CHAPTER XXIV: NATURE-WORSHIP.

§ 184. Under this title which, literally interpreted, covers the subject-matters of the last two chapters, but which, as conventionally used, has a narrower meaning, it remains to deal with superstitious beliefs concerning the more conspicuous inorganic objects and powers.

If not prepossessed by other theories, the reader will anticipate parallelism between the genesis of these beliefs and the genesis of those already dealt with. That their derivation is wholly unlike all derivations thus far traced, will seem improbable. He will, indeed, see that some of the reasons for identifying the adored object with a departed human being, no longer apply. Sun and Moon do not come into the old home or haunt the burial-cave, as certain animals do; and therefore cannot for this reason be regarded as spirits of the dead. Seas and mountains have not, in common with certain plants, the trait that parts of them when swallowed produce nervous exaltation; and ascription of divine natures to them cannot thus be accounted for. But there remain, as common causes, the misinterpretation of traditions and the misinterpretation of names. Before dealing with these linguistic sources of Nature-worship, let me point out a further imperfection in undeveloped speech which co-operates with the other imperfections.

In the Personal Recollections of Mrs. Somerville, she says that her little brother, on seeing the great meteor of Edition: current; Page: [370] 1783, exclaimed, “O, Mamma, there’s the moon rinnin’ awa.” This description of an inorganic motion by a word rightly applied only to an organic motion, illustrates a peculiarity of the speech used by children and savages. A child’s vocabulary consists mainly of words referring to those living beings which chiefly affect it; and its statements respecting non-living things and motions, show a lack of words free from implications of vitality. The statements of uncivilized men are similarly characterized. The inland negroes who accompanied Livingstone to the west coast, and on their return narrated their adventures, described their arrival at the sea by the words—“The world said to us ‘I am finished; there is no more of me.’ ” Like in form and like in implication were the answers given to a correspondent who was in Ashantee during the late war.

So, too, is it with the remark which a Bechuana chief made to Casalis—“One event is always the son of another, . . . and we must never forget the genealogy.” The general truth that the poorer a language the more metaphorical it is, and the derivative truth that being first developed to express human affairs, it carries with it certain human implications when extended to the world around, is well shown by the fact that even still our word “to be” is traced back to a word meaning “to breathe.” Manifestly this defect in early speech conspires with the defects we have already observed, in favouring personalization. If anything raises the suspicion that an inorganic mass was once a human being, or is inhabited by the ghost of one, the necessity of using words implying life, fosters the suspicion. Taken alone, this defect has probably little influence. Though a fetichistic system logically elaborated, may lead to the conclusion that boiling water is alive; yet I see no Edition: current; Page: [371] evidence that the child who remarks of the boiling water that “it says bubble, bubble,” is led by the use of the word “says” to believe the water a living being; nor is there any indication that the negro who represented the Earth as saying “I am finished,” therefore conceived the Earth as a speaking creature. All we can safely say is that, given personalizations otherwise caused, and the use of these life-implying words will confirm them. In the case of Nature-worship, as in the cases of Animal-worship and Plant-worship, the misleading beliefs due to language, take their rise from positive statements accepted on authority, and unavoidably misinterpreted.

Yet another cause of misinterpretation is the extremely variable use of words in undeveloped speech, and consequent wide differences of interpretation given to them. Here is a passage from Krapf which well exemplifies this:—

Now when we are also told that Mulungu is the name applied by the East Africans to their king—when we find that the same word is employed to mean thunder, the sky, the chief man, an ordinary ghost, it becomes manifest that personalization of the great natural objects and powers, is not only easy but almost inevitable.

In thus foreshadowing the conclusion that the worship of conspicuous objects and powers around, conceived as persons, results from linguistic errors, I appear to be indicating agreement with the mythologists. But though misconstruction of words is on both hypotheses the alleged cause, the misconstruction is different in kind and the erroneous course of thought opposite in direction. The mythologists hold that the powers of nature, at first conceived and worshipped Edition: current; Page: [372] as impersonal, come to be personalized because of certain characters in the words applied to them; and that the legends concerning the persons identified with these natural powers arise afterwards. Contrariwise, the view here held is that the human personality is the primary element; that the identification of this with some natural power or object is due to identity of name; and that the worship of this natural power thus arises secondarily.

That the contrast between these two modes of interpretation may be clearly understood, let us take an illustration.

§ 185. All winter the beautiful Sunshine, pursued by the dark Storm, was ever hiding herself—now behind the clouds, now below the mountains. She could not steal forth from her concealment for more than a short time without being again chased with swift footsteps and loud thundering noise; and had quickly to retreat. After many moons, however, the Storm, chasing less furiously and seeing her more clearly, became gentler; and Sunshine, gaining courage, from time to time remained longer visible. Storm failing to capture by pursuit, and softened by her charms, made milder advances. Finally came their union. Then the Earth rejoiced in the moist warmth; and from them were born plants which covered its surface and made it gay with flowers. But every autumn Storm begins to frown and growl; Sunshine flies from him; and the pursuit begins again.

Supposing the Tasmanians had been found by us in a semi-civilized state with a mythology containing some such legend as this, the unhesitating interpretation put upon it, after the method now accepted, would be that the observed effects of mingled sunshine and storm were thus figuratively expressed; and that the ultimate representation of Sunshine and Storm as persons who once lived on the Earth, was due to the natural mythopœic tendency, which took its direction from the genders of the words.

Contrariwise, how would such a supposed Tasmanian legend be explained in pursuance of the hypothesis here set forth? As already shown, birth-names among uncivilized races, taken from the incidents of the moment, often refer to the time of day and the weather. Catlin gives us portraits of Ojibbeway Indians named “The Driving Cloud,” “The Moonlight Night,” “The Hail Storm.” Among names which Mason enumerates as given by the Karens, are “Evening,” “Moon-rising,” etc. Hence there is nothing anomalous in the fact that “Ploo-ra-na-loo-na,” meaning Sunshine, is the name of a Tasmanian woman; nor is there anything anomalous in the fact that among the Tasmanians “Hail,” “Thunder,” and “Wind” occur as names, as they do among the American Indians as shown by Catlin’s portraits of “The Roaring Thunder,” “The Red Thunder,” “The Strong Wind,” “The Walking Rain.” The inference here drawn, therefore, harmonizing with all preceding inferences, is that the initial step in the genesis of such a myth, would be the naming of human beings Storm and Sunshine; that from the confusion inevitably arising in tradition between them and the natural agents having the same names, would result this personalizing of these natural agents, and the ascription to them of human origins and human adventures: the legend, once having thus germinated, being, in successive generations, elaborated and moulded into fitness with the phenomena.

Let us now consider more closely which of these two hypotheses is most congruous with the laws of mind, and with the facts as various races present them.

§ 186. Human intelligence, civilized and savage, in common with intelligence at large, proceeds by the classing of objects, attributes, acts, each with its kind. The very nature of intelligence, then, forbids the assumption that primitive men will gratuitously class unlike things as akin to one another. In proportion as the unlikeness is great Edition: current; Page: [374] must there be great resistance to putting them in the same group. And if things wholly unallied are bracketed as of the same nature, some strong mental bias must furnish the needful coercive force.

What likeness can we find between a man and a mountain? Save that they both consist of matter, scarcely any. The one is vast, the other relatively minute; the one is of no definite shape, the other symmetrical; the one is fixed, the other locomotive; the one is cold, the other warm; the one is of dense substance, the other quite soft; the one has little internal structure and that irregular, the other is elaborately structured internally in a definite way. Hence the classing of them in thought as akin, is repugnant to the laws of thought; and nothing but unlimited faith can cause a belief in their alleged relationship as progenitor and progeny. There are, however, misinterpreted statements which lead to this belief.

Read first the following passages from Bancroft:—

Of the Mexicans Prescott writes:—“A puerile superstition of the Indians regarded these celebrated mountains as gods, and Iztaccihuatl as the wife of her more formidable neighbour,” Popocatepetl. Of the Peruvians, who worshipped the snow-mountains, we read that at Potosi “there is a smaller hill, very similar to the former one, and the Indians say that it is its son, and call it . . . the younger Potosi.” Now observe the clue to these beliefs furnished by Molina. He says the principal huaca of the Yncas was that of the hill, Huanacauri, whence their ancestors were said to have commenced their journey. It is described as “a great figure Edition: current; Page: [375] of a man.” “This huaca was of Ayar-cachi, one of the four brothers who were said to have come out of the cave at Tampu.” And a prayer addressed to it was:—“O Huanacauri! our father, may . . . thy son, the Ynca, always retain his youth, and grant that he may prosper in all he undertakes. And to us, thy sons,” etc.

One way in which a mountain comes to be worshipped as ancestor, is here made manifest. It is the place whence the race came, the source of the race, the parent of the race: the distinctions implied by the different words here used being, in rude languages, inexpressible. Either the early progenitors of a tribe were dwellers in caves on the mountain; or the mountain, marking conspicuously the elevated region they migrated from, is identified as the object whence they sprang. We find this connexion of ideas elsewhere. Various peoples of India who have spread from the Himalayas to the lower lands, point to the snowy peaks as the other world to which their dead return. Among some, the traditional migration has become a genesis, and has originated a worship. Thus the Santals regard the eastern Himalayas as their natal region; and Hunter tells us that “the national god of the Santals is Màrang Buru, the great mountain,” who is “the divinity who watched over their birth,” and who “is invoked with bloody offerings.”

When we remember that even now among ourselves, a Scotch laird, called by the name of his place, is verbally identified with it, and might in times when language was vague have readily become confounded in legend with the high stronghold in which he lived; when we remember, too, that even now, in our developed language, the word “descend” means either coming down from a higher level or coming down from an ancestor, and depends for its interpretation on the context; we cannot, in presence of the above facts, doubt that mountain-worship in some cases arises from mistaking the traditional source of the race for the traditional parentage of the race. This interpretation Edition: current; Page: [376] strengthens, and is strengthened by, a kindred interpretation of tree-worship given in the last chapter.

There is another possible linguistic cause for conceptions of this kind. “Mountain” and “Great Mountain” are used by primitive men as names of honour: the king of Pango-Pango (Samoa) is thus addressed. Elsewhere I have suggested that a personal name arising in this way, may have initiated the belief of the New Zealand chief, who claimed the neighbouring volcano, Tongariro, as his ancestor: such ancestor possibly having acquired this metaphorical name as expressive of his fiery nature. One further fact may be added in support of the belief that in some cases mountain-worship thus arises as an aberrant form of ancestor-worship. Writing of the Araucanians, and stating that “there is scarcely a material object which does not furnish them with a discriminative name” of a family, Thompson specifies “Mountains” as among their family names.

§ 187. Save in respect of its motion, which, however, is of utterly different character, the Sea has even less in common with a man than a mountain has: in form, in liquidity, in structurelessness, it is still more unlike a person. Yet the Sea has been personalized and worshipped, alike in the ancient East and in the West. Arriaga says of the Peruvians that “all who descend from the Sierra to the plains worship the sea when they approach it, and pull out the hair of their eyebrows, and offer it up, and pray not to get sick.” Whence this superstition?

We have inferred that confusing the derivation from a place with the derivation of parenthood, has led to the worship both of mountains and of the trees composing a forest once dwelt in. Ocean-worship seems to have had, in some cases, a parellel genesis. Though when we call sailors “seamen,” our organized knowledge and developed language save us from the error which literal interpretation might cause; yet a primitive people on whose shores there arrived Edition: current; Page: [377] unknown men from an unknown source, and who spoke of them as “men of the sea,” would be very apt thus to originate a tradition describing them as coming out of the sea or being produced by it. The change from “men of the sea” to “children of the sea” is an easy one—one paralleled by figures of speech among ourselves; and from the name “children of the sea” legend would naturally evolve a conception of the sea as generator or parent. Trustworthy evidence in support of this conclusion, I cannot furnish. Though concerning Peruvians, the Italian Benzoni says—“They think that we are a congelation of the sea, and have been nourished by the froth;” yet this statement, reminding us of the Greek myth of Aphrodite, is attributed to a verbal misconstruction of his. Still it may be held that by a savage or semi-civilized people, who are without even the idea of lands beyond the ocean-horizon, there can hardly be formed any other conception of marine invaders, who have no apparent origin but the ocean itself.

That belief in descent from the Sea as a progenitor sometimes arises through misinterpretation of individual names, is likely. Indirect evidence is yielded by the fact that a native religious reformer who appeared among the Iroquois about 1800 was called “Handsome Lake;” and if “lake” may become a proper name, it seems not improbable that “ocean” may do so. There is direct evidence too; namely the statement of Garcilasso, already quoted in another connexion (§ 164), that the Sea was claimed by some clans of Peruvians as their ancestor.

§ 188. If asked to instance a familiar appearance still less human in its attributes than a mountain or the sea, we might, after reflection, hit on the one to be next dealt with, the Dawn, as perhaps the most remote imaginable: having not even tangibility, nor definite shape, nor duration. Was the primitive man, then, led by linguistic needs to personalize the Dawn? And, having personalized it, did he invent Edition: current; Page: [378] a biography for it? Affirmative answers are currently given; but with very little warrant.

Treating of the dawn-myth, Prof. Max Müller, in his Lectures on the Science of Language, takes first Saramâ as one embodiment of the dawn. He quotes with qualified assent Prof. Kuhn’s “conclusion that Saramâ meant storm.” He does not doubt that “the root of Saramâ is sar, to go.” He says:—“Admitting that Saramâ meant originally the runner, how does it follow that the runner was meant for storm?” Recognizing the fact that an allied word meant wind and cloud, he alleges that this is habitually masculine in Sanscrit; but admits that if the Veda gave Saramâ the “qualities of the wind” this incongruity “would be no insurmountable objection.” He then gives Saramâ’s adventures in search of the cows; and says it yields no evidence that Samarâ is “representative of the storm.” After saying that in a fuller version of the story, Saramâ is described as “the dog of the gods” sent by Indra “to look for the cows”—after giving from another source the statements that Saramâ, refusing to share the cows with them, asks the robbers for a drink of milk, returns and tells a lie to Indra, is kicked by him, and vomits the milk, Prof. Max Müller gives his own interpretation. He says:—

Here, then, we have a sample of myth-rendering. It is agreed that the root is sar, to go; from which one distinguished philologist infers that Saramâ meant the runner and therefore the storm (allied words meaning wind and cloud); while another distinguished philologist thinks this inference erroneous. Saramâ in the legend is a woman; and in some versions a dog. It is, however, concluded that she is the dawn, because an epithet applied to her means quick; and because another epithet means fortunate; and because she appears before Indra; and because of sundry metaphors Edition: current; Page: [379] which, if cows stand for clouds, may be applied figuratively to mean the dawn. On the strength of these vague agreements Prof. Max Müller thinks—

Thus, notwithstanding all the discrepancies and contradictions, and though the root of the name gives no colour to the interpretation, yet because of certain metaphors (which in primitive speech are so loosely used as to mean almost anything) we are asked to believe that men personalized a transitory appearance as unlike humanity as can be conceived.

Whatever difficulties stand in the way of the alternative interpretation, it has facts instead of hypotheses to start from. It may be that sometimes Dawn is a complimentary metaphorical name given to a rosy girl; though I can give no evidence of this. But that Dawn is a birth-name, we have clear proof. Naming the newly-born from concurrent events, we have seen to be a primitive practice. Of names so originating among the Karens, Mason instances “Harvest,” “February,” “Father-returned.” As we saw (§ 185), he shows that times of the day are similarly utilized; and among the names hence derived, he gives “Sunrise.” South America supplies an instance. Hans Stade was present at the naming of a child among the Tupis, who was called Koem—the morning (one of its forefathers having also been similarly named); and Captain Burton, the editor, adds in a note that Coéma piranga means literally the morning-red or Aurora. Another case occurs in New Zealand. Rangihaeata, a Maori chief’s name, is interpreted “heavenly dawn;” (“lightning of heaven” being another chief’s name). If, then, Dawn is an actual name for a person—if it has probably often been given to those born early in the Edition: current; Page: [380] morning; the traditions concerning one of such who became noted, would, in the mind of the uncritical savage, lead to identification with the Dawn; and the adventures would be interpreted in such manner as the phenomena of the Dawn made most feasible. Further, in regions where this name had been borne either by members of adjacent tribes, or by members of the same tribe living at different times, incongruous genealogies and conflicting adventures of the Dawn would result.

§ 189. Is there a kindred origin for the worship of Stars? Can these also become identified with ancestors? This seems difficult to conceive; and yet there are facts justifying the suspicion that it has been so.

The Jews regarded stars as living beings who in some cases transgressed and were punished; and kindred notions of their animation existed among the Greeks. If we ask for the earlier forms of such beliefs, which now appear so strange, savages supply them. The Patagonians say “that the stars are old Indians.” “In Fiji large ‘shooting stars’ are said to be gods; smaller ones, the departing souls of men.” The Hervey Islanders think that the ghosts of warriors killed in battle, go to the top of a mountain and “leap into the azure expanse, where they float as specks. Hence this elysium of the brave is often called speckland” [i.e., star-land: they become stars]. The South Australians think “the constellations are groups of children.” “Three stars in one of the constellations are said to have been formerly on the Earth: one is the man, another his wife, and the smaller one their dog; and their employment is that of hunting opossums through the sky.” The implication that human beings get into the heavens, recurs in the Tasmanian tradition that fire was brought by two black fellows, who threw the fire among the Tasmanians, and after staying awhile in the land, became the two stars, Castor and Pollux. Possibly the genesis of this story was that the coupled lights Edition: current; Page: [381] of these stars were fancied to be the distant fires lighted by these men after they went away. Such a conception occurs among the North Americans, who say that the Milky Way is “the ‘Path of Spirits,’ ‘the Road of Souls,’ where they travel to the land beyond the grave, and where their campfires may be seen blazing as brighter stars.” It harmonizes, too, with the still more concrete belief of some North Americans, that their medicine-men have gone up through holes in the sky, have found the Sun and Moon walking about there like human creatures, have walked about with them, and looked down through their peepholes upon the Earth below.

Definite explanation of such ideas is difficult so long as we frame hypotheses only; but it becomes less difficult when we turn to the facts. These same peoples have a legend yielding us a feasible solution. First noting that Robinson describes certain other Californians as worshipping for their chief god something in the form of a stuffed coyote, read this legend of the Coyote, current among one of the Californian tribes—the Cahrocs. The Coyote was—

When we remember that this conception of the heavens as resting on, or adjacent to, the mountain tops, is general among the uncivilized and semi-civilized; and that access to the heavens after some such method as the one described, presents no difficulty to the uncritical mind of the primitive man; the identification of stars with persons will seem less incomprehensible. Though the ancestral coyote meets with a catastrophe, like catastrophes are not necessarily alleged of other ancestral animals who thus get into the heavens. Special hills, and special groups of stars seen to rise from behind them, being identified as those referred to in the legends, the animal-ancestors said to have ascended may become known as constellations. Here, at least, seems a feasible explanation of the strange fact, that the names of animals and men were, in early times, given to clusters of stars which in no way suggest them by their appearances.

That misinterpretation of proper names and metaphorical titles has played a part in this case, as in other cases, is possible. One of the Amazon tribes is called “Stars.” The name of a Dyak chief is rendered—“the bear of Heaven.” And in Assyrian inscriptions, Tiglath-pileser is termed “the bright constellation,” “the ruling constellation.” Literal acceptance of legends containing such names has, in the earliest stages, probably lead to identification.

If ancestors, animal or human, supposed to have migrated to the heavens, become identified with certain stars, there result the fancies of astrology. A tribal progenitor so translated, will be conceived as still caring for his descendants; while the progenitors of other tribes (when conquest has united many) will be conceived as unfriendly. Hence may result the alleged good or ill fortune of being looked down upon at birth by this or that star.

§ 190. Supposed accessibility of the heavens makes similarly easy the identification of the Moon with a man or with a woman.

Sometimes the traditional person is believed to reside in the Moon; as by the Loucheux branch of the Tinneh, who, while supplicating him for success in hunting, say that he “once lived among them as a poor ragged boy.” More frequently, however, there is an alleged metamorphosis. The Esquimaux think Sun, Moon, and Stars “are spirits of departed Esquimaux, or of some of the lower animals;” and the South Australians believe that the Sun, Moon, etc., are living beings who once inhabited the earth. Clearly, then, certain low races, who do not worship the heavenly bodies, have nevertheless personalized these by vaguely identifying them with ancestors in general. Biographies of the Moon do not here occur; but we find biographies among races which are advanced enough to keep up traditions. The Chibchas say that when on Earth, Chia taught evil, and that Bochica, their deified instructor, “translated her to heaven, to become the wife of the Sun and to illuminate the nights without appearing at daytime [on account of the bad things she had taught], and that since then there has been a Moon.” The Mexican story was that, “together with the man who threw himself into the fire and came out the Sun, another went in a cave and came out the Moon.”

Has identification of the Moon with persons who once lived, been caused by misinterpretation of names? Indirect evidence would justify us in suspecting this, even were there no direct evidence. In savage and semi-civilized mythologies, the Moon is more commonly represented as female than as male; and it needs no quotations to remind the reader how often, in poetry, a beautiful woman is either compared to the Moon or metaphorically called the Moon. And if, in primitive times, Moon was used as a complimentary name for a woman, erroneous identification of person Edition: current; Page: [384] and object, naturally originated a lunar myth wherever the woman so named survived in tradition.

To this, which is a hypothetical argument, is to be added an argument based on fact. Whether it supplies complimentary names or not, the Moon certainly supplies birth-names. Among those which Mason enumerates as given by the Karens, is “Full Moon.” Obviously, peoples who distinguish children by the incidents of their birth, using, as in Africa, days of the week, and as we have seen in other cases, times of the day, will also use phases of the Moon. And since many peoples have this custom, birth-names derived from phases of the Moon have probably been common, and subsequent identifications with the Moon not rare.

And here a significant correspondence may be noted. Birth-names derived from the Moon will habitually refer to it either as rising or setting, or else as in one of its phases—waxing, full, waning: a state of the Moon, rather than the Moon itself, will be indicated. Now the Egyptian goddess Bubastis, appears to have been the new Moon (some evidence implies the full)—at any rate a phase. The symbolization of Artemis expresses a like limitation; as does also that of Selene. And in his Mythology of the Aryan Nations, Sir G. W. Cox tells us that Iô is “pre-eminently the horned” or young Moon; while Pandia is the full Moon. How do these facts harmonize with the current interpretation? Is the tyranny of metaphor so great that, of itself, it compels this change of personality?

§ 191. Naturally, we may expect to find that, in common with the Stars and the Moon, the Sun has been personalized by identification with a traditional human being.

Already implied by some of the above-quoted statements respecting the Moon, this is implied more distinctly by statements now to be quoted. The original parent of the Comanches, like themselves but of gigantic stature, lives, they say, in the Sun. So, too, “the Chechemecas called the Edition: current; Page: [385] Sun their father.” Of the Olchones, Bancroft says—“The sun here begins to be connected, or identified by name, with that great spirit, or rather, that Big Man, who made the earth and who rules in the sky;” and he also says of the Tinneh that “some of them believe in a good spirit called Tihugun, ‘my old friend,’ supposed to reside in the sun and in the moon.” By the Salive, one of the Orinoco tribes, the Sun is named “the man of the Earth above.” Among the less civilized American peoples, then, the implication of original existence on Earth and subsequent migration to the sky, is general only. Their conception is on a level with that of the African (a Barotse), who, when asked whether a halo round the Sun portended rain, replied—“O no, it is the Barimo (gods or departed spirits) who have called a picho; don’t you see they have the Lord (sun) in the centre?”: the belief doubtless being that as the rest of the celestial assemblage had once been on Earth, so, too, had their chief. But among more advanced American peoples, the terrestrial personality of the Sun is definitely stated:—

The Quiché tradition is that after “there had been no sun in existence for many years,”

There is a legend concerning the ancestor of the cazique of Mizteca, who,

More specific still is a kindred story of the Mexicans, forming the sequel to one above cited. When the god who became Edition: current; Page: [386] the Sun by throwing himself into the fire, first rose, he stood still; and when the other gods sent a messenger ordering him to go on,

Nor does this exhaust the cases which Mexican traditions furnish. After expounding the Sun-myths in which he figures, Waitz concludes that “Quetzalcoatl was originally a man, a priest in Tula, who rose as a religious reformer among the Toltecs, but was expelled by the adherents of Tezcatlipoca.”

By the mythologists these stories, in common with kindred stories of the Aryans, are said to result from personalizations figuratively expressing the Sun’s doings; and they find no difficulty in believing that men not only gratuitously ascribed human nature to the Sun, but gratuitously identified him with a known man. Doubtless the Mexican tradition “that at one time there were five suns; and the fruits of the earth did not grow well, and the men died,” will in some way be explained as harmonizing with their hypothesis. Here, however, the interpretation adopted, like preceding interpretations, does not imply that these legends grew out of pure fictions; but that, however much transformed, they grew out of facts. Even were there no direct evidence that solar myths have arisen from misapprehensions of narratives respecting actual persons, or actual events in human history, the evidence furnished by analogy would warrant the belief. But the direct evidence is abundant. In some cases we are left in doubt how the supposed connexion with the Sun originated, as in the case of the Damaras, who have “five or six different ‘eandas’ or descents”—some Edition: current; Page: [387] “who come from the sun,” and some “who come from the rain;” but in other cases there is an obvious clue to the connexion.

One source of these solar myths, is the literal acceptance of figurative statements concerning the quarter whence the race came. Already we have concluded that emergence of a people from a forest, confounded in tradition with emergence from the trees forming it, has led to the worship of trees as ancestors; and that the story of migration from a distant mountain has become, through defect of language, changed into the story of descent from the mountain as a progenitor. The like has happened with peoples who have migrated from a locality marked by the Sun. On referring to § 112, where are given the ideas of various peoples respecting that other world whence their forefathers came, and to which they expect to return after death, it will be seen that its supposed direction is usually either East or West: the obvious cause being that the places of sunrise and sunset, ranging through considerable angles of the horizon on either side, serve as general positions to which more northerly and southerly ones are readily approximated by the inaccurate savage, in the absence of definite marks. “Where the Sun rises in heaven,” is said, by the Central American, to be the dwelling-place of his gods, who were his ancestors (§ 149); and the like holds in many cases. Of the Dinneh (or Tinneh), Franklin says each tribe, or horde, adds some distinctive epithet taken from the name of the river, or lake, on which they hunt, or the district from which they last migrated. Those who come to Fort Chipewyan term themselves “Saw-eesaw-dinneh—Indians from the rising Sun.” Now may we not suspect that such a name as “Indians from the rising Sun,” will, in the legends of people having an undeveloped speech, generate a belief in descent from the Sun? We ourselves use the expression “children of light;” we have the descriptive name “children of the mist” for a clan living in a foggy locality; nay, we apply Edition: current; Page: [388] the phrase “children of the Sun” to races living in the tropics. Much more, then, will the primitive man in his poverty-stricken language, speak of those coming from the place where the Sun rises as “children of the Sun.” That peoples even so advanced as the Peruvians did so, we have proof.

When with this we join the facts that the Yncas, who otherwise carried ancestor-worship to so great an extent, were predominantly worshippers of the Sun as ancestor; and that when the Ynca died he was “called back to the mansions of his father, the Sun;” we have warrant for concluding that this belief in descent from the Sun resulted from misapprehension of the historical fact that the Ynca-race emerged from the land where the Sun rises. Kindred evidence comes from certain names given to the Spaniards. The Mexicans “called Cortes the offspring of the Sun;” and as the Spaniards came from the region of the rising Sun, we have a like cause preceding a like effect. Though apparently not for the same reason, the Panches, too, made solar heroes of the Spaniards. “When the Spaniards first entered this kingdom, the natives were in a great consternation, looking upon them as the children of the Sun and Moon” says Herrera: a statement made in other words of the Chibchas by Simon, and by Lugo, who tells us that in their language, “Suâ means the Sun, and Suê the Spaniard. The reason why this word suê is derived from suâ is that the ancient Indians, when they saw the first Spaniards, said that they were children of the Sun.”

In this case, too, as in preceding cases, misinterpretation Edition: current; Page: [389] of individual names is a factor. In the essay which contained a rude outline of the argument elaborated in the foregoing chapters, I contended that by the savage and semi-civilized, “Sun” was likely to be given as a title of honour to a distinguished man. I referred to the fact that such complimentary metaphors are used by poets: instancing from Henry VIII the expression—“Those suns of glory, those two lights of men;” to which I might have added the lines from Julius Cæsar—

• “O setting sun,
• As in thy red rays thou dost sink to-night,
• So in his red blood Cassius’ day is set;
• The sun of Rome is set!”

And I argued that among primitive peoples speaking more figuratively than we do, and greatly given to flattery, “the Sun” would probably be a frequent name of laudation. Facts justifying this inference were not then at hand; but I can now give several. Egyptian records furnish some of them; as instance the address to the Egyptian king by an envoy from the Bakhten—“Glory to thee, Sun of the Nine bow barbarians, Let us live before thee;” and then the gods Amen, Horus and Tum, are all identified with the Sun. Here, again, is a sentence from Prescott’s Mexico.

The Peruvians gave a modification of the name to those who were mentally superior; as is shown by the statement that they “were so simple, that any one who invented a new thing was readily recognized by them as a child of the Sun.” And then we have evidence that in these regions the title, sometimes given in compliment, was sometimes arrogantly assumed. In the historic legend of the Central Americans, the Popol Vuh, is described the pride of Vukub-Cakix, who boasted that he was Sun and Moon.

Once more we have, as a root for a Sun-myth, the birth-name. Edition: current; Page: [390] Among the Karens occurs the name “Yellow Rising Sun;” and though Mason speaks of “a handsome young person” as thus called, so implying that it is a complimentary name, yet considering that these people use “Evening,” “Moon-rise,” “Sun-rise,” “Full Moon,” as birth-names, it seem probable that “Rising Sun” is a birth-name. Catlin’s portraits of North Americans yield some good evidence. There is among them an Esquimaux man named “the Rising Sun,” which, as the Esquimaux have no chiefs or warriors, is not likely to have been a complimentary name; and there is a Minatarrée girl called “The Mid-day Sun,” which is not likely to have been a title of honour for a girl. Manifestly it would be anomalous were celestial incidents thus used, with the exception of the most striking one.

And now mark a significant congruity and a significant incongruity, parallel to those we marked in the case of the Moon’s phases. Birth-names taken from the Sun must refer to the Sun at some part of his course—the rising Sun, the soaring Sun, the setting Sun, according to the hour of the birth; and complimentary names taken from the Sun, may express various of his attributes, as “the glory of the Sun,” “the Sun’s brightness,” etc. That names of this class have been used is, indeed, a known fact. Among complimentary titles of Egyptian kings in the Select Papyri, we find—“the Sun of creation,” “the Sun becoming victorious,” “the Sun orderer of creation.” Hence no difficulty is presented by the fact that “the Egyptians made of the Sun several distinct deities; as the intellectual Sun, the physical orb, the cause of heat, the author of light, the power of the Sun, the vivifying cause, the Sun in the firmament, and the Sun in his resting-place.” On the other hand, how do the mythologists reconcile such facts with their hypothesis? Was the linguistic necessity for personalizing so great that eight distinct persons were required to embody the Sun’s several attributes and states? Must we conclude that the Aryans, too, were led Edition: current; Page: [391] solely by the hypostasis of descriptions to suppose Hyperion, “the high-soaring Sun,” to be one individual, and Endymion, “the Sun setting,” to be another individual: both being independent of “the separate divinity of Phoibos Apollôn”? Did the mere need for concreting abstracts, force the Greeks to think that when the Sun was thirty degrees above the horizon he was one person who had such and such adventures, and that by the time he had got within ten degrees of the horizon he had changed into a person having a different biography? That the mythologists cannot think this I will not say; for their stores of faith are large. But the faith of others will, I imagine, fall short here, if it has not done so before.

§ 192. When the genesis of solar myths after the manner I have described, was briefly indicated as a part of the general doctrine set forth in the essay above referred to, sundry resulting correspondences with the traits of such myths were pointed out. The fact that conspicuous celestial objects, in common with the powers of nature at large, were conceived as male and female, was shown to be a sequence. The fact that in mythologies the Sun has such alternative names as “the Swift One,” “the Lion,” “the Wolf,” which are not suggested by the Sun’s sensible attributes, was shown to be explicable on the hypothesis that these were additional complimentary names given to the same individual. Further, the strange jumbling of celestial phenomena with the adventures of earth-born persons, was accounted for as a result of endeavours to reconcile the statements of tradition with the evidence of the senses. And once more it was suggested that by aggregation of local legends concerning persons thus named, into a mythology co-extensive with many tribes who were united into a nation, would necessitate conflicting genealogies and biographies of the personalized Sun. While able then to illustrate but briefly these positions, I alluded to evidence which was forthcoming. Edition: current; Page: [392] Of such evidence I have now given an amount which fulfils the tacit promise made; and goes far to justify the inference drawn. I did not then, however, hope to do more than make the inference highly probable. But while collecting materials for the foregoing chapters, I have come upon a passage in the records of the ancient Egyptians which, I think, gives conclusiveness to the argument. It is in the third Sallier Papyrus. This document, recording the triumphs of Ramses II, has already yielded us illustrations of the ancient belief in the supernatural strength given by an ancestral ghost who has become a god; and more recently I have quoted from it a phrase exemplifying the complimentary application of an animal-name to a conquering monarch. Here, from an address of the subjugated people, praying for mercy, I quote in full the significant sentence:—

The whole process described above as likely to occur, is shown in this record as actually occurring. Observe all the correspondences. The deity to whom, as we saw, Ramses says he has sacrificed 30,000 bulls, and to whom he prays for supernatural aid, is regarded as his ancestor. “I call on thee my father Ammon,” he says; and the defeated say to him—“truly thou art born of Ammon, issue of his body.” Further, Ramses, described as performing the feats of a god, is spoken of as though a god: the defeated call him “giver of life for ever like his father Ra.” Thus regarded as divine, he receives, as we find warriors among the semi-civilized and savage still doing, many complimentary titles and metaphorical names; which, being joined to the same individual, become joined to one another: Ramses is at once the King, the Bull, the Sun. And while this record gives the human genealogy of Ramses and his achievements on Earth, its expressions point to his subsequent apotheosis; and imply Edition: current; Page: [393] that his deeds will be narrated as the deeds of the “conquering bull” and of “the Sun.” Remembering that at the deaths even of ordinary Egyptians, there were ceremonial eulogies by priests and others, who afterwards, at fixed intervals, repeated their praises; we cannot doubt that in laudations of a king who became a god after death, carried on in still more exaggerated language than during his life, there persisted these metaphorical titles: resulting in such hymns as that addressed to Amen—“The Sun the true king of gods, the Strong Bull, the mighty lover (of power).”

To me it seems obvious that in this legend of the victorious Ramses, king, conqueror, bull, sun, and eventually god, we have the elements which, in an early stage of civilization, generate a solar myth like that of Indra; who similarly united the characters of the conquering hero, the bull, the sun. To say that when orally transmitted for generations among a less-advanced people, a story such as this would not result in a human biography of the Sun, is to deny a process congruous with the processes we find going on; and is to assume an historical accuracy that was impossible with a language which, like that of the Egyptians even in historic times, could not distinguish between a name and the act of naming. While to allege, instead, that the Sun may not only be affiliated on human parents, but may be credited with feats of arms as a king, while he is also a brute, and this solely because of certain linguistic suggestions, is to allege that men disregard the evidence of their senses at the prompting of reasons relatively trivial.

§ 193. Little, then, as first appearances suggest it, the conclusion warranted by the facts, is that Nature-worship, like each of the worships previously analyzed, is a form of ancestor-worship; but one which has lost, in a still greater degree, the external characters of its original.

Partly by confounding the parentage of the race with a conspicuous object marking the natal region of the race, Edition: current; Page: [394] partly by literal interpretation of birth-names, and partly by literal interpretation of names given in eulogy, there have been produced beliefs in descents from Mountains, from the Sea, from the Dawn, from animals which have become constellations, and from persons once on Earth who now appear as Moon and Sun. Implicitly believing the statements of forefathers, the savage and semi-civilized have been compelled grotesquely to combine natural powers with human attributes and histories; and have been thus led into the strange customs of propitiating these great terrestrial and celestial objects by such offerings of food and blood as they habitually made to other ancestors.