Worship of the Forces of Nature.

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once evident that the type of the language greatly influenced these creations. Hence languages which make a distinction of grammatical gender, such as those of the Aryan, Semitic, and Hamitic nations, are especially adapted for the fabrication of myths. Yet the functions of language must not be over-estimated, for we find myths of gods and goddesses among nations such as the Polynesians and the people of Central America, whose grammar is destitute of genders. Thus even Bleek 51 has made the mistake of looking for the worship of ancestors only in nations using the prefix-pronominal languages, although it exists among the Chinese whose language has no grammatical forms.

Delbrück has ingeniously employed the heroic fable of Hippolytus and Phædra to illustrate the manner in which language, as it were, automatically evolves myths. It had originally no other foundation than the phenomena visible in the evening sky from the first appearance of the crescent until the disc of the moon has become full. We may venture briefly to repeat his explanation. Any Greek scholar can perceive that the name Hippolytus indicates one who drives with loose or unharnessed horses. In the world of poetry this is done by the sun-god alone. The moon, on the other hand, is glorified as Phædra, the lustrous or brilliant, for the great majority of nations have thought of the sun as masculine and the moon as feminine, and only a few, among which are the Germans and the Hottentots, have reversed these genders. It is well known that on every succeeding day the crescent moon is retarded by a considerable span behind the sun as it hastens on its western course. After twelve days at most, the sun is just sinking as the full moon rises on the opposite side of the horizon. Thus the waxing moon apparently pursues the sun, but is unable to catch up the quicker traveller. But, according to the growing myth, Hippolytus is flying from Phædra. Now, when a generation grew up which applied other adjectives to the sun and moon, and who had forgotten the original signification of Hippolytus and Phædra, although a proverb was perhaps still preserved concerning Hippolytus flying before the pursuit of Phædra, the question might well arise, why should Hippolytus fly from Phædra

51 Ueber den Ursprung der Sprache.

if, as her name suggests, she shines in all the beauty of her sex? In this stage of the conception, as Delbrück adds, the legend was completed by the notion that perhaps Phædra was the stepmother of Hippolytus. When the myth had once acquired this form, it was woven into the story of the house of Theseus, forming an admirable subject for a tragedy. Euripides, Racine, and his translator, Schiller, would probably have been surprised had it been shown them that their heroes were the sun and moon. Perhaps it may be said that it was unnecessary to suppose fear of incest as a motive for the flight of Hippolytus from Phædra: it would have been more natural to suppose that he already loved some other maiden; hence it is very remarkable that other nations give exactly the same interpretations to these natural phenomena. The Khasia in North-western India relate that at every fresh change the moon is inflamed with love for his stepmother the sun, who throws ashes in his face as a mark of abhorrence, and that for this reason the moon's disc is spotted. 52 The Eskimo say that the sun, which they regard as feminine, smears the face of her brother, the moon, with soot when he presses his love upon her. The inhabitants of the Isthmus of Darien also maintain that

the so-called "man in the moon was guilty of incest with his

sister.53

The action of myth-making must in the course of time, especially while writing was not in use, have entirely obscured the original meaning of any form of nature worship, so that it was at last necessary to deify the same power under another name, only to reinvest it with an anthropomorphous shape. This is probably the reason that among Aryan nations so many deities play the same part, and that the functions of the atmosphere in particular are represented under so many forms. But every system of gods indicates a craving for a Supreme Being to whom all other powers must sooner or later be subordinate. For instance, it is impossible that a people undergoing intellectual development should persevere in worshipping the sun, for soon or later there must arise the doubt which was expressed by the Inca Huayna Capac

52 Hooker, Himalayan Journals, vol. ii. p. 276.

53 David Cranz, Historie von Grönland. Petrus Martyr, De orbe novo.

Worship of the Heavens.

257

(+ 1525 A.D.),54 namely, that the day-star cannot possibly be the

creator of all things, for the progress of life proceeds without interruption during the night. This case again corroborates our proposition that all religious emotions proceed only from the desire for acquaintance with the Creator, and that the worship of a deity is extinguished the instant that it ceases to satisfy the requirement of causality. The divinity of the sun was not so long. or so successfully tenable as that of the changeless, self-moving heavens, which were always regarded as masculine in contrast to the feminine fertile earth. The heavens and the earth were worshipped by the Hurons, and are still worshipped by the Chinese. Sky worship occurs also among the negroes of the west coast of Africa.55 The Latins employed the same word for God and the heavens; 56 and that the heavens and the Supreme Deity were one, in ancient times, amongst the Germans also, may be inferred from the pagan idioms, "Heaven help you!" or "Heaven preserve this child." 57 Even in ancient Mexico we perceive that a multiplicity of gods makes a classification according to rank necessary, and that this involuntarily tends towards a monotheistic conception. In the celebrated admonitions of an Aztec mother to her daughter, reference is made to a single God, "who sees every secret fault." 58 Sahagun, who preserved this remarkable contribution to moral history, has indeed been accused of colouring ancient Mexican paganism with Christian views; but Waitz has justly defended the trustworthiness of his account, saying that Spanish priests were more disposed to give adverse representations of the pre-Christian state of the Americans as the work of the devil than to say too much in their favour.

If the value of religion be estimated solely by its effects as a means of education, the worship of the forces of nature is capable of raising human society to high grades. Among nations of austere morals we also find austere deities and the conception of a just regulation of the world, whereas, in the other case, liber

54 A. von Humboldt, Ansichten der Natur.

55 Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. i. p. 321.

56 Sub divo or sub dio was equivalent to "under the open skies."

57

"Der Himmel behüte dich " and "der Himmel erhalte dir dieses Kind.” 58 Sahagun. See Prescott's Conquest of Mexico, vol. iii. p. 424.

S

tinism and vice are perceptible in the creations of religion, which are invariably related to the moral level of the social condition, as are the dark lines in a spectroscopic image to the source of light. The Polynesian Tongans, or Friendly Islanders, firmly believe that their gods approve of a life of virtue and resent vice, so that the guardian spirits watch over men only so long as they behave honourably, and at once abandon the reprobate. 59 But worship of the forces of nature is of little permanent service in the social education of nations. When the object contemplated as divine has once been invested in the imagination with human traits, the representative arts are nearly always employed at the very first fabrication of the myths; and however the sculptor or painter may exalt the human form in his representation of the deity, in the eyes of the multitude, eager for objects of veneration, the material image immediately becomes an idol performing miracles, and, as a movable chattel, becomes the property of a community, and, by the folly of the majority, ultimately sinks into a fetish.

Religious veneration takes another direction when it involves belief in a future life. This belief has been found almost without exception among the aborigines of America as well as among the Polynesians, Papuans, and Australians, among the greater number of Asiatics, among the ancient inhabitants of Europe, and all the Hamites of Northern Africa from the Nile to the Canaries. When direct evidence is wanting, belief in immortality may be inferred from the mode of burying the dead. If we had no better information as to the notions of the Egyptians respecting a future life, we could still clearly recognize their expectations in the circumstance that they provided their mummies with wheat in order to supply them with seed-corn after the resurrection. In the same way the ancient Babylonians evinced a hope of another world by placing date stones in their tombs; 60 the same remark applies to the people dwelling on the shores of the Caribbean Sea, who place maize seeds in the hands of their dead. The sacrifice of human beings at the graves of chiefs or kings, such as that prescribed by

59 Mariner, Tonga Islands.

60 Rawlinson, The Five Great Monarchies.

Ideas of Immortality.

259

the Adah, or "great custom," testifies a belief in immortality in Dahomey, and the strangling of the wives at the death of a prince affords like evidence of a similar belief in the Fiji Islands. Again, if we knew no further details as to the opinions of the intellectually gifted Hottentots, formerly so greatly underrated," 61 it would be enough that, previous to burial, they place the body of the deceased in the same position which it once occupied as an embryo in the mother's womb. The meaning of this significant custom is that the dead will mature in the darkness of the earth in preparation for a new birth. As uncivilized nations, as we have seen, regard all objects as animated, they do not restrict the future life to human beings. The Itelmes of Kamtshatka believed in a renewal of all creatures, " down to the smallest fly." The Jesuits Acosta, Lafitau, and Charlevoix assert that the IncaPeruvians,62 the Iroquois, and other North Americans imagined, exactly after the fashion of the Platonic visions, the existence in the invisible world of a sort of prototype or essence for every living being.63 The Fijians go still further, for they not only believe in a paradise for men and animals, but they hope that every cocoa-nut will there be made anew.

It is only among negroes that a denial of immortality has yet been found. "Can a dead man come out of his grave unless he is dug up?" said the chief Commoro in the Latuka country to the east of the White Nile, when Sir Samuel Baker in vain attempted by cross questions to force him to acknowledge his belief in a future. The first idea of immortality has probably been always evoked by the apparitions of dreams. As long as a negro dreams of a dead person, fear is inspired by his memory; the spirit which has apparently come back demands food, and holds out threats of misfortunes to those still on earth, but the memory of a grandfather has long been extinguished and excites no further uneasiness. If, in Equatorial Africa, says Du Chaillu, inquiries are made after a person long since deceased,

61 Kolbe, Vorgebirge der guten Hoffnung.

62 Clements Markham, Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, vol. xli. 63 Lafitau, Mœurs des sauvages, p. 360. Charlevoix, Nouvelle France. Also Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. ii. p. 245.