But not only has Professor Blackie failed to perceive the real character of Mr. Cox’s researches, but he has actually charged him with holding opinions which both Mr. Cox and myself have repeatedly disavowed, and most strenuously opposed. Again and again have we warned the students of Comparative Mythology that they must not expect to be able to explain everything. Again and again have we pointed out that there are irrational elements in mythology, and that we must be prepared to find grains of local history on which, as I said,(45) the sharpest tools of Comparative Mythology must bend or break. Again and again have we shown that historical persons(46)—not only Cyrus and Charlemagne, but Frederick Barbarossa and even Frederick the Great—have been drawn into the vortex of popular mythology. Yet these are the words of Professor Blackie: “The cool way in which Max Müller and his English disciple, Mr. Cox, assume that there are no human figures and historical characters in the whole gallery of heroes and demi-gods in the Greek Mythology, is something very remarkable.” I readily admit that some of the etymologies which I have proposed of mythological names are open to criticism; and if, like other scholars, Professor Blackie had pointed out to me any cases where I might seem to him to have offended against Grimm’s law or other phonetic rules, I should have felt most grateful; but if he tells me that the Greek Erinys should not be derived from the Sanskrit Sara_n_yû, but from the Greek verb ἐρινύειν, to be angry, he might as well derive _critic_ from _to criticise_;(47) and if he maintains that a name may have two or three legitimate etymologies, I can only answer that we might as well say that a child could have two or three legitimate mothers. I have most reluctantly entered upon these somewhat personal explanations, and I should not have done so if I alone had been concerned in Professor Blackie’s onslaught. I hope, however, that I have avoided anything that could give just offence to Professor Blackie, even if he should be present here tonight. Though he abuses me as a German, and laughs at the instinctive aversion to external facts and the extravagant passion for self-evolved ideas as national failings of all Germans (I only wonder that the story of the camel and the inner consciousness did not come in), yet I know that for many years German poetry and German scholarship have had few more ardent admirers, and German scholars few more trusty friends, than Professor Blackie. Nationality, it seems to me, has as little to do with scholarship as with logic. On the contrary, in every nation he that will work hard and reason honestly may be sure to discover some grains of truth. National jealousies and animosities have no place in the republic of letters, which is, and I trust always will be, the true international republic of all friends of work, of order, and of truth. III.