THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
if the soul or life could be thus isolated, it might perhaps be laid aside or deposited in some safe place, thus rendering its possessor immune in the midst of some deadly encounter. This motif rules in many folk-lore cycles and even invaded the Old Testament.
A final psychological effect is discovered in Mythology (Gk. mythos, "narrative ")• In modern usage the word has two meanings: (1) the branch of investigation which deals with the narratives about gods and demigods, heroes, creation, origins, and the like; (2) the narratives themselves. A myth is a story, on a subject kindred
7. Myth to those just mentioned, now admitted Defined, to be untrue and often irrational, but
to its first hearers and their immediate descendants self-evident. It shows primitive reason working according to primitive logic, seeking to explain a real or a supposed fact.* Magic is primitive science, myth is primitive philosophy. Thus the sacred stone at Delphi, a fact, was accounted for by the myth that it was the stone by which Chronos was deceived when Zeus was born, which he disgorged some time later. The Crayfish Clan of the Choctaws explained their name and origin by the myth that the first of the clan were crayfish which were coaxed from their shells, taught to stand up and use their claws, finally becoming ancestors of the Crayfish Clan. Gen. vi. 1-4 is a myth accounting for the reputed giants as the product of a union between spirits and women.
When larger experience and growing mentality discredited these tales, various attempts were made to account for them. Xenophanes (sixth century b.c.) and Porphyry (d. 303 a.d.) regarded them as inventions to inculcate moral truth. Theagenes (c. 520 b.c.) and Empedocles (c. 444 B.C.) regarded them as allegorical expressions of physical philosophy. Aristotle looked on them
8. Expla- as intended to inculcate respect for nations of legal and social institutions (" Meta-
Myth. physics," XI. viii. 19). ' Euhemerus (c. 300 B.C.) accounted them the imaginative rendering of history — e.g., the gods were deified men. Of modern theories Herbert Spencer's revives Euhemerism. Max Mtiller and the philological school attributed myth to a " disease of language " by which events narrated of one object were attributed to another bearing the same or a similar nanui. The anthropological school accounts for myth by making it a " disease of thought " taking its rise in animism. Thus later Egyptians were perplexed by the animal forms of their deities and accounted for the supposed fact by the story that the gods took refuge from their enemies in the animal bodies. To modern man both the supposed fact and the explanation are irrational; to the Egyptians the fact was real and the explanation all-sufficient under the hypothetical parity of being. The distinction between myth, religion, and
* Prof. N. S. Shaler has, without intending it, given a good description of the mythological process: " The commonest misuse of the reason and the imagination is to support an irrational motive which is strong enough to be mastering, yet is felt to need explanation " (Tfie Neighbor, p. 268, Boston, 1904).
theology should be clearly made. Theology is man's belief about the gods, myth is the tale he tells to account for his belief in them, religion expresses his practical attitude toward them (cf. A. Lang, Custom and Myth, pp. 45 sqq.. New York, 1885)
b. Primitive Religion in th.e Social Sphere:
The institution of totemism can be understood only by recognizing that kinship as reckoned by civilized society is very different from kinship under
primitive conditions. To the civ- I. Kinship, ilized, kinship is a matter of degree.
Under the totemistic regime it is absolute and reckoned not by family but by the clan or totem gens. It is not even solely a matter of birth, but may be acquired (see below, Blood- Brotherhood). The absoluteness of this tie is shown by W- R. Smith, Rel. of Sem., pp. 272-273, 277: " In a case of homicide Arabian tribesmen do not say ' the blood of M or N has been spilt,' they say, ' our blood has been spilt.' " The clanbrethren are all of one blood, no others are of their blood. And the contrariety of this form of relationship to that current in civUized communities is sharply expressed by the statement that under it husband and wife are not kin, that in most cases father and children are not kin, but that mother and children are. Totemism is then an affair of the community. But since all community matters are under primitive conditions religious, the interest of comparative religion in the subject becomes evident.
Totemism " is the name for the custom by which a stock (scattered through many tribes) claims descent from and kindred with some plant,
animal, or other natural object. It
2. Totem- is a state of society and cult in ism De- which sets of persons, believing them-
fined. selves to be akin by blood, call each other by the name of some plant, beast, or other object in nature " (A. Lang, Custom and Myth, p. 260). Jevons shows another phase when he says that it is " the alliance of a clan with an animal (or plant or other natural object) species " {Introduction to Hist, of Religion, p. 120). W. R. Smith makes the proofs of the existence of totemism in any one place to depend upon " (1) the existence of stocks named after plants and animals;
(2) the conception that the members of the stock are of the blood of the eponym animal or are sprung from a plant of the species chosen as totem;
(3) the ascription to the totem of a sacred character " {Kinship, p. 188).
Because the matter has been confused (e.g., by Mr. Frazer, Encydopwdia Britannica, " Totemism," and in his Totemism, London, 1885, and otheris), it must be noted (1) that totemism is a community affair, and individual only as the in-
3. Marks of dividual is a part of the community; Totemism. (2) the totem is always a species,
never an individual, except in the (rare) case of the heavenly bodies; (3) it involves both sexes, never one alone; (4) the solidarity of the human clan is treated as absolute, as is that of the animal species. Thus is to be corrected Mr. Frazer's statement that there are three kinds of