WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO GREEK MYTHOLOGY. 47 



hunting ground for the pleasant disport of an unfettered imagination. Dis- 

 coveries are easy to make in a region where plausibility so readily gains currency 

 for proof. 



XXIV. An important aid in the interpretation of myths will often be 

 supplied by the etymology of the names of the mythological personages ; and 

 in this way new deities will sometimes be found to have arisen from the mere 

 epithets of old ones, as Jacob Bryant saw clearly nearly 100 years ago ; nay, 

 even magnificent myths may at times be traced to no more sublime origin than 

 a false etymology which had taken possession of the popular ear. The signi- 

 ficance of divine names must, of course, be sought in the first place in the 

 language to which the mythology belongs ; but in applying this test, with 

 the view of obtaining any scientific result, great care must be taken to avoid 

 treating doubtful etymologies in the same way that certain ones may be treated. 

 For where the etymology is uncertain, that is, does not shine out plainly from 

 the face of the word (as in the case of the Harpies in Hesiod), then the elements 

 of doubt are often so many, that it is wiser to abstain altogether from this 

 aid, than to attempt founding any serious conclusions upon it. For, in the 

 first place, we may not have the word in its original form ; and, in the second 

 place, two or three etymologies may be equally probable. The best etymologies, 

 whatever Bryant, and Inman, and Max Muller may say to the contrary, 

 are only accessories of scientific mythological interpretation. 



XXV. If the mythological names have no significance in the language 

 to which they belong, then reference may be made to cognate languages ; 

 and in the case of European tongues, with propriety to the Eastern sources 

 from which they are demonstrably derived. But here a double caution is 

 necessary ; for accidental resemblances may be found in all languages, and 

 extensive learning, coupled with a vivid imagination, may readily supply the 

 most plausible foreign derivations, which are merely fanciful. 



XXVI. By referring to another, and it may be a more jDrimitive and ancient 

 language, for the etymological key to a religious myth of any people, we are 

 treading on historical ground extrinsic to the people with whose myths we may 

 be dealing. For comparative philology, like archaeology, recovers the earliest 

 history of a people before writing was known ; and this raises the inquiry, 

 whether a mythology which bears a foreign nomenclature on its face may not 

 convey foreign ideas in its soul — that is, to take an example, whether the 

 Greek mythology, if the names of its personages are more readily explained in 

 Hebrew or Sanscrit than in Greek, may not in respect of its ideas and legends 

 be more properly interpreted from original Hebrew or Sanscrit, than from native 



