ed by
finding that these scholars usually differ from each other. Examples
will be found chiefly in the essays styled 'The Myth of Cronus,' 'A Far-
travelled Tale,' and 'Cupid and Psyche.' Why, then, do distinguished
scholars and mythologists reach such different goals? Clearly because
their method is so precarious. They all analyse the names in myths; but,
where one scholar decides that the name is originally Sanskrit, another
holds that it is purely Greek, and a third, perhaps, is all for an
Accadian etymology, or a Semitic derivation. Again, even when scholars
agree as to the original root from which a name springs, they differ as
much as ever as to the meaning of the name in its present place. The
inference is, that the analysis of names, on which the whole edifice of
philological 'comparative mythology' rests, is a foundation of shifting
sand. The method is called 'orthodox,' but, among those who practise it,
there is none of the beautiful unanimity of orthodoxy.

These objections are not made by the unscholarly anthropologist alone.
Curtius has especially remarked the difficulties which beset the
'etymological operation' in the case of proper names. 'Peculiarly
dubious and perilous is mythological etymology. Are we to seek the
sources of the divine names in aspects of nature, or in moral
conceptions; in special Greek geographical conditions, or in natural
circumstances which are everywhere the same: in dawn with her rays, or in
clouds with their floods; are we to seek the origin of the names of
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