MÜLLER, FRIEDRICH MAXIMILIAN (MAX MÜLLER). – Philologist and mythologist, born in Dessau on 6 December 1823, professor at Oxford, where he died on 28 October 1900. His multifaceted activity unfolded especially in three fields: comparative mythology; Indo-European philology and linguistics in general; and the history and philosophy of religion.
As a mythologist, he is the founder of comparative mythology, inasmuch as, to the principle of considering myth as the spontaneous product of popular imagination (already established by the Grimm brothers in their study of German mythology), he added the contribution provided by comparison with Indian mythology, studied especially in the Vedas (v.), which he translated and commented upon. For M., the figures of myth arise from a spontaneous process of personification proper to the mind, which identifies, through adjectives that are nomina agentis, the objects that fall under its observation. Thus, from the vision of the heavenly bodies, which are pre-eminently the resplendent ones (deva, from div = to shine), derives the name of God in all Indo-European mythologies. It is therefore language, M. concludes, that determines the physiognomy of myth, and in this sense it may be said that myth is a “disease of language.” This is an inaccurate concept, because language is the natural expression of the imaginative apperception that personifies things and obeys II.
As a philologist and linguist, his production was extraordinarily fruitful: The Science of language (2 vols., London 1861–63; 14th ed. 1885; new ed. 1890; Italian translation, Milan 1871); Biographies of words and the Home of the Aryas (London 1888; new ed. 1898) and the various essays collected under the title Chips from a German workshop (4 vols., there 1867–75; new ed. 1880); Last essays (there 1901); and, above all, the translation of the sacred books of the East: Sacred Books of the East, directed by him and entrusted to various scholars, completed in 50 vols., of which 33 were devoted to India (21 to Brahmanism and 12 to Jainism and Buddhism); 8 to Persia; 2 to Islam; 6 to China, plus 1 of indexes.
As a historian and philosopher of religion, he shows that religion develops from the mythical world when man, after having personified the forces of nature, senses that beyond what he sees and what presents itself as limited there exists an entire invisible and unlimited, infinite world. This innate sense develops, and thus, through the henotheistic form (by which epithets belonging to the Supreme Being are attributed to a given divinity), one arrives at the monotheistic form, of the one God conceived as the Father who is in heaven.
The writings in which he develops this part of his scholarly activity are: Introduction to the science of religion (London 1873; new ed. 1882; Italian translation, Florence 1874); The Origin and Growth of Religion (London 1878; new eds., 1882 and 1891); Natural Religion (there 1889; 2nd ed. 1892); Physical Religion (there 1891; 2nd ed. 1898); Anthropological Religion (there 1892; 2nd ed. 1898); Theosophy, or psychological Religion (there 1893; 2nd ed. 1895, and reprint); Contribution to the science of mythology (2 vols., there 1897); The Science of Thought (there 1887); Three lectures on the Vedanta philosophy (there 1894); The six Systems of Indian philosophy (there 1899). A complete collection of his works has been made (Collected Works, 20 vols., London 1898 ff.).