{29b} But, adds Mr. Max Muller’s learned Dutch defender, mythologists, while using philology for certain purposes, ’must shake themselves free, of course, from the false hypothesis’ (Mr. Max Muller’s) ’which makes of mythology a mere maladie du langage.’  This professor is rather a dangerous defender of Mr. Max Muller!  He removes the very corner-stone of his edifice, which Tiele does not object to our describing as founded on the sand.  Mr. Max Muller does not cite (as far as I observe) these passages in which Professor Tiele (in my view, and in fact) abandons (for certain uses) his system of mythology.  Perhaps Professor Tiele has altered his mind, and, while keeping what Mr. Max Muller quotes, braves gens, and so on, has withdrawn what he said about ’the false hypothesis of a disease of language.’  But my own last book about myths was written in 1886-1887, shortly after Professor Tiele’s remarks were published (1886) as I have cited them.

Personal Controversy

All this matter of alliances may seem, and indeed is, of a personal character, and therefore unimportant.  Professor Tiele’s position in 1885- 86 is clearly defined.  Whatever he may have published since, he then accepted the anthropological or ethnological method, as alone capable of doing the work in which we employ it.  This method alone can discover the origin of ancient myths, and alone can account for the barbaric element, that old puzzle, in the myths of civilised races.  This the philological method, useful for other purposes, cannot do, and its central hypothesis can only mislead us.  I was not aware, I repeat, that I ever claimed Professor Tiele’s ‘alliance,’ as he, followed by Mr. Max Muller, declares.  They cannot point, as a proof of an assertion made by Professor Tiele, 1885-86, to words of mine which did not see the light till 1887, in Myth, Ritual, and Religion, i. pp. 24, 43, 44.  Not that I deny Professor Tiele’s statement about my claim of his alliance before 1885-86.  I merely ask for a reference to this claim.  In 1887 {30} I cited his observations (already quoted) on the inadequate and misleading character of the philological method, when we are seeking for ’the origin of a myth, or the physical explanation of the oldest myths, or trying to account for the rude and obscene element in the divine legends of civilised races.’  I added the Professor’s applause of the philological method as applied to other problems of mythology; for example, ’the genealogical relations of myths. . . .  The philological method alone can answer here,’ aided, doubtless, by historical and archaeological researches as to the inter-relations of races.  This approval of the philological method, I cited; the reader will find the whole passage in the Revue, vol. xii. p. 260.  I remarked, however, that this will seem ’a very limited province,’ though, in this province, ’Philology is the Pythoness we must all consult;