theories, taking them in the widest sense, were not, of course, peculiar
to the Right Hon. Professor. In France, in Germany, in America, in
Italy, many scholars agreed in his opinion that the science of language
is the most potent spell for opening the secret chamber of mythology. But
while these scholars worked on the same general principle as Mr. Max
Muller, while they subjected the names of mythical beings--Zeus, Helen,
Achilles, Athene--to philological analysis, and then explained the
stories of gods and heroes by their interpretations of the meanings of
their names, they arrived at all sorts of discordant results. Where Mr.
Max Muller found a myth of the Sun or of the Dawn, these scholars were
apt to see a myth of the wind, of the lightning, of the thunder-cloud, of
the crepuscule, of the upper air, of what each of them pleased. But
these ideas--the ideas of Kuhn, Welcker, Curtius (when he appeared in the
discussion), of Schwartz, of Lauer, of Breal, of many others--were very
little known--if known at all--to the English public. Captivated by the
graces of Mr. Max Muller's manner, and by a style so pellucid that it
accredited a logic perhaps not so clear, the public hardly knew of the
divisions in the philological camp. They were unaware that, as Mannhardt
says, the philological school had won 'few sure gains,' and had
discredited their method by a 'muster-roll of variegated' and discrepant
'hypotheses.'

Now, in all sciences there are differences of opinion about details. In
comparative mythology there was, with rare exceptions, no agreement at
all about results beyond this point; Greek and Sanskrit, German and
Slavonic myths were, in the immense majority of instances, to be regarded
as mirror-pictures on earth, of celestial and meteorological phenomena.
Thus even the story of the Earth Goddess, the Harvest Goddess, Demeter,
was usually explained as a reflection in myth of one or another celestial
phenomenon--dawn, storm-cloud, or something else according to taste.