'That is exactly what I have always said. What is there new in comparing
the customs and myths of the Greeks with those of the barbarians? Has
not even Plato done this? Did anybody doubt that the Greeks, nay even
the Hindus, were uncivilised or savages, before they became civilised or
tamed? Was not this common-sense view, so strongly insisted on by
Fontenelle and Vico in the eighteenth century, carried even to excess by
such men as De Brosses (1709-1771)? And have the lessons taught to De
Brosses by his witty contemporaries been quite forgotten? Must his
followers be told again and again that they ought to begin with a
critical examination of the evidence put before them by casual
travellers, and that mythology is as little made up of one and the same
material as the crust of the earth of granite only?'



Reply


Professor Tiele wrote in 1885. I do not remember having claimed his
alliance, though I made one or two very brief citations from his remarks
on the dangers of etymology applied to old proper names. {25a} To
citations made by me later in 1887 Professor Tiele cannot be referring.
{25b} Thus I find no proof of any claim of alliance put forward by me,
but I do claim a right to quote the Professor's published words. These I
now translate:--{25c}

'What goes before shows adequately that I am an ally, much more than an
adversary, of the new school, whether styled ethnological or
anthropological. It is true that all the ideas advanced by its partisans
are not so new as they seem. Some of us--I mean among those who, without