Mythology among the Hebrews and Its Historical Development

The soundness of a new discovery is attested in various ways, but especially by the circumstance that the new thought is no sooner uttered in speech than it is seized upon and worked out by others besides its author; for the thought in question is thus proved to be really the subject which the intellect of the time is best prepared to take up, and which will lead on the Past to the Future. This is found to be the case with Comparative Mythology, Kuhn’s new creation. When a large number of Vedic Hymns—text, translation, and commentary—first appeared in Europe through the instrumentality of a German, Rosen (too early lost to science), Kuhn saw at once not only that they were written in a more ancient language than the classical Sanskrit, but, what was more important, that they opened up a source of mythological views which flowed from a more distant and primeval antiquity than is known to us anywhere else, and that this was the common source of the more important myths and figures of gods of the Aryan nations. He then demonstrated this, in successive essays on Erinnys, Despoina and Athenê, the Kentaurs, Minos, Orpheus, Hermes, and on Wuotan (Odin) in the German mythology, by proving the identity of their names and myths with corresponding ones in the Vedas. Kuhn’s acuteness and skilful combinations thus established the fact, of the highest importance to primeval history, that the heathen Aryan nations possessed a belief in gods, the outlines of which dated from the age of their original unity.

But Kuhn saw also that two further facts followed from the first, one more important, the other more interesting. By the former I mean the fact, that the Vedic myths still exist in so primitive a form as to point to the ground of their own origin, and thus themselves to furnish their own certain interpretation. The latter is the fact that all Saga-poetry, whether epic or dramatic, artistic or popular, stands in connexion with the oldest myths; and further, that the mythological faith and worship, so far from being extinct even among the civilised Christian nations of Europe, still lives on in the rural classes of the population in spirit and practice, as superstition or sometimes as jest, though of course not without frequent transformations and disfigurements. This last point, however, had already been discovered by the genius of Jacob Grimm, who only wanted the support of the Vedas to become the founder of Comparative Mythology, as he was of Historical Grammar. But this support was necessary to elevate Comparative Mythology into a science based on method, and to give sufficient certainty to the interpretation of myths and gods. The greatest genius—fully entering into the spirit of the ancient Greeks and Germans, and endowed with a lively sympathy with nature—could, without the guarantee of the Vedas, never have produced anything higher than unproved conjectures. It would have remained impossible to demonstrate the original identity of different gods, had not the Vedas given us the connecting terms.

And the sense of the myths and gods could only have been vaguely and uncertainly guessed at, had not the language of the Vedas, with a happy transparency both of grammar and of psychology, furnished the means of tracing the development of ideas from the most primitive impressions received by the soul.

Starting from the same fundamental idea as Kuhn, Roth proved, about the same time, that the heroes of the New-Persian epos are only old mythic figures of the religion of Zoroaster, which are equivalent in names and functions to certain Vedic gods. In the Oxford Essays of 1855, Max Müller gave a sketch of Comparative Mythology, drawn in a certain poetical spirit which is quite in harmony with the subject. He endeavoured, very justly, to exhibit the essential connexion between the poetical and the mythic aspect, and to show that all formation of myths was simply poetic invention. Kuhn’s idea was immediately and generally accepted and worked out by all those who were engaged on the Vedas—Benfey, Weber, and others. Mannhardt has frequently elucidated German myths with penetrating thoroughness from Vedic-Indian ones.

Thus Kuhn’s idea has with rare rapidity become a secure common property of science. In the book, the title of which is given at the head of this article, he now gives an unsurpassable model of careful method in this field of investigation. When the weight of every argument is tested with such accuracy and the conscientiousness of a judge, and exhibited so unvarnished and so entirely free from special pleading, and the conclusion is drawn with such cautiousness, as here, not only scientific but also moral recognition is the writer’s due.

We will first attempt to realise the result attained, and then proceed to a psychological analysis of it. I shall, however, here strictly confine myself to the one mythical feature which forms the foundation of Prometheus. Kuhn’s book contains, besides, an extraordinary multitude of mythological facts, grouped together as belonging to the subject mentioned in his title.

In the earliest times Fire must have been given to man by nature: there was a burning here or there, and man came to know fire and its effects by experience. At the same time he learned also how to keep it in, and very soon he may also have learned how to produce it. He took certain kinds of wood, bored a stick of the one into a stick or disk of the other, and turned the former round and round in the latter till it produced flame. Kuhn has shown elaborately that the Aryan nations’ oldest fire-instrument was formed in this way, and that the rotation of the boring-stick was effected by a thread or cord wound round it and pulled to and fro.[786] But man knew also of another sort of fire, that in the sky. Up there burned the fire of the Sun’s disk; from thence the fire of the Lightning darted down. The primitive man, in his simplicity, believed the heavenly fire to be like the earthly; its effects were the same, and it went out from time to time like the earthly fire. Therefore, Must not its origin also have been similar? must it not after every extinction have been kindled again in like manner? There was no want of the necessary wood in the sky. In the sky was seen the great Ash-tree of the world,—in a configuration of clouds which is still in North Germany called the Wetterbaum, the storm-tree.[787] It was supposed, before men believed in gods of human form, that the lightning fell down from this Ash-tree, against which a branch twined round it had rubbed till the fire was produced, as had been observed in forests on earth.

The men thought that the earthly fire had its origin in the sky, and was only heavenly fire that had fallen down. They saw how it fell down in the lightning; they recognised in the lightning a divine eagle, hawk, or woodpecker;[788] and many a bird which now flies about in the atmosphere of earth is a fallen flash of lightning, proved to be such either by its colour or by some other circumstance. The wood, too, which when rubbed turns to fire, is similarly a transformed lightning-bird. This is seen sometimes in the fiery-red colour of the fruit, e.g. of the mountain-ash (rowan),[789] sometimes in the thorns or in the pinnate leaves of the plant, in which the claws and feathers of the lightning-bird are still recognisable. The rubbing merely revokes this transformation: the igneous creature is enabled to take up again its original form.

Originally the bird was probably regarded as being itself the lightning, because inversely the lightning was treated as a bird. Afterwards it was thought that the bird which was at first perched upon the heavenly Ash that produced the fire brought the fire down from the tree to the earth.

But further, Is not Life, too, a fire, burning in the body?—and Death the extinction of the flame? And as fire is kindled by boring with a stick in the hole of a plate of wood, so human life is produced in the womb. And what happens now and always here on earth, happened up there in the Ash-tree of the world at the original creation of man. That Ash produced, first Fire, and then Man, who is also fire. Indeed, strictly speaking, this is still going on: the Soul is a lightning-bird that has come down to earth, and the birds that bear down the fire—such as the Stork[790]—still bring us children too, just as they brought the first man down to earth: in short, the Fire-god is also the Man-god.

Then, at a later stage of the development of ideas, when the divine powers were imagined as personages in human form, the wonderful element of Fire, which drew to itself the attention of men no less by its mysteriousness than by its usefulness, was undoubtedly one of the first divine figures to be personified. Now one of the oldest words for fire was agni-s, Lat. igni-s. According to Benfey it comes from the root ag ‘to shine,’ by means of the suffix ni; s is the sign of the nominative. Therefore Agni is the Shining one, the Fire; but in the earliest times the word designated not the element Fire, but the god Fire. He, the god Agni, had his abode in the wood, and was allured forth by the turning.

Agni was fire and light in general, both the absolute element in general and also every special and separate manifestation of it: such as the brilliant sky, the shining sun, the lightning, fire burning here for us, the first man and progenitor of mankind. But alongside of this, the peculiar conception of the Lightning-Bird still continued. That also was converted into a personal divine or heroic figure, which brought fire and man to the earth in the lightning. Sometimes Agni himself was called a ‘golden-winged bird,’ even in the Vedic Hymns; and sometimes the bird was made into a special god or hero distinct from Agni, bearing a name taken from one of Agni’s various epithets. Thus Picus, originally only the woodpecker, was in the belief of the Latins the Fire-Bird. He was Lightning and Man; and it was said later that the first king of Latium was Picus, for the first man and father of mankind frequently appears in localised stories as the first king of the locality. Picus is shown to be a Lightning-Bird and Lightning-Man, not only by his name and story, but also by the manner of his worship: since he was regarded as the protecting deity of women in childbed and of infants.[791]

Less obviously, but not less certainly, a Lightning-Bird was preserved at Argos in Phoroneus. He, and not Prometheus, was said in the Peloponnesian story to have given fire to men; and in his honour a holy flame was kept burning on an altar at Argos. He was at the same time regarded as father of the human race. Having been originally a bird sitting on the celestial Ash-tree, he was made a hero, son of the nymph Melia, ‘the Ash.’ Now his name is Grecised from the Sanskrit bhuraṇyu-s, an epithet of the Fire-god Agni, denoting ‘rapid, darting, flying,’ thus picturing Agni as a bird. The name Phoroneus, bhuraṇyu-s, is in root (bhar = φερ) and signification, though not in grammatical form, equivalent to the word φερόμενος.[792]

It was not possible to stop with the mere conversion of the bird into a person. When the divine beings were once thought of as persons, they were also allowed to appear and act as such. So men no longer imagined the fire in the sky to be self-originated on the World’s Tree, but regarded it as produced by gods, who acted similarly to men on earth, and revived the extinct flame of the sun hidden behind a mountain of clouds in the morning or during a storm, by driving a bolt into the sun’s disk or into the cloud.

These are mythic conceptions of the very earliest age, but they contain in themselves a motive to further development, to give completeness to the relations subsisting among them, or binding them to the natural phenomenon that they represent. Thus true myths arise.

Now, the most striking peculiarity of fire was obviously the necessity of constantly kindling it again afresh, because when lighted it must go out again sooner or later. This aspect was exhibited in the following very simple myth. Agni vanished from the earth; he had hidden himself in a cave. Mâtariśvan brings him back to men. This myth is easily understood. The existence of the god Agni is assumed to be absolute and uninterrupted: but Fire is often not present; consequently the god must have hidden himself. Where, then, can he be? Afar off, it is sometimes said, quite generally; another time it is said, In the sky—which seems to be regarded as his proper home—or with the gods. But sometimes he is not there either, as at night or in a storm. Where is he, then? Why, where he is found; in the hollow of the cloud, from which he soon shines forth: in the hole of the disk in which the stick is turned round and round. Then, who finds him there, and brings him back to men? He who makes the fire appear, or flame up, and thereby restores to men the god who had withdrawn from them: that is, the Borer, or the Lightning which bores into the cloud as the stick into the wooden disk; it is Mâtariśvan, says the myth. This is a divine or semi-divine being, of whom but little is known. He seems to be a figure which has never been fully crystallised;[793] regarded as a divine person, he fetches back the Fire-God to men.

Then the following terminology was introduced. The boring, by which man kindled fire and the sun when extinguished was lighted up again, was called manthana, from the root math (math-nâ-mi or manth-â-mi, ‘I shake, rub, or produce by rubbing’). In German, the corresponding word is mangeln, ‘to roll,’[794] Mangelholz, used in North Germany; manth here becomes mang, as hinter is pronounced hinger, and unter unger. The boring-stick was probably originally called matha, from which mathin, ‘a twirling-stick,’ differs only in its suffix. Very soon, however, matha appears to have been restricted to another signification,[795] and then the fire-generating wooden stick was designated by a term formed from the same root with the preposition pra prefixed, which only gave a shade of difference to the meaning, pramantha. But the fetching of the god Agni by Mâtariśvan (the personified pramantha) is also designated by the same verb mathnâmi, manthâmi, as the proper earthly boring. Now this verb, especially when compounded with the preposition pra, gained the signification ‘to tear off, snatch to oneself, rob.’ Thus the fetching of Agni became a robbery of the fire, and the pramantha a fire-robber. The gods had intended, for some reason or other, to withhold fire from men; a benefactor of mankind stole it from the gods. This robbery was called pramâtha; pramâthyu-s is ‘he who loves boring or robbery,’ a Borer or a Robber. From the latter word, according to the peculiarities of Greek phonology, is formed Προμηθεύ-ς, Prometheus.

He is therefore a Fire-God, very like Hephaestos, whose functions he often assumes. Mâtariśvan, who is quite synonymous with him in meaning, derives his name still more directly from the Fire-God; for mâtariśvan is originally a mere epithet of Agni; for the boring-stick itself bursts into flame, and in so doing reveals itself as Agni. Originally a mere epithet, mâtariśvan was subsequently separated from Agni and made into a distinct person; but, as already observed, without clearly-defined characteristics. Prometheus is the fire-generator, and as such the creator of the human race.[796] This relation to men explains the affection for them which prompts him to give them fire against the will of Zeus. He hid the spark of fire in a stem of Narthex,—one of the kinds of wood which were used for the production of fire, and were regarded as transformed fire.

Fire on earth was the Fire-God descended from heaven; the first man was only the same god in another form; consequently the first men—the representatives and benefactors of the human race—the first kings—the founders of the great sacerdotal families among the priest-ridden Indians—all were designated by attributes of the Fire-God. The family of the Aṅgiras-es acknowledges its descent from Aṅgiras. But Agni himself is often called by this name; and indeed these two names, Agni and Aṅgiras, come from the same root ag or aṅg, and have the same meaning—‘shining.’ Thus, in the mythical view Fire existed in three forms: first, as actual fire, i.e. as the Fire-God; secondly, as generator, rubber, fetcher, and robber, of fire, i.e. as Pramantha, Mâtariśvan, Prometheus; and thirdly, as those for whom it exists, and to whom it is given, i.e. as men. After the Fire-God has come down from heaven as man, he as man or as god fetches himself as god or divine element to earth, and presents himself as element to himself as man.

In the view of primitive man the mediating term between heaven and earth lay in the Lightning. In the lightning he saw the Fire—the god, the man—fall from heaven. Bhṛgu,[797] originally bhargu, from the root bharg, from which the Latin fulgeo, fulgur, and the Greek φλέγω also come, signifies ‘the Shining,’ ‘the Lightning;’ German blitz, which latter word comes from the identical German root (Old High German plih, Middle High German blic).[798] Bhṛgu was said to be the ancestor of the Bhṛgu-s, a sacerdotal family. To them, as representatives of the human race born from the lightning, Mâtariśvan is said to have given the fire. But as the Bhṛgu-s are the lightning, and consequently the Fire-God himself, the myth could be so turned round as to make Mâtariśvan fetch the god from the Bhṛgu-s as divine beings, or to make the Bhṛgu-s go after the traces of Agni, find him in the hole, take him among men, and cause him to display his fire.

Thus there is a mythical identity, on the one hand, between Prometheus and Mâtariśvan as fire-god and fire-fetcher, and on the other, between Prometheus and the Bhṛgu-s in the same capacities, except that the latter are also representatives of mankind. And their relation to Prometheus can be authenticated in Greek myths as well. Bhṛgu is Lightning in his very name. His son Ćyavana ‘the Fallen’ (from ćyu ‘to fall’[799]) is the Lightning again. Hephaestos, also, is well known to have fallen down. The name Iapetos appears most likely to express the notion of ‘the Fallen’; only he is not the son, but the father, of Prometheus. Prometheus created men of clay, and the earth which he used for the purpose was shown near Panopeus in Phokis, the seat of the Phlegyans; the Phlegyans, therefore, considered themselves the first men: they are the Bhṛgu-s, Grecised regularly. The Indians had, moreover, other ideas connected with the Bhṛgu-s which closely coincide with those held by the Greeks concerning the Phlegyans; especially the conception that Bhṛgu, the ancestor of the Bhṛgu-s, like Phlegyas that of the Phlegyans, was hurled into Tartaros for pride and insurrection against the gods. The same characteristics, pride and opposition to Zeus, as well as the punishment, are also found in Prometheus, who is identical with the other two.

The identity of the Indian Mâtariśvan with the Greek Prometheus, and the explanation of the latter thereby gained, are accordingly based on such a coincidence of several mythical features and so similar a combination of these features, as cannot possibly be the work of chance; as well as on several interpretations of names, which are intrinsically more or less certain. If we knew more of the Indian Mâtariśvan, or if the word pramâthyu-s, corresponding to the Greek Prometheus, could be authenticated in the Vedas, then the certainty of all that has been said above of the Greek Titan would force itself upon us. In compensation for what has not yet been found, and is perhaps lost for ever, it may be serviceable to learn about a host of divine beings described in the epic poems of the Indians, who have some connexion with the Fire-God and are called Pramatha-s or Pramâtha-s; they appear to be only the one original Pramâtha or Pramâthyu-s broken up into fragments.

This is, in Kuhn’s profound exposition, the simplest and the pure form of the Story of Prometheus. Later, in Greece, it was brought into relation to other stories in Hesiod’s poetry; and again, with peculiar profundity, into new combinations by Aeschylos. Prometheus received his higher mental signification mainly through the fact that the Greek verb μανθάν-ω, with which the name of the Titan was correctly assumed to be connected, had taken a more mental meaning than the Sanskrit mathnâ-mi or manthâ-mi. The two verbs are obviously originally absolutely identical; only the nasalisation of the root math is effected differently in each language. We might suppose that the meaning ‘to learn,’ which the root μαθ has in Greek, had grown out of the fundamental sense ‘to shake’; for learning is a shaking up, a movement, of the mind to and fro. Yet such a mode of conception might be scarcely possible to the mind of the primeval age in which that signification must have grown up; the primitive act of learning was not such violent exertion as ours in modern times, but rather a simple hearing, a mental reception. Now as the Sanskrit word mathnâmi grew into the meaning ‘to take’ (as has been observed), it is more probable that the notion of learning was formed by the Greeks from this (‘snatching to oneself, taking’[800]), as Kuhn supposes. Then the physical sense of μαθ was lost altogether to the Greeks; it was, indeed, still known that Prometheus was a fire-taker, but not that the name indicated this.

Accordingly, the answer to the question of the nature of the etymology of the name Prometheus must be this: Prometheus comes from a root pra + math, which had the same meaning as the simple verb μανθάνω. But the formation of the name from the verb is older than the appearance of any specific Hellenism; for Prometheus was not formed by the Greeks. With the verb mathnâ-mi the name pramâthyu-s, without any verb pramathnâ-mi, was also delivered to them; and so there were in Greek μανθάνω and Προμηθεύς, but not προμανθάνω. The knowledge of the mutual connexion of the two former words continued vivid in the language; and when the sense of μανθάνω was spiritualised, the same change came over that of Prometheus also. Besides this, the preposition προ was understood, according to the usual Greek analogy, as ‘beforehand’; and the verb προμανθάνω was then formed on Greek ground. Thus Prometheus came finally to denote to the Greeks ‘the Fore-learner, the Provident.’ I shall have more to say presently on this development. Let us pause for a while here, and attempt the psychological analysis of the simpler form of the myth exhibited above.

Simple Motions, or single Combinations of them, in case they are not distinct or distinguished from other simple motions or single combinations on account of the similarity or equality of their contents, coalesce with the latter into one motion or combination of motions, as the case may be. For instance, to one who has not a clear sight, or has no sense of colour, or is looking at too great a distance, two colours that are but little different will appear one and the same. If one sees a ribbon today, and tomorrow sees at the same place another scarcely differing from it in colour, length, and breadth, one will suppose it to be the same. Thus, Coalescence produces a loss of contents (for in the place of two or more motions only one remains, whereas distinction brings an enrichment of contents), but the loss is compensated by the force of the motion.

Not simple motions, but certainly combinations, can be interlaced (sich verflechten) with one another. Interlacing of combinations occurs when certain motions belonging to two or more combinations coalesce, whilst the other motions belonging to them remain apart. The interlacing of the combinations approximates more or less to a coalescence of them in proportion to the number and value of the motions that coalesce. On this more accurate definitions may be given presently. Here I will only allude to a frequently occurring instance: two words of similar sound in a foreign language are easily interlaced, even to the point of perfect coalescence, i.e. they are confounded with each other. So also two persons closely resembling each other. The coalescing members of the combinations here so greatly exceed in number and force those that remain separated, that there is no consciousness of the latter.

When something presents itself to the mind to be perceived, estimated, or in the most general sense received, a certain procedure or negotiation takes place between this something on the one side, and certain older ideas, through the instrumentality of which the reception is to be effected, on the other. This procedure is Apperception: it is obviously far from a primary occurrence in the consciousness; it depends upon Coalescences, Interlacings, and Combinations of all sorts.[801]

The primitive man saw fire on the earth and in the sky; or, to express it more precisely, he saw something burning, shining. From the conception of burning things the idea of Burning or Shining was extracted. The difference between Conception (Anschauung) and Idea (Vorstellung) must now be carefully noted.[802] The former is an undivided sum-total of many elements, corresponding to the object or occurrence presented to the senses. The thought of it is expressed in language by a plurality of ideas, every one of which corresponds to one single element of the conception; so that the ideas are equal in number to the separate elements which are recognised and distinguished in the conception. Thus, to a single conception corresponds a combination of many separate ideas. The two combinations of ideas concerning the heavenly fire and concerning the earthly, contained elements (ideas) which coalesced together; and thus they became interlaced with one another. The conceptions of the two fires (as aggregate unities, in opposition to the ideas, into which they are broken up by the analysis of their elements) would not, indeed, easily coalesce; for as such aggregates they appear to the observer too different from each other. But when the conceptions are converted into combinations of ideas, which conversion is effected by language, then the related elements in the two combinations come into prominence and coalesce, and thus produce an interlacing of the combinations.

But it must not be imagined that in this interlacing only those elements are affected which coalesce, and those which do not remain entirely unaffected by them; on the contrary, while the one set of elements press on towards coalescence, they are held back by their connexion with the others. The coalescence is therefore not quite perfect. Now, when on the one side even the not-distinguished elements are protected against the coalescence to which they incline, on the other the distinct elements which keep the two combinations asunder are themselves drawn in to the inclination towards coalescence. Thus the mutual relations of the combinations as aggregates are disturbed by their interlacing; they do not become identical, and yet are not severed: they become analogous.

The one is analogous to the other, the one gives the measure by which the other is measured: the one is the more powerful, the ruling, that which gives the means of apperception; the other the weaker, the ruled, the apperceived. How is this relation divided between the combinations of ideas of the earthly and the heavenly fire?

No doubt the heavenly fire is by far the greater and more effective, and therefore also the more penetrating into the soul of man. Man soon recognises the Sun as the source of the daylight and the origin of growth, and consequently as the giver of all wealth and all joy; and learning, on the one hand, what the sun procures him, he also experiences, on the other, by night and in winter, what it is to be deprived of it. At its rising and setting, but most impressively in the thunderstorm, the sun surprises him by the grandest sights. Thus it might be thought that the heavenly fire must give the measure for the apprehension of the earthly, and therefore for that of fire in general. But the matter demands more careful consideration.

Only the more powerful combination of ideas can give the measure and be the organ of apperception. Now a physical occurrence which works more powerfully, i.e. with greater force, upon our senses, will indeed arouse stronger feelings; but we cannot speak of stronger sensations. For instance, the vibrations of the air produce in the organ of hearing both the sensation of a tone and a feeling of pleasure or pain. Stronger commotions of air produce stronger and more painful feelings in the ear, but not stronger sensations, only sensations of louder, stronger tones. In memory we distinguish louder and softer tones merely in defining their contents, without meaning that the memory of the one is stronger than that of the other. The sensation of a louder tone is not a louder sensation. Therefore, from the mere fact that the sun is brighter and speaks louder to men in the thunder than the earthly fire, no greater power in human consciousness accrues to men’s ideas of the heavenly fire.

The more important and impressive idea, too, is not necessarily also the more powerful; for this quality also, importance and force of impression, works in the first instance only on the feeling, not on the course of ideas also at the same time. A number or a name may be very important to us, and yet we forget it very soon.