and such is the canon of criticism tacitly adopted by every modern critic. But what is a myth—μῦθος—to begin with? Are we not told distinctly by ancient writers that the word means tradition? Was not the Latin term _fabula_, a fable, synonymous with something told, as having happened in pre‐historic times, and not necessarily an invention. With such autocrats of criticism and despotic rulers as are most of the French, English, and German Orientalists, there may, then, be no end of historical, geographical, ethnological and philological surprises in store for the century to come. Travesties in Philosophy have become so common of late, that the public can be startled by nothing in this direction. It has already been stated by one learned speculator that Homer was simply “a mythical personification of the épopée”(50); by another, that Hippocrates, son of Esculapius “could only be a chimera”; that the Asclepiades, their seven hundred years of duration notwithstanding, might after all prove simply a “fiction”; that “the city of Troy (Dr. Schliemann to the contrary) existed only on the maps,” etc. Why should not the world be invited after this to regard every hitherto historical character of days of old as a myth? Were not Alexander the Great needed by Philology as a sledge‐hammer wherewith to break the heads of Brâhmanical chronological pretensions, he would have become long ago simply “a symbol for annexation,” or “a genius of conquest,” as has been already suggested by some French writer. Blank denial is the only refuge left to the critics. It is the most secure asylum for some time to come in which to shelter the last of the sceptics. For one who denies unconditionally, the trouble of arguing is unnecessary, and he also thus avoids what is worse, having to yield occasionally a point or two before the irrefutable arguments and facts of his opponent. Creuzer, the greatest of all the modern Symbologists, the most learned among the masses of erudite German Mythologists, must have envied the placid self‐confidence of certain sceptics, when he found himself forced in a moment of desperate perplexity to admit that: We are compelled to return to the theories of trolls and genii, as they were understood by the ancients; [it is a doctrine] without which it becomes absolutely impossible to explain to oneself anything with regard to the Mysteries(51) of the Ancients, which Mysteries are undeniable.