[3] Histoire des Religions de la Grece Antique, Paris, 1857.


When philological science in our own century came to maturity, in
philology, as of old in physics and later in symbols, was sought
the key of myths. While physical allegory, religious and esoteric
symbolism, verbal confusion, historical legend, and an original
divine tradition, perverted in ages of darkness, have been the most
popular keys in other ages, the scientific nineteenth century has
had a philological key of its own. The methods of Kuhn, Breal, Max
Muller, and generally the philological method, cannot be examined
here at full length.[1] Briefly speaking, the modern philological
method is intended for a scientific application of the old
etymological interpretations. Cadmus in the Bacchae of Euripides,
Socrates in the Cratylus of Plato, dismiss unpalatable myths as the
results of verbal confusion. People had originally said something
quite sensible--so the hypothesis runs--but when their descendants
forgot the meaning of their remarks, a new and absurd meaning
followed from a series of unconscious puns.[2] This view was
supported in ancient times by purely conjectural and impossible
etymologies. Thus the myth that Dionysus was sewn up in the THIGH
of Zeus (Greek text omitted) was explained by Euripides as the
result of a confusion of words. People had originally said that
Zeus gave a pledge (Greek text omitted) to Hera. The modern
philological school relies for explanations of untoward and other
myths on similar confusions. Thus Daphne is said to have been
originally not a girl of romance, but the dawn (Sanskirt, dahana:
ahana) pursued by the rising sun. But as the original Aryan sense
of Dahana or Ahana was lost, and as Daphne came to mean the laurel--
the wood which burns easily--the fable arose that the tree had