fontenelle’s forgotten common sense

in the opinion of aristotle, most discoveries and inventions have been made time after time and forgotten again. aristotle may not have been quite correct in this view; and his remarks, perhaps, chiefly applied to politics, in which every conceivable and inconceivable experiment has doubtless been attempted. in a field of less general interest — namely, the explanation of the absurdities of mythology — the true cause was discovered more than a hundred years ago by a man of great reputation, and then was quietly forgotten. why did the ancient peoples — above all, the greeks — tell such extremely gross and irrational stories about their gods and heroes? that is the riddle of the mythological sphinx. it was answered briefly, wittily and correctly by fontenelle; and the answer was neglected, and half a dozen learned but impossible theories have since come in and out of fashion. only within the last ten years has fontenelle’s idea been, not resuscitated, but rediscovered. the followers of mr. e. b. taylor, mannhardt, gaidoz, and the rest, do not seem to be aware that they are only repeating the notions of the nephew of corneille.

the academician’s theory is stated in a short essay, de l’origine des fables (oeuvres: paris, 1758, vol. iii. p.270). we have been so accustomed from childhood, he says, to the absurdities of greek myth, that we have ceased to be aware that they are absurd. why are the legends of men and beasts and gods so incredible and revolting? why have we ceased to tell such tales? the answer is, that early men were in “a state of almost inconceivable savagery and ignorance,” and that the greek myths are inherited from people in that condition. “look at the kaffirs and iroquois,” says fontenelle, “if you wish to know what early men were like; and remember that even the iroquois and kaffirs are people with a long past, with knowledge and culture (politesse) which the first men did not enjoy.” now the more ignorant a man is, the more prodigies he supposes himself to behold. thus the first narratives of the earliest men were full of monstrous things, “parce qu’ils etoient faits par des gens sujets a voir bien des choses qui n’etaient pas”. this condition answers, in mr. tylor’s system, to the confusion the savage makes between dreams and facts, and to the hallucinations which beset him when he does not get his regular meals. here, then, we have a groundwork of irresponsible fancy.

the next step is this: even the rudest men are curious, and ask “the reason why” of phenomena. “ii y a eu de la philosophie meme dans ces siecles grossiers;” and this rude philosophy “greatly contributed to the origin of myths “. men looked for causes of things. “‘whence comes this river?’ asked the reflective man of those ages — a queer philosopher, yet one who might have been a descartes did he live to-day. after long meditation, he concluded that some one had always to keep filling the source whence the stream springs. and whence came the water? our philosopher did not consider so curiously. he had evolved the myth of a water-nymph or naiad, and there he stopped. the characteristic of these mythical explanations — as of all philosophies, past, present and to come — was that they were limited by human experience. early man’s experience showed him that effects were produced by conscious, sentient, personal causes like himself. he sprang to the conclusion that all hidden causes were also persons. these persons are the dramatis person? of myth. it was a person who caused thunder, with a hammer or a mace; or it was a bird whose wings produced the din.

“from this rough philosophy which prevailed in the early ages were born the gods and goddesses”— deities made not only in the likeness of man, but of savage man as he, in his ignorance and superstition, conceived himself to be. fontenelle might have added that those fancied personal causes who became gods were also fashioned in the likeness of the beasts, whom early man regarded as his equals or superiors. but he neglects this point. he correctly remarks that the gods of myth appear immoral to us because they were devised by men whose morality was all unlike ours — who prized justice less than power, especially (he might have added) magical power. as morality ripened into self-consciousness, the gods improved with the improvement of men; and “the gods known to cicero are much better than those known to homer, because better philosophers have had a hand at their making”. moreover, in the earliest speculations an imaginative and hair-brained philosophy explained all that seemed extraordinary in nature; while the sphere of philosophy was filled by fanciful narratives about facts. the constellations called the bears were accounted for as metamorphosed men and women. indeed, “all the metamorphoses are the physical philosophy of these early times,” which accounted for every fact by what we now calletiological nature-myths. even the peculiarities of birds and beasts were thus explained. the partridge flies low because daedalus (who had seen his son icarus perish through a lofty flight) was changed into a partridge. this habit of mind, which finds a story for the solution of every problem, survives, fontenelle remarks, in what we now call folk-lore — popular tradition. thus, the elder tree is said to have borne as good berries as the vine does till judas iscariot hanged himself from its branches. this story must be later than christianity; but it is precisely identical in character with those ancient metamorphoses which ovid collected. the kind of fancy that produced these and other prodigious myths is not peculiar, fontenelle maintains, to eastern peoples. “it is common to all men,” at a certain mental stage —“in the tropics or in the regions of eternal ice.” thus the world-wide similarities of myths are, on the whole, the consequence of a worldwide uniformity of intellectual development.

fontenelle hints at his proof of this theory. he compares the myths of america with those of greece, and shows that distance in space and difference of race do not hinder peruvians and athenians from being “in the same tale”. “for the greeks, with all their intelligence, did not, in their beginnings, think more rationally than the savages of america, who were also, apparently, a rather primitive people (assez nouveau).” he concludes that the americans might have become as sensible as the greeks if they had been allowed the leisure.

with an exception in the israelites, fontenelle decides that all nations made the astounding part of their myths while they were savages, and retained them from custom and religious conservatism. but myths were also borrowed and interchanged between phoenicia, egypt and greece. further, greek misunderstandings of the meanings of phoenician and other foreign words gave rise to myths. finally, myths were supposed to contain treasures of antique mysterious wisdom; and mythology was explained by systems which themselves are only myths, stories told by the learned to themselves and to the public.

“it is not science to fill one’s head with the follies of phoenicians and greeks, but it is science to understand what led greeks and phoenicians to imagine these follies.” a better and briefer system of mythology could not be devised; but the mr. casaubons of this world have neglected it, and even now it is beyond their comprehension.