Modern Mythology

It may well be doubted whether works of controversy serve any useful purpose. 'On an opponent, as Mr. Matthew Arnold said, 'one never does make any impression, ' though one may hope thatcontroversy sometimes illuminates a topic in the eyes of impartial readers. The pages which followcannot but seem wandering and desultory, for they are a reply to a book, Mr. Max Müller'sContributions to the Science of Mythology, in which the attack is of a skirmishing character. Throughoutmore than eight hundred pages the learned author keeps up an irregular fire at the ideas andmethods of the anthropological school of mythologists. The reply must follow the lines of attack.Criticism cannot dictate to an author how he shall write his own book. Yet anthropologists andfolk-lorists, 'agriologists' and 'Hottentotic' students, must regret that Mr. Max Müller did not statetheir general theory, as he understands it, fully and once for all. Adversaries rarely succeed in quiteunderstanding each other; but had Mr. Max Müller made such a statement, we could have cleared upanything in our position which might seem to him obscure.