WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO GREEK MYTHOLOGY. 49 



not seldom an altogether hopeless task. In this respect the recognition of the 

 original identity of different words in cognate languages by comparative 

 philology is a much more safe and scientific process than a similar recognition 

 of the identity of different persons of two Pantheons through the shifting masks 

 < >f comparative mythology. 



(3.) That the principal relations under which the great objects of nature, 

 such as the sky, the sun, the sea, &c, may appear, when subjected to the process 

 of imaginative impersonation, are in many cases so obvious that two different 

 polytheistic peoples may easily hit upon them without any historical connection. 

 Even in the free exercise of poetical talent in the case of individual poets of 

 highly potentiated imagination, we constantly stumble on comparisons which 

 have been made independently by other poets at other times or in distant 

 countries, and which superficial critics are sometimes eager to fasten on as 

 plagiarisms ; much more, in the vulgar exercise of the imagination, by the mass 

 of the people on certain given natural objects may we expect frequent instances 

 of coincidence without connection. This consideration will restrain a prudent 

 investigator in this department from building any theory of foreign origin of 

 myths on a few points of natural similarity. 



Taking these cautions along with us, we now observe, in reference to the 

 probable Eastern origin of certain Greek myths — 



XXVIII. That the borrowing of one nation from another in the province of 

 mythological ideas, as in the case of philological materials, may take place in a 

 twofold fashion, either in the way of original descent from a common stock, far 

 back in the cradle of the race, or by importation through the medium of com- 

 merce or great religious revolutions and invasions. Of these two methods of 

 borrowing, it is impossible to say, a priori, which promises the greater amount 

 of gain to the adventurous inquirer ; for, while the advantage of greater close- 

 ness belonging to the original identity of stock may be in a great measure 

 neutralised by the distance of time and place, and the changes which they 

 induce, the disadvantage of a more loose connection which belongs to the foreign 

 importer may be amply compensated by the firm hold which the commerce, and 

 polity, and intelligence of a superior people may take of an inferior people. 



XXIX. It must be borne in mind, also, that the recognition of a supposed 

 identity between the gods of any two polytheistic peoples may easily take place 

 without any real borrowing. For the desire of harmonising and classifying dis- 

 cordant phenomena, which belongs to the very nature of intellectual action, is 

 particularly displayed in the field of popular religion — to such an extent, indeed, 

 that it became a fixed habit of the Greek and Roman mind to identify the 

 deities of foreign countries with their own native deities by certain signs more 



VOL. XXVI. PART I. N 



