Modern Mythology

Origin of Fetishes

If so, tant pis pour monsieur le President. But how does the unscientific conduct attributed to De Brosses implicate the modern anthropologist? Do we not try to find out, and really succeed sometimes in finding out, why a savage cherishes this or that scrap as a ‘fetish’? I give a string of explanations in Custom and Myth (pp. 229-230). Sometimes the so-called fetish had an accidental, which was taken to be a causal, connection with a stroke of good luck. Sometimes the thing – an odd-shaped stone, say – had a superficial resemblance to a desirable object, and so was thought likely to aid in the acquisition of such objects by ‘sympathetic magic.’ 122

Other ‘fetishes’ are revealed in dreams, or by ghosts, or by spirits appearing in semblance of animals. 123

‘Telekinetic’ Origin of Fetishism

As I write comes in Mélusine, viii. 7, with an essay by M. Lefébure on Les Origines du Fétichisme. He derives some fetishistic practices from what the Melanesians call Mana, which, says Mr. Max Müller, ‘may often be rendered by supernatural or magic power, present in an individual, a stone, or in formulas or charms’ (i. 294). How, asks Mr. Lefébure, did men come to attribute this vis vivida to persons and things? Because, in fact, he says, such an unexplored force does really exist and display itself. He then cites Mr. Crookes’ observations on scientifically registered ‘telekinetic’ performances by Daniel Dunglas Home, he cites Despine on Madame Schmitz-Baud, 124 with examples from Dr. Tylor, P. de la Rissachère, Dr. Gibier, 125 and other authorities, good or bad. Grouping, then, his facts under the dubious title of le magnétisme, M. Lefébure finds in savage observation of such facts ‘the chief cause of fetishism.’

Some of M. Lefébure’s ‘facts’ (of objects moving untouched) were certainly frauds, like the tricks of Eusapia. But, even if all the facts recorded were frauds, such impostures, performed by savage conjurers, who certainly profess 126 to produce the phenomena, might originate, or help to originate, the respect paid to ‘fetishes’ and the belief in Mana. But probably Major Ellis’s researches into the religion of the Tshi-speaking races throw most light on the real ideas of African fetishists. The subject is vast and complex. I am content to show that, whatever De Brosses did, we do not abandon a search for the motives of the savage fetishist. Indeed, De Brosses himself did seek and find at least one African motive, ‘The conjurers (jongleurs) persuade them that little instruments in their possession are endowed with a living spirit.’ So far, fetishism is spiritualism.

Civilised ‘Fetishism’

De Brosses did not look among civilised fetishists for the motives which he neglected among savages (i. 196). Tant pis pour monsieur le Président. But we and our method no more stand or fall with De Brosses and his, than Mr. Max Müller’s etymologies stand or fall with those in the Cratylus of Plato. If, in a civilised people, ancient or modern, we find a practice vaguely styled ‘fetishistic,’ we examine it in its details. While we have talismans, amulets, gamblers’ fétiches, I do not think that, except among some children, we have anything nearly analogous to Gold Coast fetishism as a whole. Some one seems to have called the palladium a fetish. I don’t exactly know what the palladium (called a fetish by somebody) was. The hasta fetialis has been styled a fetish – an apparent abuse of language. As to the Holy Cross qua fetish, why discuss such free-thinking credulities?

Modern anthropologists – Tylor, Frazer, and the rest – are not under the censure appropriate to the illogical.

More Mischiefs of Comparison

The ‘Nemesis’ (i. 196) of De Brosses’ errors did not stay in her ravaging progress. Fetishism was represented as ‘the very beginning of religion,’ first among the negroes, then among all races. As I, for one, persistently proclaim that the beginning of religion is an inscrutable mystery, the Nemesis has somehow left me scatheless, propitiated by my piety. I said, long ago, ‘the train of ideas which leads man to believe in and to treasure fetishes is one among the earliest springs of religious belief.’ 127 But from even this rather guarded statement I withdraw. ‘No man can watch the idea of GOD in the making or in the beginning.’ 128

Still more Nemesis

The new Nemesis is really that which I have just put far from me – namely, that ‘modern savages represent everywhere the Eocene stratum of religion.’ They probably represent an early stage in religion, just as, teste. Mr. Max Müller, they represent an early stage in language ‘In savage languages we see what we can no longer expect to see even in the most ancient Sanskrit or Hebrew. We watch the childhood of language, with all its childish pranks.’ 129

Now, if the tongues spoken by modern savages represent the ‘childhood’ and ‘childish pranks’ of language, why should the beliefs of modern savages not represent the childhood and childish pranks of religion? I am not here averring that they do so, nor even that Mr. Max Müller is right in his remark on language. The Australian blacks have been men as long as the Prussian nobility. Their language has had time to outgrow ‘childish pranks,’ but apparently it has not made use of its opportunities, according to our critic. Does he know why?

One need not reply to the charge that anthropologists, if they are meant, regard modern savages ‘as just evolved from the earth, or the sky,’ or from monkeys (i. 197). ‘Savages have a far-stretching unknown history behind them.’ ‘The past of savages, I say, must have been a long past.’ 130 So, once more, the Nemesis of De Brosses fails to touch me – and, of course, to touch more learned anthropologists.

There is yet another Nemesis – the postulate that Aryans and Semites, or rather their ancestors, must have passed through the savage state. Dr. Tylor writes: – ‘So far as history is to be our criterion, progression is primary and degradation secondary. Culture must be gained before it can be lost.’ Now a person who has not gained what Dr. Tylor calls ‘culture’ (not in Mr. Arnold’s sense) is a man without tools, instruments, or clothes. He is certainly, so far, like a savage; is very much lower in ‘culture’ than any race with which we are acquainted. As a matter of hypothesis, anyone may say that man was born ‘with everything handsome about him.’ He has then to account for the savage elements in Greek myth and rite.

For Us or Against Us?

We now hear that the worst and last penalty paid for De Brosses’ audacious comparison of savage with civilised superstitions is the postulate that Aryan and Semitic peoples have passed through a stage of savagery. ‘However different the languages, customs and myths, the colour and the skulls of these modern savages might be from those of Aryan and Semitic people, the latter must once have passed through the same stage, must once have been what the negroes of the West Coast of Africa are to-day. This postulate has not been, and, according to its very nature, cannot be proved. But the mischief done by acting on such postulates is still going on, and in several cases it has come to this – that what in historical religions, such as our own, is known to be the most modern, the very last outcome, namely, the worship of relics or a belief in amulets, has been represented as the first necessary step in the evolution of all religions’ (i. 197).

I really do not know who says that the prehistoric ancestors of Aryans and Semites were once in the same stage as the ‘negroes of the West Coast of Africa are to-day.’ These honest fellows are well acquainted with coined money, with the use of firearms, and other resources of civilisation, and have been in touch with missionaries, Miss Kingsley, traders, and tourists. The ancestors of the Aryans and Semites enjoyed no such advantages. Mr. Max Müller does not tell us who says that they did. But that the ancestors of all mankind passed through a stage in which they had to develop for themselves tools, languages, clothes, and institutions, is assuredly the belief of anthropologists. A race without tools, language, clothes, pottery, and social institutions, or with these in the shape of undeveloped speech, stone knives, and ’possum or other skins, is what we call a race of savages. Such we believe the ancestors of mankind to have been – at any rate after the Fall.

Now when Mr. Max Müller began to write his book, he accepted this postulate of anthropology (i. 15). When he reached i. 197 he abandoned and denounced this postulate.

I quote his acceptance of the postulate (i. 15): —

‘Even Mr. A. Lang has to admit that we have not got much beyond Fontenelle, when he wrote in the last century:

‘“Why are the legends [myths] about men, beasts, and gods so wildly incredible and revolting?.. The answer is that the earliest men were in a state of almost inconceivable ignorance and savagery, and that the Greeks inherited their myths from people in the same savage stage (en un pareil état de sauvagerie). Look at the Kaffirs and Iroquois if you want to know what the earliest men were like, and remember that the very Iroquois and Kaffirs have a long past behind them”’ – that is to say, are polite and cultivated compared to the earliest men of all.

Here is an uncompromising statement by Fontenelle of the postulate that the Greeks (an Aryan people) must have passed through the same stage as modern savages – Kaffirs and Iroquois – now occupy. But (i. 15) Mr. Max Müller eagerly accepts the postulate: —

‘There is not a word of Fontenelle’s to which I should not gladly subscribe; there is no advice of his which I have not tried to follow in all my attempts to explain the myths of India and Greece by an occasional reference to Polynesian or African folklore.’

Well, if Mr. Max Müller ‘gladly subscribes,’ in p. 15, to the postulate of an original universal stage of savagery, whence civilised races inherit their incredibly repulsive myths, why, in pp. 197, 198, does he denounce that very postulate as not proven, not capable of being proved, very mischievous, and one of the evils resulting from our method of comparing savage and civilised rites and beliefs? I must be permitted to complain that I do not know which is Mr. Max Müller’s real opinion – that given with such hearty conviction in p. 15, or that stated with no less earnestness in pp. 197, 198. I trust that I shall not be thought to magnify a mere slip of the pen. Both passages – though, as far as I can see, self-contradictory – appear to be written with the same absence of levity. Fontenelle, I own, speaks of Greeks, not Semites, as being originally savages. But I pointed out 131 that he considered it safer to ‘hedge’ by making an exception of the Israelites. There is really nothing in Genesis against the contention that the naked, tool-less, mean, and frivolous Adam was a savage.

The Fallacy of ‘Admits’

As the purpose of this essay is mainly logical, I may point out the existence of a fallacy not marked, I think, in handbooks of Logic. This is the fallacy of saying that an opponent ‘admits’ what, on the contrary, he has been the first to point out and proclaim. He is thus suggested into an attitude which is the reverse of his own. Some one – I am sorry to say that I forget who he was – showed me that Fontenelle, in De l’Origine des Fables, 132 briefly stated the anthropological theory of the origin of myths, or at least of that repulsive element in them which ‘makes mythology mythological,’ as Mr. Max Müller says. I was glad to have a predecessor in a past less remote than that of Eusebius of Cæsarea. ‘A briefer and better system of mythology,’ I wrote, ‘could not be devised; but the Mr. Casaubons of this world have neglected it, and even now it is beyond their comprehension.’ 133 To say this in this manner is not to ‘admit that we have not got much beyond Fontenelle.’ I do not want to get beyond Fontenelle. I want to go back to his ‘forgotten common-sense,’ and to apply his ideas with method and criticism to a range of materials which he did not possess or did not investigate.

Now, on p. 15, Mr. Max Müller had got as far as accepting Fontenelle; on pp. 197, 198 he burns, as it were, that to which he had ‘gladly subscribed.’

Conclusion as to our Method

All this discussion of fetishes arose out of our author’s selection of the subject as an example of the viciousness of our method. He would not permit us ‘simply to place side by side’ savage and Greek myths and customs, because it did harm (i. 195); and the harm done was proved by the Nemesis of De Brosses. Now, first, a method may be a good method, yet may be badly applied. Secondly, I have shown that the Nemesis does not attach to all of us modern anthropologists. Thirdly, I have proved (unless I am under some misapprehension, which I vainly attempt to detect, and for which, if it exists, I apologise humbly) that Mr. Max Müller, on p. 15, accepts the doctrine which he denounces on p. 197. 134 Again, I am entirely at one with Mr. Max Müller when he says (p. 210) ‘we have as yet really no scientific treatment of Shamanism.’ This is a pressing need, but probably a physician alone could do the work – a physician doublé with a psychologist. See, however, the excellent pages in Dr. Tylor’s Primitive Culture, and in Mr. William James’s Principles of Psychology, on ‘Mediumship.’

THE RIDDLE THEORY

What the Philological Theory Needs

The great desideratum of the philological method is a proof that the ‘Disease of Language,’ ex hypothesi the most fertile source of myths, is a vera causa. Do simple poetical phrases, descriptive of heavenly phenomena, remain current in the popular mouth after the meanings of appellatives (Bright One, Dark One, &c.) have been forgotten, so that these appellatives become proper names – Apollo, Daphne, &c.? Mr. Max Müller seems to think some proof of this process as a vera causa may be derived from ‘Folk Riddles.’

The Riddle Theory

We now come, therefore, to the author’s treatment of popular riddles (devinettes), so common among savages and peasants. Their construction is simple: anything in Nature you please is described by a poetical periphrasis, and you are asked what it is. Thus Geistiblindr asks,

What is the Dark OneThat goes over the earth,Swallows water and wood,But is afraid of the wind? &c.

Or we find,

What is the gold spun from one window to another?

The answers, the obvious answers, are (1) ‘mist’ and (2) ‘sunshine.’

In Mr. Max Müller’s opinion these riddles ‘could not but lead to what we call popular myths or legends.’ Very probably; but this does not aid us to accept the philological method. The very essence of that method is the presumed absolute loss of the meaning of, e.g. ‘the Dark One.’ Before there can be a myth, ex hypothesi the words Dark One must have become hopelessly unintelligible, must have become a proper name. Thus suppose, for argument’s sake only, that Cronos once meant Dark One, and was understood in that sense. People (as in the Norse riddle just cited) said, ‘Cronos [i.e. the Dark One – meaning mist] swallows water and wood.’ Then they forgot that Cronos was their old word for the Dark One, and was mist; but they kept up, and understood, all the rest of the phrase about what mist does. The expression now ran, ‘Cronos [whatever that may be] swallows water and wood.’ But water comes from mist, and water nourishes wood, therefore ‘Cronos swallows his children.’ Such would be the development of a myth on Mr. Max Müller’s system. He would interpret ‘Cronos swallows his children,’ by finding, if he could, the original meaning of Cronos. Let us say that he did discover it to mean ‘the Dark One.’ Then he might think Cronos meant ‘night;’ ‘mist’ he would hardly guess.

That is all very clear, but the point is this – in devinettes, or riddles, the meaning of ‘the Dark One’ is not lost: —

‘Thy riddle is easy

Blind Gest,

To read’ —

Heidrick answers.

What the philological method of mythology needs is to prove that such poetical statements about natural phenomena as the devinettes contain survived in the popular mouth, and were perfectly intelligible except just the one mot d’énigme – say, ‘the Dark One.’ That (call it Cronos=‘Dark One’), and that alone, became unintelligible in the changes of language, and so had to be accepted as a proper name, Cronos – a god who swallows things at large.

Where is the proof of such endurance of intelligible phrases with just the one central necessary word obsolete and changed into a mysterious proper name? The world is full of proper names which have lost their meaning – Athene, Achilles, Artemis, and so on but we need proof that poetical sayings, or riddles, survive and are intelligible except one word, which, being unintelligible, becomes a proper name. Riddles, of course, prove nothing of this kind: —

Thy riddle is easy

Blind Gest

To read!

Yet Mr. Max Müller offers the suggestion that the obscurity of many of these names of mythical gods and heroes ‘may be due.. to the riddles to which they had given rise, and which would have ceased to be riddles if the names had been clear and intelligible, like those of Helios and Selene’ (i. 92). People, he thinks, in making riddles ‘would avoid the ordinary appellatives, and the use of little-known names in most mythologies would thus find an intelligible explanation.’ Again, ‘we can see how essential it was that in such mythological riddles the principal agents should not be called by their regular names.’ This last remark, indeed, is obvious. To return to the Norse riddle of the Dark One that swallows wood and water. It would never do in a riddle to call the Dark One by his ordinary name, ‘Mist.’ You would not amuse a rural audience by asking ‘What is the mist that swallows wood and water?’ That would be even easier than Mr. Burnand’s riddle for very hot weather: —

My first is a boot, my second is a jack.

Conceivably Mr. Max Müller may mean that in riddles an almost obsolete word was used to designate the object. Perhaps, instead of ‘the Dark One,’ a peasant would say, ‘What is the Rooky One?’ But as soon as nobody knew what ‘the Rooky One’ meant, the riddle would cease to exist – Rooky One and all. You cannot imagine several generations asking each other —

What is the Rooky One that swallows?

if nobody knew the answer. A man who kept boring people with a mere ‘sell’ would be scouted; and with the death of the answerless riddle the difficult word ‘Rooky’ would die. But Mr. Max Müller says, ‘Riddles would cease to be riddles if the names had been clear and intelligible.’ The reverse is the fact. In the riddles he gives there are seldom any ‘names;’ but the epithets and descriptions are as clear as words can be: —

Who are the mother and children in a house, all having bald heads? – The moon and stars.

Language cannot be clearer. Yet the riddle has not ‘ceased to be a riddle,’ as Mr. Max Müller thinks it must do, though the words are ‘clear and intelligible.’ On the other hand, if the language is not clear and intelligible, the riddle would cease to exist. It would not amuse if nobody understood it. You might as well try to make yourself socially acceptable by putting conundrums in Etruscan as by asking riddles in words not clear and intelligible in themselves, though obscure in their reference. The difficulty of a riddle consists, not in the obscurity of words or names, but in the description of familiar things by terms, clear as terms, denoting their appearance and action. The mist is described as ‘dark,’ ‘swallowing,’ ‘one that fears the wind,’ and so forth. The words are pellucid.

Thus ‘ordinary appellatives’ (i. 99) are not ‘avoided’ in riddles, though names (sun, mist) cannot be used in the question because they give the answer to the riddle.

For all these reasons ancient riddles cannot explain the obscurity of mythological names. As soon as the name was too obscure, the riddle and the name would be forgotten, would die together. So we know as little as ever of the purely hypothetical process by which a riddle, or popular poetical saying, remains intelligible in a language, while the mot d’énigme, becoming unintelligible, turns into a proper name – say, Cronos. Yet the belief in this process as a vera causa is essential to our author’s method.

Here Mr. Max Müller warns us that his riddle theory is not meant to explain ‘the obscurities of all mythological names. This is a stratagem that should be stopped from the very first.’ It were more graceful to have said ‘a misapprehension.’

Another ‘stratagem’ I myself must guard against. I do not say that no unintelligible strings of obsolete words may continue to live in the popular mouth. Old hymns, ritual speeches, and charms may and do survive, though unintelligible. They are reckoned all the more potent, because all the more mysterious. But an unintelligible riddle or poetical saying does not survive, so we cannot thus account for mythology as a disease of language.

Mordvinian Mythology

Still in the very natural and laudable pursuit of facts which will support the hypothesis of a disease of language, Mr. Max Müller turns to Mordvinian mythology. ‘We have the accounts of real scholars’ about Mordvinian prayers, charms, and proverbs (i. 235). The Mordvinians, Ugrian tribes, have the usual departmental Nature-gods – as Chkaï, god of the sun (chi=sun). He ‘lives in the sun, or is the sun’ (i. 236). His wife is the Earth or earth goddess, Védiava. They have a large family, given to incest. The morals of the Mordvinian gods are as lax as those of Mordvinian mortals. (Compare the myths and morals of Samos, and the Samian Hera.) Athwart the decent god Chkaï comes the evil god Chaitan – obviously Shaitan, a Mahommedan contamination. There are plenty of minor gods, and spirits good and bad. Dawn was a Mordvinian girl; in Australia she was a lubra addicted to lubricity.

How does this help philological mythology?

Mr. Max Müller is pleased to find solar and other elemental gods among the Mordvinians. But the discovery in no way aids his special theory. Nobody has ever denied that gods who are the sun or live in the sun are familiar, and are the centres of myths among most races. I give examples in C. and M. (pp. 104, 133, New Zealand and North America) and in M. R. R. (i. 124-135, America, Africa, Australia, Aztec, Hervey Islands, Samoa, and so on). Such Nature-myths – of sun, sky, earth – are perhaps universal; but they do not arise from disease of language. These myths deal with natural phenomena plainly and explicitly. The same is the case among the Mordvinians. ‘The few names preserved to us are clearly the names of the agents behind the salient phenomena of Nature, in some cases quite intelligible, in others easily restored to their original meaning.’ The meanings of the names not being forgotten, but obvious, there is no disease of language. All this does not illustrate the case of Greek divine names by resemblance, but by difference. Real scholars know what Mordvinian divine names mean. They do not know what many Greek divine names mean – as Hera, Artemis, Apollo, Athene; there is even much dispute about Demeter.

No anthropologist, I hope, is denying that Nature-myths and Nature-gods exist. We are only fighting against the philological effort to get at the elemental phenomena which may be behind Hera, Artemis, Athene, Apollo, by means of contending etymological conjectures. We only oppose the philological attempt to account for all the features in a god’s myth as manifestations of the elemental qualities denoted by a name which may mean at pleasure dawn, storm, clear air, thunder, wind, twilight, water, or what you will. Granting Chkaï to be the sun, does that explain why he punishes people who bake bread on Friday? (237.) Our opponent does not seem to understand the portée of our objections. The same remarks apply to the statement of Finnish mythology here given, and familiar in the Kalewala. Departmental divine beings of natural phenomena we find everywhere, or nearly everywhere, in company, of course, with other elements of belief – totemism, worship of spirits, perhaps with monotheism in the background. That is as much our opinion as Mr. Max Müller’s. What we are opposing is the theory of disease of language, and the attempt to explain, by philological conjectures, gods and heroes whose obscure names are the only sources of information.