Language and Myth

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LANGUAGE AND MYTH ERNSTCASSIRER

In this important study Ernst Cassirer analyzes the non-rational thought processes ttiat go to make up culture. He demonstrates that beneath both ianguage and myth there lies an unconscious "grammar" of experience, whose categories and canons are not those of logical thought. He shows that this prelogical "logic" is not merely an undeveloped state of rationality, but someittitrg- basically clifierent, and that this archaic motle of thought still has enorlnous Power over even our most rigorous thought, in language' poetry and myth. The author analyzes brilliantly such seemingly cliverse (yet related) phenom' ena as the metaphysics of the Bhagavat Gita, the Melanesian concept of l\4ana, the Naturphilosophie of Schelling, modern poetry, Ancient Egyptian religion, and symbolic logic. He covers a vast range of material that is all too often neglected in studies of human thought. These six essays are of great interest to the stutlent of philosophy or the philosophy of science, the historian, or the anthropologist. They are also remarkabiy timely for students of literature, what with the enormous emphasis placed upon "myth" in modern literary speculation. Thil book is not superhcial speculation by a
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* t), s t LANGUAGE AND MYTH

Originallypublishedin Germanas Number VI of the "studien der BibliothekWarburg," underthe editorshipof Fritz Saxl.

TANGUAGE ondVIYTH !F!f, $$!#$!fi

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By ERNST CA$SIRER ',-'i9 JO;-

LATE VISITINO PROFESSOROF PSILOSOPEY COLUMBIA I'NIVERSITY

TRANSLATED

BY

SUSANNE K. LANGER

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AUTTIOR OF

Philosophyin a Nav Key

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Copyright @ 1946 by Harper and Brothen. All rights reserved under Pan American International Copyright Conventions.

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Published in Canada by General Publishing Company, Ltd,, 30 Lesmill Road, Don Mills, Toronto, Ontario. Published in the United Kingdom by Constable and Company, Ltd.

This Dover edition, first published in 1953, is an unabridged and unaltered republication of the English translation originally published by Harper and Brothers in 1946.

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Manufactured in the United States of America Dover Publications, Inc. 180 Varick Street New York, N. Y. 10014

Dedicated to my Father-in-Iaw, OT'TO BONDY, upon the occasionof his eightieth bi*hday.

E. C.

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE TWENTY-TWO years ago, Ernst Cassirerpublished 'a the first volume of work which struck a ,re* note in so-called "theoryof knowledge."It wascalledDie Philosophie der SymbolischenFormen (The Philosophy of SymbolicForms). In this work, the "theory of knowledge" becamea theory of mental activity,which gaveas minute and scholarlyattention to the forms of feeling and imaginationas to the categories of senseperception and logic. The book has not yet been translatedinto English; the only accesswe have to his ideas,therefore, is his recent small volume, An, Essay on Man, which presentshis main conclusionsin brief rdsum€.But to be presentedwith a thinker'sconclusions, not reallyseeing the path whereby he reached them, or knowing the 6rst suggestion*the insight or naive perception-which openedthat path, is unsatisfactoryto anyonewhosephilosophicalinterestis more than skin deep. Now fortunately,at the time when ProfessorCassirer wasengrossed in the first half of his great work-tracing the story of human mentality before the birth of that ratherabshactform of conceptionwhich we call "logic" -he wrote a short but faithful account of his growing idea,his theoryof myth and language. This little study, entitled Spracheund Mytho.s,revealsthe genesisof some of thosegreatconclusionsfor which he is known to the world; it gives one a look into the mental laboratory wherenew ideasaregenerated and developed. Americans like to look into laboratories,especially when they know that somethingbig is in the making there. So this philosophical.fragment which preparesa

viii

Translator'sPre[ace

whole world view is here presentedto the English-speaking public,for the samereasonthat the BibliothekWarburg (one of the world'sgreatventuresin populareducation) sawfit to publishit originally. But an expert in his sanctum sometimesappearsto make strangemoves,unlesswe know what he is trying to d9. A laymanseriouslywatchinghim may well-appreciatea tip to that eftect from somefellow worker in the place.ThereforeI may be permitted to point out in advancewhat ProfessorCassirerwas undeitaking and how he proposedto do it. He wasoriginally struck with the fact that the ,.theory oJ knowledge,"as philosophershad developedit since the l\4iddle Ages, concerneditself solelywith the appreciation of "facts" and the developmentof orderiy thought about facts. The inveteratebelief of all mankind in myth, sometimescrystallizedinto dogmas,sometimesdegradedinto vulgar superstition,was alwaysexcluded from the field of philosophicalinterest,eitirer as divine revelation,which philosophycould not touch, or (especiallyin modern times) as a miscarriageof logical explanation,a product of ignorance.But the whole realm of mythical conceptsis too great a phenomenonto be accounted for as a "mistake" due to the absenceof logically recordedfacts. Mere ignoranceshould be rgnostic-empty and negative-not exciting and irrepressible. And it dawnedon the philosopherthat theory of mind might well begin not with the analysisof knowledge,but with a searchfor the reasonand spiritual function of this peculiarsort of "ignorance." Here he washelped by a strokeof insight: the realization that Tanguage, man's prime instrument of reason, reflectshis mythmaking tendencymore than his rationalizing tendency. Language, the symbolization of

Tnnslator's Preface

ix

thought, exhibits two entirely difterent modes of thought. Yet in both modesthe mind is powerful and creative. It expressesitself in difierent forms, one of which is discursivelogic, the othet creative imagination. Human intelligencebeginswith conception,the prime mental activity; the processof conceptionalwaysculminatesin symbolicexpression. A conceptionis fixed and held only rvhenit has been embodiedin a symbol. So the study of symbolicforms ofiersa key to the forms of human conception.The genesisof symbolic formsverbal, religious, artistic, mathematical, or whatever modesof expression therebe-is the odysseyof the mind. The two oldest of thesemodesseemto be language and myth. Sinceboth areof prehistoricbirth, we cannot fix the age of either; but there are many reasonsfor regarding them as twin creatures.The intuitions about nafure and man reflectedin the oldest verbal roots, and the processes by which languageprobably grew up are the sameelementaryintuitions and the sameprocesses which are expressed in the developmentof myths.They are not the categoriesand canonsof so-called"discursive logic," the forms of reason,which underlie both commonsenseand science. Reasonis not man'sprimitive endowment,but his achievement.The seedsof it-fertile, yet long dormant-lie in language;logic springs from languagewhen that greatestof symbolic modesis mature (as it is by the time we meet it in history or ethnology). Myth never breaksout of the magic circle of its figurativeideas.It reachesreligiousand poeticheights;but the gulf betweenits conceptionsand those of science never narrowsthe least bit. But language,born in that same magic circle, has the power to break its bounds; languagetakesus from the mythmakingphaseof human

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Translator'sPreface

mentality to the phaseof logical thought and the conceptionof facts. Theory of knowledge has always treated this final achievement asman'snaturaland primitivewayof thinking, and taken"facts" ashis earlieststockin trade.Consequently,it could find no connectionat all between myth and truth, poetryand commonsense,religionand science;most of man'sactualideas,most of his cultural and spiritualbackground,had to be discountedas error, caprice,or emotional indulgence.ProfessorCassirer's greatthesis,basedon the evidenceof languageand verified by his sourceswith quite thrilling success,is that philosophy of mind involves much morc than a theory of knowledge;it involves a theory of prelogical conception and expression, and their fnal culminationin reason and tactual knowledge. Such a view changesour whole picture of human mentality. The following pagesgive the readerthe high lights of significantfact which suggested, supported,and finally clinched the theory. I offer the translationof this little study (with some slight modificationsand abridgmentsmadeby the author shortlybeforehis death) both as a statementof a new philosophicalinsight and as a revelation of the philosopher'swork: his material, his technique,and the solution of the problem by a final flash of interpretivegenius. S. K. L. New York City November \ Lg4S

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CONTENTS t

The Placeof Languageand Myth in the Pattemof Human Culture

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z. The Evolution of ReligiousIdeas

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3. Languageand Conception

23

4. Word Magic

44

Phasesof ReligiousThought 5. The Successive

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6. The Powerof Metaphot

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LANGUAGE AAID MYTH

.+B r &s, The PlaceoI Language and Myth in the Pattem oI Human Culture of the Platonic dialoguePhaedrus TTIE openingpassage describeshow Socrateslets Phaedrus,whom he encounters, lure him beyond the gatesof the city to the banks of llissus.Plato haspicturedthe settingof this scenein nicest detail, and there lies over it a glamour and fragrance well-nigh unequaledin classicaldescriptionsof nature. In the shadeof a tall plane tree, at the brink of a cool spring,Socratesand Phaedruslie down; the summer breezeis mild and sweet and full of the cicada's Phaedrusraisesthe song.In the midst of this landscape questionwhether this be not the placewhere,according to a myth, Boreascarried off the fair Orithyia; for the wateris clearand translucenthere,fitting for maidensto sport in and bathe. Socrates,when pressedwith questions as to whether he believesthis tale, this "mythologemen,"repliesthat, althoughhe cannotbe saidto believe it, yet he is not at a lossasto its significance."For," he says,"then I could proceedasdo the learrred,and say by wayof cleverinteqpretation,that Orithfa, while playing with her companionPharmacia,had beenborne over yonder cliffs by Boreasthe Northwind, and becauseof

Language and Myth this mannerof her death she wassaid to have been car,.for ried of. by my Jhe god Boreas.. . . But I,', he adds, part, Phaedrus,I 6nd that sort of thing pretty yet considersuch inteqpretationsrather a' attinciat "noug6 a-rrd and do not envy him who indulgesin ledrous_business, it For he will necessarilyhave tb account for ceitaun and the chimaera,too, and witl find himself overwhelmed by a verymultitude of _suchcreatures,gorgonsand pegasusesand countlessother strange-orrsters. ana wn5ever discreditsall these wondeiful beitrgs and tackles them with the intention of reducingthem eachto some prob-ability,will have to devote a great deal of time to this bootlesssort of wisdom.But l-haveno reisureat all for such pastimes,and the reason,my dear friend, is that as y_etI canno! as the Delphic precepthasit, know 1npelf. So it seemsabsurdto me that, ai long as I am in ignoranceof myself, I should concern *vr-.lf about extraneousmatters.ThereforeI let all such tirings be as $91*rf, and think not of them, but of myself-ihether T.be, indeed, a creaturemore complex and monstrous than Typhon, or whether perchancj I Ue a gentler and simpleranimal,whosenahrrecontainsa divinl and noble essence."(Phaedrus,zzgD fr,) so*.9f *yt interpretation, which the Sophisb ]{1 and Rhetoriciansof the time held in high repute as the florver of polite learning and the height of itre urbane spirit, seemedto Plato the very opposite of this spiri! but although he denouncedit is such,calling it a rustic science(Elptxosoogta),his iudgment did not preventthe learned from indulging in this sort of wisdom for cen_ furies to come. As the Sophistsand Rhetoriciansvied with eachother at this intellectual sport in plato's day, so the Stoics and Neoplatonistsdid in the Hellenistic period. And it was ever and alwaysthe scienceof lan-

In the PatternoI Human Culture guage,of etymology,that servedas a vehicle for such research.Here in the realm of spooksand daemons,as well as in the higher reachesof mythologY,the Faustian word seemedever to hold good: here it was alwaysasof eachmythical figure could be sumedthat the essence its name. The notion that name from directly learned and internal relation to each beara necessary and essence other, that the namedoesnot merelydenotebut actually is the essenceof its object, that the potency of the real thing is containedin the name-that is one of the funof the mythmakingconsciousness damentalassumptions itself. Philosophicaland scientificmythology,too, seemed to accept this assumption.What in the spirit of myth itself functions as a living and immediateconvictionbecomesa postulateof reflectiveprocedurefor the science of mythology; the doctrine of the intimate relation beand of their latent identity, tween namesand essences, is here set up as a methodologicalprinciple. Among the philosophersit was especiallyHerbert Spencerwho tried to prove the thesisthat the mythice religious veneration of natural phenomena,as, for in' stance,the sun and the moon, has its ultimate origin in nothing more than a misinterpretationof the names which men have applied to these objects.Among the philologists,Max Miiller has taken the method of philo' logical analysisnot only as a meansto revealthe nature of certain mythical beings,especiallyin the context of Vedic religion, but also as a point of departurefor his generaltheory of the connectionbetweenlanguageand myth. For him, myth is neither a transformationof history into fabulouslegendnor is it fable acceptedashis' tory; and just as certainly it does not spring directly from the contemplationof the great forms and powers of nature. What we call myth is, for him, something

Language and Myth 4 conditionedand negotiatedby the agencyof language; "a, it is, in fact, the product of a basicsf,ortcoming, Inherent weaknessof language.AII linguistic denotation is essentiallyambiguous-and in thii ambiguity, this "paronymia"of wordslies the sourceof all rn'yths. m. examplesby which Max Miiller supportsthis iheoryare charactenstic of his approach.He ciles,as one instance, the- legend of Deucalionand pyrrha, who, after Zeus had rescuedthem from the greaiflood which destroyeJ mankind,becamethe ancestors of a new raceby taking up stonesand castingthem over their shoulde.s,wherel upon the stonesbecamemen. This origin of human b-:ingrfrom stonesis simply absurdand"seemsto defy all interpretation-but is-ii not immediaterycrarifiei as we recallthe fact that in Greekmen and ,ton., denotedby identicalor at IeastsimilarsoundingnameE "r. that the wordslao; and )r6csare assonant? Or take the myth of Daphne,who is savcdfrom Apollo's embracesby the fact that her mother,the Earth, iransformsher into a laurel.tree-. Againit is only the historyof languagethat can make this myth ..comprehensible,;' and glve"it any sort of sense.Who wasDaphne?In orderto answerthis question we must resort to etymology, that is to say, we must investigatethe history of thi word. ,,Daphne,; can be tracedback to the Sanskrit Ahanl, and ihand meansin Sanskritthe rednessof dawn. As soon as we know this, the whole matter becomesclear.The story of Phoebusand_Daphne is nothing but a descriptionof what_one-may obseweeveryday: fiist, the appearance of the dawnlight in the easteinsky, then the riiing of the sun-godwho hastensafter his bride, then the gradual fadjng of the red dawn at the touch of the fiefi rays, and finally its death or disappearance in the bosom'oi Mother Earth. So the deciiive condition for the de-

In the Pattern of Human Culture 5 velopmentof the myth wasnot the natural phenomenonitseli, but rather the circumstancethat the Greek word for the laurel (aa6r,1)and the Sanskritword for the dawn are related;this entailswith a sort of logicalnecessitythe identification of the beingsthey denote.This, therefore, is his conclusion: "Mythology is inevitable,it is natural,it is an inherent -ianguage, if we recognizein languagethe necessityof of thought; it is in manifestation form and outward throws upon language fact the dark shadow which thought, and which can never disappeartill language becomesentirely commensuratewith thought, which it never will. Mythology, no doubt, breaks out more fiercelyduring the early periodsof the history of human altogether.Dependuponthougirt, but it neverdisappears it, there is mythology now as there was in the time of Homer, only we do not perceiveit, becausewe ourselves live in the very shadowof it, and becausewe all shrink from the full meridian light of truth. . . . Mythology' in the highestsense,is the Powerexercisedby language on thought in everypossiblesphereof mental activity."r It might seem an idle pursuit to hark back to such points ol view, which havelong beenabandonedby-the itymology and comparativemythologicalresearchof today, were it not for the fact that this standpoint representsa typical attitude which is ever recurrentin all re' lated fields, in mythology as in linguistic studies,in theory of art as well as in theory of knowledge.For Max a world of illu' Miiller the mythical world is essentially whenits explanation finds illusion sion-but an that ever the original, necessaryself-deceptionof the mind, from which the error arises,is discovered.This self' l Max Miiller, "The Philosophy of Mythology," appended to Intro' duction to the Scienceof Religion (London, 1873)' PP. )t3'35r.

Languageand Mytlt deceptionis rooted in language,which is forevermaking game of the human mind, ever ensnaringit in thaT iridescentplay of meaningsthat is its own h"eritage. Aid this notion that myth does not rest upon a positive power of formulation and creation, but ratherupon mental defect-that we find in it a ,,pathological,,'irrf* " ence of speech-this notion has its proponents even in modernethnologicalliterature.z' But when we reduce it to its philosophical lowest terms,this attitude turns out to be iimply ihe loeical result of that naiVerealismwhich regards'the realiti oi; something directly and unequivocallygiu"n, i:",r,:t Itterally something tangible-arptf raiv yepoiv, plato as says.Ij reality is conceivedin this manner,then of course evgVthinS which has not this solid sort of reality dissolvesinto mere fraud and illusion. This illusion _'ry t" finely wrought,and flit about us in the gry.rtiia :].t,:o Iov€lrest colors;the fact remainsthat this i*# has no independentconten! no intrinsic meaning.It" doesindeedreflecta reality-but a reality to whicf, it can never measureup, and which it can neveradequatelyportray. From this point of view all artistic .r.rtiorr. U.*-.r'" mere imitation, which must always fall short of the original. N-o! only simple imitation of a sensibly presentedmodel, but also what is known as idearization, manner, or style, must fnally succumb to this verdictj ,itruth', of the obiect to be lor 1ea-sur.e$ !y the naked depicted, idealization itself is nothing but subiective _ misconceptionand falsification. And ii ,..*, that all other processes of mental gestationinvolve the samesort of outrageousdistortiorr,ihe same deparfurefrom ob iective reality and the immediate data of e*perience. or Primitive Peoples (NewYorkand t""h? ,t;"ii:Hl'rl;ligi'ons

In the Pattern of Human Culture

7 fail to graspreality itself, and in For all mental processes it at all, they are drivento it, to hold represent to order the useof symbols.But all symbolismharborsthe curse of mediacy;it is bound to obscurewhat it seeksto reveal.Thus the soundof speechstrivesto "express"sub iective and objectivehappening,the "inner" and the "outer" world; but what of this it can retain is not the but only a dead life and individualfullnessof existence, abbreviationof it. All that "denotation" to which the spoken word lays claim is really nothing more than a "suggestion"which, in face of the mere suggestion; concretevariegationand totality of actual experience, must alwaysappeara Poorand emptyshell.That is true of the externalaswell asthe inner world: "When speaks the soul,alas,the soul no longerspeaks!" From this point it is but a singlestepto the conclusion which the modem skeptical critics of languagehave drawn: the complete dissolution of any alleged truth content of language,and the realizationthat this con' of the tent is nothing but a sort of phantasmagoria spirit. Moreover,from this standpoint,not only myth, art, and language,but even theoreticalknowledgeitself for even knowledge can becomesa phantasmagoria; never reproducethe true nature of things as they are, but must frame their essencein "concepts."But what are conceptssaveformulationsand creationsof thought, which, insteadof giving us the true forms of objects, show us ratherthe forms of thought itself?Consequently all schematawhich scienceevolvesin order to classify, otganize,and summarize the phenomenaof the real world turn out to be nothing but arbitrary schemesairy fabricsof the mind, which expressnot the nature of things,but the natureof mind. Soknowledge,as well as myth, language,and art, has been reducedto a kind

Languageand Myth of fiction-to a fiction that recommendsitself bv its usefulness,but must not be measured by any strictitandard of truth, if it is not to melt awayinto nothingness. Against this self-dissolutionof the spirit there is only one remedy: to acceptin all seriousness what Kant calls his "Copernicanrevolution." Insteadof measuringthe content, meaning, and truth of intellectual forms by something extraneouswhich is supposedto be r"producedin them, we must 6nd in theseforms themselves the measureand criterion for their truth and intrinsic meaning.Insteadof taking them as mere copiesof something else,we must seein each of thesespiritual forms a spontaneouslaw of generation;an original way and tendencyof expressionwhich is more than a mere iecord of something initially given in fixed categoriesof real existence.From this point of view, myth, ar! language and scienceappear as symbols; not in the serrie of mere figureswhich refer to somegiven reality by means of suggestionand allegoricalrenderings,but in tire sense of forceseach of which producesand posits a world of its own. In theserealmsthe spirit exhibits itself in that inwardly determineddialectic by virtue of which alone ,!-.rltr any reality, any organizedand definite Being at all. Thus the specialsymbolicforms are not imitati6ns, but organsof reality, since it is solely by their agency that anything real becomesan object for intelleituai apprehension, and as such is made visible to us. The questionasto what realityis apartfrom theseforms,and what are its independentattributes,becomesirrelevant here. For the mind, only that can be visible which has somedefiniteform; but everyform of existencehas its sourcein somepeculiarway of seeing,someintellectual formulation and intuition of meaning. Once language, myth, art and scienceare recognizedas such ideational

ln the Pattern of Human Culture

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forms,the basicphilosophicalquestionis no longerthat of their relation to an absolutereality which forms, so to speak,their solid and substantialsubstratum;the central problemnow is that of their mutual limitation and Though they all function organically supplementation. in the together constructionof spiritualreality,yet each of theseorganshasits individualassignment. From this angle, the relation between languageand myth alsoappearsin a new light. It is no longera matter of simply deriving one of these phenomenafrom the other, of "explaining" it in terms of tlie other-for that would be to level them both, to rob them of their features.If myth be really,as Max Miiller's characteristic it, theory has nothing but the darkeningshadowwhich languagethrows upon thought, it is mystifyingindeed that this shadowshouldappeareveras in an auraof its own light, should evolve a positive vitality and activity of its own, which tends to eclipsewhat we commonly call the immediate reality of things, so that even the palesbeforeit. experience wealth of empirical,sensuous with has said in connection Humboldt As Wilhelm von the languageproblem: "Man lives with his objects chiefly-in fact, sincehis feelingand acting dependson his perceptions,one may say exclusively-as language presentsthem to him. By the sameprocesswherebyhe himself spinslanguageout of his own being,he ensnares in it; and eachlanguagedrawsa magic circle round the peopleto which it belongs,a circle from which there is no escapesaveby steppingout of it into another."s This holds, perhaps,evenmore for the basicmythical conceptionsof mankind than for language.Such conceptions are not culled from a ready-madeworld of tW. von Humboldt,Einleitungzum Kawi-Werk,S.W. (Coll. ed.), VII, 6o.

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Language and Myth

Being, they arenot mereproductsof fantasywhich vapor ofi from fixed,empirical,realisticexistence,to foat above the actual world like a bright mist; to primitive consciousnessthey present the totality of Being. The mythical form of conceptionis not somethingsuperaddedto certaindefiniteelementsof empiricaleiistence; instead,the primary "experience"itself ii steepedin the iTrgry of myth and saturatedwith its atmosphere. Man lives with objects only in so far as he livei with theseforms; he revealsreality to himself, and himself to reality, in that he lets himself and the environmententer into this plasticmedium,in which the two do not merelv make contact, but fuse with eachother. Consequentlyall thosetheorieswhich proposeto find _ the ro.oh of myth by exploring the realm of experience, of obfects,which are supposedto have given rise to it, and from which it then allegedlygrewand spread,must alwaysremain one-sidedand inadequate.Tirere are, as is well known, a multitude of suchexplanations-a great variety of doctrinesabout the ultimate origin and-real kernelof mythmaking,hardlylessmotleythan the world of objects itself. Now it is found in certain psychical conditions and experiences,especiallythe phenomenon of dreaming,now in the contemplationof naturalevents, and amongthe latter it is further limited to the observation of natural obiectssuch as the sun, the moon, the stars,or elseto that of great occunencessuch as storms, lightning and thunder, etc. Thus the attempt is made againand againto make soul mythologyor naturemythology, sun or moon or thunder mythology the basii of mythologyas such. But even if one of theseattempts should prove successful,this would not solve the real problem which mythology presentsto philosophy, but at best would

In the Pattern of Human Culture

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push it back one step.For mythical formulation as such cannot be understood and appreciatedsimply by determining the objet on which it is immediately and originally centered.It is, and remains,the samemiracle of the spirit and the samemystery,no matter whether it coversthis or that realistic matter, whether it deals with the interpretation and articulation of psychical processes or physicalthings, and in the latter case,just particular thingsthesemay be. Even though it were what possibleto resolveall mythology to a basicastral mythderives from ology-what the mythical consciousness contemplationof the stars,what it seesin them directly, would still be something radically difierent from the view they present to empirical observationor the way they 6gure in theoreticalspeculationand scientific "explanations" of natural phenomena.Descartessaid that theoretical scienceremains the samein its essenceno matter what obiect it dealswith-iust as the sun's light is the sameno matter what wealth and variety of things it may illuminate. The samemay be saidof any symbolic form, of language,art, or myth, in that eachof theseis a particular way of seeing,and carrieswithin itself its particular and proper sourceof light. The function of envisagement,the dawn of a conceptualenlightenment can neverbe realisticallyderivedfrom things themselves or understoodthrough the nature of its objectivecontents. For it is not a questionof what \ryeseein a certain perspective,but of the perspectiveitself. If we conceive the problem in this way,it is certainlyclear that a reduction of all myth to one subiectmatter bringsus no nearer to the solution, in fact it removesus further than ever from any hope of a real answer.For now we seein lan*a1e, art and mythologySomanyarchetypalphenomena of human mentality which can be indicatedas such,but

\2

Languageand Myth

are not capableof any further 'explanation"in terms of somethingelse.The realistsalwaysassume,as their solidbasisfor all suchexplanations, the so-called "given," which is thought to have somedefiniteform, someinherent structureof its own. They acceptthis reality as an integratedwhole of causes and effects,thingsand attributes,statesand processes, of objectsat rest and of motions, and the only questionfor them is which of theseelementsa particularmentalproductsuchasmyth, languageor art originallyembodied.If, for instance,the phenomenonin questionis language,their natural line of inquiry must be whethernamesfor things preceded namesfor conditionsor actions,or vice versa-whether, in other words, nouns or verbs rvere the first "roots" of speech.But this problem itself appearsspuriousas soon as we realizethat the distinctions which here are takenfor granted,the analysisof realityin termsof things and processes, perrnanentand transitoryaspects,obiects and actions,do not precedelanguageas a substratumof given facf but that languageitself is what initiates such articulations, and developsthem in its own sphere.Then it turns out that languagecould not begin with any phaseof "noun concepts"or "verb concepts,"but is the very agencythat producesthe distinction betweenthese forms, that introduces the great spiritual "crisis" in which the permanentis opposedto the transient,and Being is made the contrary of Becoming.So the linguisticfundamentalconceptsmust be realizedas something prior to these distinctions,forms which lie between the sphereof noun conceptionand that of verb conception,betweenthinghood and eventuality,in a stateof indifference,a peculiarbalanceof feeling. A similarambiguityseemsto characterize the earliest

In the Pattern of Human Culture

ry phasesto which we c:ln trace back the developmentof mythical and religious thought. It seemsonly natural to us that the world should presentitself to our inspection and observationas a pattern of definite forms, each with its own perfectly determinate spatial limits that give it its specificindividuality. If we seeit as a whole, this whole nevertheless consistsof clearlydistinguishable units, which do not melt into each other, but preserve their identity that sets them definitely apart from the identity of all the others. But for the mythmaking consciousnessthese separate eiements are not thus separatelygiven,but have to be originally and gradually derived from the whole; the processof culling and sorting out individual forms has yet to be gone through. For this reasonthe mythic stateof mind hasbeen called the "complex" state, to distinguishit from our abstract analytic attitude. Preuss,who coined this expression, points out, for instance,that in the mythology of the Cora Indians,which he hasstudiedexhaustively, the conception of the nocturnal heavenand the diurnal heaven must haveprecededthat of the sun, the moon, and the separateconstellations.The first mythical impulse, he claims,wasnot toward makinga sun-godor a lunar deiry but a community of stars."The sun-goddoes indeed hold first rank in the hierarchyof the gods,but . . . the various astral deities can stand proxy for him. They precedehim in time, he is createdby them, by somebody's iumping into a fire or being thrown into it; his power is influencedby theirs, and he is artificially kept alive by feedingon the heartsof sacrificedvictims,i.e., the stars.The starry night sky is the necessary condition for the existenceof the sun; that is the central idea in the whole religiousideation of the Coras and of the

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Languageand Myth

ancient Mexicans,and must be regardedas a principal factor in the further developmentof their religibn."r The same function here attributed to the nocturnal heavensseemsto be imputed by the Indo-Germanic racesto the daylit sky. Their religionsshow many traces of the fact that the worship of light as an undifierentiated, total experienceprecededthat of the individual heavenlybodies,which figure only as its media, its particular manifestations.In the Avesta,for instance,Mifhra is-not a sun-god,as he is for later ages;he is the spirit of . heavenly light. He appears on the mountaintops beforc the sun rises,to mount his chariot which, drawn by four white horses,runs the courseof heavenduring tfe {ay; when night comes,he the unsleepingstill lighti the face of earth with a vagueglimmeringlight. We are explicitly told that he is neither the sun, nor the moon, nor any or all of the stars,but through them, his thousand ears and ten thousand eyes, he perceiveseverything and keepswatch over the world.6 Here we seein a concreteinstancehow mythic conception originally graspsonly the great, fundamental, qualitative contrast of light and darkness,and how it treats them as one essence,one complex whole, out of which definite charactersonly gradually emerge. Like the spirit of language,the mythmaking genius 'tras" separateand individualized forms only in so far as it "posits" them, as it carvesthem out of the undifferentiated whole of its pristine vision. This insight into the determining and discriminating function, which myth as well as languageperforms in {Preuss, Die Nayarit-Expedition I: Die Religion der Cora Indianer, :ipzig, r9rz. geistige?ultur der Naturvd'lker, tgrz. Cf.'further, Cf.'further, Preuss, Preuss,Die Die geistige Naturvd&er.

,. 9 rr. #:t;'f. !Y.asht-{, r45; YasnaI, ii (15); cf. Cumont,?exteset monuments fgurCsrelatifsi6x mystCres de'lviitfua(Brussels, 1899), I, p.22t.

In the Pattern of Human Culture

r5

the mentalconstruction of our worldof "things",seems to be all that a "philosophyof symbolicforms" canteachus. Philosophyassuchcango no further;it cannotpresumeto presentto us,in concreto,the greatprocess of emergence, and to distinguishits phasesfor us. But if pure philosophy is necessarilyrestricted to a general, theoretical picture of such an evolution,it may be that philology and comparativemythology can fill in the outline and draw with firm, clearstrokeswhat philosophicalspeculation could only suggestivelysketch.An initial and portentous step in this direction has been taken by Usener in his work on divine names."An Essaytoward a Science of ReligiousConception,"is the subtitle he has given to his book, which brings it definitely into the realm of philosophicalproblems and systematictreatment. To tracethe history of the divinities, their successive appearanceand developmentamongthe severaltribesof man, he tells us, is not an attainablegoal; only a history of mythic ideascan be reconstructed. Suchideas,no matter how manifold,how varied,how heterogeneous they may appearat first sight, have their own inner lawfulness; theydo not arisefrom a boundless capriceof the imagination, but move in definite avenuesof feelingand creative thought. This intrinsic law is what mythology seeksto establish.Mythology is the science(Ioros) of myth, or the scienceof the forms of religiousconception.s His findingsin this field may certainlygive pauseto philosophers,who tend to regardthe human mind as endowedab initio with logical categories."There have been long periods in mental evolution," he observes, "when the human mind was slowly laboring toward thought and conceptionand was following quite difier._6lJsener, G
16

Languageand Myth

ent laws of ideation and speech.Our epistemologywill not have any real foundation until philology and mythology have revealedthe processes of involuntary and unconsciousconception.The chasmbetweenspecificperception and general concepts is far greater than our academicnotions,and a languagewhich doesour thinking for us,leadus to suppose. It is so greatthat I cannot imaginehow it could have been bridged,had not language itself, without man's consciousawareness, preparedand inducedthe process. It is languagethat causes the multitude of casual,individual expressionsto yield up one which extendsits denotationovermoreand more specialcases,until it comesto denote them all, and assumesthe powerof expressing a classconcept"(p. lrt). Here, then, it is the philologist, the student of languageand religion,who confrontsphilosophywith a new question, which emergesfrom his own investigations. And Usenerhas not merely indicated a new approach; he has resolutelyfollowed it up, employing to this end all the clues which the history of language,the precise analysisof words, and especiallythat of divine names provided. The question naturally arises whether phi. losophy,not commandingany suchmaterials,canhandle this problem which the humanistic scienceshave presented to it, and what intellectual resourcesit can tap to meet such a challenge.Is there any other line than the actual history of languageand of religion that could lead us closer to the origin of primary linguistic and religiousconcepts?Or is it, at this point, one and the samething to know the genesisof such idcas and to know their ultimate meaningsand functions? This is the issueI proposeto decide in the following pages.I shall take up Usener'sproblem in exactly the form in which he has castit; but I shall attempt to tackle it on

The Evolution of Religious ldeas

ry other groundsthan linguisticand philologicalconsiderations. Usenerhimselfhasindicatedthe propriety,in fact of suchan approach,in that he formulated the necessity the main issueas not merelya matter of linguisticand intellectualhistory,but also of logic and epistemology. This presupposes that the latter disciplines,too, can handlethe problemof semanticand mythic conception from their own standpoint,and treat it by their own methodologicalprinciplesand procedures. Through this expansion,this apparent oversteppingof the usual boundariesof logicalinquiry, the scienceof logic really comesinto its own, and the realm of pure theoretical reasonbecomesactuallydefinedand distinguishedfrom other spheresof intellectualbeing and development.

.cB z 8s, The Evolution of Religious Ideas BEFORE we move, however, to the attack on this generalobjective,we must graspthe separatefactswhich Usener'sstudiesin the history of languageand religion have brought to light, in order to have a concretebasis for our theoreticalinterpretationsand constructions. In the evolution of thosetheologicalconceptswhich he has traced by means of divine nomenclatureshe distinguishesthree principal phases.The oldest of these is markedby the productionof "momentarydeities."These beingsdo not personifyany force of nature,nor do they representsomespecialaspectof human life; no recurrent trait or valueis retainedin them and transformedinto a

r8

Language and Myth

mythico-religious image;it is somethingpurely instantaneous,a fleeting,emergingand vanishingmental content, whose objectification and outward discharge producesthe imageof the "momentarydeity." Everyimpressionthat man receives, everywish that stirs in him, everyhope that lures him, everydangerthat threatens him can afiecthim thus religiously.fust let spontaneous feelinginvestthe obiectbeforehim, or his own personal condition,or somedisplayof power that suqprises him, with an air of holiness,and the momentarygod hasbeen experienced and created.In starkuniqueness and singlenessit confrontsus; not as a part of someforce which may manifest itself here, there and everywhere,in various placesand times, and for difierent persons,but as somethingthat existsonly hereand now, in one indivisible moment of experience,and for only one subiect whom it overwhelmsand holds in thrall. Usenerhas shown through examplesof Greek literature how real this primitive religious feeling was even in the Greeksof the classicperiod,and how it activated them againand again."By reasonof this vivacity and responsiveness of their religioussentiment, any idea or obiect which commands, for the moment, their undivided interest,may be exaltedto divine status:Reasonand UnderstandingWealth, Chance,Climax,Wine, Feasting,or the body of the Beloved. . . . Whatever comesto us suddenlylike a sendingfrom heaven,whatever rejoicesor grievesor oppresses us, seemsto the religiousconsciousness like a divine being.As far back as we can trace the Greeks,they subsumesuch experiencesunderthegenericterm of 6ais,tv"(pp. zgof). On a somewhathigher plane than these momentary daemons,which come and go, appearingand dissolving like the subjectiveemotions from which they arise,we

The Evolutionof Reft'gious Ideas

19

find a new seriesof divinities,originatingnot from spontaneousfeelings,but fronr the orderedand continualactivitiesof mankind.As intellectualand cultural development progresses, our relation toward the outer world changesproportionatelyfrom a passiveto an activeattitude. Man ceases to be a mereshuttlecockat the mercv of outward impressionsand influences;he exercises his own will to direct the courseof eventsaccordingto his needsand wishes.This coursenow has its own measure and periodicity:at definite intervals,in uniform cycles from day to day and month to month, humah activities repeatthemselvesand are linked with invariant, permanent effects.But again the human ego can realize its presentactivity, as formerly its passivity,only by proiecting it into the outer world, and giving it someconcrete form. So everydepartmentof human activity givesrise to a particulardeity that represents it. Thesedeities,too, which Usenercalls"specialgods" (Sondergotter),have as yet no generalfunction and significance; they do not permeateexistencein its whole depth and scope,but are limited to a mere section of it, a narrowly circumscribeddepartment.But within their respectivespheres they have attained to permanenceand definite character, and therewith to a certain generality.The patron god of harrowing, for instance,the god Occator, rules not only this year'sharrowing,or the cultivation of a particular field but is the god of hanowing in general, who is annuallyinvoked by the whole community as its helper and protectorupon the recurrenceof this agricu-lturalpractice.So he represents a specialand perhaps a humble rustic activity, but he representsit in its generality (p. z8o). Usener demonstrates,through the so-called "functional gods" of the Romans,how widely and variously

20

Language and Myth deity is developedin Romanreligion. *i::3:_:Lspeciat prachcal performance has its patron: the first :uey brea.kingof fallow soil, the secondpto*ing, the actsof so.wing,of weeding,the cutting of the grain and like_ wisethe harvesting; and none oi theseuridertaki.,gs can be successful unlessits approprirt. has been invoked in prescribedfashionn".i Uy his loJ name.Usener -prrr_ ""orrect has uncoveredthe samestructure of af,. popufn, according to separateactivities in Lithuanian lh.:1. tradition. From this as well as from similar fi"din;; ;; the history of Greek religion he draws the conclusion that the naturesand namls of suchd.;ties t*r, ;t;i; certainstageof religiousdevelopmentamong all peoples. r ney representa necessary phasewhich ,.ligious corrsciousness must traversein order to reachits"firral and supremeachievement,the conception of p.rronrf godri The process,however,wh19by it ;tt i., this goal can be revealed,according to Usener, Uy phiirl"gi.ri research; "riyff. for "the necessary condition if,J g"n"ri",oi personalgodsis a linguisfib_historical process,,"1p. 3r6j. \%enever a goa i, first conceiued, it is invested -special wrrn a specratname,which is derivedfrom the particular activity that has given riseto the deity. As l;g name is-understood, and taken in its ;riginrf ,J"ri"r-ih;; tf,. Iimits of meaningare the limits of the god,spowers; -its through his name the god is permanenity"t i" t# narrow field for which "ta wg originallycreated. fe euite otherwise,however,,ifthrough an"accijent of phonetic changesor the obsolescenc. if it, verbal -with root the name losesits meaning and its co.,rrectio., the living language.Then ihe no longer suggests to those who useit the ideaoflam€ a sing/eactivTty,io'wf,ich the subiect that bearsit must be lxclusively'bound.The word hasbecomea propername_and this connotes, iust like

The Evolution of Religious Ideas

zr

the givennameof a man,the conceptionof a personalify. Thus a new Being has beenproduced,which continues to developby a law of its own. The conceptof the special god, which expressed a certainactivity rather than a certain nature,now achievesits embodimentand appears, so to speak,in the flesh.This god is now capableof acting and sufferinglike a human creature;he engages in all sortsof actions,and insteadof beingwholly consum, mated in one function he is relatedto it as an independent subject.The many divine nameswhich originally denoteda corresponding numberof sharplydistinguished specialgodsnow fusein one personality,which has thus emerged;they become the severalappellationsof this Being, expressingvariousaspectsof his nature,power and range(pp. 3orf., 325,33o). What intrigues us about these results of Usener's, which we have tried to recapitulatein brief, is not primarily his materialconclusionbut the method by which he has arrivedat it. That method is summedup in his prefacewith thesewords: "Only through devotedpreoccupationwith the spiritual tracesof vanishedtimes, that is to say,through philologicalresearch,can we train ourselvesto feel with the past; then gradually sympathetic strainsmay be set in motion within us so that we find in our own consciousness the threads that link ancientand moderntimes.A greaterwealth of observation and comparisonallowsus to go further and proceed from the particularcaseto a law. It would be a sad pass for human knowledge if detailed researchipso facto fettered the mind and preventedit from seekinga synopticvision. The deeperyou delve, the more you may expectto be rewardedby generalinsight." Usenerdrawsmost of his materialevidencefrom the history of Greek and Roman religion;yet he makesit

2Z

Languageand Myth

perfectly clear that these demonstrationsare merely representativeinstancesof a pattern that is generally the fact valid. Indeed,he specificallyadmits and stresses that he gained his understandingof many important, basic traits in Graeco-Romanreligion only through his extensivestudiesof Lithuanian paganism.And even in entirely unrelated fields, in American and African systems of belief, there are often astonishingparallelswhich serveto supportand illuminate his fundamentaltheses in religioushistory and philosophy.In the detailedand careful accountof the Ev6 tribe which Spieth has published there is a descriptionof Ev6 godsthat is nothing of what Usenerhas introducedunder short of a pa:ir,gon the nameof "momentarydeities." "After the inhabitants of the town of Dzake in Peki had settledthat place,a certain farmer at work in his fields went to look for water. In a trough-shapedhollow he drove his macheteinto the damp soil. Suddenlya gory looking streamwelledup beforehim, of which he He told his family drank,and which he found refreshing. them to comewith him and woraboutit and persuaded ship that red fluid. After a while the water cleared,and all the family drank of it. From this time on, this water and to his kin. . . . wasa tr6 to its discoverer "It is saidthat upon the arrivalof the first settlersof Anvlo a man happenedto be standingbefore a great, thick breadfruit tree. At the sight of the tree, he felt panicky.He went to the priestto askfor an explanation of this event.The answerhe receivedwas that the tree was a tro which wanted to live with him and be worshippedby him. So his fright was the signwherebythe man knew that a h6 had revealeditself to him. . . . If anyonetakes refuge in an anthill from his human or 'The anthill he will sayafterwards: animal persecutors,

Language and Conception

23

savedmy life.' It is the samewhen a man finds safety in a brookfrom someragingwoundedanimal,or a family or entire clan takes shelter from the enemy in some mountain fastness.In everycasethe rescueis ascribed to someindwellingpowerof the object or placewhere, or by meansof which, it occurred."T The valueof suchobservations for the generalhistory religions in lies the fact that here a dynamicconcept of of deity hastaken the placeof the staticoneswith which both arewont to operate;that the god or daemonis not merelydescribed accordingto his natureand significance, but that the law of his origin is takeninto consideration. An attempt is made to spy out his genesisfrom the mythico-religious consciousness, in fact to note the very hour of his birth. If empiricalscience,in the realmsof etymology,religion and ethnology,finds itself facedwith problemsof this sorf surelyno one can deny philosophy the right to essaythem, and bring its oum principlesand intereststo bearon their solution.

-Bl6* Language and Conception TO know and understandthe peculiarnatureof mythicoreligious conception not only through its results, but through the very principle of its formation, and to see, ?Spieth, Die Religion der Eweer in Srid-Togo (Leipzig, rgrr), pp. -work 'rq56\,' on the Ev6 tribes ("Beriin, pp'.'+62, 7f; cf. esp. Spieth's examples here given are especiallysuited fo; rifutafion 48o, 49o.-The of lVundt's objection that Usener's "momentary gods" are "not really empirical data but rather logical postulates"' (Vo&spsychologic, IV,56r).

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Language and Myth

furthermore, how the growth of linguistic conceptsis related to that of religious ideasand in what essential traits they coincide-this requiresus, indeed, to reach far back into the past. We must not hesitateto take a roundaboutway through generallogic and epistemology, for it is only upon this basisthat we may hope to determine preciselythe function of this sort of ideationand to distinguish it clearly from the conceptualforms which servetheoretical thinking. According to the traditional teachingsof logic, the mind forms conceptsby taking a certain number of objects which have common prop erties, i.e., coincide in certain respects,together in thought and abstractingfrom their difierences,so that only the similaritiesare retainedand reflectedupon, and a classof ob. in this waya generalidea of such-and-such jects is formed in consciousness. Thus the concept (notio, conceptus) is that idea which representsthe totality of essentialproperties,i.e., the essenceof the objects in question. In this apparently simple and obvious explanation,everything dependson what one meansby a "property,"and how suchpropertiesare sup posedto be originallydetermined.The formulationof a generalconcept presupposesdefinite properties;only if there are fixed characteristicsby virtue of which things may be recognizedas similaror dissimilar,coincidingor not coinciding,is it possibleto collectobjectswhich resembleeach other into a class.But-we cannot help askingat this point-how cansuchdifierentiaeexistprior to language?Do we not, rather, rcalizethem only by throughthe veryact of namingthem? meansof language, And if the latter be the case,then by rvhat rules and what criteriais this act carriedout?What is it that leads or constrainslanguageto collect just theseideasinto a singlewhole and denotethem by a word?What causes

2, Language and ConcePtion stream it to select,from the ever-flowing,ever-uniform the from arise which strike our sensesor ;i;;;;.;ti;ns of the mind, certain pre-eminent autonomousProcesses a iot-t, to dwetl on them and endow them with Pw ;sigrrific"rrce"?As soon as we castthe problemin it.d"; this mol{ traditional logic ofters no support-to lhe student ,rrd philotopher o1 hnguage;for its explanation u.t1 of generic conceptsPresuPPoses ;ith. origin lht "rr. derive-the and s.Jkit g to undet-tg:d thing rve linguiJtic notions'8The problem becomes of iorniotttio" con.u.r, *or" difficuit, as well as more urgent' if one sidersthat the form of that ideational synthesis.whiclt is ieadsto the primary verbalconceptsand denotations obiect Uy ti*pfy attd otteqoivocallydetermined !\" "oi itself,but'allowsscopefor the freeoperationof language even this ;;J i"t its specificmental stamp' Of course' creative original' this freedom muit have its rules, and forth' set be law own' Can this ;;;;. has a law of its principles and can it be brought into relation with the esPe' that governother spheresof spiritual expressron' theopurely and teiigiotts, cialiv"the rules of mythical, retical,i.e., scientific,conception? can Beginning with the last of these branches'we mind show"that itt tttt intellectual labor whereby the is imp,ressions specific of forms general concepts out datum' the of directei toward breaking the isolation occur*t.tt;"g it from the "heie and now" of its actual it rence,ielating it to other things and gathering and of- a them into some inclusiveorder, into the unity the ;tyti.-." The logical f-ol- of conception, .from a butnothing is stindpoint of the6retical knowledge, pi.ptt^tio" for the logical form ol iudgment; all iudg s For more detailed discussionof this point see my Philosophie der symbolischenFormen, l, 244fi'

26

Language and Myth ment, however,aimsat overcomingthe illusion of singularity which adheresto everypartlcuhr content of con-

apparently singular factbecome; k;;;, l.lilll1j;me understoodand conceptually

graspedonly in so far as ii is "subsumed"underu g*;ot'idr", ,.aognizedas a "case"of a law or as a *e*be, of a manifoli or a series. In this senseevery-genuine ludg*errt is synthetic;for what it intends f;;X-il; this synthesisof "r,ditriu., parts into a whole, this weaving of particulars into a system.This cannot be achievedimmediatelv _synthesis a! a singlestroke;it has to be worked il;fi; 1nd Uy a progressive of relatrng separate ll.p, no.activity senseimpressions gr with each otler,'and then l-".1t gamerrng up the resultant-wholes into greatercomplexes, until finally the union of all these sJparate complexes yields the coherentpicture of the totality of thingsl The ,: this totality is the vivifying principte of o,i, tt.* Y]l .ro emplricll.gonception.This principte, there:::lol necessarily,,discursive',; that is 1o say, it starts ::-.r.? i wrrn a partrcularcase,but insteadof dwelling upon if and.resting content in contemplation o? tli" p;;: ticular, it lets the mind,sheer merelystartirom this instance whole qamu! of Bling in the speciatdirec_ _I1_tl",the uons determined by the- empirical concept. By this processof runnins through a iealm of experien"L, i..., of discursivethinking, thJparticuinr-r..riurs its fixed intellectual"meaning'tanddifinite character.It hasdifierent appearances accordingto the ever-broaderring contextsin which it is taken;the p]1ceit holds in the ;;..ltt of Being,or rather the placewhich the progressive march o{ thoughl assignsto i}, determinesits content and its theoreticalsignificance. How this ideal of knowledge controls the rise of sciencg especially the constrriction of mathematical

27 Language and ConcePtion elucrdation'All the concepts physics, 'plyri.,requiresno further the have no other aim than to transform if ;tnlpJ"ay of perceptions,"by which the world of sense presentid to us, into a system'a coherent is actualiy 'of^ Ir*r. Each individual datum becomes a ;;tr;;; and obiect of "nature" o-nlyas.it meets ;i;;;;"t"n ,,nature"in the theoreticalsense, iil',.qr*ment_for' to the Kantian definition, is nothing but the ;;;il thingsasdeterminedby generallaws' existencJof the "inA distinctionf,as often been drawn between "genthe ai"iaotfiri"g" mode of historicalthought and the latter any .tril"i"g" ,iode of science' While in as an instanceof a gen' concret!caseis merelyregarded iht"" and "now" has no sig: ;;;i i;, and while t'ht rule' it is nificancesavein so far as it revealsa universal this here and said that history deliberately seeksout this in now, in order to graspit evermore.precisely iust particular the thinking character.But even in histotical into ir.t i, significantonly by virtue of the.relationships regardedas an which it" enters.Although it cannot be be historically instanceof a generallari, yet in order to of history' it mode conceived,to appearsub'speciethe of eventsor -uri trt" its placeas a memberof a course determination belong to some teleological "":Y.t' Its temp-oral.separateits of in tirie is the exact opposite if t"di: ;;t;;];t historicallyit has meaningonly 'l ]l i:; nus au tuture' fers back to a past and forward to a in histori&l reflection, insread of losing itself ;;;"i;. nonrecurrent' 2""i.*pr"tion of the merely-singularand of Goethe' thought *ort ,t iu., like the morphologiial of events course to find those"pregnant" riromentsin the are *h"r", as in focaipoints, whole seriesof occurrences that are epitomized.In such points, phasesof reality and connected *ia.fy separated'become ;ffittttt

28

Language and Myth linked for historicalconceptionand understandine. As certainhigh momentsarecuileafrom the;;if;;i?;"of time, and are relateclto eachother, and concatenated in. serics,the origin and end of oil'f,"pp.rr,r,gi--tiJil whenceand whithlr, is graduallyillumined. So historical conception,too, is charaiterized by the fact thar ihroufi it a thousandconnectionsare for!.J by on. stroke;and not so much the contemplatil; particulars as an I1 It **rr::"r: ot relationships that constitutes the I' pecurrar . .st1ch hrstorrcitv,or what we call the historical significanceof facts. But let us not dwell longeron suchgeneral observations, becauseour

structure ofscientinlolff::ril, ;"Jj:TlHlll

,f;

orde.r clarifyanott.r,nr-.1i ii. :::T,::., ll of thetoprinrordial rorm and i,lty character linguistic

concepts. While thisremains to be d^one, thep"r.ill"*#';#; o{ conception cannotbe completaya."ir"p.J:'F;;;1i

the conceptsof theoreticalfcnowledgeconstitute merely an upperstratumof logicwhich is founded upor, Iowe,, stratum,that of the logic of language. " intelBeforethe Iectualwork of conceiviigona uria.rit nding of ph.;;;ena can set in, the work of namrngmust hlve ir...a.a it, and havereacheda certainpoiit oi etaboration.For it is this processwhich transformsthe worrd of sense impression,which animals,lro porr.rr, irrto a mental world, a world of ideasand meaningr.aU theoretical cognition takesits departurefrom a i,orlcl formed by language;th.e-scientist, the "fr.oay fr." historia",' .'"., the philosoptteiti"u.sfrjl.hit as tanguage presentsthem to him. This immediate "U;i.i, ""ry d.p.na.ri." "i, harder to realizethan anything that the mind creates mediately,by conscioo,ihorrgit processes. It is easy to see.that logical theory which tracesconcepts back to

Language and Conception

zg

"abstraction,"is of little usehere; an act of generalizing for this "abstraction"consistsof selectingfrom the wealth of given propertiescertainoneswhich are combut our mon to severalsensoryor intuitive experiences; problem is not the choice of propertiesalreadygiven, It is to but the positing of the propertiesthemselves. comprehendand illuminate the natureand directionof noticing, which must precedementally the function of "denoting." Even those thinkers who have concerned themselvesmost actively with the problem of the to stop "origin of language"have thought it necessary at this point, and have simply assumeda "faculty" of the soul for the processof "noticing." "Wren man attained that condition of reflection which is peculiarto him," saysHerder in his essayon the originsof language,"and when this reflectionfirst achievedfree play, he inventedspeech."Supposea certain animal, say a lamb, to passbefore the eyesof a human being: what image,what view of it will present itself to him? Not the samethat would arisefor wolves or lions;they would smelland tasteit mentally,be overand instinctwould throw them upon comeby sensuality, it. Nor would man'simagebe like that of anotheranimal to whom the lamb wasof no direct interest;for suchan animal would let it glide vaguelypast,becauseits own instinct wasturnedin anotherdirection."But with man, not so! As soon as he is in a position to becomeacquaintedwith the lamb, there is no instinct to interfere with him; there is no sensualityto draw him into too closecontactwith it, or to repel him fron-rit; it stands before him just as it meetshis senses.White, gentle, woolly-his mind in its consciousexerciseseeksa characteristicfor it-the lamb bleats!He has found the differentia. His inner senseis activated.This bleating,

jo

Language and Myth

which has made the liveliest impressionon his mind, that freed itself from all other propertiesof sight and touch, stood forth, and enteredmost deeply into his experience-'Ah! You are the bleating 6ngl'-ls6sing with him; he feels that he has recognizedit humanly, hasinterpretedit, in that he knowsit by a property.. . . By a property,then? And is that anything but by an inward denotingword?The soundof bleating,thus apprehendedby a human being as the characterof the sheep,became,through the medium of reflection,the name of the sheep,even though his tonguehad never attcmptedto utter it."e In thesestatements of Herder'sone canstill hearquite clearlythe echoesof thosetheorieswhich he was comI bating-the tracesof the languagetheoriesof the Eni lightenment, which derived languagefrom conscious reflectionand consideredit as something"invented." Man looksfor a differentiabecause he needsit; because his reason,his specificfaculty of "reflection" demands 1 it. This demanditself remainssomethingunderived-a | "basic power of the soul." Thus the explanationhas in a circle: for the end and goal of I really progressed \ languageformation, the act of denotationby specific I properties,must be regardedas alsothe principleof its I beginning. Humboldt's notion of the "inward form of language" seemsto lead in another direction. For he no longer considersthe "whence" of linguistic concepts,but is concernedpurely with their "what"; not their origin, but the demonstrationof their characterconstituteshis problem.The form of observation,which underliesall speechand languagedevelopment,alwaysexpresses a peculiarspiritual character,a specialway of conceiving e "Ueber den Ursprrrngder Sprache,"Werke (ed. Supham), Y, 3rt.

Language and Conception

jr

and apprehending.The differencebetween the several languages, therefore,is not a matter of differentsounds and marks,but of difierent world conceptions.If the moon is denotedin Greekas the MeasuringOne (r4r), in Latin as the Shining One (luna), or if evenin one and the samelanguage,as in Sanskrit,the elephantis called now the Twice Drinker, now the Two-Tusked One, norv the Handed One-that goes to show that languagenever denotessimply objec-ts,things as such, I but alwaysconceptionsarising from the autonomous activity of the mind. The natureof concepts,therefore, dependson the way this activeviewingis directed. i But even this notion of the inward form of language reallyhasto presuppose that which it professes to prove and reveal.For, on the one hand, speechis here the vehicle of any world perspective,the medium through which thought must passbeforeit can find itself and assumea definite theoretical form; but, on the other hand, iust this sort of form, this definiteperspective has to be presupposed,in order to explain the particular characterof any given language,its specialway of seeing and denoting.So the questionof the origin of language tendsalwaysto become--cvenfor the thinkerswho have taken it most profoundly and struggledhardestwith it-a veritable monkey puzzle. All the energy devoted to it seemsonly to lead us about in a circle and finally leaveus at the point from which we started. And yet the very nature of such fundamental prob lems entails that the mind, though it despairsof ever finally solving them, can never quite let them alone. And we receivesomethinglike a new hope of a solution if, instead of comparing the primary linguistic forms \!1g with the forms of logical conception,we try to compare I\[1 them with thoseof mythical idiation. Wtrat holds tirese lN

jz

Language and Myth

two kinds of conception,t-helinguistic and the mythical, togetherin one category,and opposesboth of them to the form of logical thought, is the fact that they both seem to reveal the same sort of intellectual apprehension, which runs counter to that of our theoretical thought processes.The aim of theoreticalthinking, as we have seen, is primarily to deliver the contents of sensoryor intuitive experiencefrom the isolation in which they originally occur. It causesthesecontents to transcend their narrow limits, combines them with others, comparesthem, and concatenates them in a definite order, in an all-inclusivecontext. It proceeds "discursively,"in that it treats the immediatecontent only as a point of departure,from which it can run the whole gamut of impressions in variousdirections,until these impressionsare fitted together into one unified conception,one closedsystem.In this systemthere are no more isolatedpoints;all its membersare reciprocally related,refer to one another,illumine and explaineach other. Thus everyseparateevent is ensnared,as it were, by invisible threads of thought, that bind it to the whole. The theoreticalsignificancewhich it receiveslies in the fact that it is stampedwith the characterof this totalitv. Mythical thinking, when viewedin its most elementary forms, bearsno such stamp;in fact, the character of intellectualunity is directly hostile to its spirit. For in this mode, thought doesnot disposefreely over the dataof intuition, in orderto relateand comparethem to each other, but is captivatedand enthralledby the intuition which suddenlyconfrontsit. It comesto rest in the irnrnediateexperience;the sensiblepresent is so greatthat cverythingelsedwindlesbeforeit. For a person whose apprehensionis under the spell of this

Language and Conception

3j attitude, it is as though the whole mythico-religious world were simply annihilated;the immediatecontent, whateverit be, that commandshis religiousinterestso that nothing elsecan completelyfills his consciousness existbesideand apartfrom it. The egois spendingall its energyon this singleobject,livesin it, losesitself in it. we find Insteadof a widening of intuitive experience, that instead of expansion limitation; its extreme here being, of would leadthroughgreaterand greaterspheres we havehere an impulsetoward concentration;instead This of extensivedistribution, intensivecomPression. is prerequisite focusingof all forceson a singlepoint the for all mythical thinking and mythical formulation. When, on the one hand,the entireself is givenup to a by it and, on the other is "possessed" singleimpression, betweenthe subiect is tension hand, there the utmost and its obiect, the outer world; when externalreality is not merelyviewedand contemplated,but overcomes a man in sheerimmediacy,with emotionsof fearor hope, terror or wish fulfillment: then the spark iumps somehow across,the tensionfinds release,as the subjective excitementbecomesobjectified,and confrontsthe mind as a god or a daemon. protophenomenon Here we havethe mythico-religious which Usenerhas soughtto fix with the term "nomentary god." "In absoluteimmediacy,"he says,"the individual phenomenonis deified,without the intervention of even the most rudimentaryclassconcept;that one thing which you seebeforeyou, that and nothing elseis the god" (p. z8o). To this day,the life of primitive racesshowsus certainfeaturesin which this processis almosttangiblyclear.We may recallthe examplesof it which Spiethadduces:wafer found by a thirsty person, a termite mound that hidesand savessomeone,any new

31

Language and Myth

object that inspiresa man with suddenterror-all these are transformeddirectly into gods. Spieth summarizes his observations with the words: "To the mind of the Ev6, the moment in which an object or any striking attributesof it enter into any noticeablerelation,pleasl ant or unpleasan!with the life and spirit of man, that moment a T16 is born in his consciousness.,, It is as though the isolated occurrenceof an impression,its separationfrom the totality of ordinary commonplace experience producednot only a tremendousintenslfication, but alsothe highestdegreeof condensation, and as though by virtue of this condensationthe obiective form of the god were createdso that it veritablyburst forth from the experience, Now it is here,in this intuitive creativeform of myth, and not in the formation of our discursivetheoreiical concepts,that we must look for the key which mav unlock for us the secretsof the originai conceptionsof language.The formulationof languige,too, shouldnot be tracedback to any sort of reflectivecontemplation, to the calm and clearheaded comparisonof given sense impressionsand the abstractionof definite attributes; but hereagainwe must abandonthis staticpoint of view for the comprehension of the dynamic piocesswhich producesthe verbalsoundout of its own inner drive.To be sure, this retrospectin itself is not enough; for through it we are merelybrought to the further; more difficult question,how it is possiblefor anythingpermanent to resultfrom sucha dynamism,and why the vague billowing and surgingof sensoryimpressionsand feelings shouldgive rise to an objective,verbal"structure." The modern scienceof language,in its effortsto elucidate the "origin" of language,has indeed gone back frequently to Hamann's dictum, that poetry is ..the

Language and Conception

3, mother-tongueof humanity"; its scholarshave empha- f' sized the fact that speechis rooted not in the prosaic, I but in the poeticaspectof life, so that its ultimatebasis: must be soughtnot in preoccupation with the objective accordingto cer-l view of things and their classification tain attributes,but in the primitive power of subiective'' feeling.loBut althoughthis doctrinemay seem,at first sight, to evadethe viciouscircle into which the theory of logical expressionis ever lapsing,in the end it also cannot bridge the gulf betweenthe purely denotative functionof speech.In this theory,too, and the expressive therealwaysremainsa sort of hiatusbetweenthe lyrical and its logicalcharacter;what aspectof verbalexpression remainsobscureis exactlythat emancipationwherebya soundis transformedfrom an emotionalutteranceinto a denotativeone. Here we may be guided once more by consideration If sucha of how the "momentarygods"weregenerated. god is, in his origin, the creationof a moment, if he owes his existenceto some entirely concreteand individual,never-recurring situation,he yet achievesa certain substantialitywhich lifts him far abovethis accidentalconditionof his origin.Oncehe hasbeendivorced from the immediateexigency,the fear or hope of the moment, he becomesan independentbeing, which henceforthlives on by a law of its own, and has gained form and continuity.He appearsto men not asa creature of the hour, but as an objectiveand superiorpower, which they adoreand which their cult endorvswith more and more definite form. The imageof the momentary god, insteadof merely preservingthe memory of what he originallymeant and.was-a deliverancefrom fear, 10See Otto fespersen,Progressin Language (London, r894), esp. pp.

3)2 fr.

Language and Myth 36 the fulfillment of a wish and a hope-persistsand remains long after that memory has faded and finally disappeared altogether. The samefunction which the imageof the god performs, the sametendencyto permanentexistence,m3I be ascribedto the uttered soundsof language.The word, like a god or a daemon,confrontsman not as a creationof his own, but as somethingexistentand significant in its own right, as an obiectivereality.As soon as the sparkhas jumped across,as soon as the tension and emotion of the moment has found its dischargein the word or the mythicalimage,a sort of turning point has occurredin human mentality: the inner excitement which wasa meresubiectivestatehasvanished,and has been resolvedinto the objective form of myth or of speech.And now an ever-progressive objectificationcan begin. In the samemeasurein which the autonomous activity of man extendsover a widening sphere,and becomesadjustedand organizedwithin that sphere,his mythical and verbal world undergoesa progressiveorganization and ever more definite articulation. The "momentarygods"are succeeded by godsof activity,as Usenerhasshownus throughthe examples of the Roman "functional gods" and the correspondingLithuanian deities. Wissowa summarizesthe basic characterof Roman religion with the words: "All their deitiesare entirely practicallyconceived,so to speak---
Language and Conception

37 and Tellus were gods of the Roman community, gods of the hearthand the heath,of wood and wold, seedtime and harvest,of growth and flowerand fruit."r1Here one can trace directly how humanity really attainsits insight into objective reality only through the medium of its own activity and the progressivedifferentiation of that activity; before man thinks in terms of logical concepts, by meansof clear, separate, he holds his experiences mythical images. And here, too, the development of languageappearsto be the counterpartof the development which mythical intuition and thought undergo; for one cannot graspthe true nature and function of linguisticconceptsif one regardsthem as copies,as rePresentationsof a definite world of facts, whose componentsare given to the human mind ab initio in stark and separateoutlines.Again, the limits of things must first be posited, the outlines drawn, by the agencyof language;and this is accomplishedas man's activity becomesinternallyorganized,and his conceptionof Being clearand definitepattern. acquiresa correspondingly that theprimaryfunction We havealreadydemonstrated of linguisticconceptsdoesnot consistin the comparison of experiencesand the selectionof certain common attributes,but in the concentrationof suchexperiences, so to speak,in distilling them down to one point. But the manner of this concentrationalwaysdepends upon the direction of the subject'sinterest,and is determinednot so much by the contentof the experience as by the teleologicalperspectivefrom which it is viewed. Whateverappearsimportantfor our wishingand willing, our hope and anxiety,for acting and doing: that and only that receivesthe stamp of verbal "meaning."Dis11G. Wissowa, Religion und Kultus der Rcjmer (Munich, rgrz), Vol. z, pp. 24f.

38

Languageand Myth

tinctions in meaningare the prerequisitefor that solidi. fication of impressionswhich, as we said above, is a necessary condition for their denotationby words.For only what is relatedsomehowto the focuspoint of willing and doing,only what provesto be essentialto the whole schemeof life and activity, is selectedfrom the uniform flux-of senseimpressions, and is "noticed" in the midst of them-that is to say,receivesa speciallinguistic accent, arrame. The beginningsof this processof "noticing" must undoubtedly be attributed even to animal mentality; for in their world of experience,too, those elementsupon which their impulsesand instincts center are singled out by their consciousapprehension.Only something that arousesa single impulse, such as the nutritional or the sexualimpulse, or anything that reIatesto it, "is there" for an animal as an obiectivecontent of its feeling and apperception.But sucha presence always6lls iust the actual moment in which the impulse is evoked,is directly stimulated.As soon as the excitation abates,and the desireis fulfilled, the world of Being, the order of perceptionscollapsesagain. When a new stimulus reachesthe animal's consciousness, this world may be resurrectedlbut it is alwaysheld in the narrow confinesof actual drivesand excitations.Its successive beginningsalwaysfill just the presentmoment,without ranging themselvesin any progression;the past is but dimly retained,the future doesnot becomean image,a prospect.Only. symbolic expressioncan yield the posjI sibility of prospectand retrospect, becauseit is only by symbolsthat distinctionsare not merely made,but fxed in consciousness. What the mind hasoncecreated,what has been culled from the total sphereof consciousness, doesnot fade awayagainwhen the spokenword has set its sealupon it and given it definite form.

Languageand Conception

39

Here,too, the recognitionof function precedes that of Being. The aspectsof Being are distinguishedand coordinatedaccordingto a measurestrppliedby actionhencethey are guided,not by any "objective"similarity among things, but by their appearancethrough the medium of practice,which relatesthem within a purpStyg--lglus. This ieleologiffi cepts may be readilysupportedand clarifiedby means of examples from the historyof language.l2 A greatmany of the phenomenawhich philologistscommonly treat under the generalheadingof "changesof meaning"can really be understoodin principle only from this angle. If alteredconditionsof life, the changesthat attend the 11 advanceof culture,have brought men into a new prac- \\ tical relation with their environment,the conceptsin- ll herent in languagedo not retain their original "sense." I I They begin to shift, to move about, in the samemeasure as the boundsof human activity tend to vary and efiaceeachother.Wherever,for any reason,the distinction between two activitiesloses its importanceand meaning,there is wont to be a corresponding shift of verbal meanings,namely, of the words which marked that distinction.A very characteristicinstanceof this sort of thing may be found in an articlewhich Meinhof haspublishedunder the title, "On the Influenceof Occupationon the Language of the BantuTribesin Africa." Accordingto Meinhof, "The Hererohavea word, rima, to denote sowing,which is phoneticallyidentical with Iima, the word for hoeing, cultivating,in other Bantu languages. The reasonfor this peculiarchangeof meaning is that the Herero neither sow nor cultivate the ground.They are cowherds,and their whole vocabulary l2ln_regard to the_'teleological"structureof language,cf. the more detailed study in mv Philosopf,ie d. symbolischenFo"rmin, l, 254fr.

1o

Langaageand Myth

smells of cows. Sowing and cultivating they deem unworthy occupationsfor a man; so they do not find it worth while to draw nice distinctions among such inferior tasks."ra Primitive languagesespeciallyfurnish many further examplesin supportof the principle that the order of nomenclaturedoes not rest on the external similarities amongthingsor events,but that differentitemsbearthe samename,and are subsumedunder the sameconcept, whenevertheir funcfional significance is the same,i.e., wheneverthey hold the sameplaceor at leastanalogous placesin the order of human activitiesand purposes. Certain Indian tribes,for instance,are said to use the sameword for "dancing" and for "working"la-obviously becausethe distinction between these two activities is not immediatelyapparentto them, sincein their scheme of thingsdanceand agricultureserveessentially the same pu{pose of providing the means of livelihood. The growth and prosperityof their cropsseemsto them to dependas much or more on the correctperformanceof their dances,their magicaland religiouscCremonies, than on prompt and proper attention to the soil.16Such a fusion of activitiesgivesrise to the identificationof their respectivenames,the "concepts" of language.When the nativesalong the SwanRiver in Africa were first introducedto the sacramentof Communion,they called it a dance;16 which goesfurther to showhow a unity may ls'rUeber die Einwirkung der Besc'hdftigungauf die Sprachebei den ntustdmmenAfrikas," Bantustdmmen Afrikas," Globus, Vol. 75 (t8SS), p. 36r. ra "Die Tarahumara tenzen ilberhaubi ra"Die iiberhaupt nur zu Zauberzweckenbzw. '. nur'iu 'Gebet.' als Tanzen ist ihnen daher . . gleich arbeiten, was aus der Bedeutung des Wortes tanzen nol6voa hervorgeht," Preuss, "Der Kunst," Globus, Vol.87 (t9o5), p.376. Ursprungder Ursprung der Religion Religionund Globus,Vol.87 (t9o5), p.376. und Kunst,"

16E. Reclus,Le primitit d'Australie,p. 28.

16Cf. Preuss,Religion und Mythologie der Uitoto (Gdttingen and I*ipng, r9z3),l, n7fr.; ll, 677f.

Language and Conception

4L posited of all distinctions and be by languagein spite as long as the even completedisparityof appearances, contentsof experience agreein their functionalimportin this case,their religioussignificance.l? Here is one of the basicmotivesby virtue of which mythical thinking transcendsthe original vagueness of "complex" intuitions and proceedsto concretelydefined,distinctlysundered, and individualizedmentalconstructions.This process,too, rs determinedprimarily by the lineswhich activitytakes;so much so that the forms of mythical invention reflect, not the objectivecharacter of things,but the forms of human practices.The primitive god, like primitive action,is limited to a very restrictedsphere.Not only doeseveryoccupationhave its particulargod, but eachphaseof the total action becomesthe domain of an independentgod or daemon who governsthis precisesphereof action. The Roman Fratres Amales,when making atonement for the reDia, movalof treesfrom the sacredgroveof the goddess acts,for each dividedthe deedinto a numberof separate of which a specialdeity was invoked: Deferendafor fetching down the wood, Commolendafor choppingit up, Coinquendafor splitting it, and Adolendafor burn1?Here we may adduce a further striking example of this "teleological" construction of language,which I owe to a verbal communication from my colleagueProfessorOtto Dempwolfi. In the Kite language, which is current in Nerv Guinea, there is a word bilin, rvhich denotes a certain kind of srasswith tough stems and roots that are wedged firmly in the soil; ihe latter .r. riid to hold the earth together dur-ing earthquakes, so that it does not break apart. When nails were first introduced by Europeans, and when their use became popularly known, the natives applied this word to them-as also tg wire and to iron rods, in short, to everything that served the purpose of holding things together. Similarly, one may often observe in nursery language the creation of such teleological identities, which do not meet our class concepts at all, and seenieuetrto defy them. Cf. Clara and William Stern, Die Kindersprache(Leipzig, 19o6), pp. 26, t7z, etal.

Languageand Myth 42 ing up the brushwciod.ts The samephenomenonmay be in seen primitivelanguages, which often dividean action into severalsubactions,and insteadof comprehending it all under one term, denote each part by a separate verb,as though they had to breakup the idea into little piecesin orderto handleit. Perhapsit is not merechance that in the languageof the Evd, who havesucha wealth of "mornentarygods"and "specialgods,"this peculiarity should be very pronounced.reAnd even where both languageand myth have risen considerably abovesuch momentary, sense-boundintuition, where they have broken through their original fetters, they long remain quite inseparablyinvolved with each other. Their connection is, in fact, so closethat it is impossibleto determine on a basisof empiricaldata which of them takes the lead in their progresstoward universalformulation and conception,and which one merely follows suit. Usener,in a section of his work that is philosophically one of the most significantparts,has sought to prove that all generaltermsin languagehavehad to go through a certain mythical phase.The fact that in the Indo Germanic languagesabstract concepts are usually denoted by feminine nouns, with the feminine ending -a (-z), proves,accordingto Usener, that the idea this feminine form expresses was originally not conceivedas an abstractum,but apprehendedand felt as a female d,eity. "Can there be any doubt," he asksfurther, "whether i[69oscame first, or 66|os,the divine image or the condition? Why should the condition be denotedas something of masculine gender, not as neuter, like raaeor? The first creationof the word must have been inspired lt Wissowa, Religion und Kultus der Rd,mer,Vol. z, p. 25. loWestermann, Grammatik der Ewe-Sprache (Berlin, r9o7), p. 95.

Language and Conception

47 by someidea of a living, personalBeing, the "Startler," the "Flight Producer";in countlessapplicationsof the supposedabstractword, this Being still appears: ciofi\lev O,ipos,the Startler stalks,or attacks,mel The ot &vhreac same processmust be assumedfor the making of all feminized abstractions.The feminine adjective only becamean abstractionafter it had denoteda femalepersonage,and in primitive times this could not have been conceivedasanythingbut a goddess"(p. 37S). But doesnot the scienceof languageas well as that of religion show signs of a converseprocessas well? Shouldwe not suppose,for instance,that the way which inflected languageshave of endowing every noun with a particulargendermay haveinfluencedthe conceptions of mythico-religiousimaginationand bent them after its own fashion? Or may we deem it mere chance that among peoples whose languagedoes not difierentiate genders,but employsother and more complexprinciples of classification,the realm of myth and religion also exhibits an entirely different structure-that it represenb all phasesof existencenot under the auspicesof personal, divine powers,but ordersit accordingto totemic groups and classes?We shall content ourselveswith merely proposingthis question,which would have to be answeredby detailed scientific research.But whatever the verdictmight be,it is evidentthat myth and language play similar roles in the evolution of thought from momentaryexperienceto enduring conceptions,from senseimpressionto formulation,and that their respective functions are mutually conditioned. Together and in combinationthey preparethe soil for the greatsyntheses from which our mental creation, our unified vision of the cosmossprings.

11

Language and Mvth

*9+6* Word Magic SO far we have sought to discover the comnron root of linguistic and mvtht conceptionf ,roiu tion, how this relationsf,ipi!--refle;l; "rir., the ques," the structure of the "wortd,, that is gi"* bt;;;;;h and by mvth.

Hereweencounter a lari ttratnltai

botic forms, and bearsessentrrly-# "q*ilil";rrri'rt#_ t#. ;;i;tt"". None of them arise,injtially ,;;;pirr_t , independently recognizable_ fgrms, b.t everyorr. Lf them must first-afi be emancipatedfrom the commo" *niri* of *ytf. mental contents, no matter how truly they evince a separatesystematicrealm and a ,.principl.1,of tt.i, o*n, r3r"1hrally kno_wnto us only as thus involved and grounded.Theoretical,practical rria rJn.tic consciousness,the world of Ianguagearrd oi morality, the basic forms of the commuriity"and th, il._they are all originally tied up witlr'myilico-r.tigious conceptions. This connectionis so strongthat whe-reit beginsto dissolvethe whoreintetectuar?orri r..*r threatenedwith and collapse;so vital that asthe separate forms l]:TnO": emergefrom the original whole and henceforth show specificcharacteristicJ againstits undiffLrentiatedbackgroundthey seemto uprbot themselves and losesomeof

nlturg.O'ry

ao

gria"rr[, theyshow ll.i'.:lt .B'9p.' that thisself-imposition is partof-th.i.,Jf f_A.u.ioi;;;; contains in..*Uyro^of1 ,,., assertion, :hal tlle negation that the verydivorcement becomes the startingpoint of a new connection, which arisesfrom extraneouspostulations. The original bond between the linguistic and the

Word Magic

1'

in is primarily expressed mythico-religiousconsciousness the fact that all verbalstructuresappearas alsomythical entities,endowedwith certain mythical powers,that the Word, in fact, becomesa sort of primary force,in which all being and doing originate. In all mythical cosmogonies, as far back as they can be traced, this supreme position of the Word is found. Among the texts which Preusshas collectedamong the Uitoto Indians there is one which he hasadducedasa direct parallelto the opening passageof St. |ohn, and which, in his translation, certainly seemsto fall in with it perfectly: "In the beginning," it says, "the Word gave the Father his origin."zoOf course,shiking though it may be, no one would try to argue from this coincidenceto any direct relationshipor even an analogyof material content between that primitive creationstory and the speculations of St. fohn. And yet it presentsus with a certain prob lem, it points to the fact that someindirect relationship must obtain, which covers everything from the most primitive gropingsof mythico-religiousthought to those highest products in which such thought seemsto have alreadygoneover into a realm of pure speculation. A more preciseinsight into the foundationsof this relationshipcan be attainedonly in so far as we are able to carry back the study of those examplesof Word veneration,which the history of religions is alwaysuncovering, from the mere analogy of their respective contentsto the recognitionof their commonform. There must be someparticular,essentiallyunchangingfunction that endowsthe Word with this extraordinary,religious character,and exaltsit ab initio to the religioussphere, the sphereof the "holy." In the creationaccountsof almost all great cultural religions,the Word appearsin D Preuss,Relgion und Mythologieder Uitoto, l, z5 t.; II, 659.

46

Language and Myth

R

l' leaguewith the highest Lord of creation;either as the which he employsor actuallyas the primarysource | |tool 'from which he, like all other Beingand order of Being, | derived. Thought and its verbal utteranceare usually is \ taken directly as one; for the mind that thinks and the tongue that speaksbelong essentiallytogether.Thus, in one of the earliest recordsof Egyptian theology, this primary force of "the heart and the tongue" is attributed to the creation-godPtah, where\ he produces and govemsall godsand men, all animals,and all that lives. Whatever is has come into being through the thought of his heart and the command of his tongue; to these two, all physicaland spiritual being,the existenceof the Ka as well as all propertiesof things, owe their origin. Here, as indeed certain scholarshave pointed out, thousandsof yearsbeforethe Christian era,God is conceived as a spiritual Being who thought the world before he createdit, and who used the Word as a meansof expressionand an instrument of creation.2lAnd as all 21SeeMoret, MystdresEgyptiens (Paris, r9r3), pp. rr8fi., r38. Cf. csp. Erman, "Ein Denkmal memphitischer Theologie," litzungsbericht der &ciniglich-PreussischenA&ademie der'Wjssenschaften, XLIII An exact parallel to this may be found in a creation (r9rr),9r6fi. hymn of Polynesia, whictr, according to Bastian's German translation (here renderedinto Enelish), readsas follows: ' In the beginning, Space and the Companion, Space in the height of Heaven, Tananaoa filled; he ruled the Heaven, And Mutuhei wound himself above it. In those days was no voice, no sound, No living thing yet in motion. No day ihere 'iai as yet, no light, Only a gloomy, black-dark night. Taninaoi it w;l who conquerEdthe night, And Mutuhei's spirit the distance pierced. From Tananaoa Atea was sprung, Mighty, filled with the power of life, Atea it was, who now ruled the Day, And drove away Tananaoa." 'The basic idea is that Tananaoa induces the processin that the original

Word Magic

47

physicaland psychicalBeing rest in him, so do all ethical bonds and the whole moral order. Those religions which base their world picture and their cosmogonyessentiallyon a fundamentalethicalcontrast,the dualismof goodand evil, veneratethe spoken Word as the primary force by whosesole agencyChaos was transformed into an ethico-religiousCosmos.According to the Bundahish,the cosmogonyand cosmography of the Parsis,the war betweenthe power of Good and the power of Evil, i.e., betweenAhura Mazda and Angra Mainyu, beginswith Ahura Mazda's reciting the wordsof the Holy Prayer(Ahuna Vairya): "He spakethat which hastwenty-onewords.The end, which is his victory the impotence of Angra Mainyu, the decline of the Daevas,the resurrectionand the future life, the ending of oppositionto the (good) creation for all eternity-all these he showed to Angra Mainyu When a third of this prayer had been Angra spoken, Mainyu doubled up his body with terror, when two-thirdshad beenspokenhe fell upon his knees, and when the whole had been uttered he was confounded,and powerlessto abusethe creaturesof Ahura Mazda, and remained confounded for three thousand years."22 Here, againthe words of the prayerprecedethe material creation,and preserveit ever againstthe destructive powersof the Evil One. Similarly, in India, we find the sjlence (Mutuhei) is removed through the production of Tone lOng) , and ltea_(Light) is weddedwith the Red Dawn (Atanua).,, See.Bastian, Kosmogonieu.' Theologi,c ^Dieheiligefagg der Polynesier, (Leipzig, r88_r), pp. r3f; also Achelis,"Ueber Mythologieu. Kul[us von Hawaii,Das Ausland,Vol. 66 (t8Sl), p. 4i,6. 22 yon Fer- See Der Bundehesh,zum ersten Male h6iausgegeben dinand/usti (I*rp"ig, 1868),Chap. r, p. 3.

48

Language and Myth

power of the SpokenWord (Vac) exaltedeven above the might of the gods themselves. "On the SpokenWord all the godsdepend,all beasts and men; in the Word live all creatures. . . the Word is the Imperishable,the firstborn of the eternal Law, the mother of the Veddas, the navel of the divine world."23 As the Word is first in origin, it is also supremein power.Often it is the nameof.the deity, rather than the god himself, that seemsto be the real sourceof effiKnowledgeof the name giveshim who knows it cacy.2a masteryeven over the being and will of the god. Thus a familiar Egyptian legend tells how Isis, the great sorceress,craftily persuadedthe sun-godRa to disclosehis of the name name to her, and how through possession shegainedpower overhim and over all the other gods.26 In many other ways, too, Egyptian religiouslife in all its phasesevincesover and over again this belief in the supremacyof the nameand the magicpower that dwells sTaittiriya Brahm., z, 8, 8, 4 (German by Gelder in his Religionr geschichtliches Lesebuch,p. r25). 2aAccording to the tradition of the Maori, upon their first immigration in New Zaland they did not take along their old gods, but only their mighty pnyers, by means of which they were assured the power of bending the gods to their will. Cf. Brinton, Religions of. Pimitivc Peoples,pp. ro3f. 2t"I am he," says Re in this story "with many names and many shapes,and my form is in every god. . . . My father and mv mother havl iold -.' *y name, and'it" has remained hidden in hy body since my birth, lest some sorcerershould acquire magic power over me thereby." Then said Isis to Re (who has been stung by a poisonous serpent of her creation, and is appealing to all the gods for help from the poison): "Tell me your name, father of gods, . . . that the poison may go out of you; for ihe man whose namJis spoken, he lives.' And the poison burned hotter than 6re, so that the god could no longer resisf. He said to Isis: "My name shall go forth from my body and over into thine." And he added: "Thou shalt conceal it, but to thy son Horus thou mayst reveal it as a potent spell against every poison." See Erman, Aegypten u. aegyptischei Lebei im lltertum, il, 36ofi.; De aegyptischeReligion, Vol. z, pp. t73f.

Word Magic

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in it.28 The ceremoniesattending the anointment of for the transkingsaregovernedby minute prescriptions ferenceof the god'sseveralnamesto the Pharaoh;each name conveysa specialattribute,a new divine power.2? Moreover, this motive plays a decisive role in the Egyptiandoctrinesof the soul and its immortality.The soulsof the departed,startingon their journey to the land of the dead,must be given not only their physical possessions, such as food and clothing, but also a certain outfit of a magicalnature: this consistschieflyof the names of the gatekeepersin the nethdr world, for only the knowledgeof thesenamescan unlockthe doors of Death'skingdom.Even the boat in which the dead man is conveyed,and its severalparts,the rudder,the mast, etc., demand that he call them by their right names;only by virtue of this appellationcan he render them willing and subservientand causethem to take him to his destination.2E The essentialidentity betweenthe word and what it denotesbecomesevenmore patentlyevidentif we look at it not from the objectivestandpoint,but from a subjective angle.For even a person'sego, his very self and personality,is indissolubly linked, in mythic thinking, 20Cf. the examplescited by Budge,Egyptian Magic (London, r9r r ), Vol. z, pp. 157ft.; also Hopfner, Griechisch-AegyptischerOfrenbarungszauber (Leipzig, tgzt), pp. 68oft. 2?Cf. esp. G. Foucart, Histoire des religions et mCthode com'nom' parative rative ((Paris, 19l2), rgrz), pp. zozf.: zozf.: "Donner "Donner au Pharaon un nouveau,danslequel entrait la dCsignationd'un attribut ou d'une manifestation de I'Epervier, puis, plus tard, de Ri et I'aiouter aux autres noms du protocol c'6tait pour les Egyptlens introduire dans la perEgyptiensrntrodurre Protocol royale,c'etalt PeIsonne royale, et superposerarx autres €liments qui la composaientd€jl, un €tre nouveau,exceptionnel, exceotionnel,qui Ctait une incamation de Ri. Ou, Ou. plus exactement, c'Ctait bel et bien d€tacher de Ri vibrations- une R6 une des vibrations, des imes forces, dont chacune est lui tout entier; et en la faisant entrer dans la personnedu Roi, c'Ctait transformer toute celle-ci en un nouvel exemplaire,un nouveau support matdriel de la divinit€." 28For further details see Budge, op. cit., pp. r64ff.

5o

Languageand Myth

with his name.Here the nameis nevera mere slmbol, but is part of the personalproperty of its bearer;property which must be carefullyprotected,and the use of which is exclusively arrdiealouslyreserved to him. Sometimesit is not only his name,but alsosomeother verbal denotation,that is thus treatedas a physicalpossession, and as such may be acquiredand usurpedby someone else.Georgvon der Gabelentz,in his book on the science of language,mentionsthe edict of a Chineseemperorof the third century r.c., wherebya pronoun in the first person,that had been legitimatelyin popular use,was henceforthreservedto him alone.2e And the name may even acquire a status above the more or less accessory one of a personalpossession, when it is taken as a truly substantialBeing,an integralpart of its bearer.As such it is in the samecategoryas his body or his soul. It is said of the Eskimosthat for them man consistsof three elements-body, soul, and name.soAnd in Egypt, too, we find a similar conception,for there the physicalbody of man was thought to be accompanied,on the one hand, by his Ka, or double, and, on the other, by his name,asa sort of spiritual double.And of all thesethree elementsit is iust the last-mentionedwhich becomes of a man's "self," of his more and more the expression Even in far more advancedcultures this "personality."31 connectionbetweenname and personalitycontinuesto 'When, in Roman law, the conceptof the "legal be felt. person" was formally articulated,and this stafuswas denied to certain physical subiects,those subiects were of a proper name. Under also denied official possession mDie Sprachwissenschaft, p. zz8. e See Biinton, Religions oi Pilmitive Peoples,P'_9,3.. srCf. Budge, op.-cit., P. r57, also Morel Mystdres EgPtiens, P. rr9.

Word Magic

5r

Roman law a slavehad no legal name,becausehe could not function as a legalperson.32 In other ways, too, the unity and uniquenessof the nameis not only a mark of the unity and uniqueness of the person,but actually constitutesit; the name is what first makesman an individual. Where this verbal distinctivenessis not found, there the outlines of his personality tend also to be efiaced.Among the Algonquins, a man who bearsthe samename as some given person is regardedas the latter's other self, his alter ego.ssIf, in accordancewith a prevalentcustom,a child is given the nameof his grandfather,this expresses the belief that the grandfatheris resurrected,reincarnatedin the boy. As soon as a child is bom, the problem ariseswhich one of his departedancestorsis reborn in him; only after this has been determined by the priest can the ceremony be performed whereby the infant receivesthat progenitor's name.sa Furthermore, the mythic consciousness does not see human personalityas somethingfixed and unchanging, but conceiveseveryphaseof a man's life as a new per. sonality,a new self; and this metamorphosisis first of all made manifest in the changeswhich his name undergoes.At-pub.rty boy receivesa new name,becausgby " virtue of the magical rites accompanyinghis initiation, he has ceasedto exist asa boy, and hasbeen rebornas a __82Mommsen,RcimischesStaatsrecht,III,_ r,.p. zo3; cf. Rudolph Hinel, "Der Name+in Beitrag zu seiner Gschichte im Altertum'u. besonders bei den Griechen," Abhandlungen der sdclsr'rclen Gescllschaft der Wisenschaften, Vol. XXVI (ro-r8). p. ro. * "T" orp-ressionin the^Algonkin toirgire ior^a person of the samc -is name is njnd owiawina, .He anothei myself.'i' (Cuoq. Lexiouc

"a*:ii,:5:t 8'::"lt::fl:io;':",i,,T1-;0"J,"?f; "t3#;l;Ji'ff *f '#1%#T"",?1'g,"i"rTlr:;i:iffi ,,$olii"tr;inl);Jr-'n.

Languageand Myth

52

of one of his ancestors.sF In other man, the reincarnation casesthe changeof name sometimesservesto protect a by taking on man againstimpendingdanger;he escapes a difterent self, whoseform makeshim unrecognizable. Among the Ev6 it is customaryto give children, and especiallythosewhoseelder brothersor sistershave died young, a name that has a frightful connotation,or attributes some non-humannature to them; the idea is that Death may be either frightened away,or deceived, and will passthem by as though they werenot human at all.36Similarly,the nameof a man laboringunderdiseaseor bloodguilt is sometimeschanged,on the same principle,that Death may not find him. Even in Greek culture this custom of altering names,with its mythic motivation,still maintaineditself.3?Quite generally,in fact, the being and life of a pe$on is so intimatelyconnectedwith his name that, as long as the name is pre' servedand spoken,its beareris still felt to be presentand directly active.The deadmay, at any moment,be liter' ally "invoked,"the moment thosewho survivehim speak his name.As everyoneknows,the fear of suchvisitation to avoid not only everymention has led many savages of the departed,whosename is tabooed,but even the to his name. Often, for enunciationof all assonances whosenamea defunctPe$on instance, an animalspecies had borne has to be given a different appellation,lest the deadman be inadvertentlycalledupon by speaking 85Characteristic examples may be found especiallyamong the initia' tion rites of Australian native tribes; cf. esp. Howitt, The Native Tribes of South East Australia (London, r9o4), and |ames, Primitive futual and Beliel (London, r9r7), pp. 16 ff. 88Cf. Spieth, op. cit., p. 27o. 8?Hermippos 26, 7: 6td roitto

fipiv |etot xal icpol &vlpes &iortoav a:lrois xard 6v6para, 6ros rc)ruvoivres

xa\6s

&rot1.oltivov \avil&veu

llfi

xal 6&p7co0at'

tva\|rdrrctv rdv

tvaiptol

rd

r(ov t6tov

Word Magic

57

of the beast.ssIn tnany casesproceduresof this sor! entirely mythic in their motivation, have had a radical influence on language,and modified vocabulariesconsiderably.se And the further a Being'spowerextends,the more mythic potency and "significance"he embodies, the greateris the sphereof influence of his name. The rule of secrecy,therefore,applies first and foremost to the Holy Name; for the mention of it would immediately releaseall the powersinherent in the god himself.ao Here, again,we are faced with one of the prime and essentialmotives which, rooted as it is in the deepest layersof mythical thought and feeling, maintains itself even in the highest religious formulations. Giesebrecht has traced the origin, extent and developmentof this motive throughout the Old Testament,in his work, Die alttestamentlicheSchiitzungdes Gottesnamensund ihre religionsgeschichtliche Grundlage. But early Christianity, too, still laboredentirely under the spell of this idea. "The fact that the name functions as proxy for its bearer,"saysDieterich in his Eine Mithrasliturgie,"and to speakthe name may be equal to calling a personinto being; that a name is fearedbecauseit is a real power; s Ten Kate, "Notes ethnographiques sur les Comanches," Revue 0tinographie, IV, d'E-t.\nographie, ar-tnnogfaPnte, rv, r3r ((cite-d (( irori Preus, Preus. "Ursprung "Urspruns der der Religion Religion u. Kunst," Kunst," Globus, clobus, Vol. EZ, 8z p. eoS). 8elJame taboos, I am 'told -in 'a peisonal a communication fron Meinhof, play a vital part especially y i-n in Africa; Africa: among amonE many menv Baatu Brnhr tribes, tor trrDes, for rnstance, instance, women wo-men are not nof allowed to speak the names of their husbands or their fathers, so they are co*pdiled to invent new

s For, later Greek magical p-ractices, cf. Hopfner, Griechirchigyptis.cher.Ofienbarungsza-uber,_^$ 7c; p. r7gi,,1" hoh;; ;"d michtiger der mechtiger d-erGott wai, war, desto kriftller kriftiler uid wirisamer wiricsam6rmussteauch sein wahrerNamesein.Daher_istes gin4 folgerichtiganzunehmen, das qcr dcr wanre Name oes r.{ame wahre Name wahre des etnen einen Ureotti, einen U-rgottl, Urgotts, des des Sch0pfers des SchOpleis (aza"rp7an1 ftir 6i; -i" 'die..r'(dzproupzdr) Menschen iiberhaupt Menschen iiberhaupt unertrAgliih unertrAgliih iei: denn , N"-e'*lr porml zJgleicllauch zugleich auchdas dasG<;ttliche Gbttlichean an-sich iich und und zwar zwarin s.in"i-frocfriie" seiner hiichsrm il#; daher fiir die schwacheNatur des Stetblichen viel zu stark; starh daher dahd tdtet er den, der ihn htirt."

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that knowledgeof it is soughtbecausebeing able to speak it bestows control of that power on the knower-all thesefacts indicate clearly what the early Christians were 'In still feeling and trying to expresswhen they said 'In God,' or'In Chrisfs name' God's name' insteadof 'In for Christ.' . . . Thus we c:rn understandsuch exXpwror-instead of. parpressionsas go.rd?ewelsrl 6vopa. xpwil4 name is pronounced over the font ets the tLev of the waterand pewadesit and therebytakespossession so that the neophyteis quite literally immersedin the nameof the Lord. The congregation,whoseliturgy begins 'In with the words: the nameof God,'was thought at the time to be within the bourne of the name'sefficacy(no matter how figurativelyand formally the phraseis taken). 'Where two or three are gatheredtogether in my mmg (ets d &1Av6w1n) t-here am I in the midst of them(Matthew r8:zo) meanssimply,'Where they pronounce my name in their assembly,there I am really presenL' 'A1oa.o&fitu d 6vop&oou once had a much more concrete sensethan one would eversuspectfrom the hermeneudcs of the severalchurchesand their doctrines."al The "special god," too, Iives and acts only in the particular domain to which his nameassignsand holds him. 'Whoever, therefore, would be assuredof his Protection and aid must be sureto enter his realm, i.e., to call him by his "right" name. This need explainsthe phraseolog5t of prayer, and of religious speechin general,both in Greeceand in Rome-all the turns of phrasewhich ring a changeon the severalnamesof the god, in order to obviate the dangerof missing the proper and essential appellation. Conceming the Greels, this practice is rcin Plato's Kraty' corded for us by a we[*nown Passage 'lDieterich, Einc Mithrasliturgie, pp. rrr,

rr4f.

Word Magic

))

Ios;{2in Rome it produceda standingformula, in which the various terms of invocation, correspondingto the severalaspectsof the god'snature and will, are disioined by "either - or," "sive- 5iys."a3This stereotypedmode of addressmust be repeatedeverytime; for everyact of devotion to the god, everyappealdirected to him, commandshis attention only if he is invoked by his appropriate name. The art of right address,therefore, was developedin Rome to the point of a sacerdotaltechnique, which produced the indigitamenta in the keeping of the pontifices.aa But here let us stop; for it is not our intention to collect theologicalor ethnologicalmaterial, but to clarify and definethe problem presentedby such material.Such interweavingand interlockingas we havefound between the elementsof language,and the various forms of religious and mythical conceptioncannot be due to mere chance;it must be rooted in a common characteristicof Ianguageand myth as such. Some scholarshave sought to basethis intimate connectionon the suggestive power of words,and especiallyof a spokencommand,to which primitive man is supposedto be particularlysubiect;the magicaland daemonicpower which all verbal utterance has for the mythic stateof consciousness seemsto them to be nothing more than an obiectificationof that experience.But sucha narrow empiricaland pragmaticfoundation, such a detail of personalor social experience, cannot support the prime and fundamentalfacts of linguisticand mythic conception.More and more clearlywe seeourselvesfaced with the question whether the close 0 Plato, Kratylos, 4ooE. A For details see Norden, Agnostos Theos: Untersuchungen zut FomrengeschichtereligiriserRcde lleipzig, r9r3), pp. r4l fi. sCf. Wissom, Religion und Kultui dlr Rtim-er,Vot.'i, p.37.

56

Language and Myth

relationshipof contentswhich certainly obtainsbetween languageand myth may not be most readilyexptrineJ b.y the common form of their evolution, by the- condi-

both verbalexpression', na rnytnl.

,T::, _:ll.l from .gou.T, rmagrnatron theirearliest, unconscious beginnines. We havefoundtheseconditions givenil; .r#T;: -?ir"*rii" prehensionthat is contrary to theoreiiJ, thinking.For, asthe latteri""a, to*"ra .*prnriorr.irn_

plication and systematicconnection, the former tends toward concentration,telescoping, separatecharacterization. In discursivethough! tire iarticular phenomenon is relatedto the whole pattern oi b.ing ani of p.o..rr, with ever-tig-htening, evei more elaborat!bondsiii, fr.td to that totality. In mythic conception,however, things arenot takenfor what they meanindirectly,but io, th"li immediateappearance; they are taken as pure presentations,and embodiedin the imagination.fi i, *iy-t"-r* hypostatization"must read to r; ;;.dy :*:_:1T'?:1, "l dltterent attitude toward the spokenword, toward it's p,owe1and content, than the itandpoint of discursive thoughtwould produce.For theoreticatthint irr;, ;;j is essentiallya vehicleservingthe fundamental aim of such ideation: the establishirentof relationships Uegivgn phenomenon and others which are .!he *.*l rrKe' tt or otherwiseconnectedwith it according to some -co-ordinatinglaw. The significanceof discuisive thought lies entirelyin this function. In this sense, it is ..sign,' essentially ideal, a or symbol, th" ob_ :oT.thi".g. ,ecr or whrchis not a substantialentity but lies ratherin the relationsit establishes. The word stands,so to ,p.+ betwee.nactual particular impressions,as , ph.no*Lnon ot a_dfterent order,a new intellectualdimension; and to- this mediating position, this remotenessfrom the sphereof immediatedata,it owesthe freedomand ease

Word Magic

57

with which it movesamongspecificobjectsand connects one with another. This free ideality, which is the core of its logical nature, is necessarilylacking in the realm of mythic conception. For in this realm nothing has any significance or being savewhat is given in tangible reality. Here is no "reference"and "meaning"; every content of consciousness to which the mind is directedis immediately translatedinto terms of actual presenceand eftectiveness.Here thought doesnot confront its data in an attitude of free contemplation,seekingto understandtheir structureand their systematicconnections,and analyzing them accordingto their partsand functions,but is simply captivatedby a total impression.Such thinking doesnot develop the given content of experience;it does not reach backwardor forward from that vantagepoint to find "causes"and "effects," but restscontent with taking in th€ sheerexistent.When Kant defined "reality" as any content of empirical intuition which follows general laws and thus takes its place in the "contexl of experience,"he gavean exhaustivedefinition of the concept of reality in the canonsof discursivethought. But mythic ideation and primitive verbal conception recognize no such "context of experience."Their function, as we haveseen,is rathera processof almost violent sep arationand individuation.Only when this intenseindi. viduationhas been when the immediate "onsu-*ri.d, intuition has been focused and, one might say,reduced to a single point, does the mythic or linguistic form gmgrge,and the word or the momentarygod is created. And this peculiar genesisdeterminesthe-type of intellectual content that is common to languagJand myth; for where the processof apprehensionaims not ao expansion,extension,universalizingof the contenf"t but

58

Languageand Myth

rather at its highestintensification,this fact cannot fail All other things are to influencehuman consciousness. Iost to a mind thus enthralled;all bridgesbetweenthe totality of expericoncretedatum and the systematized enceare broken;only the presentreality, as mythic or and shapesit, fills the enIinguisticconceptionstresses tire subjectiverealm.So this one content of experience must reignoverpracticallythe whole experientialworld. There is nothingbesideor beyondit wherebyit couldbe measuredor to which it could be compared;its mere presence is the sum of all Being.At this point, the word which denotesthat thought content is not a mere conventional symbol,but is mergedwith its object in an indissolubleunity. The consciousexperienceis not merely wedded to the word, but is consumedby it. Whatever has been fixed by a name, henceforth is not only real,but is Reality.The potential between"symbol" and "meaning" is resolved;in place of a more or less we find a relationof identity, of adequate"expression," complete congruencebetween "image" and "obiect," betweenthe nameand the thing. From anotherangle,too, we may observeand elucidate this substantial embodiment which the spoken or word undergoes:for the samesort of hypostatization transubstantiationoccurs in other realms of mental creativity; indeed, it seemsto be the typical processin all unconsciousideation. All cultural work, be it technical or purely intellectual,proceedsby the gradualshift from the direct relation between man and his environment to an indirect relation. In the beginning, sensual impulse is followed immediatelyby its gratification;but gradually more and more mediating terms intervene betweenthe will and its object. It is as though the will, in order to gain its end, had to move away from the

Word Magic

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goal insteadof toward it; insteadof a simple reaction, almost in the nature of a reflex,to bring the object into reach,it requiresa differentiation of behavior,covering a wider classof objects,so that finally the sum total of all theseacts,by the useof various"means," may realize the desiredend. In the realm of technicalachievementthis increasing mediationmay be seenin the invention and useof tools. But herg again,it may be observedthat as soon as man employsa tool, he viewsit not asa mereartifact of which he is the recognizedmaker, but as a Being in its own right, endowedwith powersof its own. Insteadof being governedby his will, it becomesa god or daemonon whosewill he depends-to which he feels himself sub iected,and which he adoreswith the rites of a religious cult. Especiallythe ax and the hammer seemto have attained such religious significancein earliest times;a6 but the cult of other implements,too, such as the hoe or the fishhook,the spearor the sword,may be found to this day among primitive peoples.Among the Ev6 the smith'shammer (Zu) is deemeda mighty deity whom they worship and to whom they make sacrifices.ao And evenin Greekreligionand Greekclassicalliteraturethe sentimentthat prompts such a cult often finds direct As an exampleof this, Usenerhas drawn atexpression. tention to a passagein the Seyen against Thebes of Aeschylos,in which Parthenopaeus swearsby his spear, which he "honorsabovegod, and abovehis eyes,"to destroy Thebes."Life and Victory dependupon direction and power,as alsoon the good will of the weapon;this feelingwellsup irresistiblyin the crucialmoment of the a5Examplesof this may be found, e.g., in Beth's Einfiihrung in die vergleichendeReligionsgcichichte(Leip;ig, rgzo), pp. 24ff. ispieth, Religi6n der Eweer,p. rri.

6o

Language and Myth

battle; and prayer does not invoke a god from afar to guide the weapon-the weaponitself is god, the helper and deliverer."rz An implement, then, is never regardedas something simply manufactured,something thought of and produced,but as a "gift from above."Its origin doesnot go back to man himself, but to some"culture hero," either a god or an animal.This attribution of all cultural values to a "savior" is so universal that attempts have been made to find the essenceand origin of the god concept in this notion.asAgain we are facedwith a characteristic of mythic thinking which dividesit sharplyfrom the way of "discursive," or theoretical,reflection. The latter is by the fact that evenin apparentlyimmedicharacterized ately "given" data it recognizesan elementof mental this activeingredient.Even in matcreation,and stresses ters of fact it revealsan aspectof mental formulation; even in sheer sensedata it traces the influence of a "spontaneityof thought" that goesto their making.But while logical reflectiontends,in this wise,to resolve mythic conceptionshows all receptivityinto spontaneity, exactly the opposite tendency, namely, to regard all action as receptive,and all human achievespontaneous ment as somethingmerelybestowed.This holds for all the technical means of culture, and no less for its intellectualtools. For betweenthese two sorts of implement there is originally no sharp dividing line, but rathera fluid distinction.Even purelymental assetsand such as the words of human speech,are achievcments, at first conceivedentirely in the categoryof physical existenceand the physical support of mankind. Preuss {? Uscner,Gottcrnamen,p. 285. 4 Cf. Kurt Breysig, Die Entstehung des Gottesgedankensu. der Heilbringer, Bcrlin, r9o5.

Word Magic

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reports that, according to the Cora Indians and the Uitoto, the "Patriarch"createdmen and nature,but that since this creationhe no longer interferesdirectly with the courseof events.In lieu of suchpersonalintervention, he gaveto men his "Words," i.e.,his cult and the religiousceremonies by meansof which they now connature and trol attain whateveris necessary for the welfare and perpetuationof the race.Without theseholy spells which were originally given into their keeping, men would be entirelyhelpless,for natureyieldsnothing merely in return for human labor.aeAmong the Cherokees,too, it is an acceptedbelief that success in hunting or fishing is due chiefly to the use of certain words, of the proper magic formulas.so It was a long evolutionarycoursewhich the human mind had to traverse,to pass from the belief in a physico-magical power comprisedin the Word to a realizationof its spiritualpower.Indeed,it is the Word, it is language,that really revealsto man that world which is closerto him than any world of naturalobjects and toucheshis wealand woemoredirectlythan physical nature.For it is languagethat makeshis existencein a communitypossible;and only in society,in relationto a "Thee," can his subiectivityassertitself as a "Me." But here againthe creativeact, while it is in progress, is not recognized as such;all the energyof that spiritual achievement is proiectedinto the resultof it, and seems bound up in that obiectfrom which it seemsto emanate as by reflection.Here, too, as in the caseof tools and aeFor dctails seePreuss,Dre Nayarit-Expedition,I, rxvrnf.; Relrgion 'also pieuss's article: 'i)ie u. Mythologie der lJitoto l, zSt; cf. hrichste Gottheit bei den kulturarmen Viilkern," Psychol. Forschungen, ll, tgzz. 60Cf. Mooney, "Sacred Formulas of the Cherokee," VIIth Annual Report of tfie Bureau o{ Ethnology (Smithsonian Institution).

6z

Language and Myth

instruments, all spontaneity is felt as receptivity, all creativity as being, and every product of subiectivityas so much substantiality.And yet, this very hypostatization of the Word is of crucialimportancein the develop ment of human mentality. For it is the first form in which the spiritual power inherent in languagecan be apprehendedat all; the Word has to be conceivedin the mythic mode, as a substantivebeing and power, before it can be comprehendedas an ideal instrumen! an organonof the mind, and as a fundamentalfunction in the constructionand developmentof spiritual reality.

-il6The SuccessivePhasesof Religious Thought ACCORDING to Usener,the lowest level to which we can trace back the origin of religious conceptsis that of "momentary gods," as he calls those imageswhich are born ftom the need or the specificfeeling of a critical moment sprungfrom the excitationof mythicoreligious fantasy, and still bearing the mark of all its pristine volatility and freedom.But it appers that the new findings which ethnologyand comparativereligion have put at our disposalduring the three decadessincethe publication of Usener'swork enableus to go back one step further yet. A few yearsbefore lUsener'sbook there ap peareda work by the English missionaryCodrington: The Melanesians;Studies in their Anthropology and Folk-Inre (t8gt), which enriched the discipline of religious history by a very important concept.Codrington

The SuccessivePhasesof Religious Thought 63 showsthe root of all Melanesianreligion to be the concept of a "supernafural power," which permeatesall things and events,and may be presentnow in objects, now in persons,yet is never bound exclusivelyto any singleand individual subjector obiect as its host, but may be transmitted from place to place, from thing to thing, from person to person.In this light, the rvhole existenceof things and the activity of mankind seemto be embedded,so to speak,in a mythical "field of force," an atmosphereof potency which permeateseverything, and which may appearin concentratedform in certain extraordinaryobiects,removedfrom the realm of everyday afiairs,or in speciallyendowedpersons,such as distinguished warriors, priests,or magicians.The core of this world view, however,of the "mana" conceptwhich Codrington found among the Melanesians,is not so much the idea of such particular embodiments,as the notion of a "power" in general,able to appearnow in this form, now in that, to enter into one obiect and then into another;a power that is veneratedfor its "holiness" as well as feared for the dangersit contains.For that power which is conceivedin a positive senseas "mana" has also a negative aspect as the power of "taboo." Every manifestationof the divine potency,be it vested in personsor things, animateor inanimate,falls outside the realm of the "profane," and belongs to a special sphereof being which has to be separatedfrom the ordinary and mundaneby set lines of division, and by all sorts of protectivemeasures. Since Codrington's early discoveries,the scienceof ethnologyhas proceededto trace the diftusion of these conceptsall over the earth. Certain terms that conespondexactlyto the meaningof manamay be found not only among the South SeaIslanders,but also among a

6t1

Language and Myth great many American Indian tribes, as well as in Australia and in Africa. preciselythe sa'me notion of a universal,essentiallvundiffereniiatedpower may be found Algon,quin,,manitu,,,the ,,wakanda,, of the Sioux, illn: the "orenda" of the. Iroquois,and in variousAfrican religions.On the basisof iu.h'oUre*ltions, studentsof ethnology and comparativereligion t nu" largely come to regard this conception not merely as a universal phenornenon,but as nothing f." tfrm n special category

of mythicconsciousnerr. TI'.,,Taboo-Ml;;-i.;;;il;I

has been regardedas the "minimu-m definition of religion," i.e.,is the expression of a distinctionwhich constitutesone of the essential,indispensable conditionsof r_eligious life assuch,and ,.pr.r"rrt', th. Iowest level of it that we know.6r Concerningthe proper interpretation of this formula, and of the mana concept and its various.qri"rf.rir, ethnologists have,indeed,reachedno g;rr.rnl agreement. In fact, their severalrendering, ,rrJ iu..pted -to explanations still stand in completevarion.. one another. "Preanimistic" theoriesaiternate *ih-,."ri*irti;;; ;;;;; interpretationswhich treat the *r"n L somethingmaterial are ipposed to otherswhich ,tr*r'it, dynamicnature and tend to regardit purely as a force.i, Bur this very disagreement-ay serui to bring us closer to the acfualsenseof the manaconception;fir it demonstrates 61Cf. especiallv Marett, ..The, Taboo_manaFormula as a minimum Definitignbf Reiig;on, " * rni ii ti;r- frliejrriri.,,r#. ana "ne

b;ffiil Jty,n;;ti;#;;",,b#Ti'Hl.,Tjtrlll,"fJ: I (reprinted in oi;31,f,); Anth roporosisr, N.s.rv er::i,ili#i;' :1ft r;?":'1'' --nn exceilent critical survey Congress for rhe'Hjsr. ot Reti|l2n-i(tff*;;ld8), The Threshold of Re|igion, ro"njon,, ;;;,"',rlr:: See also Hewitt. ..Oreid

of'_th-evarious theories represented in ethnologicalliterature mru be,iouni; F:'il. #;ann,s rvork, Mana:

,o:..-l:et *s t-ctPzrg, ,.922.

"Ausseroidenrr,"h w;;il;d;ff;l:'

bei sridseev.rkern,

Phasesof ReligiousThought 65 The Successive the fact that this conception is still quite indifierent, one might say"neutral," to a host of distinctionswhich our theoreticalview of being and happeningand our advancedreligiousfeeling would apply to it. A surveyof the availablematerial.tendsratherto show that this in' difterenceis an essentialtrait of the mana conception, and that the more one tries to "determine"it, i.e., to of distinctionsand contra' interpret it in the categories dictions familiar to our thinking, the more widely one missesits true nature.Codringtonhimselfattemptedthg of it when he defirst and most obviouscharacterization and magicalpower, scribedit as not only a supernatural but a mental or "spiritual" poweras well. But the prob' Iematical aspectof this characterizationappearedeven in his own examplesof it. For they show clearly that the content and compassof the mana idea do not coincide at all with our idea of the "spiritual"-whether the latter be conceivedas somethingof personalcharacter,or merelyasdeterminedby an animate,asopposed For not everythinganimate,nor to inanimate,nature.53 mana,but only that which, everythingspiritualpossesses for one reasonor another,is endowedwith heightened, effectivepo\r'ers;and moreover,manamay extraordinary belongto merethings,if theyexhibitsomerareform that excitesthe mythic imagination,and therebyrise above It appears,therefore, the realm of everydayexperience. related that the icleaof manaand the variousconceptions obiects (anibound a realm to it are not to particular of mate or inanimate,physicalor spiritual),but that they should rather be said to indicatea certain "character," which may be attributedto the nost diverseobiectsand 6sI{ewitt demonstrates,through a detailed linguistic comparison, that the orenda of the lroquois, too, is not equivalentto their notions of either spiritual forces or merely life forces, but is a conception and expressionsui generis (op. cit., p. 44 fr.).

66

Languageand Myth

events,if only theseevokemythic "wonder" and stand forth from the ordinary backgroundof familiar, mundane existence. As Soderblomsays,in summarizingthe results of his exhaustiveand exact analysisof the concept: "The words in question[mana, manitu, orenda, etc.] have ambivalentmeaningand are variouslytranslated as remarkable,very strong, very great, very old, strong in magic, wise in magic, supernatural,divineor in a substantivesense'aspower, magic,sorcery,fortune, success, godhead,delight."5a Such meanings,utterly disparateto our logicalsense, can yield somesort of unity only if this unity be sought in a certaintype not of content,but of mental attitude, of conception.It is not a matterof "what," but of "hotv"; not the object of attention, but the sort of attention directed to it, is the crucial factor here. Mana and its severalequivalentsdo not denotea single,definite predicate;but in all of them we find a peculiarand consistent torm of predication This predication may indeed be designatedas the primeval mythico-religiouspredication, sinceit expresses the spiritual"crisis" wherebythe holy is divided from the profane, and set apart from the sphereof the ordinary, in a religioussenseindifferent, reality. By this processof division the object of religious mayreallybe saidto be broughtinto existence, experience and the realm in which it movesto be first established. And herewithwe have arrivedat the crucial factor for our generalproblem: for our original aim was to treat both languageand myth as spiritualfunctionswhich do not take their departurefron a world of given obiects, dividedaccordingto fixedand finished"attributes,"but which actually first produce this organizationof reality e Siiderblom, Das 'Werden des Gottesglaubens;Untersuchungeniiber die Antdnge der Rel'gion (German ed., I*ipzig, 1916), p. 95.

Phasesof ReligiousThought 67 The Successive and make the positingof attributespossible.The con' cept of mana and the correlative,negativeconceptof taboo revealthe waysin which this constructionis originally eftected. From the fact that we are here moving on a level rot yet atwhere the mythic and religiousworld has no to speak, us, so but is presented to form, fixed any tained many' into the insight in statu nascendi,we may gain colored,variegatedplay of meaningsin the word-and the concept-of mana.It is quite telling that even the attempt to determinethe word classto which it belongs seemsto encounterdifficultiesat everyturn. According to our habits of thinking and speaking,the easiestway is to takeit simplyasa noun.This makesmanaa sort of of all the which representsthe quintessence substance, magic powerscontainedin individual things. It creates a unified existentthing, which may, however,distribute itself over variousbeingsor objects.And since,moreover,this unity was conceivednot only as existent,but as animate and personified,the concept of mana was endowedwith our own basicnotion of "spirit"-witness the way one has often interpretedthe manitu of the Algonquins and the wakandaof the Sioux as nothing of the "Great Spirit," but their respectivedesignations they adoredas the creator which, one naturallyassumed, of the world. But a more preciseanalysisof the words and their meaningshas nowhere borne out this interpretation. It showedthat quite apart from any categoryof personal being, which is never really strictly applicable,even the mere conceptof a thing with independent,substantial existenceis too rigid to render the fleeting,elusiveidea that is here to be grasped.Thus McGee observed,coneerning the wakandaof the Sioux, that the reports of

68

Languageand Myth

missionaries,accordingto which it expressedthe concept.of- a-personal,original being, were completely discreditedby more scholarlylanguagestudiei. ,,Among thesetribesthe creationand contiol of tne world and thI thingsthereofareascribedto ,wa-kao-da, (the term varying somewhatfrom tribe to tribe), iust as among the Algonquin tribes omnipotencewas ascribedto ,mani-do' ('Manito the Mighty' of 'Hiawatha');yet inquiry showsthat waka'daassumes variousforms,'andis rather a_quality than a definite entity. Thus among many of the tribes the sun is waka"da-not the wafa'da or a wataoda,but simply waka"da;and among the same tribesthe moon is wakaoda, and so is thundJr,lightning, the stars,the winds,the cedar,and variousothei thingi; even a man, especiallya shaman,might be waka'daor a waka'da.In addition the term was appliedto mythic monstersof the earth,air, and watersland accordingto som_e-of the sagesthe groundor earth,the mythic urrd.rworld, the idealupperworld,darkness, etc.,werewakaoda or wakandas. So, too, the fetichesand the ceremonial objectsand decorations. . . . In like mannermanynatural objectsand placesof striking characterwere considered waka"da.Thus the term was applied to all sorts of entities and ideas,and was used (with or without inflectionalvariations)indiscriminatelyas substantiveand adiective,and with slightmodificationasverbandadverb. Manifestlya term so proteanis not susceptible of transIation into the more highly difierentiatedlanguageof civilization. Manifestly, too, the idea expressedby the term is indefinite,and cannot iustly be renderedinto 'spirit,' muchless'GreatSpirit';thoughit is easyto understandhow the superficialinquirer,dominatedby definite spiritualconcept(s),handicappedby unfamiliaritywith the Indian tongue, misled by ignoranceof the vague

?fie Successive Phasesof Relgious Thought 69 prescriptorialideation, and perhapsdeceivedby crafty native informantsor mischievousinterpreters,came to adopt and perpetuatethe erroneousinteqpretation. The term may be translatedinto 'mystery'perhapsmoresatisfactorilythan into any othersingleEnglishword,yet this renderingis at the same time much too limited and much too de6nite. As used by the Siouan Indian, waka"davaguelyconnotesalso'power,''sacredr''ancien!' 'grandeurr''animater''immortal,' and other words, yet doesnot expresswith any degreeof fullnessand clearness the ideas conveyedby these terms singly or collectively-indeed, no English sentence of reasonable length can do justiceto the aboriginalideaexpressed by the term wakanda."56 Accordingto the findingsof ethnologistsand philologists,much the samething is true of the Divine Name in the Bantu languages, and of the fundamentalintuition it embodies. These tongues ofier a special criterion wherebywe may evaluatethe conceptionin question;for the Bantu languagesdivide all nouns into different classes,and as they draw a sharp distinction between personaland impersonalnouns,the subsumptionof the Divine Name under one of these headsallows us to infer immediately the characterit denotes.And as a matter of fact the word mulungu,which our missionaries have acceptedas the equivalentof our word "God," is assignedin the East Bantu dialect,for instance,to the impersonalclassof nouns, to which its prefix and other formal characteristicsassimilateit. Of course,this fact in itself still allows of other interpretation;it is possible to view such linguistic propertiesas signs of degeneration, indicating a regress of religious consciousness. 66McGee, "The Siouan Indians," r5th annual report of the Burcau of Ethnology (Smithsonian Institutio;), pp. rz8f.

Language and Myth 70 Roehl, for instance,saysin his grammarof the Shambala language: "The conceptionof God as a personalbeing hasbeen practicallylost amongthe Shambalas; they speakof God as of an impersonalspirit, inherent in all nature. The Mulungu lives in the bush, in separatetrees,in clifis, in caves,in wild animals(lions, snakes,cats), in birds, in locusts,etc. For such a Mulungu there is no possible placein classI (the personalclass)."56 An exactlyoppositeintelpretation has been given by Meinhof, who summarizesthe results of a painstaking analysisof the mulungu conceptin the light of religious and linguistic studies,to the eftect that the word denotes primarily the placeof ancestralspirits and, secondly,the Wwer which emanatesfrom that spot. "But this power remains something ghostly; it is not personified,and accordinglyis not treated gammatically as a personal entity, exceptwhere a foreign religion has introduced a heightenedconceptionof its nature."5?Examplesof this 0oRoehl, Versuch einer systematischen Grammatik der Schambalaqprache(Hamburg, rgrr), pp. 45ft. Another characteristicreport on the "impersonal" nature of the mulungu conccpt is contained in Hetherwick's account of its use among the Yao of British Central Ahica: "In its native use and form the word [mulungu] does not imply personality, for it does not belong to the personal clas of nouns. . . . Its form denotes rather a statc or property inhering in something, as the life or health inheres in body, Among the various tribes where the word is in use as we have described, the missionaries have adopted it as the 'God.' But the untaught word for Yao refusesto assign to it any idea of being a personality. It is to him more a quality or faculty of the human nature whose signification he has qtended so as to embrace the whole spirit world. Oncc after I have endcavored to impress an old Yao headman with the penonality of tlre Godhead in the Christian senseof the term, using the term Mulungu, my listener began to talk 'Che Mulungu,' 'Mr. God,' showing that originally to him the of word conveyed no idea of the personality I was ascribing to it." Hetherwick,'"Some animistic beliefs among the Yaos of Briftsh Central Africa," loumal of the Anthropol. Inst. of Grcat Bitain and lreland, XXXII (r9oz), p. 94. 6t Meinhof, "Die Gotteworstellung bei den Bantu," lJlgemeiae Missions-Zeitschrift,Vol. 5o (rgrl), p. 6.

The SuccessivePhasesof Religious Thought 7r sort are instructive for us especiallybecausethey show us that the level of mythic conceptionon which we find ourselveshere correspondsto a level of linguistic conception to which we may not assignoffhand our grammatical categories,our neat classifications of sharplydistinguishedwords.If we would havea verbalanalogueto the mythic conceptionshere at issue,we must, apparently, go back to the most primitive level of intetiections.68The manifu of the Algonquins,the mulungu of the Bantusis usedin this way-as an exclamationwhich indicatesnot so much a thing as a certain impression, and which is usedto geet anything unusual,wonderful, marvelousor terrifying.de At this point one can seehow far prior the level of consciousness which begetstheseverbal forms is even to that on which the "momentary gods" ere produced.For the momentary god, despite his transiency,is nevertheless always an individual, personal form, whereashere the holy, the divine, that which besetsa man with su& den terror or wonder, still hasan entirely impersond, one m€ht say "anonymous," character.But this nameless Presenceforms the backgroundagainstwhich definite daemonicor divine imagescan take shape.If the "mo8In a few casesthis connection may still be tuaced even etymologically. Thus Brinton derives the wakanda of the Sioux from an interiection of wonder and amazeurent (Religions ol Primitive Peoplcs, P.60). 6eAcc,ording to a report by Roger Williams, cited by Siiderblom (op. cit., p. !oo), it is customary among t}le Algonquins, when they note anything unusual in men, women, birds, beasts, or fish, to exclaim: Manitul that is: "This is a godl" When therefore, they converse with each other of English ships and great buildings, of plowing the fields, and especially of looks aird letteis, thev eodwith.'uMeri nitowok," "Thoyi are gods," "Cummannitowok,"-'Tou are a qod." Compare especiallyHetf,erwick, op. cit., p. 94: "Mulungu is regirded as the agent in anything mpterious. It's mulungu, is the Yao exilamation on being shown anything that is beyond the range of his undcrstanding. The rainbow is alwap 'mulungu' although some Yaos have begun to use the Mang' anla term 'uta wa L€sa,' 'bow of Lesa."'

Language and Myth 7z mentary god" is the first actualform originated by the creative, consciousness, _mythico-religious this actualitv

is grounded, nonet}. tfs, in thegen;rJil;ili

mythico+eligiousfeering.oo The divisfin of the rearm of the "holy" from that.of-the ,profa;;;i, tf," pr.r"q;ii" for any definite divinities *i"tro.u.r. The Self feels steeped,as it were, a mythico_religious ,,;&;;;;; .in which ever enfolds it, and in which "it ,ro* lives and moves;it takesonly a spark,a touch, to createthe god oi daemonout of this.charged The outlines of suchdaemonicbeingsmay be "i;;iph.re. .u.i ,o vague_yet L'Lvl re' thev indicatethe first stepii n n"* air.Jo".J"--

mrltricthinkingveersfromits originat, .,-1^r_llr^t1,in!, the phrie oi ..11'o-111olt'*stage fo.the exacropposite, porynomy-" Every deity

unites in itself a wealih of attributes, which originaliy b_el.onged io-tf," ,p".af g"* that haveall been iombined in fne new goa, Their suchowever,inherits not only all their attributes, but "9sor, also their names-not as his prop., name,but as ,;illatives;for the nameand nrtur. ff tt , foa are the same thing..Thus the polynomyof the perso'nal deitiesis an essentialtrait in their very being. '-'Forrerigioos f"ering, @This expression of ..poten-c/,, las been involuntarily adopted bv those who-hive sought to'desc-ri6" tlt" tn-*. .on.""ption and its relatei

e-g.,H-ewitt'sa;,n.rtr"-i'iii.'lri"'p.,38): ..Orenda -oi-.kii l:j'_o.Tri.."f, is a nypothetic potencvor ootentiality -iail""n'tr" to i6 resultsmystically.,, preiiaential Hartlandb 9r'l:9. i'eport of trie British Assocrbtron lor the Advancement of .Sciiir.r,i;ih 19.0, pp. symptomsof this ..indei..-iri.t."ir'; may 67g ft. ,-_1'1g1to, be found in &tnguage, in the wayssuch.daemonic nrtor., d""-o;A ro; instance,in the Bairtu dialects-thena;;;;fi;"h "i"-ii.qu.niry ;eings do not have the pre6x of the 6rst clas, which ;;;;;;r";;es ..independenr of agents,persons";there is. jrlstea.d,, ,"fi-rrt. pr.ni, *.r.ril';fiiil;; jpirits, j:,Y:$"_f: is used.for in-," f.i"lif,5y Ie ,egarded..not ai rnoependentpersonalities_-but as that which aiimat* ? U.f.ffr"i# they appty to'sicknesees-;;;ili;'#;ie, nre, streams,or ::}it:r ule mooD,as naturalDowers." lMiinhof, G.unJz,ige,;n.. u"rei.i"iJ-

denGrammatik derBintuspraci;;; iilil;;;;o-, "p?. oll6r.""BlT'iiii

The Successive Phases of ReligiousThought 73 in the abundanceof his the power of a god is expressed is polynomy a prerequisite for a god of the epithets; higher, personalorder."62In the Egyptian writings, Isis appearsas the thousand-named, the ten-thousand-named, the myrionlma;63in the Koran, Allah's might finds expressionin his "hundrednames."In the nativeAmerican religions, too, and especiallythe Mexican, this wealth of divine namesis illustrated.oa So it may be said that the concept of godheadrea\ receives its first concrete development and richness through language.As it emergesinto the bright light of speech,it ceases therebyto be a mereoutlineand a shade. But a contraryimpulse,too, inherent in the nature of language, is awakenedanewin this process:for asspeech has a tendencyto divide,determineand fixate,so it has also,no lessstrongly,a tendencyto generalize. So,guided by language,the mythic mind finally reachesa point where it is no longer contented with the variety, abundance and concretefullness of divine attributes and names,but whereit seeksto attain, through the unity of the word, the unity of the God,idea.But even here man'smind doesnot rest content;beyondthis unity, it strivesfor a conceptof Being that is unlimited by any particular manifestation,and therefore not expressible in any word,not calledby any name. 62Usener, Cbtternamen, p. 334. 03Cf. Brugsch, Religion u. Mythologie der alten Aegypter, Leipzig, ,r888,p. 645; for the eipression"isis M/rionyma," which"isfound alio iln Latin inscriptions, see Wissowa, Reliqion und Kultus der Rrimer, Vol.?, p.9r.-In magicalpractice,thiiconcept of the "polvnomy" of gods hai becorne rcgirlar itock in trrde; thus rve nnd, ih GiaecoEgypfian magic forniulas and prayers, invocations of Dionysius anil Apollo in which the severalnames wherebv they are called are arranged in alp,habeticalorder, so that each versepresents-aletter of the alpha5et For details see Hopfner, Griechisch-Aigyptischer Oftenbarungszauber, Sec.684, p. r7g. eFor details see Brinton, Religrons of Primitive Peoples,p, 99.

74

Languageand Myth

Here the cycle of mythico-religious thinking is completed.But the beginningand the end do not resemble from a realm of mere eachother; for we haveprogressed indeterminateness to the realm of true generality.The Divine, insteadof enteringinto the welter of properties and propernames,the gay kaleidoscope of phenomena, is set off againstthis world as somethingwithout attributes.For everymere "attribute" would limit its pure omnis determinatioest negatio.It is especially essence; the cult of mysticism,in all agesand amongall peoples, that grapplesagain and again with this intellectual doubleproblem-the task of comprehending the Divine in its totality,in its highestinwardreality,and yet avoiding any particularity of name or image.Thus all mysticismis directedtowarda world beyondlanguage, a world of silence.As MeisterEckhardthaswritten, God is "the simpleground,the still desert,the simple silence" (der einveltigegrunt, die stille wueste,die einvelticstille"); for "that is his nature,that he is one nature."66 The spiritualdepth and powerof languageis strikingly evincedin the fact that it is speechitself which prepares the way for that last stepwherebyit is itself transcended. This most difficult and peculiarachievementis representedby two fundamental,linguisticallygroundedconcepts-the conceptof "Being," and the conceptof the "Ego." Both appearto belong, in their complete significance,to a relativelylate developmentof language; both show, in their grammaticalforms, clear traces of the difficulties which verbal expressionencounteredin face of theseconcepts,and could masteronly by slow degrees.In regardto the conceptof Being,a glanceat the developmentand the original etymologicalmeaning 65SeeFr. Pfeifter,DeutscheMystiker des vierzehnten/ahrhunderts, Vol. II: MeisterEckhardt(Leipzig,1857),p. 16o.

The SuccessivePhasesof Religious Thought 75 of the copula in most languagesshowshow verbally oriented thinking arrived only very graduallyat a distinction between"being" and "being-so."The "is" of the copulaalmostunfailinglygoesback to a sensuously concreteoriginal meaning;insteadof conveyingmere existence or a generalstateof being,it originallydenoted especially a particular kind and form of appearance; being in a certainplace,at a specificpoint in space.66 Now, when the growth of languageachievesthe liberation of the concept of Being from its bondageto some specificform of existence,it therebyfurnishdsmythicoreligiousthought with a new vehicle,a new intellectual tool. Critical, or "discursive,"thinking, it is true, finally progresses to a point at which the expressionof "being" appearsas the expressionof a relation, so that, to speak with Kant, Being is no longera "possiblepredicateof a thing," and therefore can no longer be an attribute of God. But for mythic thought, which recognizesno such critical distinction,but remains"substantive"even in its highestreaches, Being is not'only a predicate,but at a certain stage of developmentactually becomesthe Predicateof Predicates;it becomesthe expressionwhich allows one to subsumeall the attributes of God under 'Wherever, a single rubric. in the history of religious thought, the demand for the Unity of the Deity arises, it takes its stand on the linguistic expressionof Being, and finds its surestsupportin the Word. Even in Greek philosophythis courseof religiousthinking may still be traced; even in Xenophaneswe find the Unity of God derived and proved from the Unity of Being. But this connection is by no means restricted to philosophical speculation;it goesback to the oldestknown recordsin dlllustrations of this principle may be found in my Philosophie der symboliscien Formen, Vol. I, pp. 287 ff.

Language and Myth 76 the history of religion.In early Egyptian texts, in the midst of all the godsand animalsof the Egyptianpantheon,we encounterthe ideaof the "hidden God," who is referredto in the inscriptionsas the One whoseform no onc hasknown, rvhoseimageno one hasdiscovered; "He is a secretto his creation,""His name is a secret to his children."There is but one designationthat may be applied to him, besidesthat of Creator,Maker of men and gods:that is the designation of pure Being.He begetsand is not begotten,he bearsand is not born, he is Being,the Constantin everything,the Remaining in all. Thus he "Is from the beginning,""Is from the first"; everythingthat is, becameafter he was.67Here all separate, concreteand individual divine nameshave been resolvedinto the one name of Being; the Divine excludesfrom itself all particularattributes,it cannot be describedthrough anything else,but can be predicated only of itself. From here it is but a singlestep to the fundamental idea of true monotheism.This step is accomplished as soonas the unity which so far has been sought through in objectiveterms, the objectiveworld, and expressed is turned into a subiectiveessence, and the meaningof. divinity is approachednot through the existenceof things, but through the being of the Person,the Self. What has been said about the expressionof "Being" may alsobe saidabout the denotationof the "I"-it had to be graduallyfound in the courseof languagemaking, and had to be derived,slowly and stepwise,from concrete, purely sensorybeginnings.But as soon as the expression"I" is finally coined, religious thought has gaineda new category.And againit is religiouslanguage o?Compare the exc€rpts and translations from inscriptions, in Brugsch, Rcligion und Mythologie der alten Aegypter, pp. 56ft.,96ft.

The Successive Phases of ReligiousThought 77 that seizesupon the new expression, and usesit, as it were, for a rung to reacha new spiritual height. The form of "self-predication," of self-revelation of the god througha constantlyreiterated"I am . . . ," which reveals the variousaspectsof his unified being, originatesin Egypt and Babylon; afterward,in later stages,it develops into a typical stylisticform of religiousexpression.68 But its final form is not met with until it excludes all other forms; where, accordingly,the only "name" for the godis the nameof the Self.When God, revealing hirnselfto Moses,is askedwhat nameMosesshouldbear to the Israelites, in casethey want to know what god has senthirn to them, the answeris: "I am that I am. Thus thou shaltsayto them: I am hassentme unto you." It is only by this transformationof objectiveexistence into subjectivebeing that the Deity is reallyelevatedto the "absolute" realm, to a state that cannot be expressed throughany analogywith thingsor namesof things.The only instrumentsof speechthat remainfor its expression are the pcrsonalpronouns: "I am he; I am the first, the last,"asit is writtenin the PropheticBooks.oe Finally,both lines of contemplation-that which uses the notion of Being,and that which usesthe notion of Self-are gatheredup into one, in the speculations of India. This philosophy,too, takesits departurefrorn the "Holy Word," the Brahma.In the Vedic booksit is the power of this Holy Word to which all Being,even the gods,mustsubmit.The Word rulesand guidesthe course of nature;knowledgeand possession of it givesthe initiate s For the origin and dissemination of this form see the exhaustive studies by Norden (instructive also for students of religious philosophy): AgnostosTheos, pp. ry7 fr., zo7 fr. oelsaiah 48: tz; cf. 47: to. For the significanceof the "I am he," see G_oldziher,Der Mythos bei den Hebrdern (Leipzig, 1876), pp.

359tr.

l-anguage and Myth 78 power over everything in the world. At fint, it is treattd entirely as a particular, to which some particular phase of existenceis subiect;in its use,the priesthasto observe the most meticulous detail-any deviation by wen a syllable,any changein rhythm or meter would void the potency of the prayer.But the progressftom the Vedas to the Upanishadsshowsus how the Word is gadually liberated from this magic circle, and becomes an allinclusiveintellectual potency.From the essences of particular things, expressedin their separateconcretedenotations, human thought rises to the unity that encompasses them all. The power of individual words is distilled, so to speak,into the power of the Word as such, the Brahma.ToIn this, all particular being, everything that seemsto havea "nature" of its own, is represented; but by virtue of this inclusion it is at once divestedof its "nafure." In order to expressthis relationship, religiousspeculationis driven againto the concept of Being, which the Upanishads,seekingto grasp its abstractmeaning now presentin a sort of heightened form, a higher potential. fu Plato contrasted the durc; the world of empirical things, with the 6vr,rdv,the pure Being of the Idea, so we find in the Upanishadsthe world of particular existence opposed to the Brahma as the "Being-in-Being" ("satyasyasatyam").?l This developmentpresentlymeetsand interpenehates r For the fundamental meaning of Brahma as the "Holy Wor4" as pnryer and incantation, cf. Oldenberg, in the Anzeiger fiir indogermanische Sprach= und Altertumskunde, Vol. VIII, p. 4o; also Oldeoberg, Die Religion der Upanishaden und die Antlnge des Buddhismus (Giittingen r9r5), pp. 17 ff., 38fr.,46 ff. A somewhatdivergent erplanation is grven by Hopkins, who regards the concept of power as the fundamental notion of Brahma, and believes this conccpt to have been Aans fened later to the word as pr:ryer, with its magical potency. (Hopkins, Or\in and Evolution of Reldion, New Haven, 1923, p. 39.) a Examples may be found in Deussen, Philosophie der Upanisha& (bipr[, 1899), pp. rr9 ff.

The SuccessivePhasesof Religious Thought 79 with the other, which takes its departurefrom the op posite pole: the intellectual progession which treab not Being but Self as the keynoteof religiousthought. Both convergeon the same goal; for Being and Self, Brahma and Atman, are distinct only in expression,not in content. The Self is the only thing that neither ages nor passes,that is unchangeableand immortal, and thereforeis the true "Absolute." But by taking this final step,byidentifying Brahmaand Atman, religiousthought and speculationhas againbroken its original bounds,the bounds of language.For words can no longer graspand hold this unity of "subiect" and "obiect." l,anguage now vacillatesbetweensubiectiveand obiective,it moves ever from one to the other, from the secondback to the first; but this meansthat even in combining the two it always has to recognize them as separateideas. When religious speculationdenies this distinction, it claims independencefrom the power of the word and the guidance of language; but thereby it arrives at the transcendental, which is inaccessiblenot only to language,but to conception as well. The only namg the only denotation that remainsfor this Pan-Unity is the expressionof negation. Being is Atman, who is called "No, no"; abovethis "It is not so" there is nothing further, nothing higher. So this revolt of the mind, which seversthe bond between languageand mythico-religious thought, only goesto demonstrateoncemore how strong and closeis this bond; for as myth and religion seekto transcend t}e bourne of language,they arrive therewith at the limits of their own creativeand formulativepower. When, in the year 1878, Max Mtiller published his Irctures on the Origin and Growth of Religion, he leaned heavr\ on the first reporb he receivedby letter from Codrington conceming the mana of the Melane-

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sians, which he used in support of his fundamental thesis in philosophy of religion-the thesisthat all religion is groundedin the power of the human mind to graspthe "Infinite." "What I hold," he says,.,is that with everyfinite perceptionthere is a concomitantperception, or, if that word should seemtoo strong,a concomitant sentimentor presentimentof the infinite; that from the very first act of touch, or hearing,or sight, we are brought in contact,not only with a visible,but at the sametime with an invisible universe." And in the word "mana," which he interpretedas "a Polynesianname for the Infinite," he saw one of the earliest and clumsiestexpressionsof what Man's conception of the Infinite may havebeen in its most primitive stages.?2 Our increasingacquaintance with the mythico-religious realm to which the conceptionand expression"mana" belongs has completely destroyed the nimbus of infinity and supersensoriness which surroundedthe word, as Mtiller understoodit; it hasshownus how thoroughly the "religion" of mana is groundednot only in sense perception,but in sensualdesires,in absolutely"finite" practical interests.TsIndeed, Miiller's inteqpretationis possibleonly becausehe equatedthe "infinite" with the "indefinite," the "interminable" with the "indeterminate."?'But the fluidity of the mana concept,which makesit so hard for us to grasp,or to find any verbal tz See Friedrich Max Miiller, Lectures on the Orisin and Crowth ot Religion (New impression,London, 1898), pp. 46ff-. za"All Melanesiin religion," says Miiiler, iiiing a letter of Codrington's,_"in fact,_consistsi-n getting this Mana for"oneself, or getting It used for one's benefit-all religion, that is, as far as religious-practices go, prayersand sacrifices." zr "What I nant to prove in this course of lectures is that indefinite and _infinite are in reality two names for the same thing" (op. cit., P.16).

The Successive Phasesof ReligiousThought 8r equivalentfor it in our languagepattern, has nothing whateverto do with the philosophicalor religiousidea of the Infinite. As the latter is abovethe possibility of exact verbal determination,so the former is still below such fixation. Languagemovesin the middle kingdom betweenthe "inde6nite"and the "infinite"; it transforms the indeterminateinto a determinateidea, and then holds it within the sphereof finite determinations.So there are, in the realm of mythic and religiousconcep tion, "ineffables"of differentorder,one of which representsthe lower lirnit of verbalexpression, the other the upperlimit; but betweenthesebounds,which aredrawn by the very nature of verbal expression,languagecan move with perfect freedom,and exhibit all the wealth and concreteexemplificationof its creativepower. Here, again,the mythmakingmind exhibitsa sort of consciousness of the relationshipbetweenits product and the phenomenonof language,though characteristically it can expressthis relationshipnot in abstract logical terms, but only in images.It transformsthe spiritual dawn which takes place with the advent of languageinto an obiectivefact, and presentsit as a cosmogonicprocess.fean Paul remarkssomewhere:"It seemsto me that, just asanimalsdrift throughthe outer world as though it were a dark undulatingsea,so man, too, would be lost in the starryvastness of externalperceptions,could he not divide that vaguebrightnessinto constellationsby the agencyof language,and thus resolvethe wholeinto its partsfor his consciousness." This emergencefrom the vaguefullnessof existenceinto a world of clear, verbally determinableforms, is represented in the mythic mode, in the imagist fashion peculiarto it, as the oppositionbetweenchaosand creation. And againit is speechthat makesthe transition

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from the featurelessmatrix of Being to its form and organization. Thus the Babylonian-Assyrianmyth of creation describesChaos as the condition of the world when the heavensabovewere "unnamed" and on earth no name was known for any thing. In Egypt, too, the time before creation is called the time when no god existedand no namefor any obiectwasknown.?6 From this indefinite state arisesthe first determinate existencewhen the creatorgod uttershis own name,and by virtue of the power dwelling in that word calls himself into being.The idea that this god is his own cause,a real causasui, is mythically expressed in the story of his origin through the magical force of his name. Before him therewasno god,nor wasanygod besidehim, "there wasfor him no motherwho madehis namefor him, nor father who uttered it, saying: 'I have begottenhim."'70 In the Book of the Dead, the sun-godRA is represented ashis own creatorin that he giveshimself his names,i.e., his charactersand his powers.?? And from this original power of speechwhich dwells in the demiurge arises everything else that has existenceand definite being; when he speaks,he causesthe birth of godsand men.?t The samemotif occurs,with a somewhatdifferentturn and a new depth of meaning,in the Biblical accountof ?5A. Moret, Le Rituel du culte divin journalier en Egypte (Paris, rgoz), p. rz9. ?0From a Leyden papyrus. See A. Moret, Mystgres Egyptiens, pp. rzo f. 7r Book of the Dead (ed. Naville), l-7, 6; cf . Erman, Die aegyptischc Religion (Berlin, r9o9), p. 34. ?8Compare this pasuge with the examples given by Moret in the section "le mvstdre du verbe crCateur" of his MystCres Egyptiens, pp. ro3fi.; also Gpsius, "Aelteste Texte des Totenbuches, p. ii. Uow dtiis Egyptian notion of the creative power of the word was combined with the fundamental ideas and concepts of Greek philosophy, and what this combination has meant to the development of the Christian Logos-idea,has been set forth by Reitzenstein in his Zwei rcligionsgeschichtlicheFragen (Strassburg,rgor), esp. pp. 8o ff.

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-Creation.Here, too, it is the word of God that separates light from darknessand producesthe heavens^nd the earth.But the namesof earthly creaturesare no longer directly given by the Creator, but have to wait their assignment by Man. After God hascreatedall the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air he brings them to man, to see what he will call them. .,And whatsoever Adam called every living creature,that was the name thereof." (Genesisz: rg). In this act of appellation, man_takes_possession of the world both phyiically and intellectually-subjects it to his knowledgi ;a his rule. This specialfeature revealsthat fundarnentalcharacter and spiritualachievementof pure monotheismof which Goethe remarkedthat it is alwaysuplifting becausethe belief in the one and only God *nk.s man awareof his own inner unity. This unity, however,cannot be discovered -exceptas it revealsitself in outward form by virtue of the concretestructuresof languageand myth, in which it is embodied,and from whicl it is aftenward regainedby the processof logical reflection.

..6 6 ED The Power of Metaphor THE foregoing considerationshave shown us how mythical and verbal thought are interwoven in every way; how the great structuresof the mvthic and lingtistic. realms,respectively,are determined and guided trl9ug\ long periodsof their developmentby thJ same spiritual motives. Yet one fundamental motive has so

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far remained unnoticed, which not only illustrates their relationship, but offers an ultimate explanation of it. That m1'th and languageare subject to the same,or at least closely analogous,laws of evolution can really be scen and understood only in so far as we can uncover the common root from which both of them spring. The rescmblanccsin their results, in the forms which they producc,point to a final community of function, of the principlcs whereby they operate. In order to recognize this function and representit in its abstractnakedness, we have to pursue the ways of myth and language not in thcir progress,but in regress-back to the point from which those two divergent lines emanate.And this common center really seemsto be demonstrable;for, no matter how widely the contents of myth and languagemay differ, yet the same form of mental conception is operative in both. It is the form which one may denote as metaphorical thinking; the nature and meaning of metaphor is what we must start with if we want to find, on the one hand, the unity of the verbal and the mythical worlds and, on the other, their difference. It has frequently been noted that the intellectual link between language and myth is metaphor; but in the precise definition of the process,and even in regard to the general direction it is supposedto take, theories are widely at variance.The real sourceof metaphor is sought now in the construction of language, now in mythic imagination; sometimes it is supposed to be speech, which by its originally metaphorical nature begetsmyth, and is its eternal source; sometimes, on the contrary, the metaphorical character of words is regarded as a legacywhich languagehas receivedfrom myth and holds in fee. Herder, in his prize essayon the origin of speech, emphasized the mythic aspect of all verbal and proposi-

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tional conceptions."As all nature sounds;so to Man, creatureof sensgnothing cculd seemmore naturalthan that it lives,and speaks,and acts.A certainsavagesees a tree,with its majesticcrown;the crownrustles!That is stirringgodhead!The savage fallsprostrateand worshipsl Beholdthe historyof sensuons Man, that darkweb,in its becoming,out of verbisnaplin2-snd the easiesttransition to abstractthought! For the savagesof North America,for instance,everythingis still animate;everything hasits genius,its spirit.That it waslikewiseamong Greeksand orientals,may be seenfrom their oldestdictionaryand grammar-they are,aswasall natureto their inventor, a pantheon!A realm of living, acting creatures. . The driving storm, the gentle zephyr, the clear fountain and the mighty ocean-their whole mythology lies in those treasuretroves,in verbisand nomrinibusof the ancientlanguages; and the earliestdictionary wasthus a soundingpantheon."?o The romanticsfoliowed the way indicated by Herder; Schelling,too, seesin languagea "faded mythology," which preserves in formal and abstractdistinctionswhat mythology still treats as living, concretedifierences.so Exactlythe oppositecoursewastakenby the "comparative mythology"that was attemptedin the secondhalf of the nineteenthcentury,especiallyby Adalbert Kuhn and Max Mtiller. Sincethis schooladoptedthe mefhodoIogicalprincipleof basingmythologicalcornparisons on linguisticcomparisons, the factualprimacyof verbalconceptsover mythic onesseemedto them to be implied in their procedure.Thus mythologyappearedas a result of language. The "root metaphor"underlyingall mythic ?e"Ueber den Ursprung der Sprache," Werke (ed. Suphan), V, PP. 53 f. t0 Schelling, "Einleitung in die Philosophie der Mythologie,,' Sdmtliche Werke, znd-div., I, p. li.

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formulations was regarded as an essentially verbal phenomenon,the basic characterof which was to be investigatedand understood.The homonymity or assonanceof denotativeterms was supposedto break and direct the way for mythic fantasy. "kt us consider,then, that there was,necessarily and really, a period in the history of our race when all the thoughts that went beyond the narrow horizon of our by meansof metaphors, everydaylife had to be expressed and that thesemetaphorshad not yet becomewhat they are to us, mere conventionaland traditional expressions, but were felt and undentood half in their original and half in their modified character.. . . Wheneverany word, that was at first used metaphorically,is used without a clearconceptionof the stepsthat led from its original to its metaphoricalmeaning,there is dangerof mythology; wheneverthosestepsareforgottenand artificial stepsput in their places,we have mythology, or, if I may say so, we have diseasedlanguage,whether that languagerefers to religiousor secularinterests.. . . What is commonly called mythology is but a part of a much more general phase through which all languagehas at one time or other to pass."8l Before one can attempt any decisionbetween these antagonistictheories,this battle for the priority of languageover mythology or myth over language,the basic concept of metaphor requires scrutiny and definition. One can take it in a narrow sense,in which it comprises only the consciousdenotation of one thought content by the name of another which resemblesthe former in somerespect,or is somehowanalogousto it. In that case, metaphoris a genuine"translation";the two concepts t1 Max Miiller, Lectures on the Science of Language, second serieg (New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co., 1875), PP. 372376.

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between which it obtains are fixed and independent meanings, and betwixt them,asthe giventerminusa quo and terminus ad quem, the conceptualprocesstakes place,which causesthe transition from one to the other, wherebyone is semanticallymadeto standproxy for the other. Any attempt to probe the genericcausesof this conceptualand nominal substitution,and to explainthe extraordinarilywide and variegateduse of this sort of metaphor (i.e., the consciousidentificationof avowedly diverseobjects),especially in primitive formsof thinking and speaking,leadsone back to an essentialattitude of mythic thought and feeling.Heinz Wemer, in his study of the originsof metaphor,haspresenteda very plausible argumentfor the suppositionthat this particularkind of metaphor, the circumlocution of one idea in terms of another,restson quite definite motivesarisingfrom the magicalview of the world, and more especiallyfrom certain nameand word taboos.82 But such a use of metaphor clearly presupposes that both the ideas and their verbal correlatesare already given as definite quantities; only if these elements,as such, are verbally fixed and defined can they be exchangedfor one another.Such transpositionand sub stitution, which operatewith a previouslyknown vocab. ulary as their material, must be clearly distinguished from that genuine "radical metaphor" which is a condition of the very formulation of mythic as well asverbd conceptions. Indeed, even the most primitive verbal utterancerequiresa transmutationof a certain cognitive or emotive experienceinto sound,i.e., into a medium that is foreign to the experience,and even quite disparate; just as the simplest mythical form can arise only eHeinz Wemer,Die Unprtinge der Metaphet(L,eipdg,r9t9), esp. chap. l, pp, 74 fr.

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by virtue of a transformationwhich removesa certain impressionfrom the realm of the ordinary,the everyday and profane,and lifts it to the level of the "holy," the "significance."This involves sphereof mythico-religious not merelya transference, but a real y.eril"Bao'l , eis d)rlo levos;in fact, it is not only a transitionto anothercategory,but actuallythe creationof the categoryitself. If, now, one were to ask which of thesetwo types of metaphor begetsthe other-whether the metaphorical expressions in speechare producedby the mythic point of view, or whether,on the contrary,this point of view could ariseand developonly on the basisof languageshow that this questionis the foregoingconsiderations reallyspecious. For, in the first place,we are not dealing here with a temporalrelation of "before" and "after," but with the logical relation betweenthe forms of languageand of myth, respectively;with the way the one the other.This determination, conditionsand determines however,can be conceivedonly as reciprocal.l,anguage and myth standin an originaland indissolublecorrelation with one another,from which theyboth emergebut graduallyas independentelements.They aretwo diverse shootsfrom the sameparentstem,the sameimpulseof symbolic formulation, springing from the same basic mental activity, a conccntrationand heightening of In the vocablesof speechand simplesensoryexperience. in primitive mythic figurations,the sameinner process finds its consummation:they are both resolutionsof an of subjectiveimpulses inner tension,the representation and excitationsin definite objectiveforms and figures. As Usencremphaticallysaid: "It is not by any volition that the name of a thing is determined.Peopledo not in order to introinvent somearbitrarysound-complex, duce it as the sign of a certainobject,as one might do

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with a token. The spiritualexcitementcausedby some object which presentsitself in the outer world furnishes both the occasionand the meansof its denomination. Senseimpressionsare what the self receivesfrom its encounterwith the not-self,and the liveliest of these naturallystrivefor vocalexpression; they arethe basesof the separateappellationswhich the speakingpopulace attempts."83 Now this genesiscorrespondsprecisely,feature for feature,with that of the "momentarygods." Similarly, the significance of linguisticand mythii metaphors,respectively,will revealitself, so that the spiritualpower embodiedin them may be properlyunderitood,only ,, we trace them back to their commonorigin; if one sieks this significanceand power in that p"colia, concentration, that "intensification"of sensJexperiencewhich underlies.all linguistic as well as all mythico-religious formulations. If we takeour departureoncemore from the contrast which theoreticalor "discursive"conceptionpresents, we shall find indecdthat the difierentdirlctioni which the grou,thof logical (discursive)and mythic-linguisticconception,respectively, havefollowed,may be ieen iust as clearlyin thcir severalresu/ts.The foriner beeinswith somcindivid-ual, singleperception,whichrveexiand,and carry beyondits originalbounds,by viewins ii in more and more relationships.The inteliectual irocess here involvedis one of s.yntlletrcsupplcmentafion, the com_ bination of thc singlcinstance,ith tlr" totality. and its completionin the totality. But by this relationitip *itt the whole, the separatefact doesnot lose its concrete identity and lirnitation.It fits into the sum total of phenomena, yet remainsset off from thern as something 83Usener, Gcittenramen, p.

3.

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independentand singular.The ever-growingrelationship which connects an individual perception with others does not causeit to become merged with the others. Each separate"specimen"of a speciesis "contained"in the species;the speciesitself is "subsumed"under a higher genus;but this means,also, that they remain distinct,they do not coincide.This fundamentalrelation in the schemewhich is most readilyand clearlyexpressed logiciansare wont to use for the representation of the hierarchyof concepts,the order of inclusionand subsumption obtaining amonggeneraand species.Here the logical determinationsare represented as geometricdea certain "area" that terminations;every concept has from other belongsto it and wherebyit is distinguished conceptualspheres.No matter how much these areas may overlaprcover each other or interpenetrate-each one maintains its definitely bounded Iocation in conceptualspace.A conceptmaintainsits spheredespiteall its synthetic supplementationand extension;the new relationsinto which it may enter do not causeits boundaries to becomeeffaced,but lead rather to their more distinct recognition. If, now, we contrast this form of logical conception by speciesand generawith the primitive form of mythic and linguisticconception,we find immediatelythat the two represententirely different tendenciesof thought. Whereasin the former a concentricexpansionover everwidening spheresof perceptionand conceptiontakes place,we find exactlythe oppositemovementof thought grving rise to mythic ideation. The mental view is not it is, so to speak,distilledinto widened,but compressed; by this processof distillationis the a singlepoint. Only particular essencefound and extractedwhich is to bear the specialaccentof "signi6cance."All light is concen-

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gr

{ate{ in one focal point of "meaning,"while everything that lies outsidethesefocal points of verbalor mythic conceptionremainspracticallyinvisible.It remains,,unremarked"because,and in so far as, it remainsunsup plied with any linguistic or mythic "marker.', In the realm of discursiveconception there reigns a sort of diffuse light-and the further logical analysisproceeds, the further doesthis even clarity and luminosity extend. But in the ideationalrealm of myth and languagethere are always, besides those locations from which the strongestlight proceeds,othersthat appearwrappedin profoundestdarkness. While certaincontentsof-perception becomeverbal-mythicalcentersof force, ce.ttersof significance, there are otherswhich remain,one might sap beneaththe thresholdof meaning.This fact, namily, that primitive mythical and linguistic conceptsconstituie suchpunctiform units, accountsfor the fac[ that they do not permit of any further quantitative distinctions. Iogical contemplationalwayshasto be carefullydirected toward the extension of concepts;classicalsyllogistic logic is ultimately nothing but a system of iulei for combining,subsumingand superimposing concepts.But the conceptionsembodiedin languageand myih must be takennot in extension,but in intension;not quantitatively, but qualitatively.Quantity is reduced to a purely casualproperty,a relativelyimmaterialand unimportant aspect.Two logical concepts,subsumedunder the next-highercategory,as their genusproxirnurn,retain their distinctivecharacters despitethe relationshipinto they have been brought. In mythico-linguistic ryhich thought, however,exactly the opposite tendenc! prevails. Here we find in operationa law which mieht actuallybe calledthe law of the Ievelingand extincttn of specificdifferences. Everypart of nuhole is the whole

Language and Myth 92 itself; everyspecimenis equivalentto the entire species. The part doesnot merely representthe whole, or the specimenits class;they are identicalwith the totality to which they belong; not merely as mediating aids to which actureflectivethought,but as genuinepresences and efficacy of the ally contain the power, significance whole. Here one is remindedforcefullyof the principle which might be calledthe basicprincipleof verbalaswell as mythic "metaphor"-the principle of pars pro toto. It is a familiarfact that all mythic thinking is governed and permeatedby this principle.Whoever has brought any part of a whole into his powerhastherebyacquired power,in the magicalsense,overthe wholeitself.What the part in questionmay havein the strucsignificance of the whole,what functionit fulfills, ture and coherence is relativelyunimportant-the mere fact that it is or has been a part, that it has been connectedwith the whole, no matter how casually,is enoughto lend it the full and powerof that greaterunity. For instance, sigriificance to hold magicaldominion over another person'sbody of his pared nails or one need only attain possession cut-offhair,his spittleor his excrement;evenhis shadow, his reflectionor his footprints sewe the samePurPose. the injunctionto smooth still observed The Pythagoreans the imprint of the that arising so the bed soon after body, left upon the mattress,could not be usedto the Most of what is known as "magic owner'sdetriment.8a from the samefundamentalattitude; springs of analogy" and the verynatureof this magicshowsthat the conccpt in questionis not one of mere analogY,but of a real identification.If, for instance,a rain-rnakingceremony consistsof sprinklingwateron the groundto attract the efamblichos, Protreptichosp. ro8, 3, quoted after Deubner, Magie und Religion (Freiburg,rgzz), p. 8.

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97

rain, or rain-stoppingmagicis madeby pouring water on red hot stoneswhereit is consumedamid hissingnoise,86 both ceremonies owe their true magicalsenseto the fact that the rain is not just represented,but is felt to be reallypresentin eachdrop of water.The rain asa mythic "power," the "daemon" of the rain is actually there, whole and undivided, in the sprinkled or evaporated water,and is thus amenableto magicalcontrol. This mystic relationshipwhich obtains between a whole and its partsholds alsobetweengenusand species, and betweenthe speciesand its severalinstances. Here, too, each form is entirely merged with the other; the genusor speciesis not only represented by an individual member of it, but lives and acts in it. If, under the totemisticconceptionof the world, a group or clan is organizedby totems,and if its individualmemberstake their namesfrom the totem animalor plant, this is never a merearbitrarydivisionby meansof conventionalverbal or mythical "insignia,"but a matter of genuinecommunity of essence.s0 In otherrespects, too, wherevera genus is involved at all, it alwaysappearsto be wholly present and wholly effective.The god or daemonof vegetation lives in eachindividual sheafof the harvest.Therefore, an ancientbut still popularrural customdemandsthat the last sheafbe left out in the field; in this remnant, the power of the fertility-god is concentrated,from which the harvestof the coming year is to grow.8?In Mexico and among the Cora Indians the corn-godis supposedto be present,fully and unrestrictedly, in every P_a1kr1son, Thirty Years rn the South Seas, p. 7; quoted by ___85See Werner, Die Urspriingeder Metapher, p. s6. tu -y study, Die Begifrsform ini mytfiischen Denken (Leipzig, 9f. rgzz), pp. r6ff. t'Cf. Mannhardt,'WaId= und Feldftulte,znd ed. (Berlin, r9o4-r9o5), _ l, zrzfr.

94

Languageand Myth

stalk and even every grain of corn. The Mexican corngoddessChicomecoatlin her maidenhoodis the green stalk,in her old agethe corn harvest;but sheis alsoeach separatekernel and eachparticulardish. Likewise,there are severaldeitiesamongthe Coraswho representcertain kinds of flowers,but are addressed as individual flowers. The sameis true of all the Coras' demoniaccreatures: the cicada,the cricket, the grasshopper,the armadillo are simply treated as so many individual wholes.88If, therefore,ancientrhetoric namesas one of the principal types of metaphor the substitution of a part for the whole, or vice versa,it is easyenough to seehow this sort of metaphorarisesdirectly out of the essentialattitude of the mythic mind. But it is equallyclear that foi mythic thinking there is much more in metaphorthan a bare "substitution," a mere rhetorical figure of speech; that what seemsto our subsequentreflectionas a sheer transcription is mythically conceivedas a genuine and direct identification.se sSee Preuss,in Globus, Vol.87, p.38r; cf. esp. Die NapritExpedition, Vol. I, pp. 47 fi. t0 This is the more obviously valid if we consider that for mythic and magical thought there is no such thing as e mere picture, iinct every image embodies the "nature" of its object, i.e., its "soul" or "dremon." Cf., for example,Budge, Egyptian Magtc, p. 65: "It has been said above that the name or the emblem or the picture of a god or a demon could become an amulet with power to protect him that wore it and that such power lasted as long as the substanceof which it was made lasted, if the name, or emblem, or picture was not erased from it. But the Egyptians went a step further than this and they believed that it was possible to transmit to the 6gure of any man, or woman, or animal or living creature the soul of the being which it represented,and its qualities and attributes. The statue of a god in a temple contained the spirit of the god which it represented,and from time immemorial the people of Egypt believed that every statue and 6gure pgssessedan indwelling spirit." The same belief is held to this day among all "primitive" peoples. Cf., for instance, Hetherwick, "Some animistic beliefs amonq the Yaos of British Central Africa" (see footnote above, p. 7o): zThe photographiccamera was at first an obiect of dread, and when it was turned upon a group of natives

The Power of Metaphor

95

In the light of this basicprincipleof mythic metaphor we can graspand understand,somewhatmore clearly, what is commonlycalledthe metaphoricalfunction of language. Even Quintilian pointedout that this function doesnot constituteanypartof speech, but that it governs and characterizes all human talk; paenequidquid loquimur figwa est.But if this is indeedthe case-if metaphor, taken in this generalsense,is not iust a certaindevelopment of speech,but must be regardedas one of its essentialconditions-then anv effort to understandits function leadsus back, once more, to the fundamental form of verbal conceiving.Such conceivingstems ultimately from that same processof concentration,the compressionof given senseexperiences, which originally initiates every single verbal concept. If we assumethat this sort of concentration occurs by virtue of several experiences, and alongseverallines,so that two difterent perceptualcomplexesmight yield the samesort of "essence"as their inner significance,which givesthem their meaning,then at this very point we should expect that first and firmest of all the connectionswhich language can establish;for, as the namelesssimply has no existence in language,but tends to be completelyobscured, so whateverthings bear the same appellationappear absolutelysimilar. The similarity of the aspectfixed by the word causesall other heterogeneityamong the perceptionsin questionto becomemoreand moreobscured, and finally to vanishaltogether.Here again,a part usurps the place of the whole-indeed, it becomesand is the whole. By virtue of the "equivalence"principle, entities they scattered in all directions with shrieks of terror . In thcir minds the-lisoka (soul) was allied to the chiwilili or picture and thc removal of it to the photographic plate would mean'the diseaseor death of the shadelesstrody"-(p1p. 89 f.).

s6

Language and Myth

which appearentirely diversein direct senseperception or from the standpoint of logical classificationmay be treatedas similarsin language,so that every statement madeaboutone of them may be transferredand applied to the other. Preuss,in a characterizationof magicbuttercomplexthinking, says:"If the CoraIndian classes flies, quite absurdly,as birds, this means that all the propertieswhich he notes in the object are quite difierently classifiedand relatedfor him than they are for us from our analytical,scientificpoint of view."ooBut the apparentabsurdityof this and other such classifications disappearsas soon as we realizethat the formation of these primary conceptswas guided by language.If we in the name,and supposethat the elementemphasized thereforein the verbal conceptof "bird," as an essential wasthe elementof "flight," then by virtue characteristic of this element and by its mediation the butterfly does belong to the classof birds. Our own languagesare still which conha' constantlyproducingsuch classifications, of speciesand concepts scientific dict our empiricaland (Dutch "butterfly" genera,asfor instancethe denotation boterulieg),in someGermanictonguescalled a "butterbird." And at the same time one can see how such lingual "metaphors"react in their turn on mythic,metaphor and prove to be an ever-fertilesourcefor the latter. Euery characteristicproperty which once gave a point of departureto qualifying conceptionsand qualifying appel[ationsmay now serveto merge and identify the obj'ectsdenotedby thesenames.If the visibleimageof lightning, as it is fixed by language,is concentratedupon the impressionof "serpentine,"this causesthe lightning to becomea snake;if the sun is called "the heavenly flier," it appearshenceforth as an arrow or a bird-the DPreuss,Die geistige Kultur der Naturvdlker(I*ipzig, r9r4), p' ro'

The Power of Metaphor

97 sun-god of the Egyptian pantheon, for instance, who is representedwith a falcon's head. For in this realm of thought there are no abstract denotations;every word is immediatcly transformed into a concretemythical figure, a god or a daemon.Any senseinpression,no matter how vague, if it be fixed and held in .language, may thus become a starting point for the conception and denotation of a god. Among the namesof the Lithuanian gods which Uscner has listed, the snow-god Blizgulis, the "Shinrmerer," appears beside the god of cattle, the "Roarer" Baubis; also in relation to these we find the god of bees, Birbullis the "Hunmer," and the god of earthquake,the "Thresher" Drebkulys.elOnce a "Roarer God" in this sensewas conceived,he could not but be recognizedin the most diverse guises;he was naturally and directly heard, in the voice of the lion as in the roaring of the storm and the thunder of the ocean.Again and again, in this respect, myth receivesnew life and wealth from language,as languagedoes fron'r myth. And this constant interaction and interpenetration attests the unity of the mental principle from rvhich both are sprung, and of which they are simply different expressions,different manifestationsand grades. *mentality Yet in the advance of human even this coniunction, close and essentialthough it seemsto be, begins to disintegrate and dissolve. For language does not belong exclusively to the realm of myth; it bears within itself, from its very beginning, another power, the power of logic. How this power gradually waxes great, and breaks its way by means of language, we cannot undertake to set forth here. But in the course of that evolution, words are reduced more and more to the status of mere conceptual signs. And this process of 01lJsener,Gdttemamen,pp.85 ft., rr4.

98

Languageand Myth

separationand liberation is paralleledby another: art, Iike language, is originallybound up entirelywith myth. Myth, languageand art begin as a concrete,undivided unity, which is only graduallyresolvedinto a ttiad of independentmodesof spiritualcreativity.Consequently, the samemythic animationand hypostatizationwhich is bestowedupon the wordsof human speechis originally accordedto images,to everykind of artisticrepresentation. Especiallyin the magicalrealm, word magic is everywhereaccompaniedby picture magic.e2 The image, too, achieves its purely representative, specifically "aesthetic"function only as the magiccirclewith which mythical consciousness surroundsit is broken,and it is recognizednot as a mythico-magicalform, but as a particular sort of formulation. But althoughlanguageand art both becomeemancipated, in this fashion,from their native soil of mythical thinking, the ideal,spiritual unity of the two is reasserted upon a higher level. If languageis to grow into a vehicle of thought, an expressionof conceptsand iudgments, this evolution can be achievedonly at the price of forgoing the wealth and fullnessof immediate experience. In the end, what is left of the concretesenseand feeling content it once possessed is little more than a bare skeleton.But there is one intellectual realm in which the word not only preservesits original creativepower, but is everrenewingit; in which it undergoes a sort of constantpalingenesis, at oncea sensuous and a spiritual reincarnation.This regeneration is achievedas language becomesan avenueof artisticexpression. Hereit recovers the fullnessof life; but it is no longer a life mythically bound and fettered, but an aestheticallyliberated life. 02For further details see the second volume of my Philosophie dcr symbolischenFomen, esp. pp. 54ft.

The Powet of Metaphot

99

Among all typesand forms of poetry,the lpic is the one which most clearly mirrors this ideal development.For lyric poetry is not only rooted in mythic motives as its beginning,but keepsits connectionwith myth even in its highestand purestproducts.The greatestlyric poets, for instance H
INDEX Achelis,47n Aeschylos,59 Animal mind, 38, 8r Art, 98 Australians,5zn Bantu,39, 53n,E, 7r, 7zn Bastian,quoted,47-48n Beth, 59n Brahma, 77 Breysig,K., 6on Brinton, 8., 6n, q&r., gon, 7rn, 7)n Brugsch,73n Budge, 49n, 5on quoted,94n Bundahish,47

Eskimos, 5o Ev6, zzf., 34, 42, 52, 59 Foucart, G." quoted, 49n Gabelentz, G. v. d., 5o Gelder, 48n Giesebrecht, glt, 57 Cod, 46, 7o,74ft,83 G o d s ,r 3 , 1 4 1 6 , 5 9 , 7 r n , 7 ) , 9 1 functional, tg[,76, 4r momenrary, $, 33, 35f., 12, 57, 62, 7r, 89 special,r9ft, 42, 54 Goethe, l. W,, 27, 87 Goldziher, 77n Greek language,4, l, )r religion, t8, zofr, 59 word-magic, gz, 53n, 54,82

Chinese,5o Codrington,6zt,65,79 Concepts,7, rz Hamann, 34 historical:zf Hartland, 7zn linguistic,i4, 7o, )2, 39t, 44, Herder,I. G., 84 mythical,ro, 14, 23, 3zt religious, 14, 15, chapter z Dassrm sciintific, z7f Cuoq, 5rn Dempwolft,O., 4rn Descartes, R,, r r Deubner,9zn Deussen,78n Dieterich,quoted,53f Eckhardt,quoted, 74 Egyptian magic, 94n religion,46, 481,76,97 Erman. 8zn quoted, 48n useof names,5o,73,77,82

quoted, zgt,8g Herero, 39 Hermippos, quoted, 5zn Hetherwick, quoted, 7on, 7rn, 94n Hewitt, 64n, 65n, 7za Hirzel, R., 5rn H
t02

Index

Indian*Continued C o r a ,r 3 , 6 r , 9 7 t , 9 6 Iroquois,64,65n Mexican,,4, 73, 91.t Sioux, 64, 67fr, 7n Uitoto, 4on, 45, 6r Jamblichos, 9zn |ean Paul, quoted, 8r fusti, F., 47n Kant, I., 8, ,7, 75 Keah, f., 99 Kuhn, A., 85

Modes of thought, z7 discursive,26, 56,6o, 89f mythical l-7, 49, 53, 6o, 72, 8r, 90t religious,r7, t4, r, Mommsen, T., 5rn

Moret,A., 46n, 8zn Miiller,Max, 3, g, 79,8, quoted,8o, 86 Mulungu, 69ff Myth-interpretation, z, ro Mythology,scienceof, J, to, rr, r5

Name alterationof, 5rf Language and essence, ), zo, 95 and Being, 74f, 8z and object,24, 28, 76,49 and community, 6r and person,5of and Ego, 74, 76,79 divine,15, zl-, 49, 57f.,69,77 and thought, 16, chapter 3 pas- Norden, 1,5n,77n sim, g6f

55, 7), origin of, rz, 2et )l relation to myth, 4, 9, lS, 79, 8r, 84ft, 88 scienceof, ft, 7o, 74 teleology of, 39, 4rn Lehmann, F. R., 64n [,epsius, 8zn Lithuanian paganism,zz, 36, 97 Logic, r!, ry, 24f and language,24, )r, 57, 90 Magic, 4o, 66, 67, 98 of words, chapter 4 pasim, 78, 82,87,92f, 98 Mana, 63F, 8o Maori, 48n Marrett, 64n McGee, 67 quoted,'68f Meaning, )7, S7t Meinhof, 79, ,7n, Torr quoted, 7zn Melanesians,6zf, 8o Metaphor, chapter 6, passirn mythic, 92, 96 radical (root-), 85fi

Oldenberg,78n Parsis,47 .Pfeifter,F. 74n Plato, r, z, 6, 54, 78 quoted, rf Poetry, 74, 99 Polynomy,7z r3, r4n, 4on,45,,Jn,6, Preuss, 6rn, 94n quoted,96 Pythagoreans, 9z Quintilian,95 Reclus,E., 4on Roehl,quoted,7o Roman g o d sr,9 , z o , 7 6 f , 4 r law, 5of fi|ual, zrt, 4r, 55 Schelling,F. W. f., 85 r Socrates, Spencer,H., 3-6, passim quoted, 5

Index Spieth,z3n, 3), Jrn,52n' 59n quoted,22f Siiderblom,7rn quoted,66 Stern,C. and W., 4rn St. fohn, 45 Symbolicforms,8,'r.r, r5, 25 philosophyot, t5, )9a, 7Sn, 98n Symbolism7, 78, 56, 58

ro3

Usener,H., r5fi, t8ft, 77,76,62, 97 quoted,rS, 16, zr, 42,5gt,7zt, 88f Yeda, 77f

Taboo, 52, 67, 67, 87 Ten Kate, 53n Tools, 59f, 6rf

Wakanda, 67 Werner,H., 87 lVestermann,4zn Williams, Roger,7rn Wissowa,76, 55n, 77n Word, 45f[, 57f, 6fi,7r, 7, 77t 'Wundt, W., z7n

Upanishads, 78

Xenophanes, 75

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CAALOGOFDOVERBOOKS EARLY NINETEENTH-CENTURY CRAFTS AND TRADES, Peter Stockham (ed.).F,xtremelyrare 1807volume describesto youngstersthe crafls and trades of the day: briclmaker, weaver, dressmaker,bookbinder, ropemalcer,saddler, many more. - illustatiom for each craft. 20 blaclr-and-white line illustraQgaint prore, chamirqg 27293-l Pa $4.95 tiins. l92pp. a* x 6. VICTORIAN TASHIONS AND COSTUMES FROM HARPERS BAZA& 1867-1898, Stella Blum (ed). Day coshrmeq evening wear, q)orts clothes, shoes, hats, other accegsoriesin over 1,0(X)detailed engravings.320pp. 9* x l2l{' 2299G4 Pa-$14.95 GUSTAV STICKLEY, THE CRAFTSMAN, Mary Ann Smith. Superb study sur' vevs broad scope of Stickley's achievemen! especially in architecture. Desigrophilosophy, rise and fall of the Coffsm.n empire, descriptions and floor plans for many Crafts;an houges, more. 86 black-and-white halftones. 3l line illustrations. 27210-9Pa- $9.95 Introduction 208pp. 6', i I'1. THE I,oNG ISLAND RAIL ROAD IN EARLY PHOTOGRAPHS, Ron Zel' ( 1844)and development of Over 220 rare photos, 'Long informative te>ddocument origin Island' Vrntage views of early trains, locomotiv^elt!{"TlPT. rail sewice on 26301-0Pa' $13'95 sengers,cr"*r, -oih more. Captions.8?tx ll{. THE BOOK OF OLD SHIPS: From Egvptian Galleys to Clipper Ships, Henry B' culver. superb, authoritative history of sailing vessels,with 80 Tagnificent.line illystrations. Gallen bark, caravel longship, whaler, qany more. Detailed, informative text on each vlssel by noted naval historian. Innoduction' 256pp' -' 5* x 811' 27332-6Pa-$7.95 TEN BOOKS ON ARCHITECTURE, Vitruvius. The most imPortant book ever tvriten on architecture, Early Roman aesthetics,technology, classical orders, site selectiorqall other aspects.Morg""r translation. 33lpp. 5* x 816. 20645-9 Pa- $8.95 THE HUMAN FIGURE IN MOTION, Eadweard Muybridge' More than 4,500 stopD€d-actionphotos, in action series, showing un&aped mer\ women' children carrying' etc. 390pp' 7:A.x-ly!'- ^ :n-pitt6 lying dowu throwing, sihing, wrestling, 20204-6Clothbd. $25.95 TREES OF THE EASTERN AND CENTRAL UNITED STATES AND CANAD,\ William M. Harlow. Best one-volume guidg to 140 bees. Full descriptions' woodlore, range' etc' Over 600 ilustrations' Handy size' 288pp' a}{ x 6%', 20395-6Pa-$6.95 soNcsoFWESTERNBIRDS,Dr.DonaldJ'Borror.Completesongandcall repertoire of 60 western species,including- flycarchers,juncoes, cactus wrens' many casseue and manual 99913-0$8'95 firlv ilush;ted booklel ;;;;ile.; VCTSAIiIC GROWING AND USING HERBS AND SPICES, MiIO MIOTAdOViCh. p-."id"r all the information neededfor cultivation and use of all the herbs rr*au*t 2_36pp.S1;^A^U. i",,t"lt" in Noflh America- 4 ilustrations. Index. Glossary_. 25058-X Pa-$6.95 ""d,li*. BIGBooKoFMAznsANDI"ABYRINTHS,WalterShepherd.50mazes.and labwinths in all-dassical, soli4 ripple, and more-in on€ Sreatvolume' renect rnexperisive puzzler for clever youngsterr. Full solutions' ll2oo' 8* x ll' 2295r-3 Pa $4.95

AIULOG OFDOIIERBOOKS PIANO TUNING, J. Cree Fischer. Cleares! best book for beginner, amateur. Simple repairg raising dropped notes, hrning by easy method of flafrened fifths. No previous skills needed. 4 illustrations. 20lpp. 59(x 8lt. 232674 Pa. $6.95 A SOURCE BOOK IN THEATRJCAL HISTORY, A. M. Nqgler. Contemporary observers on acting, directing, make-up, costuming, stage props, machinery, scene design,from Ancient Greeceto Chekhov.6llpp. 596x 8'1. 205154 Pa. $12.95 THE COMPLETE NONSENSE OFEDWARD LEA\ Edward Lear. Allnonsense limericks, zany alphabets,Owl and Pussycat,songr, nonsensebotany, etc., illustrated by kar. Total of 320pp. 51 x 811.(USO) 20167-8Pa-$6.95 VICTORTAN PARLOUR POETRY: An Annotated Anthotogy, Michael R Tirmer. ll7 gems by Longfellow, lbnnyson, Browning marry lesser-known poets. "The Village Bladrsmith,n "Curfew Must Not Ring Tonigh!" "Only a Baby Small,ndozens more, often difficult to ffnd elsewhere.Index of poets, titles, fint lines. :oriii + 325pp. 5{ x 8t. 27014-0Pa.$8.95 DUBUNERS,JamesJoyce. Fifteen stories ofrer vivid, tightly focused observations of the lives of Dublin's poorer classes.At least one, -The Dead,nis considereda masterpiece. Reprinted complete and unabridged from standardedition. l60pp. 5fi0x 81(. 26870-5Pa $1.00 THE HAUNTED MONASTERY and THE CHINESE MAZE MURDERS. Robe* van Gulik lito firll novels by van Gulilq set in 7th-cenhrry China, continue adventures ofJudge Dee and his companions. An evil Taoist moiastery seemingly supernahral eventa; overgrown toptary maze hides strange qimes. 27 illustation;. 328pp.5*x 8)1. 23502-5Pa-$8.95 THE BOOK OF THE SACRED MAGIC OF ABRAMEIIN THE MAGE, transl+ed by S. MacGrego_rMathers. Medieval manuscript of ceremonial magic. Baric docurnent in Aleist€r Crowley, Golden Dawn groups. 268pp. UO llb.rr_U * *r.n' NEIV RUSSIAN.ENGIJSH AND ENGUSH-RUSSIAN DICTIONARY. M. A. O'Drien. This is a remarkably handy Rursian dictionary, containing a zurprising amount of infgrmation, including over 70,000enhies. 366pp. 416x 616. 20208-9Pa-$9.95 HISTORIC HOMES OF THE AMERICAN PRESIDENTS, Second, Revised Edition, Irvin Haas. A traveler's guide to American hesidenfral homeg most open !o the pubhc, depicting and describing homes occupied by every American hesident from George Washington to George Bush. With visitinj- houri, admigsion charges, travel routes. 175photographr. Index. l60pp. 8%x ll. 26Z5l-2 pa- $U:95 NEW YORK IN TIIE FORTIES, Andreas Feininger. 162 briftant ohotomaphs bv the well-known photographer, formerly wirh Lifc i"Cn i"". C"--irte"r,itdppe.J, lryes $gare { nigh! much else from city at iti peak. Captions byJohn .,on ii"rt". l8lpp. 9{ x 10il. 23Ss.'{ pa" $12.95 INDIAN SIGN I"ANGUAGE, William Tomkins. Over 525 sirsrs developed bv Sioux and other tribes. Writen instructions and diagrams. Also-290 picto'grapd. lllpp. 6{ x 914. 22029-Xpa. $g'.95

CATALOGOFDOWRBOOKS PHOIOGRAPHIC SKETCHBOOKOF THE CIVIL WA& AlexanderGardner' Harper's 100photostakenon field duringthe Civil War.Famousshotsof Manassas Pa-$9.95 22731-6 etc.244pp.l01x 8lL Ferry,Lincoln,Richmond,slave-pens, FIVE ACRESAND INDEPENDENCE,MauriceG. Kains.Greatback-to-the-land farming.The onebookto get.95 illusbations. classicexplainsbasicsof self-sufrcient 2097+l Pa-$7.95 397pp.5* x 8)1. SONGS Of EASTERN BIRDS, Dr. DonaldJ. Borror. Songsand calls of 60 species llycatchers, thrushes, lartr, most common to eastern U.S.: warblers, Cassefreand manual 99912-2$9.95 many more in high-quality recording. A MODERN HERBAI+ Marnaret Grieve. Much the fullesl most exact, most usefirl compilation of herbal material Gigantic alphabetical encyclopediq from aconite to zedoary, gives botanical information, medical properties, folklore, economic uses, -".h 6lr.I Indispensable to serious reader. l6l-illustrations. 888pp. -6-lt-1q{. ?-I9! VoL I:22798:7 Pa-$9.95 set.(USO) Yol. ll: 22799-5Pa $9.95 HIDDEN TREASURE MAZE BOOK Dave Phillips. Solve 34 challenging mazes accompaniedby heroic tales of advenh[e. Evil dragone' PeoPle-eatingPlanb ql thirsty giants, many more dangerous adversaries lurk at every t*itt T!-h'T: 2456G7Pa-$2.95 mazei,itories, soluhons.l8pp.8U x Il. LETTERS OF W. A. MOZART, Wolfgang A. Mozart Remarkable letters show t::ldi bawdy wi! humor, imagination, musi&l insights,,cont€mPorary^fy4 22859-2 Pa- $7'95 includes some letters frori l*opold MozarL 276pp' 5*x8lz. BASIC PRINCIPLES OF Cf.ASSICAL BALLET, drippina Vaganova Great Russiantheoretician, teacher explains methods for teaching classicalb4Jet._ll8^illus22036-2Pa' $5'95 x 811. trations. 175pp.596 THEJUMPING FROG, Mark Train. Revenge edition. The original stgry of The Celedrated Tumpinc Frog of Calaveras Co,-*, a hapless French translation, and Twain's hila?oui "r6bans'iation" from the French. 12 illusnations. 66pp. 5{ x 8}1' 226867 Pa- $3.95 BEST REMEMBERED POEMS, Martin Gardner (ed.). The 126 poems in this zuperb collection of 19th- and 20th-cmtury British and American vene range fr-om Stiellev's "To a Skylark" to the impasrioned "Renascence"of Edna SL Vincent Millay aThe O*l and the Pussycal" 224pp' 5%x8lz' and dndward kar's whimsical . 27165-X Ba $,{.95 COMPLETE SONNETS, Willianr Shakespeare.Over 150 exquisite -poems dcd other evanescenca,death and otlrer with love, friendship, the tyranny of rime, beauty's evalescencgtherres in langu"g.'of remdtk"bli power, precision and beauty. Glossary of archaic 26686:9 Pa-$1.00 terms.80pp. ilt, i stL BODIES IN A BOOKSHOP, R T. Campbell. challenging mystery of blackmail and murder with ingenious plot and zuperbly drawn draracters. [n the best tradition 2472G1 Pa' $6'95 f.on. tbzpp. 5l( x^816. ;iil;J"""p;

ATALOG OFDOVERBOOKS THE INFLUENCE OF SEA POWER UPON HISTORY, 1660-1783,A. T. Mahan. Influential classic of naval history and tactics still used as text in war colleges.First paperbackedition.4 maps.24 battleplans.6a0pp.5* x 8'1. 25509-3Pa- $12.95 THE STORY OFTHE TITANIC ASTOLD BY ITS SURV[VORS,JackWinocour (ed.). What it was really like. Panic, despair, shocking inefficiency, a.nda little heroism. More tbrilling than any fictional account. 26 illustrations. 320pp. 596x 8t1. 20610-6Pa-$8.95 FAIRY AND FOLK TAT ES OF THE IRISH PEASANTRY. William Butler Yeats (ed.). Tieasury of 64 tales from the twilight world of Celtic myth and legend: "The Soul Cages," "The Kildare Pooka," "King O'Toole and his Goose,' many more. Introduction and Notesby W B. Yeats.352pp. 5%x 8'6. 26941-8Pa. $8.95 BUDDHIST MAHAYANA TEXTS, E. B. Cowell and Others (eds.).Superb, accurate translationsof basic documentsin Mahayana Buddhism, highly important in hisPy of Tliggls. The Buddha-kaxitaof Asvaghoshq Larger Sukhavativyuhq more. 448pp. 516x 811. 2SSS2-2pa. $12.95 ONE TWO THREE . . . INFINITY: Factsand Speculationsof Science,George Gamow. Great physicist's fascinating, readable overview of contemporary scienc-e: number theory, relativity, fourth dimension, entropy, genes,atomic structure, much more. 128illustrations.Index. 352pp. 5%x 8'1. 25664-2pa. $8.9S ENGINEERING IN HISTORY, Richard SheltonKirby, et al. Broad,nontechnical survey of history's major technological advances:birth of Greek science,induskial revolution,electricityand appliedscience,2Oth-century automation,much more. l8l illushations.". . . excellent. . ."-/srs.Bibliography.vii + 530pp. 516x 8l[. 26412-2Pa. $14.95 DAIJ ON MODERN ART: The Cuckolds of Antiquated Modern Ar! Salvador Dali' Inllurntial painter skewersmodem art and its pt .titiott"rr. ouhageous evaluations of Picasso,C6zanne,-Iirrner, more. 15 renderings of paintings d]scussed.44 calligraphicdecorationsby Dali. 96pp. 5%x 8[. (USO)2d220-7pa. 94.95 PLAYING CARDS: A Pictorial History, Henry Ren6 D'Allemagne. 4Nn^qy! over 900 elaborate,decorativeimagesfrom rare playing carad(t+th-zo*r centuriles): Bacchus,death, dancing dogs, hunting r.ut toy"l.oits of arms, players cheating, "r, pa $11.93 much more. 96pp. 9'l x l2'l. ZSiZAS-7 MAKING FURNITURE MASTERPIECES: 30 holects with MeasuredDrawinss. Franklin H._Gottshall. Step-by-stepinstructions, illusltrations for consructing hantsome,usefrrlpieces,amon_g_them a She,ratondeslq Chippendale chair, SpadJh deslq Qyeen Anne table and a Williarn and Mary dressing tril-lor. 224pp. g'[ ; I I [. 29338-6Pa.$13.95 THE FOSSIL BOOK: A Record of Prehistoric Life, patricia V. Rich et al. hofuselv ilhrstrated definitive guide covers everything from single-celled organisms ani dinosaurs to birds and mammals and the interplay betwee-nclimate ani man. over 1,500illustrations. 76opp, 7lLx t0*. 2gg7l-g pa. 929.95 hires subjectto dwngewitlnat noticc. or mite for freecat"togto Depr GI, Doverhrblications,Inc.,3l 4val+lgg yoltr book-dealer Est 2ndSt, MineolqN.Y.11501. Doverpublishes morethansOobookseachyea on science, elementaryand advancedmathematics, biology,music,axt,literaryhistory,soJial,.ierces ard otherarero.

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