Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/58

26 changes of day and night, of light and darkness, of summer and winter, with the passionless equanimity which our philosophy requires; and he who from a mountain summit looks down in solitude on the long shadows as they creep over the earth, while the sun sinks down into the purple mists which deaden and enshroud his splendours, cannot shake off the feeling that he is looking on the conscious struggle of departing life. He is wiser if he does not attempt to shake it off. The peasant who still thinks that he hears the soft music of the piper of Hameln, as the leaves of the wood rustle in the summer air, will be none the better if he parts with this feeling for some cold technical expression. The result of real science is to enable us to distinguish between our impressions and the facts or phenomena which produce them, whenever it may be necessary to do so; but beyond this, science will never need to make any trespass on the domain of the poet and the condition of thought which finds its natural expression in the phrases that once grew up into a mythology.

To the primary myths which spring from phrases employed in their original meaning to express the phenomena of the outward world, and to the secondary myths which arose from a partial or complete forgetfulness of that meaning, must be added a third class, which came into existence from the use of equivocal words. If, as the tribes and families of men diverged from common centres, there was always a danger that words expressing sensuous ideas might be petrified into personal appellatives, there was also the more imminent danger that they might be confounded with other words most nearly resembling them in sound. The result would be, in grammatical phrase, false etymology: the practical consequence would be the growth of a mythology. Many of the tales belonging to the most complicated mythical systems arose simply from the misinterpretation of common words. From a root which meant to shine, the Seven Shiners received their name; possibly or probably to the same roots belongs the name of the Golden Bear ( and ursa), as the Germans gave to the lion the title of Goldfusz; and thus, when the epithet had, by some tribes, been confined to the Bear, the Seven Shiners were transformed first into seven bears, then into one with Arktouros (Arcturus) for their bearward. In India, too, the meaning of riksha was forgotten; but instead of referring the word to bears, they confounded it with rishi, and the Seven Stars became the abode of the Seven Poets or Sages, who enter the ark with Menu