’I am very far from looking upon all myths as psychical reflections of physical phenomena, still less as of exclusively solar or meteorological phenomena, like Kuhn, Schwartz, Max Muller and their school.’  What a queer way of expressing his agreement with Mr. Max Muller!

The Professor expostulates with Mannhardt (1. xx.):—­’Where has any one of us ever done this?’ Well, when Mannhardt said ‘all myths,’ he wrote colloquially.  Shall we say that he meant ‘most myths,’ ’a good many myths,’ ‘a myth or two here and there’?  Whatever he meant, he meant that he was ‘still more than very far removed from looking upon all myths’ as Mr. Max Muller does.

Mannhardt’s next passage I quote entire and textually from Mr. Max Muller’s translation:—­

’I have learnt to appreciate poetical and literary production as an essential element in the development of mythology, and to draw and utilise the consequences arising from this state of things. [Who has not?] But, on the other hand, I hold it as quite certain that a portion of the older myths arose from nature poetry which is no longer directly intelligible to us, but has to be interpreted by means of analogies.  Nor does it follow that these myths betray any historical identity; they only testify to the same kind of conception and tendency prevailing on similar stages of development.  Of these nature myths some have reference to the life and the circumstances of the sun, and our first steps towards an understanding of them are helped on by such nature poetry as the Lettish, which has not yet been obscured by artistic and poetical reflexion.  In that poetry mythical personalities confessedly belonging to a solar sphere are transferred to a large number of poetical representatives, of which the explanation must consequently be found in the same (solar) sphere of nature.  My method here is just the same as that applied by me to the Tree-cult.’

Mr. Max Muller asks, ’Where is there any difference between this, the latest and final system adopted by Mannhardt, and my own system which I put forward in 1856?’ (1. xxi.)

How Mannhardt differs from Mr. Max Muller

I propose to show wherein the difference lies.  Mannhardt says, ’My method is just the same as that applied by me to the Tree-cult.’  What was that method?

Mannhardt, in the letter quoted by Mr. Max Muller, goes on to describe it; but Mr. Max Muller omits the description, probably not realising its importance.  For Mannhardt’s method is the reverse of that practised under the old colours to which he is said to have returned.

Mannhardt’s Method

’My method is here the same as in the Tree-cult.  I start from a given collection of facts, of which the central idea is distinct and generally admitted, and consequently offers a firm basis for explanation.  I illustrate from this and from well-founded analogies.  Continuing from these, I seek to elucidate darker things.  I search out the simplest radical ideas and perceptions, the germ-cells from whose combined growth mythical tales form themselves in very different ways.’