Muller's Contemporary Critics

But if his critics were unfair, they had legitimate grounds for
a certain opposition to his system. Many of his propositions,
as well as those of his followers, were doubtful ; the method
was often pushed to extremes which just escaped being
ludicrous ; and the somewhat ponderous erudition behind it
seemed only to heighten the absurdity of some of its conclusions,
although the charm and usual clarity of Muller's literary style
were not to be denied. The combat waxed fierce, and both
sides brought up all their forces. Linguistic science, it was
said, is an uncertain medium for determining the substance and
nature of thought. The linguistic and etymological methods
had been discarded by philosophy, only to make an unwelcome
reappearance in mythology. The original meaning of a word
is often totally at variance with its later use. Again, similar
mythic conceptions are found with totally different names,
and divergent ones with the same names. These were serious
objections, but they do not destroy the strictly verifiable con-
clusions of the philological school. At present the school is in

1 See "The Lesson of Jupiter," Nineteenth Century for October 1885: "To
understand the origin and meaning of the names of the Greek gods and to enter into
the original intention of the fables told of each, we must take into account the
collateral evidence supplied by Latin, German, Sanskrit, and Zend philology."
See also Lectures on Language^ 2nd ser., p. 406.
D 49



INTRODUCTION TO MYTHOLOGY

the deepest discredit ; indeed, it may be said to possess scarcely
a single follower ; but that its methods are applicable to certain
classes of mythic phenomena no mythologist of experience
would deny.
