Note 1 — PREAMBLE

He is still kept in countenance, it is true, by “specialists” of the highest standing. The average “liberal” theologian still employs the explanatory method of Toland; and anthropologists still offer him support. Thus Sir James Frazer, by far the most learned collector of mytho-anthropological lore in his age, positively refuses to apply to the history of the Christian cult his own express rule of mythology—formulated before him1 but independently reiterated by him—that “all peoples have invented myths to explain why they observed certain customs,” and that a graphic myth to explain a rite is presumptively “a simple transcript of a ceremony”; which is the equivalent of the doctrine of Robertson Smith, that “in almost every case the myth was derived from the ritual, and not the ritual from the myth,” and of the doctrine of K. O. Müller that “the mythus sprang from the worship, and not the worship from the mythus.” What justification Sir James can give for his refusal to act on his own principles is of course a matter for full and careful consideration. But at least the fact that he has to justify the refusal to apply in a most important case one of the best-established generalizations of comparative mythology is not in this case a recommendation of the principle of authority to scientific readers.