students. 



Bibliography. The Mythology of 

 the Aryan Nations, 2 vols., G. W. 

 Cox, 1870 ; Zoological Mythology, 

 2 vols., A. de Gubernatis, 1872 ; 

 Custom and Myth, 1884 . Modern 

 Mythology, 1897 ; Myth, Ritual, and 

 Religion, 2 vols., new ed. 1899, A. 

 Lang ; Introduction to the Science 

 of Religion, new ed. 1882 ; Anthro- 

 pological Religion, 1892 ; Con- 

 tributions to the Science of Mytho- 

 logy, 2 vols., 1897 ; Chips from a 

 German Workshop, 4 vols., new ed. 

 1898-1902, F. Max Muller ; The 

 Golden Bough, 12 vols., J. G. 

 Frazer, new ed. 1907-15. 



Myto Vysok6. Dist. and town 

 in the Bohemian portion of the 

 republic of Czecho-Slovakia. The 

 town is 91 m. by rail E. of 

 Prague, and is an important road 

 junction on the route which fol- 

 lows the valleys parallel with the 

 Sudetes mts. Pop. dist., 45,000; 

 town, 9,500. 



Myxoedema (Gr. myxa, mucus ; 

 oedema, swelling). Disorder due to 

 diminution or loss of function of the 

 thyroid gland, an organ situated 

 hi the front of the lower part of the 

 neck. It is more common among 

 women than men. See Cretinism. 



Mzensk OR MTSENSK. Town 

 of Central Russia. It is in the 

 government, and 30 m. N.E., of 

 Orel, on the river Zusha and the 

 Moscow-Kursk railway. Pop. 15,000. 



