the simoom. The Talmud narrates that the Jewish Mazakeen were born during the separation of Adam and Eve after having taste the tree of life, from the union of the one with female spirits, and of male spirits with the other. A somewhat similar hypothesis was current in Iceland relative to the parentage of the Elves there. The Hebrew belief that the spirits of evil were once angels of light has often been applied for the same purpose. With a more delicate fancy the peasants of Devon hold the pixies to be "the souls of infants who died before they were baptized." The Welsh fairies are thought to be the souls of the Druids, who, not sufficiently wicked to deserve the pains of hell, and yet unfit for the bliss of heaven, are constrained to wander over earth until the Judgment. The Breton peasants believe that their korrigan or fays are heathen princesses who refused to embrace Christianity. Perhaps the most graceful blending of theological and poetical elements is to be found in the common Scandinavian belief that the Necks or river-sprites may often be heard at eventide singing joyously, unless disturbed by the cruel mocks of a passer-by, who denies them the hope of final salvation. The songs then change into sounds of wailing, which float fitfully above the stream, until some kindly voice removes the ban with hopeful assurances, and the blithe carols are resumed.*

In ordinary parlance the term "mythology" is often improperly used as the synonym for a false or fanciful theology. However prone theology may be to mythical developments, imagination does not of necessity enter into its intrinsic constitution. The deification of universal nature (Pantheism) or of its separate agents (Polytheism); the recognition of two opposing principles (Dualism), or of a sole Creator and Preserver of the universe (Monotheism)-these can only be classed among rational inductions. Imagination, although commonly present in these conceptions, has a subordinate function to render them palpable and beautiful. Fetichism, indeed, if it could be proved to be an aboriginal or extant creed, might be ranked among purely imaginative products; but we concur in Mr. Mackay's opinion, that "if Fetichism be understood as a worship of things, merely as things, without the least apprehension of ulterior meanings, it would scarcely be too much to say that it never existed, unless in the imaginations and reports of African traders or travellers unable to describe accurately what they did not themselves thoroughly understand."+ Considered as mere relic-worship, which is probably in the majority of cases its real character, it involves no such union of rational and imaginative elements as would bring it within the mythical category. Allowance must be made, in analysing the developments of a theology, for the progressive action of reason, whereby, without the aid of imagination, novel forms, which superficially appear to indicate it, may be framed out of old materials. Thus theogonies seem to be the growth of a mental stage transitional from the polytheistic

* Keightley's Fairy Mythology, passim.

+ Progress of the Intellect, i. 148.

to the monotheistic stand-point. The original perception of variety is too precious an aspect of nature to be at once surrendered when the impression of unity forces itself upon the mind, and the result is an attempt at simplification. The sun is still a God, but subordinate to Intelligence; Apollo is the son of Zeus. A kindred process of simplification may be discerned in the development known as Oɛorpacia, an illustration of which is afforded in the theology of Egypt, where Isis and Osiris finally absorbed the names and attributes previously dispersed over an extensive pantheon.

Notwithstanding these allowances, however, the mythical element in theology is sufficiently large and varied. The historic myth is probably present in some of the theophanies or appearances of deity, which figure so prominently in Grecian and Oriental legend. The Avatars of Vishnou and Buddh may be examples of the poet'c or etymological myth, while the manifold forms of sacrifice and the mysteries are unmistakably allegorical. The etiological myth in theology is not so superficially apparent, but probably prevails to a larger extent than any other form. It would seem to be a law that at a certain period in the growth of a creed there should be a manifestation of unrecognised fiction, occasioned by the need of compromise under the stimulus of external pressure. When, for instance, in Alexandria the conservatism of Hebrew monotheism encountered the enterprise of Hellenic philosophy, to preserve the old and to accept the new became an equal necessity to such a mind as Philo's. That the accommodations thence elicited do not bear more strongly marked traits of mythology may be explained by his preponderant rationalism, but there is an intrusion of imagination in his theories of "Emanation," which were requisite to reconcile the Mosaic creed that Jehovah was the creator and maintainer of the world, with the Platonic conception of God as the Supreme Intelligence, of whom mundane interference was a work unworthy. The tendency but hinted at in Alexandrian theosophy was avowed in Christian Gnosis—a phenomenon manifested when the new life-blood of Christianity was poured into the veins of pre-existing metaphysical systems. Some of the ideal machinery of Gnostic speculation may have been mere symbolism, but certain features of it were so obviously explanatory, and as such so fanciful and artificial, that they must be classed among ætiological forms. The "Docetic" heresy is an illustration. This was adopted by those Gnostics whose metaphysics rejected nature as evil, and Judaism as the revelation of the Demiurgos or Creator of the world, but who accepted the Founder of Christianity as a divine teacher, and his mortal life as a verity. Their dilemma was avoided by the mythical hypothesis that the Pneumatic Æon, an emanation from the Supreme Deity, assumed in the person of Christ a visual body, which was laid aside at his apparent death. Following in the footsteps of the Alexandrian Jews, the Gnostics often found it necessary to spiritualize the received canon of Scripture, and accommodate its statements to their own views. Schemes of alle

gorical interpretation are common forms of the theological myth. A mind that has accepted a religious system as upon the whole satisfying, but involving somewhat of crudity, is driven to compromise. To escape the alternative of scepticism or superstition, it becomes imperative to exalt the dross to the standard of the gold, the meagre to the rank of the sublime. Reason has to explain the presence of intruders in the fane, and imagination suggests a notion which it gladly seizes, that they are angels in disguise. Thus the Hebrew theologian, deeply impressed with the majesty of the scheme of Atonement, and dissatisfied to find its symbolism associated with a common historical statement, persuaded himself that a deep meaning underlay the sensuous covering of the latter, and tortured a simple coincidence into a mystic design. "Why," asks the Talmud, "does Scripture relate the death of Miriam immediately after the directions about the red heifer? To teach that as the ashes of the heifer atone for Israel, so doth the death of the righteous." It would be easy to adduce a score of similar instances from the literature of other creeds. In truth the phenomena are of universal occurrence and as common in the present as in the past. It is impossible to fix any limit in time to the appearance of the myth. Not only do we find that enlightenment, although progressive in the general current, is stationary at particular points, but the history of the intellect seems to move in cycles, and the same difficulties and errors are perpetually recurring. The great Scandinavian mythology was generated in an era which had ceased to be mythopoeic in Greece and Rome. Geology was a collection of fables long after astronomy had become a formulated science. We have no other tool wherewith to work out our mental problems than was possessed by earlier thinkers but the larger acquisition of experience, and its insufficiency to provide against the contingencies of careless observation and fallacious logie is the subject of repeated demonstration. It can be no matter of surprise, therefore, to meet with the familiar shape of the myth at the centre of civilization and within the pale of science. The unveiling of spiritual meanings, which has been found to be so provocative of the theological myth, is boldly adopted by the Swedenborgian Church as its leading canon of Biblical criticism. How courageously the theory is carried into practice may be exemplified from the work of a recent commentator, who discerns in the "plague of frogs" a symbolical expression of "reasoning from false principles!" Not to be outstripped in ingenuity, an Anglo-Catholic divine has identified the "two pence" given by the Good Samaritan to the inn-keeper to whom he entrusted "the man fallen among thieves," with "the two greater sacraments," which have been confided to the Church by the Saviour of sinners; while in the commendation bestowed in the Book of Proverbs upon the prudent woman who clothes her household "in scarlet " during the winter, an Evangelical divine has discovered a foreshadowing of the Christian sacrifice. The laconic observation of Tacitus upon the ancient mythists is surely not less applicable to the modern: "Fingunt simul creduntque."

It needs no research to detect the mythical spirit lurking under other shapes of our own day. Save perhaps the allegorical and etymological forms, none of those above considered appear to be wanting. The historic myth is to be found whenever the air is astir with news of great events, and the minds of men are roused by unwonted excitement. The continually refuted but ever-recurring stories of the Anglo-French warsthose for example which circle round the cries, "Up, Guards, and at 'em," and "La Garde meurt mais ne se rend pas," have successors on every similar occasion. Thanks, however, to the swifter circulation of intelligence, the historic myth may now be seen in the process of manufacture. Round the birthplace of the Mormon prophet we learn that legends of his miraculous infancy have already commenced to float. During the Crimean war a popular ballad was sung about London, having for its burden the dramatically sudden death of the Emperor Nicholas, and of which the last line ran thus:

And they buried him in Sebastopol.

It is curious to speculate upon the material for historical scepticism which this statement may furnish a thousand years hence, when it is compared with contemporaneous narratives of the Imperial obsequies.

The modern poetic myth will be easily recognized in the canard of the Metropolitan stock-market, or the provincial newspaper: a form which a Saturday-Reviewer may have had in his mind when he made the just observation that "there is in this world a great deal of sheer lying." Perhaps the most offensive variety of this fiction is the back-stair scandal of the Court or aristocratic circle, an unmistakable product of vulgar prurience and baffled curiosity. The modern ætiological myth is to be found among the ingenious hypotheses devised to coerce facts in the direc tion of foregone conclusions. Voltaire's famous mode of accounting for the presence of marine shells in the Alps, upon which the divines of his time relied as evidence of the Flood, by affirming them to be scallops dropped by medieval pilgrims, may be matched by equal absurdities framed in the opposite interest. The theories which have attributed a "judicial visitation " of cholera to the omission of the words Dei gratia on a newly-minted florin, or to the application of the name Leviathan to the Great Eastern steam-ship, are instances in point.* These illustrations,

* We are indebted to a student of Webster for an earlier illustration of ætiological mythology in connection with ship-naming. In The Devil's Law Case, a merchant, whose ships have been wrecked, is reminded by a Job's comforter that he had given them

"Most strange, most dreadful

And unfortunate names: I never looked they'd prosper. .

...

(Act ii. sc. 3, Dyce's edition, p. 119.)

which it would be easy to multiply, may suffice to show that, like the science from which we drew our illustration at starting, mythology recognizes "the identity of ancient and modern causes."

To most inquirers the interest and value of the study lie in the introduction which it affords to the earliest intellectual annals. The chronicle may contain some dark and repulsive pages, but, like the freckles which mar a beautiful face, they are tokens of the sun's visit, and may well be condoned in remembrance of the blessing of his light. The glimpses which reach us from the morning-land of the past cannot fail to furnish suggestions that render the present more precious and the future more possible. The student of history well knows what ample materials for ethnological and philological science are disclosed when the mine of mythology is fairly opened. The artist knows that he may enter the mythical age as into a picture-gallery living with landscape, drama, and portrait. He may have visions of an Asiatic Eden, flushed with the colour and reposeful with the languor of the south; of an Egyptian palm-grove swaying its shadows above the dark Nile waters; of a Greek valley between mountains of white limestone, which bathe their feet in verdure and their brows in violet air; of a Scandinavian fjord, whose crystal depths gleam amid the blackness of pine-clad rocks. He may gaze on passages of battle and siege, perilous emprise by sea and land, riotous orgy and serene solemnity. There are faces for him with the passionate eyes of hero and poet, the stern lips of sage and priest; shapes of Love the alchemist, and Hate the coiner, of Faith radiant with Medea's spell of youth, and Superstition drunken on sacramental wine. And to the philosophic thinker there is yet a higher gain, when, as he contemplates the difficulties of mental wayfare, the idola which have lured astray, and the stumbling-blocks which have retarded so many pilgrims, lessons are forced on him which the recurring phenomena of human thought and emotion afford abundant opportunities of putting into practice.

H. G. H.