But the Fors or Fortuna held even a more exalted position, for Cicero (De Div. 41, 85) tells us of an old sanctuary and oracle at Praeneste, where Fortuna was represented as holding Jupiter and Juno on her lap, and giving the breast to the young Jupiter 1. Could such a goddess have been a modern, abstract deity? Is it not more likely that she was an old Dawn goddess, represented here, as elsewhere, as the beginning of all things, the mother of the gods (Rv. I. 113, 19), carrying her bright child (rusadvatsâ); also, from another point of view, as the daughter of Dyaus (Rv. VII. 75, 4), and the wife of Surya, the sun (Rv. VII. 75, 5)?

There are lessons to be learnt, as I have often tried to show, from mythologies which have no genealogical connection with the mythologies of Greece and Rome, but which after all exhibit to us the reflection of the same nature on the same mirror, the human mind. What one knows to be real in other mythologies, one feels to be possible at least, in Greek and Latin. Now there is a goddess Fortuna in Egyptian, namely Renenet, and this Renenet, like our Fortuna, is represented as suckling the infant Horus. Professor Le Page Renouf, without knowing anything of my attempted identification of Fortune with the Dawn, says, 'In whose lap can the Sun be nursed more fitly than in that of the Dawn?' (Hibbert Lectures, p. 161.)

There are few praises bestowed upon Ushas, the dawn, which cannot be transferred to Fortuna, if we

1 Preller's Römische Mythologie, p. 561. Jordan, 1. c., p. 8, makes the important remark, scilicet per totum religionum italicarum orbem conjugia deorum quae quidem videantur esse maxime temporibus antiquissimis obviam sunt, liberorum procreatio nulla est unquam.'

take her as the bright light of each day, worshipped from the earliest times as the Fortuna Huiusce Diei. Fortuna had one temple near the Circus Maximus, another in the Campus Martius, and her own festival on the 30th of July. This Fortuna Huiusce Diei was very much what we should call the goddess of Good Morning. There was likewise a Fortuna Virgo, reminding us of the Feronia as Juno Virgo1, and her festival fell on the same day as that of the Mater Matuta. We read of a Fortuna Respiciens and Obsequens, a Bona Fortuna, Domina, Regina, Tutela, Opifera, Supera, Victrix. All these epithets, though meant, no doubt, for the goddess of good fortune, are applicable likewise to the Dawn.

If then the concept of Good and Evil Fortune can have been evolved from that of Dawn, the phonetic transition of Harit into Fors and Fortuna causes no difficulty. The Sanskrit word gharma, kettle, appears in Latin as formus, and fors, fortis would correspond to a Sk. har-ti, instead of har-it. The further development of fors to fortuna finds analogies in portunus, portumnus, and portus, in Neptunus, Tutunus, etc.

I do not venture to say that the identification of Fortuna with Harit is beyond the reach of doubt. Far from it. The most natural objection will be the same which Curtius at first brought forward against the equation Harit Xápis. What shall we do,' he said, with the appellatives χάρις, with χαρά, χαίρω, χαρίζομαι, χαρίεις, etc.? That question has by this time been answered 2. But in our case the difficulty is even less, for such

=

6

1 Preller, Römische Mythologie, p. 377.

2 Lectures on the Science of Language, ii. 410.

words as forte, fortuito, forsit, forsitan, forsan, must all have passed through the stage marked by Fors, no longer as mere Dawn, but as the Dawn who ushers in the day with all its chances, as the 'Morgenstunde' which has Gold im Munde' for those who know how to earn it, but who may be likewise a fatal dawn, and the revenger of dark crimes. If we derived Fors from ferre, we should equally have to admit that Fors had been changed into some kind of deity, a deity of chance, before forte or forte fortuna could mean 'by chance,' as opposed to providentiâ. Still I do not wish to speak confidently on Fors-Harit1. There are many things in Comparative Mythology which, for the present at least, can be put forward as hypothetical only. And it was for that very reason that I wished to show by an extreme case why even an uncertain etymology, if only based on physical phenomena, is preferable to a purely rationalistic derivation, however unobjectionable it may seem, both as to the phonetic form and the ordinary meaning of a mythological name.

Nomina and Cognomina.

And here a new problem presents itself to us which

1 I had given an extract from this chapter in my Biographies of Words. Some of my critics in the Academy (1888, i. pp. 80, 98, 116, 135, 151, 170, 190) failed to follow my argument that there is no sure instance of bhar ever taking the o-grade in Latin, and that therefore the derivation of fors from ghar is really less objectionable than that from bhar. I never said that fer could not become for; I simply said it did not, and I tried to account for the only apparent exception, namely, fordus. I thought I could not explain what I meant better than in citing the words of de Saussure, Le latin est fort chiche de ses a2. Of course, such phonetic tendencies may be looked upon as purely fortuitous; still it is well to note them. Vigfusson's idea of connecting fors with bera at and the noun at-burdr brings in quite an other cluster of ideas, in German sich zutragen, which have little to do with ferre, to bear, to carry.

has to be carefully examined, because it is due to a want of a clear perception of all its bearings that different scholars have diverged so widely in their views of ancient mythology.

Supposing that Athene and Daphne were both originally names of the Dawn, should we be right in saying that they were one and the same deity? Many scholars, I know, take that view, and are inclined to trace the whole mass of Greek or any other mythology back to a small number of physical sources. They look, in fact, on the numerous deities as mere representatives of a few prominent phenomena in nature. If Apollon and Helios, for instance, can be shown to have been originally intended for the sun, they would treat them as one and the same divine subject. Hermes betrayed a solar character, he would share the same fate. Dr. Roscher, for instance, in a very learned essay on Apollon and Mars, after showing the same solar elements in the Greek and in the Italic god, treats these two gods as identical1.

If

We cannot deny that such a treatment of mythology has a certain justification, and we may see from such papers as Dr. Roscher's, that it may lead to very

valuable results. But we must not allow it to interfere with the etymological treatment of mythological names. According to the principles of the etymological school, a deity begins from the moment it is named. It could have no existence as a deity before it was named. In Sanskrit, for instance, it is no doubt the sun that is meant by such names as Surya, Aditya, Savitri, Mitra, and in certain cases even

1 Studien zur vergleichenden Mythologie, I. Apollon und Mars, 1873 (p. 5).

by Agni, Pûshan, and other names. But every one of these names constitutes a separate mythological individuality, and must be treated accordingly. Were we to say that because Mitra is meant for the sun, and Savitri is meant for the sun, therefore both are the same deity, we should be right perhaps logically, but certainly not mythologically. In mythology it is the name which makes the god, and keeps one deity distinct from the other, and it is the name alone which remains unchanged, however much everything else, the character, the attributes, the legends and the worship, may change. There is in the name and in the name alone that continuity which cannot be broken, which lasts through centuries, nay, which binds together the mythology of countries as distant from one another as India and Iceland. Other things may be like each other, but the names alone can be said to be identical, and in the name alone therefore rests the identity of mythological personalities. Apollon and Mars may share many things in common, as Dr. Roscher has clearly shown, but they are different from their very birth, they are different as mythological subjects. It would be possible to find deities, not only in Greek and Latin mythology, but in almost every religion representing, like Apollon and Mars, the sun, as determining the order of years, seasons, and months, as bringing back every spring the life of nature, as conquering heroes, as patrons of clans, and towns, and states. But though we might compare them, we should never think of identifying them.

Here lies the fundamental difference between what I call the Etymological and the Analogical Schools of Comparative Mythology. I do not mean to de