pure and simple, has strayed occasionally into this sphere of
conceptions without any further organic meaning--simply as a baying,
hostile watch-dog. But we cannot prove anything by an ignorant _non
possumus_; the conception _may_, even if we cannot say _must_, after all
in each case, have been derived from essentially the same source: the
dead journeying upward to heaven interfered with by a coursing heavenly
body, the sun or the moon, or both. Anyhow, the organic quality of the
Indo-European, or at least the Hindu myth makes it guide and
philosopher. From dual sun and moon coursing across the sky to the two
hell-hounds, each step of development is no less clear than from Zeus
pater, "Father Sky," to breezy Jove, the gentleman about town with his
escapades and amours. To reverse the process, to imagine that the Hindus
started with two visionary dogs and finally identified them with sun and
moon--that is as easy and natural as it is for a river to flow up the
hill back to its source.

MAX MUeLLER'S CERBERUS.

The rudiment of the present essay in Comparative Mythology was published
by the writer some years ago in a learned journal, under the title, "The
two dogs of Yama in a new role."[22] My late lamented friend, Max
Mueller, the gifted writer who knew best of all men how to rivet the
attention of the cultivated public upon questions of this sort, did me
the honor to notice my proposition in an article in the _London Academy_
of August 13, 1892 (number 1058, page 134-5), entitled "Professor
Bloomfield's Contributions to the Interpretation of the Veda." In this
article he seems to try to establish a certain similarity between his
conception of the Kerberos myth and my own. This similarity seems to me
to be entirely illusory. Professor Mueller's own last words on the
subject in the Preface of his _Contributions to the Science of
Mythology_ (p. xvi.), will make clear the difference between our views.
He identifies, as he always has identified, Kerberos with the Vedic stem
_carvara_, from which is derived _carvar[=i]_, "night." To quote his own
words: "The germ of the idea ... must be discovered in that nocturnal
darkness, that _c[=a]rvaram tamas_, which native mythologists in India
had not yet quite forgotten in post-Vedic times." With such a view my
own has not the least point of contact. Cabala, the name of one of the
dogs, means "spotted, bright"; it is the name of the sun-dog; it is
quite the opposite of the _c[=a]r