But his influence at Cambridge, and particularly over a younger fellow-countryman to whom we owe _The Golden Bough_, was of a most fruitful character. To the impulse he gave is to be traced much--perhaps more than we suspect--of what anthropology has accomplished in various directions during the last five-and-twenty years. Meanwhile revolt against false interpretation of known facts and inadequate methods of enquiry had spread elsewhere. Professor Max Müller, by his unsurpassed {vii} powers of exposition, his eloquence and his wide knowledge of the Aryan tongues, had become the champion in this country of the German explanation of myths as a disease of language, a teacher on whose lips learned and simple hung. Great as was his learning, however, it was circumscribed by the Indo-European languages and literature. He took little account of savage myths which could not be interpreted on his principles, and still less of the equally important rites and beliefs of European peasants and primitive peoples beyond the seas. In Germany, Mannhardt, originally a disciple of the same school, had turned to more reasonable and penetrating modes of interpretation. It is his glory to have been the first to combat the fancies of the philologists in a series of works steeped as deeply in classical learning as theirs, but with a much wider outlook and a keener sense of actuality. Yet he died without having made many converts; and in Germany still the sun-myth lingers, though hastening fast to its inevitable setting. In England his works were hardly known, when, in 1887, Andrew Lang, after a powerful article on “Mythology” in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_, and other preliminary essays, published _Myth, Ritual and Religion_, in which he attacked with overwhelming acumen and wit the philological position. It is not too much to say that as far as English-speaking countries were concerned the blow was decisive, the philological position was carried, and the enemy’s flag planted triumphantly on the battlements.