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The Floating Press - Edward Clodd

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118 pages

English

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British polymath Edward Clodd was a banker who also established himself as a prominent thinker in the fields of anthropology and folklore. In Myths and Dreams, Clodd takes a look at the mythological beliefs of many cultures and societies, ranging from prehistoric times to the nineteenth century, providing keen insight into the ways that natural and environmental factors, rather than supernatural ones, came to shape these belief systems.

Sujets

Sociologie, société et politique

Anthropology

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Publié par	The Floating Press
Date de parution	01 mai 2014
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781776536115
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0134€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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MYTHS AND DREAMS
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EDWARD CLODD

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Myths and Dreams First published in 1891 Epub ISBN 978-1-77653-611-5 Also available: PDF ISBN 978-1-77653-612-2 © 2013 The Floating Press and its licensors. All rights reserved. While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
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Preface PART I - MYTH: ITS BIRTH AND GROWTH I - Its Primitive Meaning II - Confusion of Early Thought Between the Living and the Not Living III - Personification of the Powers of Nature IV - The Solar Theory of Myth V - Belief in Metamorphosis into Animals VI - Totemism: Belief in Descent from Animal or Plant VII - Survival of Myth in History VIII - Myth Among the Hebrews IX - Conclusion PART II - DREAMS: THEIR PLACE IN THE GROWTH OF BELIEFS IN THE SUPERNATURAL I - Difference Between Savage and Civilised Man II - Limitations of Barbaric Language III - Barbaric Confusion Between Names and Things IV - Barbaric Belief in Virtue in Inanimate Things V - Barbaric Belief in the Reality of Dreams VI - Barbaric Theory of Disease VII - Barbaric Theory of a Second Self or Soul VIII - Barbaric Philosophy in "Punchkin" and Allied Stories IX - Barbaric and Civilised Notions of the Soul's Nature X - Barbaric Belief in Souls in Brutes and Plants and Lifeless Things XI - Barbaric and Civilised Notions About the Soul's Dwelling-Place XII - Conclusions from the Foregoing XIII - Dreams as Omens and Media of Communication Between Gods and Men Endnotes
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TO RICHARD A. PROCTOR, B.A.,
AUTHOR OF 'THE SUN,' 'OTHER WORLDS,' ETC., EDITOR OF 'KNOWLEDGE.'
MY DEAR PROCTOR—The best gifts of life are its friendships, and to you,with whom friendship has ripened into fellowship, and under whoseeditorial wing some of the chapters of this book had temporary shelter, Iinscribe them in their enlarged and independent form.
Yours sincerely, EDWARD CLODD.
Preface
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The object of this book is to present in compendious form the evidencewhich myths and dreams supply as to primitive man's interpretation of hisown nature and of the external world, and more especially to indicate howsuch evidence carries within itself the history of the origin and growthof beliefs in the supernatural.
The examples are selected chiefly from barbaric races, as furnishing thenearest correspondences to the working of the mind in what may be calledits "eocene" stage, but examples are also cited from civilised races, aswitnessing to that continuity of ideas which is obscured by familiarity orignored by prejudice.
Had more illustrations been drawn from sources alike prolific, theevidence would have been swollen to undue dimensions without increasingits significance; as it is, repetition has been found needful here andthere, under the difficulty of entirely detaching the arguments advancedin the two parts of this work.
Man's development, physical and psychical, has been fully treated by Mr.Herbert Spencer, Dr. Tylor, and other authorities, to whom students of thesubject are permanent debtors, but that subject is so many-sided, sofar-reaching, whether in retrospect or prospect, that its subdivision isof advantage so long as we do not permit our sense of inter-relation to bedulled thereby.
My own line of argument will be found to run for the most part parallelwith that of the above-named writers; there are divergences along theroute, but we reach a common terminus.
The footnotes indicate the principal works which have been consulted inpreparing this book, but I desire to express my special thanks to Mr.Andrew Lang for his kindness in reading the proofs, and for suggestionswhich, in the main, I have been glad to adopt.
E. C.
ROSEMONT, TUFNELL PARK, LONDON, March 1885 .
PART I - MYTH: ITS BIRTH AND GROWTH
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"Unchecked by external truth, the mind of man has a fatal facility forensnaring, entrapping, and entangling itself. But, happily, happily forthe human race, some fragment of physical speculation has been built intoevery false system. Here is the weak point. Its inevitable destructionleaves a breach in the whole fabric, and through that breach the armies oftruth march in."
Sir H. S. MAINE.
I - Its Primitive Meaning
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It is barely thirty years ago since the world was startled by thepublication of Buckle's History of Civilisation , with its theory thathuman actions are the effect of causes as fixed and regular as those whichoperate in the universe; climate, soil, food, and scenery being the chiefconditions determining progress.
That book was a tour de force , not a lasting contribution to thequestion of man's mental development. The publication of Darwin'sepoch-making Origin of Species [1] showed wherein it fell short; how theimportance of the above-named causes was exaggerated and the existence ofequally potent causes overlooked. Buckle probably had not read HerbertSpencer's Social Statics , and he knew nothing of the profound revolutionin silent preparation in the quiet of Darwin's home; otherwise, his bookmust have been rewritten. This would have averted the oblivion from whichnot even its charm of style can rescue it. Its brilliant but defectivetheories are obscured in the fuller light of that doctrine of descent withmodifications by which we learn that external circumstances do not aloneaccount for the widely divergent types of men, so that a superior race, insupplanting an inferior one, will change the face and destiny of acountry, "making the solitary place to be glad, and the desert to rejoiceand blossom as the rose." Darwin has given us the clue to those subtle andstill obscure causes which bring about, stage by stage, the unseenadaptations to requirements varying a type and securing its survival, andwhich have resulted in the evolution of the manifold species of livingthings. The notion of a constant relation between man and his surroundingsis therefore untenable.
But incomplete as is Buckle's theory, and all-embracing as is Darwin's, sofar as organic life is concerned, the larger issue is raised by both, andfor most men whose judgment is worth anything it is settled. Either man isa part of nature or he is not. If he is not, there is an end of thematter, since the materials lie beyond human grasp, and cannot be examinedand placed in order for comparative study. Let Christian, Brahman,Bushman, and South Sea Islander each hold fast his "form of sound words"about man's origin. One is as good as another where all are irrational andbeyond proof. But if he is, then the inquiry concerning him may not stopat the anatomy of his body and the assignment of his place in thesuccession of life on the globe. His relation, materially, to thesimplest, shapeless specks of living matter; structurally, to the highestand more complex organisms, is demonstrated; the natural history of him isclear. This, however, is physical, and for us the larger question ispsychical. The theory of evolution must embrace the genesis anddevelopment of mind, and therefore of ideas, beliefs, and speculationsabout things seen and unseen.
In the correction of our old definitions a wider meaning must be given tothe word myth than that commonly found in the dictionaries. Opening anyof these at random we find myth explained as fable, as somethingdesignedly fictitious, whether for amusement only, or to point a moral.The larger meaning which it holds to-day includes much more than this—towit, the whole area of intellectual products which lie beyond the historichorizon and overlap it, effacing on nearer view the lines of separation.For the myth, as fable only, has no place for the crude fancies andgrotesque imaginings of barbarous races of the present day, and of racesat low levels of culture in the remote past. And so long as it was lookedupon as the vagrant of fancy, with no serious meaning at the heart of it,and as corresponding to no yearning of man after the truth of things,sober treatment of it was impossible. But now that myth, with its prolificoffspring, legend and tradition, is seen to be a necessary travailingthrough which the mind of man passed in its slow progress towardscertitude, the study and comparison of its manifold, yet, at the centre,allied forms, and of the conditions out of which they arose, takes rankamong the serious inquiries of our time.
Not that the inquiry is a new one. The limits of this book forbid detailedreferences to the successive stages of that inquiry—in other words, tothe pre-Christian, patristic, and pseudo-scientific theories of myth whichremained unchallenged, or varied only in non-essential features, till therise of comparative mythology. But apology for such omission here is theless needful, since the list of ancient and modern vagaries would have themonotony of a catalogue. However unlike on the surface, they arefundamentally the same, being the products of non-critical ages, and oneand all vitiated by assumptions concerning gods and men which are to us as"old wives' fables."
In short, between these empirical theories and the scientific method ofinquiry into the meaning of myth there can be no relation. Because, forthe assigning of its due place in the order of man's mental and spiritualdevelopment to myth, there is needed that knowledge concerning his origin,concerning the conditions out of which he has emerged, and concerning themythologies of lower races and their survival in unsuspected forms in thehigher races, which was not only beyond reach, but also beyond conception,until this century.
Except, therefore, as curiosities of literature, we may dismiss theLemprière of our school-days, and with him