APPENDIX.
TWO ESSAYS BY H. STEINTHAL,
THE ORIGINAL FORM OF THE LEGEND
OF PROMETHEUS:
The soundness of a new discovery is attested in various ways, but especially by the circumstance that the new thought is no sooner uttered in speech than it is seized upon and worked out by others besides its author; for the thought in question is thus proved to be really the subject which the intellect of the time is best prepared to take up, and which will lead on the Past to the Future. This is found to be the case with Comparative Mythology, Kuhn’s new creation. When a large number of Vedic Hymns—text, translation, and commentary—first appeared in Europe through the instrumentality of a German, Rosen (too early lost to science), Kuhn saw at once not only that they were written in a more ancient language than the classical Sanskrit, but, what was more important, that they opened up a source of mythological views which flowed from a more distant and primeval antiquity than is known to us anywhere else, and that this was the common source of the more important myths and figures of gods of the Aryan nations. He then demonstrated this, in successive essays on Erinnys, Despoina and Athenê, the Kentaurs, Minos, Orpheus, Hermes, and on Wuotan (Odin) in the German mythology, by proving the identity of their names and myths with corresponding ones in the Vedas. Kuhn’s acuteness and skilful combinations thus established the fact, of the highest importance to primeval history, that the heathen Aryan nations possessed a belief in gods, the outlines of which dated from the age of their original unity. But Kuhn saw also that two further facts followed from the first, one more important, the other more interesting. By the former I mean the fact, that the Vedic myths still exist in so primitive a form as to point to the ground of their own origin, and thus themselves to furnish their own certain interpretation. The latter is the fact that all Saga-poetry, whether epic or dramatic, artistic or popular, stands in connexion with the oldest myths; and further, that the mythological faith and worship, so far from being extinct even among the civilised Christian nations of Europe, still lives on in the rural classes of the population in spirit and practice, as superstition or sometimes as jest, though of course not without frequent transformations and disfigurements. This last point, however, had already been discovered by the genius of Jacob Grimm, who only wanted the support of the Vedas to become the founder of Comparative Mythology, as he was of Historical Grammar. But this support was necessary to elevate Comparative Mythology into a science based on method, and to give sufficient certainty to the interpretation of myths and gods. The greatest genius—fully entering into the spirit of the ancient Greeks and Germans, and endowed with a lively sympathy with nature—could, without the guarantee of the Vedas, never have produced anything higher than unproved conjectures. It would have remained impossible to demonstrate the original identity of different gods, had not the Vedas given us the connecting terms. And the sense of the myths and gods could only have been vaguely and uncertainly guessed at, had not the language of the Vedas, with a happy transparency both of grammar and of psychology, furnished the means of tracing the development of ideas from the most primitive impressions received by the soul.
Starting from the same fundamental idea as Kuhn, Roth proved, about the same time, that the heroes of the New-Persian epos are only old mythic figures of the religion of Zoroaster, which are equivalent in names and functions to certain Vedic gods. In the Oxford Essays of 1855, Max Müller gave a sketch of Comparative Mythology, drawn in a certain poetical spirit which is quite in harmony with the subject. He endeavoured, very justly, to exhibit the essential connexion between the poetical and the mythic aspect, and to show that all formation of myths was simply poetic invention. Kuhn’s idea was immediately and generally accepted and worked out by all those who were engaged on the Vedas—Benfey, Weber, and others. Mannhardt has frequently elucidated German myths with penetrating thoroughness from Vedic-Indian ones.
Thus Kuhn’s idea has with rare rapidity become a secure common property of science. In the book, the title of which is given at the head of this article, he now gives an unsurpassable model of careful method in this field of investigation. When the weight of every argument is tested with such accuracy and the conscientiousness of a judge, and exhibited so unvarnished and so entirely free from special pleading, and the conclusion is drawn with such cautiousness, as here, not only scientific but also moral recognition is the writer’s due.
We will first attempt to realise the result attained, and then proceed to a psychological analysis of it. I shall, however, here strictly confine myself to the one mythical feature which forms the foundation of Prometheus. Kuhn’s book contains, besides, an extraordinary multitude of mythological facts, grouped together as belonging to the subject mentioned in his title.
In the earliest times Fire must have been given to man by nature: there was a burning here or there, and man came to know fire and its effects by experience. At the same time he learned also how to keep it in, and very soon he may also have learned how to produce it. He took certain kinds of wood, bored a stick of the one into a stick or disk of the other, and turned the former round and round in the latter till it produced flame. Kuhn has shown elaborately that the Aryan nations’ oldest fire-instrument was formed in this way, and that the rotation of the boring-stick was effected by a thread or cord wound round it and pulled to and fro.[786] But man knew also of another sort of fire, that in the sky. Up there burned the fire of the Sun’s disk; from thence the fire of the Lightning darted down. The primitive man, in his simplicity, believed the heavenly fire to be like the earthly; its effects were the same, and it went out from time to time like the earthly fire. Therefore, Must not its origin also have been similar? must it not after every extinction have been kindled again in like manner? There was no want of the necessary wood in the sky. In the sky was seen the great Ash-tree of the world,—in a configuration of clouds which is still in North Germany called the Wetterbaum, the storm-tree.[787] It was supposed, before men believed in gods of human form, that the lightning fell down from this Ash-tree, against which a branch twined round it had rubbed till the fire was produced, as had been observed in forests on earth. The men thought that the earthly fire had its origin in the sky, and was only heavenly fire that had fallen down. They saw how it fell down in the lightning; they recognised in the lightning a divine eagle, hawk, or woodpecker;[788] and many a bird which now flies about in the atmosphere of earth is a fallen flash of lightning, proved to be such either by its colour or by some other circumstance. The wood, too, which when rubbed turns to fire, is similarly a transformed lightning-bird. This is seen sometimes in the fiery-red colour of the fruit, e.g. of the mountain-ash (rowan),[789] sometimes in the thorns or in the pinnate leaves of the plant, in which the claws and feathers of the lightning-bird are still recognisable. The rubbing merely revokes this transformation: the igneous creature is enabled to take up again its original form.
Originally the bird was probably regarded as being itself the lightning, because inversely the lightning was treated as a bird. Afterwards it was thought that the bird which was at first perched upon the heavenly Ash that produced the fire brought the fire down from the tree to the earth.
But further, Is not Life, too, a fire, burning in the body?—and Death the extinction of the flame? And as fire is kindled by boring with a stick in the hole of a plate of wood, so human life is produced in the womb. And what happens now and always here on earth, happened up there in the Ash-tree of the world at the original creation of man. That Ash produced, first Fire, and then Man, who is also fire. Indeed, strictly speaking, this is still going on: the Soul is a lightning-bird that has come down to earth, and the birds that bear down the fire—such as the Stork[790]—still bring us children too, just as they brought the first man down to earth: in short, the Fire-god is also the Man-god.
Then, at a later stage of the development of ideas, when the divine powers were imagined as personages in human form, the wonderful element of Fire, which drew to itself the attention of men no less by its mysteriousness than by its usefulness, was undoubtedly one of the first divine figures to be personified. Now one of the oldest words for fire was agni-s, Lat. igni-s. According to Benfey it comes from the root ag ‘to shine,’ by means of the suffix ni; s is the sign of the nominative. Therefore Agni is the Shining one, the Fire; but in the earliest times the word designated not the element Fire, but the god Fire. He, the god Agni, had his abode in the wood, and was allured forth by the turning.
Agni was fire and light in general, both the absolute element in general and also every special and separate manifestation of it: such as the brilliant sky, the shining sun, the lightning, fire burning here for us, the first man and progenitor of mankind. But alongside of this, the peculiar conception of the Lightning-Bird still continued. That also was converted into a personal divine or heroic figure, which brought fire and man to the earth in the lightning. Sometimes Agni himself was called a ‘golden-winged bird,’ even in the Vedic Hymns; and sometimes the bird was made into a special god or hero distinct from Agni, bearing a name taken from one of Agni’s various epithets. Thus Picus, originally only the woodpecker, was in the belief of the Latins the Fire-Bird. He was Lightning and Man; and it was said later that the first king of Latium was Picus, for the first man and father of mankind frequently appears in localised stories as the first king of the locality. Picus is shown to be a Lightning-Bird and Lightning-Man, not only by his name and story, but also by the manner of his worship: since he was regarded as the protecting deity of women in childbed and of infants.[791]
Less obviously, but not less certainly, a Lightning-Bird was preserved at Argos in Phoroneus. He, and not Prometheus, was said in the Peloponnesian story to have given fire to men; and in his honour a holy flame was kept burning on an altar at Argos. He was at the same time regarded as father of the human race. Having been originally a bird sitting on the celestial Ash-tree, he was made a hero, son of the nymph Melia, ‘the Ash.’ Now his name is Grecised from the Sanskrit bhuraṇyu-s, an epithet of the Fire-god Agni, denoting ‘rapid, darting, flying,’ thus picturing Agni as a bird. The name Phoroneus, bhuraṇyu-s, is in root (bhar = φερ) and signification, though not in grammatical form, equivalent to the word φερόμενος.[792]
It was not possible to stop with the mere conversion of the bird into a person. When the divine beings were once thought of as persons, they were also allowed to appear and act as such. So men no longer imagined the fire in the sky to be self-originated on the World’s Tree, but regarded it as produced by gods, who acted similarly to men on earth, and revived the extinct flame of the sun hidden behind a mountain of clouds in the morning or during a storm, by driving a bolt into the sun’s disk or into the cloud.
These are mythic conceptions of the very earliest age, but they contain in themselves a motive to further development, to give completeness to the relations subsisting among them, or binding them to the natural phenomenon that they represent. Thus true myths arise.
Now, the most striking peculiarity of fire was obviously the necessity of constantly kindling it again afresh, because when lighted it must go out again sooner or later. This aspect was exhibited in the following very simple myth. Agni vanished from the earth; he had hidden himself in a cave. Mâtariśvan brings him back to men. This myth is easily understood. The existence of the god Agni is assumed to be absolute and uninterrupted: but Fire is often not present; consequently the god must have hidden himself. Where, then, can he be? Afar off, it is sometimes said, quite generally; another time it is said, In the sky—which seems to be regarded as his proper home—or with the gods. But sometimes he is not there either, as at night or in a storm. Where is he, then? Why, where he is found; in the hollow of the cloud, from which he soon shines forth: in the hole of the disk in which the stick is turned round and round. Then, who finds him there, and brings him back to men? He who makes the fire appear, or flame up, and thereby restores to men the god who had withdrawn from them: that is, the Borer, or the Lightning which bores into the cloud as the stick into the wooden disk; it is Mâtariśvan, says the myth. This is a divine or semi-divine being, of whom but little is known. He seems to be a figure which has never been fully crystallised;[793] regarded as a divine person, he fetches back the Fire-God to men.
Then the following terminology was introduced. The boring, by which man kindled fire and the sun when extinguished was lighted up again, was called manthana, from the root math (math-nâ-mi or manth-â-mi, ‘I shake, rub, or produce by rubbing’). In German, the corresponding word is mangeln, ‘to roll,’[794] Mangelholz, used in North Germany; manth here becomes mang, as hinter is pronounced hinger, and unter unger. The boring-stick was probably originally called matha, from which mathin, ‘a twirling-stick,’ differs only in its suffix. Very soon, however, matha appears to have been restricted to another signification,[795] and then the fire-generating wooden stick was designated by a term formed from the same root with the preposition pra prefixed, which only gave a shade of difference to the meaning, pramantha. But the fetching of the god Agni by Mâtariśvan (the personified pramantha) is also designated by the same verb mathnâmi, manthâmi, as the proper earthly boring. Now this verb, especially when compounded with the preposition pra, gained the signification ‘to tear off, snatch to oneself, rob.’ Thus the fetching of Agni became a robbery of the fire, and the pramantha a fire-robber. The gods had intended, for some reason or other, to withhold fire from men; a benefactor of mankind stole it from the gods. This robbery was called pramâtha; pramâthyu-s is ‘he who loves boring or robbery,’ a Borer or a Robber. From the latter word, according to the peculiarities of Greek phonology, is formed Προμηθεύ-ς, Prometheus. He is therefore a Fire-God, very like Hephaestos, whose functions he often assumes. Mâtariśvan, who is quite synonymous with him in meaning, derives his name still more directly from the Fire-God; for mâtariśvan is originally a mere epithet of Agni; for the boring-stick itself bursts into flame, and in so doing reveals itself as Agni. Originally a mere epithet, mâtariśvan was subsequently separated from Agni and made into a distinct person; but, as already observed, without clearly-defined characteristics. Prometheus is the fire-generator, and as such the creator of the human race.[796] This relation to men explains the affection for them which prompts him to give them fire against the will of Zeus. He hid the spark of fire in a stem of Narthex,—one of the kinds of wood which were used for the production of fire, and were regarded as transformed fire.
Fire on earth was the Fire-God descended from heaven; the first man was only the same god in another form; consequently the first men—the representatives and benefactors of the human race—the first kings—the founders of the great sacerdotal families among the priest-ridden Indians—all were designated by attributes of the Fire-God. The family of the Aṅgiras-es acknowledges its descent from Aṅgiras. But Agni himself is often called by this name; and indeed these two names, Agni and Aṅgiras, come from the same root ag or aṅg, and have the same meaning—‘shining.’ Thus, in the mythical view Fire existed in three forms: first, as actual fire, i.e. as the Fire-God; secondly, as generator, rubber, fetcher, and robber, of fire, i.e. as Pramantha, Mâtariśvan, Prometheus; and thirdly, as those for whom it exists, and to whom it is given, i.e. as men. After the Fire-God has come down from heaven as man, he as man or as god fetches himself as god or divine element to earth, and presents himself as element to himself as man.
In the view of primitive man the mediating term between heaven and earth lay in the Lightning. In the lightning he saw the Fire—the god, the man—fall from heaven. Bhṛgu,[797] originally bhargu, from the root bharg, from which the Latin fulgeo, fulgur, and the Greek φλέγω also come, signifies ‘the Shining,’ ‘the Lightning;’ German blitz, which latter word comes from the identical German root (Old High German plih, Middle High German blic).[798] Bhṛgu was said to be the ancestor of the Bhṛgu-s, a sacerdotal family. To them, as representatives of the human race born from the lightning, Mâtariśvan is said to have given the fire. But as the Bhṛgu-s are the lightning, and consequently the Fire-God himself, the myth could be so turned round as to make Mâtariśvan fetch the god from the Bhṛgu-s as divine beings, or to make the Bhṛgu-s go after the traces of Agni, find him in the hole, take him among men, and cause him to display his fire.
It is also told of the above-mentioned Aṅgiras that they found Agni hidden in the cave. They are, indeed, only the same god broken into fragments: the fire separated into individual cases of burning, flame flashing at various places.
Thus there is a mythical identity, on the one hand, between Prometheus and Mâtariśvan as fire-god and fire-fetcher, and on the other, between Prometheus and the Bhṛgu-s in the same capacities, except that the latter are also representatives of mankind. And their relation to Prometheus can be authenticated in Greek myths as well. Bhṛgu is Lightning in his very name. His son Ćyavana ‘the Fallen’ (from ćyu ‘to fall’[799]) is the Lightning again. Hephaestos, also, is well known to have fallen down. The name Iapetos appears most likely to express the notion of ‘the Fallen’; only he is not the son, but the father, of Prometheus. Prometheus created men of clay, and the earth which he used for the purpose was shown near Panopeus in Phokis, the seat of the Phlegyans; the Phlegyans, therefore, considered themselves the first men: they are the Bhṛgu-s, Grecised regularly. The Indians had, moreover, other ideas connected with the Bhṛgu-s which closely coincide with those held by the Greeks concerning the Phlegyans; especially the conception that Bhṛgu, the ancestor of the Bhṛgu-s, like Phlegyas that of the Phlegyans, was hurled into Tartaros for pride and insurrection against the gods. The same characteristics, pride and opposition to Zeus, as well as the punishment, are also found in Prometheus, who is identical with the other two.
The identity of the Indian Mâtariśvan with the Greek Prometheus, and the explanation of the latter thereby gained, are accordingly based on such a coincidence of several mythical features and so similar a combination of these features, as cannot possibly be the work of chance; as well as on several interpretations of names, which are intrinsically more or less certain. If we knew more of the Indian Mâtariśvan, or if the word pramâthyu-s, corresponding to the Greek Prometheus, could be authenticated in the Vedas, then the certainty of all that has been said above of the Greek Titan would force itself upon us. In compensation for what has not yet been found, and is perhaps lost for ever, it may be serviceable to learn about a host of divine beings described in the epic poems of the Indians, who have some connexion with the Fire-God and are called Pramatha-s or Pramâtha-s; they appear to be only the one original Pramâtha or Pramâthyu-s broken up into fragments.
This is, in Kuhn’s profound exposition, the simplest and the pure form of the Story of Prometheus. Later, in Greece, it was brought into relation to other stories in Hesiod’s poetry; and again, with peculiar profundity, into new combinations by Aeschylos. Prometheus received his higher mental signification mainly through the fact that the Greek verb μανθάν-ω, with which the name of the Titan was correctly assumed to be connected, had taken a more mental meaning than the Sanskrit mathnâ-mi or manthâ-mi. The two verbs are obviously originally absolutely identical; only the nasalisation of the root math is effected differently in each language. We might suppose that the meaning ‘to learn,’ which the root μαθ has in Greek, had grown out of the fundamental sense ‘to shake’; for learning is a shaking up, a movement, of the mind to and fro. Yet such a mode of conception might be scarcely possible to the mind of the primeval age in which that signification must have grown up; the primitive act of learning was not such violent exertion as ours in modern times, but rather a simple hearing, a mental reception. Now as the Sanskrit word mathnâmi grew into the meaning ‘to take’ (as has been observed), it is more probable that the notion of learning was formed by the Greeks from this (‘snatching to oneself, taking’[800]), as Kuhn supposes. Then the physical sense of μαθ was lost altogether to the Greeks; it was, indeed, still known that Prometheus was a fire-taker, but not that the name indicated this. So they attempted to understand his name in a strictly mental sense, and remodelled the nature of the Titan accordingly.
Accordingly, the answer to the question of the nature of the etymology of the name Prometheus must be this: Prometheus comes from a root pra + math, which had the same meaning as the simple verb μανθάνω. But the formation of the name from the verb is older than the appearance of any specific Hellenism; for Prometheus was not formed by the Greeks. With the verb mathnâ-mi the name pramâthyu-s, without any verb pramathnâ-mi, was also delivered to them; and so there were in Greek μανθάνω and Προμηθεύς, but not προμανθάνω. The knowledge of the mutual connexion of the two former words continued vivid in the language; and when the sense of μανθάνω was spiritualised, the same change came over that of Prometheus also. Besides this, the preposition προ was understood, according to the usual Greek analogy, as ‘beforehand’; and the verb προμανθάνω was then formed on Greek ground. Thus Prometheus came finally to denote to the Greeks ‘the Fore-learner, the Provident.’ I shall have more to say presently on this development. Let us pause for a while here, and attempt the psychological analysis of the simpler form of the myth exhibited above.
The following definitions must be given in advance:
Every simple act of the soul and every simple occurrence in the soul shall be termed a Motion, that we may have a general word to embrace all psychological data and designate, so to speak, a psychical atom.
Simple Motions combine together for very various reasons and in various ways, which I need not enumerate here; e.g. a colour, a form, and a matter. Thus they form a Combination of motions, e.g. ‘a black round disk.’
Simple Motions, or single Combinations of them, in case they are not distinct or distinguished from other simple motions or single combinations on account of the similarity or equality of their contents, coalesce with the latter into one motion or combination of motions, as the case may be. For instance, to one who has not a clear sight, or has no sense of colour, or is looking at too great a distance, two colours that are but little different will appear one and the same. If one sees a ribbon today, and tomorrow sees at the same place another scarcely differing from it in colour, length, and breadth, one will suppose it to be the same. Thus, Coalescence produces a loss of contents (for in the place of two or more motions only one remains, whereas distinction brings an enrichment of contents), but the loss is compensated by the force of the motion.
Not simple motions, but certainly combinations, can be interlaced (sich verflechten) with one another. Interlacing of combinations occurs when certain motions belonging to two or more combinations coalesce, whilst the other motions belonging to them remain apart. The interlacing of the combinations approximates more or less to a coalescence of them in proportion to the number and value of the motions that coalesce. On this more accurate definitions may be given presently. Here I will only allude to a frequently occurring instance: two words of similar sound in a foreign language are easily interlaced, even to the point of perfect coalescence, i.e. they are confounded with each other. So also two persons closely resembling each other. The coalescing members of the combinations here so greatly exceed in number and force those that remain separated, that there is no consciousness of the latter.
When something presents itself to the mind to be perceived, estimated, or in the most general sense received, a certain procedure or negotiation takes place between this something on the one side, and certain older ideas, through the instrumentality of which the reception is to be effected, on the other. This procedure is Apperception: it is obviously far from a primary occurrence in the consciousness; it depends upon Coalescences, Interlacings, and Combinations of all sorts.[801]
The primitive man saw fire on the earth and in the sky; or, to express it more precisely, he saw something burning, shining. From the conception of burning things the idea of Burning or Shining was extracted. The difference between Conception (Anschauung) and Idea (Vorstellung) must now be carefully noted.[802] The former is an undivided sum-total of many elements, corresponding to the object or occurrence presented to the senses. The thought of it is expressed in language by a plurality of ideas, every one of which corresponds to one single element of the conception; so that the ideas are equal in number to the separate elements which are recognised and distinguished in the conception. Thus, to a single conception corresponds a combination of many separate ideas. The two combinations of ideas concerning the heavenly fire and concerning the earthly, contained elements (ideas) which coalesced together; and thus they became interlaced with one another. The conceptions of the two fires (as aggregate unities, in opposition to the ideas, into which they are broken up by the analysis of their elements) would not, indeed, easily coalesce; for as such aggregates they appear to the observer too different from each other. But when the conceptions are converted into combinations of ideas, which conversion is effected by language, then the related elements in the two combinations come into prominence and coalesce, and thus produce an interlacing of the combinations. But it must not be imagined that in this interlacing only those elements are affected which coalesce, and those which do not remain entirely unaffected by them; on the contrary, while the one set of elements press on towards coalescence, they are held back by their connexion with the others. The coalescence is therefore not quite perfect. Now, when on the one side even the not-distinguished elements are protected against the coalescence to which they incline, on the other the distinct elements which keep the two combinations asunder are themselves drawn in to the inclination towards coalescence. Thus the mutual relations of the combinations as aggregates are disturbed by their interlacing; they do not become identical, and yet are not severed: they become analogous.
The one is analogous to the other, the one gives the measure by which the other is measured: the one is the more powerful, the ruling, that which gives the means of apperception; the other the weaker, the ruled, the apperceived. How is this relation divided between the combinations of ideas of the earthly and the heavenly fire?
No doubt the heavenly fire is by far the greater and more effective, and therefore also the more penetrating into the soul of man. Man soon recognises the Sun as the source of the daylight and the origin of growth, and consequently as the giver of all wealth and all joy; and learning, on the one hand, what the sun procures him, he also experiences, on the other, by night and in winter, what it is to be deprived of it. At its rising and setting, but most impressively in the thunderstorm, the sun surprises him by the grandest sights. Thus it might be thought that the heavenly fire must give the measure for the apprehension of the earthly, and therefore for that of fire in general. But the matter demands more careful consideration.
Only the more powerful combination of ideas can give the measure and be the organ of apperception. Now a physical occurrence which works more powerfully, i.e. with greater force, upon our senses, will indeed arouse stronger feelings; but we cannot speak of stronger sensations. For instance, the vibrations of the air produce in the organ of hearing both the sensation of a tone and a feeling of pleasure or pain. Stronger commotions of air produce stronger and more painful feelings in the ear, but not stronger sensations, only sensations of louder, stronger tones. In memory we distinguish louder and softer tones merely in defining their contents, without meaning that the memory of the one is stronger than that of the other. The sensation of a louder tone is not a louder sensation. Therefore, from the mere fact that the sun is brighter and speaks louder to men in the thunder than the earthly fire, no greater power in human consciousness accrues to men’s ideas of the heavenly fire.
The more important and impressive idea, too, is not necessarily also the more powerful; for this quality also, importance and force of impression, works in the first instance only on the feeling, not on the course of ideas also at the same time. A number or a name may be very important to us, and yet we forget it very soon.
Therefore the power which an idea can exert on the consciousness, e.g. in an apperception, essentially depends on conditions which flow simply from the nature of our consciousness. I hope that the following exposition will meet with assent. Power, or influence on the consciousness, is obtained by a combination of ideas through the number of its elements, through familiarity with it as an aggregate, and yet more through accurate acquaintance with its separate elements by themselves and in their relations both to one another and to elements belonging to other combinations, and through the number and variety of such relations. Greater clearness in our consciousness of something is only another mode of expression for more manifold distinction of the elements contained in it; and this implies increase of knowledge, but also sharp definiteness and thoroughness.
There is a curious contrast between feeling and theory. In the latter clearness, careful assortment, delicate distinction, and reference, give preponderance; whereas it is the masses of unclearness that work most powerfully on the former.
We will measure by this principle the force of the ideas concerning the heavenly and of those concerning the earthly fire. The latter must be much more numerous, clear, definite, and certain, as man has the earthly fire nearer, and works in company with it, and work is a copious source of knowledge. The earthly fire is the only one that he knows; a heavenly fire he only infers. The earthly fire enlightens the darkness of his night, which surrounds him as soon as ever it goes out; by it he learns the operation of warmth: this first leads him to seek the cause of the brightness and warmth of the day in the place where he sees something similar to his fire—in the sun; especially as, when he sees no sun, darkness and cold prevail just as when there is no fire. It is then the knowledge of the earthly fire that helps him to apprehend the kosmic fire; from the former he transfers his ideas to the latter. He experiences the former only; he constructs or images to himself the latter. Therefore, in the theoretical consciousness the ideas of the earthly fire are the more powerful and creative, and they give the measure; those of the heavenly are formed in conformity to them. The feeling, on the contrary, is more powerfully affected by the heavenly than by the earthly fire, because that is grander in its activity, mysterious in its appearance and disappearance, and independent of man. It surprises, stirs, and troubles the mind in a higher degree, and excites a more lively attention.
Now the power exerted by ideas upon the feeling is certainly not without influence even on their theoretical connexion and distinction, on their prominence and their formation. Further, much as man may have to do with fire, often as he may kindle it and put it out, variously as he may employ it, still he never fully understands it as to its appearance, mode of working, and essence. Now it always seems that the great must be the generator of the small, the strong the point of departure for the weak, the worthy and impressive more original than the mean and ineffective. If therefore, on the one hand, the ideas of the celestial fire are formed by analogy with those of the terrestrial, on the other hand, the latter are complemented by being put into connexion with the former. First of all the question is asked, What is there above?—and the answer is, The same as here below. But then comes the question, Whence comes this that is here below, and what is it?—and the answer is, It comes from above, and is the same as what is above. There above is the great, the self-subsisting, the adorable; it has descended to earth to do us good. Thus the idea of the heavenly is attained through the earthly; but the origin of the latter removed to the upper regions.
Thus it comes to pass that, although the ideas of the earthly fire are prior in psychological perception and give rise to those of the heavenly, still man holds the heavenly fire to be the original and creative one, from which the other is derived. He is so overpowered by the grandeur, wonder, and unapproachableness of the celestial element, that he regards the fire which he kindles for himself as fallen down from on high and given to him.
Man receives certain visual sensations of the Sun; and he converts these into a conception, or an object, by apperceiving them with the ideas that he has of fire. Thus he makes of them a fiery wheel. The ideas of this wheel are partly the same as those of the earthly fire, partly different; for they are distinct in the elements of place, size, effect, and dependence or independence. Thus arises an interlacing of the two combinations of ideas, as has been already observed. The disturbance produced among the ideas by this relation impels to a double apperception of the two combinations, first on the part of what is alike in them, and next on the part of what is different. The first apperception results in the comprehension of the two combinations as fire; the other in the separate conceptions of a divine and an earthly fire. This latter separation contradicts the first comprehension; and this contradiction is composed by a new process of apperception, in which both the likeness and the difference are regarded as the consequence of the relation of originality or derivation, in which the earthly fire stands to the divine. They are both really the same, namely, the god Agni, who lives above and descends to men.
For the separation of the combination of ideas of the celestial fire from that of the terrestrial, is not sufficiently supported to offer an effectual opposition to the coalescence to which the most essential elements tend. All the difference that declares itself here resolves itself ultimately into one point only; for the differences of nearness and distance, of greatness and smallness, and whatever else may be added to these, all unite in the one point of the independence of the celestial fire and the dependence of the terrestrial. But this point is very weak. For even the terrestrial fire is observed by man to be not dependent on him, and seems to him to be even less so than it is in fact. The primitive man does not think he actually generates the fire by boring: he regards his action as scarcely more than a petition to the fire to appear. And if the fire then does appear, it does so as a free and kindly being that has an independent existence. Where, then, could it live in its own character, if not on high? It lives there for itself and for ever; here it comes down out of kindness.
Having thus discovered the psychological foundation for the fact that the primitive man regarded the fire as a god, we will endeavour to make clear to ourselves also the first forms of mythical conceptions.
We must imagine the primitive man placed as he was freely in the midst of nature. He saw the sky, the sun, clouds, and in the storm the lightning, and likewise heard thunder. He saw, he heard:—this means only ‘he received sense-impressions.’ These may no doubt have formed themselves into an image; still the image was not yet an object placed before his mind,—not yet a conception. When we see something strange to us, we ask, What is it? Yet we see clear, and have a definite image of the thing; then what more can we have to ask about it? We want to know also the purpose, origin, and regulation of what we have seen, so as to be able to find a place for it in the series of things previously known, or, if there is no suitable place, at least to find out its relation to that series. Nothing less will satisfy us; then it is no longer an isolated image, but a conception, an object; then we have apperceived it. It remains therefore for the mind to convert the image into an object through apperception. But certain means are demanded by the mind for all its creations, i.e. for everything that it makes its own by thought. The sensations—all that is presented by the senses: tones, colours, touch—are merely matter which the mind appropriates to itself. The means whereby this appropriation is rendered possible are not delivered to it by the organs, nor yet innate in it and ready for use. On the contrary, as in trade and commerce possession is multiplied by possession, so also the mind enriches itself every time by means of that which has been already gained; every acquisition is made a means towards its own enlargement. Thus then the primitive man apperceived the descent of the lightning and the sun’s rays by means of that which his mind already possessed. But I must insist on the necessity of caution. In speaking here of the ‘descent of the lightning and the sun’s rays,’ I have presented and apperceived a certain physical occurrence in the way in which we are now wont to do in conversation. But that is not the way in which the primitive man spoke; and we have still to enquire how he did speak. For him there was as yet no sun, no lightning, no ray; of all these he knew nothing. He saw at first only something shining, in various forms and movements. But he had not set himself the task of working further with his mind at this presentment of the senses: his consciousness passively received motions, out of which mythical ideas grew up. He apperceived unconsciously, and of course with the ideas that he already had; his mind built with the materials that it possessed. What, then, was likely to be the result of his building?
Which, of all the creatures known to man, passed through the sky like the sun, darted down and cut through the air like the lightning and the ray of light? Only the Bird. This comparison of the bird with the manifestations of light, was made immediately and unconsciously. Among the ideas about the bird, motion through the air was the most prominent; so when this motion was perceived, the aggregate of ideas about the bird was instantly ready to operate as a means towards the apperception that ‘What moves in the air is a bird.’ It comes down from the heavenly tree. Thus then the Fire-god Agni, as god of the lightning, is invoked as a fiery, golden-winged bird. The bird in general is next individualised into an eagle or falcon—a strong, swift bird, that darts down with might and majesty.
This apperception was one of the simplest, and was made unconsciously, as has been said. The idea of motion through the air presented by the lightning, and the same idea derived from the combination of ideas of the bird, coalesced and became one. The mere smallness of man’s knowledge of the lightning caused the entire combination of ideas of the lightning to be drawn into that of the bird, whereby the latter combination was enriched so far as to admit the existence of a most wonderful divine bird beside the earthly ones. Thus no conscious comparison between lightning and bird took place; but immediate coalescence of the two was effected by the single conception of the lightning-bird, in which men were not conscious of any dualism. What we call lightning, was to the primitive man a bird, not lightning at all.
But also conversely, what we call a bird of this or that kind—eagle, vulture, or woodpecker—was to him lightning. The original meaning of the name φλεγύας, given by the Greeks to a kind of eagle or vulture—which, as has been noticed, has a connexion with Blitz, the Phlegyans and the Bhṛgu-s—was not ‘a bird as swift as lightning,’ but ‘lightning’ itself.
Thus, then, a multitude of mythical conceptions exhibit the lightning as some kind of bird, or a bird in general. So Phoroneus, ‘the quickly descending’ (p. 368), is in origin only an epithet of the powerful bird, and the Sabine goddess Feronia presents the corresponding feminine form; and numerous superstitions are founded on the recognition of lightning in a bird.
Still there is a difference between lightning and a bird flying; and this did not escape the notice of the primitive man. Nevertheless, so far from this difference having power to cancel, when once accomplished, the coalescence of the ideas of lightning and bird, and the unconscious apperception of the former through the latter; the difference itself was rather apperceived only in conformity with this coalescence. The difference was without any reflexion explained thus: when the bird has once descended flashing with lightning, it flashes no more; it is now only a lightning that has become weakened and earthly. Or it may also be said: the bird is not itself the lightning, it has brought the lightning down.
But where, then, has the lightning gone? It has shone for a moment, and vanished. It shone as if it were fire (fulgeo = φλέγω). Or perhaps it hit and fired something—then, whether it be bird or no, it is clearly fire. We must figure it to ourselves thus. In the sky, at the farthest limits of the space which the eye can reach, the primitive man saw light, radiance, brightness, in an overpowering degree; there he saw the sun and stars. He knew only the things on earth; only ideas of earthly things formed the possessions of his mind; and on the dark earth he knew nothing similar to those things of the upper world, except fire; only by his idea of this could he apperceive those. Now fire darts down from above before his very eyes. Now all is explained: the earthly fire comes from above, and the upper fire, having descended, conceals itself at once, by a transformation, in the body from which he extracts fire—in wood.
But now the relations are becoming more complicated; and already they are so far complicated that the original idea of the Lightning-Bird cannot be retained in its simplicity. Alongside of it the idea of the deity, or of the divine essence, has been everywhere developed; and the fire, the lightning, the golden-winged bird, has become the god Agni. Now the ideas of fire also take a new and less simple form.
The flame breaks forth from the wood: consequently, it must have been in it for a long time. The boring and rubbing in a certain way move Agni to appear: such action is therefore loved by the god, he allows himself to be drawn forth by it. If he loves it, it cannot be indifferent to the man who yields himself to the god in fear and thankfulness. It is a holy action. The pieces of wood which he stirs hold the god concealed. All appears divine to him, and his consciousness tarries in a world of gods. For the slight separation which he can make between the fire on high and that below, consists merely in the distinction between essence and manifestation. But wherever the god manifests himself, why there he is for certain. Consequently, during the holy act of kindling fire the two combinations of ideas of the God-Fire and of the earthly fire coalesce completely; there only remain ideas of one fire. But it was the ideas of the divine fire that completely absorbed those of the earthly. Unresisted, they exert an exclusive power over the consciousness and entirely fill it. Man is removed in spirit from the earth into the world of gods. He has forgotten everything sensuous and earthly, and sees and touches only gods and divine things. And every perception received from his senses is directly laid hold of by the ideas respecting the world of gods of which his consciousness is full, and has a place and significance assigned to it among them. The pieces of wood are no longer wood; the borer, the really active piece that draws the god forth, is a divine being that fetches the god. The god is concealed in the hole of the disk, but this is transformed in conception into a locality in the country of the gods—a hollow, in which the god is found. It is an occurrence that took place among the gods: the divine Pramantha fetches Agni out of the hollow.
The flaring of the flame, however, brings the consciousness back to the earth: Pramantha has brought the god to earth. We must realise the revolution effected in the consciousness by the fire breaking out. The combination of ideas concerning the earthly fire, which had coalesced with the other combination concerning the divine fire, is, by the present perception, again introduced into the consciousness as a special power, and its coalescence with the other conception is thereby cancelled. Against the sensuous impression of the present actual fire the circle of ideas of the divine one cannot maintain its supremacy. It retires and leaves the foreground of the consciousness to the circle of ideas of the earthly fire. But all this appeared to the primitive man not a psychological, but a real procedure; not a shifting of ideas, but an actual shifting of the imagined reality. When attention was shifted from the one circle of ideas to the other, guided by the idea of fire, which bound the two together, then it appeared to the primitive man as if the actual fire had removed from the one into the other, and had come from heaven to earth; and the already-begun fancy that the god Pramantha had fetched Agni, is accordingly carried on to the further point of saying that he put him among men.
Man soon observed in the sky on an enlarged, divine scale, the identical process which he had learned when producing fire by rotation. Agni dwells in the bright, clear, light sky. But the sky is overcast and darkened by a thunder-cloud: Agni has concealed himself; he has hidden himself in the hollow of the cloud. He breaks forth from it, being fetched by a divine Pramantha, Mâtariśvan, the Lightning. The lightning bores into the cloud as the earthly borer into the wooden disk: Prometheus, or Bhṛgu and his descendants the Bhṛgu-s, fetch the god from his hiding-place. They go down to the earth with him and take him to men.
The primitive man does not ask, Where does the fire come from? what becomes of the fire that has fallen from heaven? Before he asks this, and without his asking, he sees, and the lightning tells him, that the fire comes from heaven, and the wood tells him that the lightning (Agni) is concealed in the wood. Neither does the primitive man ask, Where does man come from? He sees it, and practises it.[803] The birth of man is a generating of fire. When the primitive man sees a tree, he does not ask, What is it? but by the sight of the tree present before him the combination of ideas respecting trees which is already formed in his mind is without his observation recalled into his consciousness; and this combination appropriates to itself the present sight, the perception coalescing with the combination of ideas through the similarity of their contents: and thereby what is seen is apperceived as a tree. Similarly, when the primitive man figures to himself the act of copulation, it is the combination of ideas of producing fire by rubbing that enters into his consciousness on account of the similarity of the movement, and gives him an apperception of that act. The similarity of the two acts seems to the primitive man greater than to us. On the one hand, the production of fire is to him a religion and a divine energy; on the other, man is already regarded by him as a fire-creature, lightning-born quite as much as a bird. The two combinations of ideas do not, indeed, coalesce; but yet are greatly interlaced with each other in some of their essential elements. The opposition between the partial difference which separates the combinations and the partial similarity which unites them, leads to a solution in a double and reciprocal apperception: first, that the divine rubber, Pramantha or Prometheus, created man, or that lightning, Bhṛgu, Yama, or the lightning-bird Picus, was the first man; secondly and conversely, that the production of the flame by rubbing is the production of the Fire-God Agni, and that the wood is the cradle of the new-born god. Thus Agni remains always the ‘new-born’ and the ‘youngest,’ as he is called in the Vedas; and Dionysos, also a fire-god, appears as λικνίτης, a god in a cradle.
The primitive man was convinced that man was fire. Indeed, his wonder at his own lightning-nature was aroused every time that he produced the god; and when sacerdotal families had gained the exclusive privilege of kindling fire, these families traced their origin to Bhṛgu or Agni, and called themselves Bhṛgu-s, Aṅgiras-es, etc. For they continued to do just what their ancestor, the Lightning, had done before them.
This is, as far as I can give it, the psychological explanation of the original forms of the stories of the Descent of the Fire. The superstition attached to these stories, in ancient as well as in modern times, would be more fittingly considered separately. The peculiar formation of the character of Prometheus among the Greeks however, may still engage our attention a little longer.
Prometheus is a god and yet a Titan also. He is the greatest benefactor of the human race. Yet in all other cases the mythical idea is that whoever does good to man is also friendly to God, and that only those who do harm to man rebel also against God. For the elucidation of this most peculiar and contradictory position, the following points seem to me worth pondering.
All the forces and occurrences of nature show two sides; one beneficial to man, and one hostile to him. So also the myth almost always discovers in the one and the same natural event, a good and a bad god. The bad god is hostile at once to men and gods. The development of a myth frequently takes the course of converting one of the epithets of the god who represents some process of nature, into a good god, and another into a bad god. The course to be followed in such a case is frequently determined by the nature or significance of the epithets themselves. Now it is certain that Hephaestos and Prometheus are identical in their origin, as indeed is shown in the story of the birth of Athene, in which the head of Zeus is cleft by either one or the other of them. But both Hephaestos and Prometheus are Agni in different forms. We have seen what Prometheus signifies. Somewhat of the physical signification must have still clung to this name even when it came upon Greek ground. Hephaestos, on the other hand, possessed from its very origin the finest signification of Agni; for it probably represents Agni as a home-god, guardian of the family, as a god of the hearth. And Hephaestos was still worshiped by the Greeks as a hearth-god. It surely seems natural, then, that the ideas of the beneficent action of fire should fasten themselves to him. But, on the other side, to make Prometheus, the Fire-stealer, an actual enemy of the gods, was impossible, for the very reason that he had been a benefactor of men by giving them fire, and was also the creator of men. Thus, he, as a god, became the champion of mankind against the injustice of the gods. It must be added that, perhaps even in the age of the unity of the Aryan race, the Fire-god, in his capacity as god (creator) of mankind, was also a god of Thought, who among primeval circumstances could scarcely be anything else but a god of Prudence, or foreseeing caution—an idea which gave the Romans their Minerva, but which might very naturally be attached to a god of fire, since prudence is exhibited nowhere more plainly than in the use of fire. At all events, even in the Vedas, Agni has the epithet pramati, which would yield something like προμῆτι-ς in Greek. Epic story made Pramati an independent personage, a son of Ćyavana (supra, p. 373), the ‘Fallen,’ who is a son of Bhṛgu, the Lightning. Thus in sense, if not in name, the Indian Pramati is equivalent to Prometheus.
Prometheus is Fire-god, Man-god, God of human energy in thought. In this capacity he comes into collision with the supreme god. So he appears in Hesiod, and also in Aeschylus, except that the latter was able to give a far deeper meaning to the guilt of Prometheus, to his entire relation to Zeus, and therefore also to his ultimate reconciliation.
Thus then in Prometheus is comprised the whole essence of heathenism: deification of Man and Nature. He was the most characteristic figure of that mode of conception which created gods in the image of man. But the opposite mode of conception, according to which man was created like one single god, and was expected to make himself like God in life, produced a figure opposed to that of Prometheus—Moses. I speak here not of the historical, but of the mythical Moses; and I hope that the reader will be inclined to distinguish the two as clearly as we distinguish the historical and the legendary Charlemagne. Now the mythical Moses may be compared in meaning with Prometheus. Prometheus ascended to heaven and fetched down fire from the altar of Zeus for men. Moses also went up and brought back the Tables of his God with the fundamental laws of all common human moral life; for this act Moses could not come into conflict with God. But the original heathen myth respecting Moses was different. Moses struck water out of the rock with his staff: the staff is the lightning, the rock the cloud, the water the rain. Kuhn has shown at length what a close connexion subsists between the procuring of water, wine, honey, mead, and soma, and the bringing down of fire,[804] (like the connexion between rain and lightning), and that they are so to speak, mythical synonyms. And this water did cause a difference between Moses and God. Now the reconciliation is brought about by Aeschylus by making both Prometheus and Zeus purify themselves and bind themselves by moral elements. But the monotheistic spirit of the Prophet transfigured the entire myth, and put in the place of the water and the fire the Word of God; and then no reconciliation was needed, for God spoke with Moses as his servant and messenger. Yet alongside of this monotheistic myth of Moses who brings down the Word of God, there remained also the old heathen one, which said that he brought water. It was a correct feeling, or a lingering consciousness which had been retained, that declared that Moses had sinned in the matter of the water, although it was no longer known in what the sin consisted.[805] Therefore I interpret and clear up the obscured remembrance or suspicion of the author of the Book of Numbers, by saying that, forasmuch as Moses strikes water out of the rock with his staff, he is a heathen god, a Mâtariśvan, a Pramantha, and therefore in opposition to the one true God, and must die; but forasmuch as he gives the Word of God to men, he is the Prophet without his equal.