years, and what are
the results? The ideas attained by the method have been so popularised
that they are actually made to enter into the education of children, and
are published in primers and catechisms of mythology. But what has a
discreet scholar to say to the whole business? 'The difficult task of
interpreting mythical names has, so far, produced few certain results'--so
writes Otto Schrader. {4} Though Schrader still has hopes of better
things, it is admitted that the present results are highly disputable. In
England, where one set of these results has become an article of faith,
readers chiefly accept the opinions of a single etymological school, and
thus escape the difficulty of making up their minds when scholars differ.
But differ scholars do, so widely and so often, that scarcely any solid
advantages have been gained in mythology from the philological method.

The method of philological mythology is thus discredited by the disputes
of its adherents. The system may be called orthodox, but it is an
orthodoxy which alters with every new scholar who enters the sacred
enclosure. Even were there more harmony, the analysis of names could
throw little light on myths. In stories the names may well be, and often
demonstrably are, the latest, not the original, feature. Tales, at first
told of 'Somebody,' get new names attached to them, and obtain a new
local habitation, wherever they wander. 'One of the leading personages
to be met in the traditions of the world is really no more than--Somebody.
There is nothing this wondrous creature cannot achieve; one only
restriction binds him at all--that the name he assumes shall have some
sort of congruity with the office he undertakes, _and even from this he
oftentimes breaks loose_.' {5} We may be pretty sure that the adventures
of Jason, Perseus, OEdipous, were originally told only of 'Somebody.' The
names are later additions, and vary in various lands. A glance at the
essay on 'Cupid and Psyche' will show that a history like theirs is
known, where neither they nor their counterparts in the Veda, Urvasi and
Pururavas, were ever heard of; while the incidents of the Jason legend
are familiar where no Greek word was ever spoken. Finally, the names in
common use among savages are usually derived from natural phenomena,
often from clouds, sky, sun, dawn. If, then, a name in a myth can be
proved to mean cloud, sky, sun, or what not (and usually one set of
scholars find c