the topic are chiefly Custom and Myth, Myth, Ritual,
and Religion (with French and Dutch translations, both much improved and
corrected by the translators), and an introduction to Mrs. Hunt's
translation of Grimm's Marchen.



Success of Anthropological Method


During fifteen years the ideas which I advocated seem to have had some
measure of success. This is, doubtless, due not to myself, but to the
works of Mr. J. G. Frazer and of Professor Robertson Smith. Both of
these scholars descend intellectually from a man less scholarly than
they, but, perhaps, more original and acute than any of us, my friend the
late Mr. J. F. McLennan. To Mannhardt also much is owed, and, of course,
above all, to Dr. Tylor. These writers, like Mr. Farnell and Mr. Jevons
recently, seek for the answer to mythological problems rather in the
habits and ideas of the folk and of savages and barbarians than in
etymologies and 'a disease of language.' There are differences of
opinion in detail: I myself may think that 'vegetation spirits,' the
'corn spirit,' and the rest occupy too much space in the systems of
Mannhardt, and other moderns. Mr. Frazer, again, thinks less of the
evidence for Totems among 'Aryans' than I was inclined to do. {7} But it
is not, perhaps, an overstatement to say that explanation of myths by
analysis of names, and the lately overpowering predominance of the Dawn,
and the Sun, and the Night in mythological hypothesis, have received a
slight check. They do not hold the field with the superiority which was
theirs in England between 1860 and 1880. This fact--a scarcely deniable
fact--does not, of course, prove that the philological method is wrong,
or that the Dawn is not as great a factor in myth as Mr. Max Muller
believes himself to have proved it to be. Science is inevitably subject
to shiftings of opinion, action, and reaction.



Mr. Max Muller's Reply


In this state of things Mr. Max Muller produces his Contributions to the
Science of Mythology, {8} which I propos

Martha Finley (1828 - 1909) was a teacher and author of numerous works, the most well known being the 28 volume Elsie Dinsmore series which was published over a span of 38 years. The daughter of Presbyterian minister Dr. James Brown Finley and his wife and cousin Maria Theresa Brown Finley, she was born on April 26th, 1828 in Chillicothe, Ohio. Finley wrote many of her books under the psodonym Martha Farquharson. She died in 1909 in Elkton, Maryland, where she moved in 1876.

Anonymous may refer to: Anonymus, the Latin spelling, may refer to: