Note 17 — Chapter I · HISTORICAL METHOD (continued 2)

Pre-philological arguments From such deliverances we gather that in Mr. Robertson and his disciples we have survivals of a stage of culture which may be called prephilological. A hundred years ago or more the most superficial resemblance of sound was held to be enough of a ground for connecting words and names together, and Oxford divines were busy deriving all other tongues from the Hebrew spoken in the Garden of Eden by Adam and Eve. Mr. Robertson sets himself (p. 139) to ridicule these old-fashioned writers, and regales us with not a few examples of that over-facile identification of cult names that have no real mutual affinity which was then in vogue. Thus Krishna was held to be a corruption of Christ by certain oriental missionaries, just as, inversely, within my memory, certain English Rationalists argued the name Christ to be a disguise of Krishna. So Brahma was identified with Abraham, and Napoleon with the Apollyon of Revelation. One had hoped that this phase of culture was past and done with; but Messrs. Robertson and Drews revive it in their books, and seem anxious to perpetuate it. As with names, so with myths. On their every page we encounter—to use the apt phrase of M. Émile Durkheim17—ces rapprochements tumultueux et sommaires qui ont discredité la méthode comparative auprès d’un certain nombre de bons esprits.