Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/45

Rh must have brought about a result so perplexing; and if even for conscious invention there must have been some groundwork, much more must this be the case if we take up an alternative which even less admits the exercise of a creative faculty.

If then the mythology of the Aryan nations is to be studied to good purpose, the process applied to their legends must be strictly scientific. In every Aryan land we have a vast mass of stories, some preserved in great epic poems, some in the pages of mythographers or historians, some in tragic, lyric, or comic poetry, and some again only in the oral tradition or folklore of the people. All these, it is clear, must be submitted to that method of comparison and differences by which inductive science has achieved its greatest triumphs. Not a step must be taken on mere conjecture: not a single result must be anticipated by ingenious hypothesis. For the reason of their existence we must search, not in our own moral convictions, or in those of ancient Greeks or Romans, but in the substance and materials of the myths themselves. We must deal with their incidents and their names. We must group the former according to their points of likeness and difference; and we must seek to interpret the latter by the principles which have been established and accepted as the laws of philological analysis.