heroes in things historical and human, or in physical phenomena?' {3a}
Professor Tiele, of Leyden, says much the same thing: 'The uncertainties
are great, and there is a constant risk of taking mere jeux d'esprit for
scientific results.' {3b} Every name has, if we can discover or
conjecture it, a meaning. That meaning--be it 'large' or 'small,' 'loud'
or 'bright,' 'wise' or 'dark,' 'swift' or 'slow'--is always capable of
being explained as an epithet of the sun, or of the cloud, or of both.
Whatever, then, a name may signify, some scholars will find that it
originally denoted the cloud, if they belong to one school, or the sun or
dawn, if they belong to another faction. Obviously this process is a
mere jeu d'esprit. This logic would be admitted in no other science,
and, by similar arguments, any name whatever might be shown to be
appropriate to a solar hero.

The scholarly method has now been applied for many years, and what are
the results? The ideas attained by the method have been so popularised
that they are actually made to enter into the education of children, and
are published in primers and catechisms of mythology. But what has a
discreet scholar to say to the whole business? 'The difficult task of
interpreting mythical names has, so far, produced few certain results'--so
writes Otto Schrader. {4} Though Schrader still has hopes of better
things, it is admitted that the present results are highly disputable. In
England, where one set of these results has become an article of faith,
readers chiefly accept the opinions of a single etymological school, and
thus escape the difficulty of making up their minds when scholars differ.
But differ scholars do, so widely and so often, that scarcely any solid
advantages have been gained in mythology from the philological method.

The method of philological mythology is thus discredited by the disputes
of its adherents. The system may be called orthodox, but it is an