Nov. 16, 1883.] 



KNOWLEDGE 



299 



to the manager of the hotel (where I expected to be the 

 same day), " Important letter posted Tuesday not yet 

 received " (Thursday) ; " see if in your letter-box," etc. 

 This was misunderstood, and reply came, " Large packet 

 of letters received ; am forwarding it and other letters 

 by 12.40 train." My reply to hold letters till I came 

 was just in time to prevent a number of Knowledge 

 letters from being sent on a useless journey, which would 

 liave considerably delayed my work with them. The 

 way in which the letter had miscarried was rather strange. 

 I had written a little note on the corner telling the person 

 to whom the letter was sent what my address would lie the 

 following day ; and some foolish clerk had carefully sent 

 the letter, not to the address written staringly across the 

 envelope, but to the address appearing as part of this little 

 corner note. (It is hardly necessary to say that after this 

 foolish blunder and the annoyance caused by it all round, an 

 extra charge was made when the letter was delivered.) 

 Here the coincidence consisted in the odd and almost incon- 

 ceivable stupidity of the post-ofEce people on the one hand 

 and on the other in the circumstances which made it ante- 

 cedently likely that the mistake arose at the hotel. Then 

 the misinterpretation of my telegram came to complete the 

 cross-purposes. In this case there was really a warning. 

 For it made me tremble (with two r's) to think what would 

 have happened if my editorial letter to the printers with 

 make-up, proofs, <S;c., ifec, were at any time to be similarly 

 interrupted in transit. 



However this was not quite the end. After sending off 

 the second telegram, I was on my way from Malvern to 

 Birmingham where I expected to be at 4.47. Changing at 

 Worcester I had bestowed myself in a first-class through 

 carriage for Birmingham. Now, grant the following con- 

 ditions, and consider the infinitesimal minuteness of the 

 chance of my not reaching Birmingham by that train : — 

 First, I am alone in a first-class carriage ; secondly, the 

 carriage is really a through one for Birmingham ; thirdly, 

 no accident occurs ; fourthly, no occasion arises for me to 

 leave my seat ; hut — here are the elements out of which 

 disturbance is to be produced — fifthly, tn-o first-class 

 passengers are at Bromsgrove (where we get 21 minutes 

 after leaving Worcester) intending to go to Derby ; one 

 second-class passenger is alone in a rear carriage of the 

 train I am in ; that rear carriage is badly attached ; at 

 Barnet Green there is an excitable station-master ; and 

 finally in our train there is a stolid guard. Can thesf 

 elements be so combined as to cause me to be delayed 

 at Birmingham, and so to lose certain opportunities for 

 work, on which I had counted \ They could, unlikely 

 though it may seem : and as a matter of fact they 

 did. The two firsl^class passengers get by mistake 

 into a Birmingham carriage ; the second - class pas- 

 senger, lieing alarmed by the swaying of liis carriage, gets 

 into mine ; a telegram is sent to 13arnet Green " two first- 

 class passengers for Derby in the Birmingham train ; " 

 excitable station-master there says to stolid guard, " Find 

 two first-class passengers for Birminfihnm (sir) and put into 

 forward carriage ; " stolid guard though knowing (it ap- 

 pears later) that the forward carriage is 7wl going to Bir- 

 mingham, nevertheless does what he is told. I and 

 unfortunate fellow-passenger (who is going up to Bir 

 niinghara to get ten minutes' talk with a friend who leaves 

 at 5.10) are busily bundled into the wrong carriage; and 

 at the next station are informed liy stolid guard that it 

 does not go to Birmingham. 1 am left to kick my heels 

 till a train arrives which will take me to Birmingham ; 

 and unfortunate passenger takes the next train back to 

 Worcester. What were the clianccs that these things, 

 imless specially planned, would have come oil' so strangely ? 



If it had so chanced that either the carriage I got out of 

 or the one I got into had been smashed up in a railway 

 accident, what view ought I to have taken of the escape in 

 the one case or the mishap in the other 1 When I was 

 injured in a railway accident last July it happened by a 

 singular chance that my wife, who with some relatives had 

 been travelling with me up to the previous evening, was for 

 a few hours not in my company, but was to have joined me 

 at Bishopstoke; into which place my train was running when 

 the collision took place. If I regard it as a lucky chance, 

 which assuredly I do, that she was not just then with me, 

 how am I to view the unlucky chance for me that just then 

 I was not with herl A thought of that sort always suggests 

 itself to me when I hear expressions of special thankfulness 

 for escape where others have suflered. Logically one 

 cannot assert special favour in one set of cases without 

 asserting special disfavour in the others. I suppose, indeed, 

 it is thus that persons who (being of unscientific turn of 

 mind) have no idea of causation, recognise special judgments 

 when some striking accident happens, deeming that those 

 destroyed must needs have sinned in some way beyond 

 other men, — an idea still commonly entertained though so 

 strongly rebuked wlien propounded in the case of the Tower 

 of Siloam. Even more unreasonable is the idea that though 

 most of the men, women, and children, who perish in some 

 great disaster — like the destruction of the Friucess Alice 

 for example — were no worse than their fellows, the disaster 

 was specially sent to punish some national shortcoming, 

 for which they were the scapegoats. Here is the veritable 

 Oriental idea of Deity, as originally conceived by those 

 who knew and reverenced only one form of power, that of 

 the Sultan or Caliph, who, when offended, deems it good 

 policy to punish the offender's kindred, however innocent 

 of offence. 



THE BIRTH AND GROWTH OF MYTH. 



By Edward Clodd. 

 X X. — C O N C L U S I O X. 



THE serial form of publication has its advantages in 

 these runand-read days in compelling the writer to 

 pack his thoughts closely together, but it has its disad- 

 vantages in breaking their sequence, and compelling the 

 reader to turn to back numbers for the missing links. 



The multitude of subjects traversed in these chapters 

 compelled presentment in so concise a form that any 

 attempt to gather into a few sentences the sum of things said 

 would be as a digest of a digest, and it is, therefore, better 

 to briefly emphasise the conclusions to which the gathered 

 evidence points. It was remarked at the outset, when 

 laying stress on the serious meaning which lies at the 

 heart of myths, that they have their origin in the endeavour 

 of barbaric man to explain his surroundings. The mass 

 of fact brought together illustrates and confirms this view, 

 and has thereby tended to raise what was once looked upon 

 as fantastic, curious, and lawless, to the level of a subject 

 demanding sober treatment and examination on strictly 

 scientific methods. 



Archbishop Trench, in his "Study of Words," quotes 

 Emerson's happy characterisation of language as fossil 

 poetry and fossil history : "Just as in some fossil, curious 

 and beautiful shapes of vegetable or animal life, the grace- 

 ful fern, or the finely-vertebratcd lizard, such as have been 

 extinct for thousands of years, are permanently bound up 

 with the stone, so in words are beautiful thoughts and 

 images, the imagination and the feeling of past ages, of 

 men long since in their graves, of men whose very names 



