In thas foreshadowing the conclusion that the worship of conspicuous objects and powers around, conceived as persons, results from linguistic errors, I appear to be in- dicating agreement with the mythologists. But though misconstruction of words is on both hypotheses the alleged cause, the misconstruction is quite different in kind and the erroneous course of thought opposite in direction. The mythologists hold that the powers of nature, at first con*- ceived and worshipped as impersonal^ come to be person- alized because of certain characters in the words applied to them; and that the legends concerning the persons identified with ihese 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 interpreta- tion may be clearly understood^ let us take an illustration.
§ 185. All winter the beautiful Sunshine^ pursued by the dark Storm^ was ever Uding 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, how- ever, 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 iBarih rejoiced in the moist warmth; and from them were bom plants which covered its surface and made it gay with flowers. But every autumn Storm begins to frown and growl; Simshine flies from him; and the pursuit begins again.
Supposing the Tasmanians had been found by us in a semi-civilized state with a developed mythology containing some such legend as this, the unhesitating interpretation put upon it, after the method now accepted, would be that the observed efieots of mingled sunshine and storm were thus figuratively expressed, and that the ultimate represen- tation of Sunshine and Storm as persons who once lived on the Earth, was due to the natural mythopoeic tendency, which took its direction from the genders of the words.
Contrariwise, supposing such a legend to be found, how would it 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. Among such which Mason enumerates, as given by the Karens, are '^ Evening,^' '^Moon-rising,'^ etc. There is, therefore, nothing anomalous or exceptional in the fact that " Ploo-ra-na-loo-na,'' meaning Sunshine, is the name of a Tasmanian woman; nor is there anything exceptional in the fact that among the neighbour- ing Australians "Hail,*' "Thunder,^' and "Wind" occur as names. The inference here drawn, therefore, harmonizing 392 THE DATA OF dOCIOLOQT.
with all preceding inferences, is that tlie initial step in the genesis of such a myth, would be the existence of human beings named Storm and Sunshine; that from the confusion inevitably arising in tradition between them and the natural agents having the same names, would result this person- alizing of these natural agents, and the ascribing to them 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 class- ing of objects, attributes, acts, each with its kind. The very nature of intelligence, then, forbids the assumption that primitive men vrill gratuitously class unlike things as akin to one another. In proportion as the unlikeness is great must there be great resistance to putting them in the same group. And if, by primitive men, things wholly^ unallied are bracketed as of the same nature, some strong mental bias must furnish the needful coercive force.
What degree of likeness can we find between a man and a mountain? Save that they both consist of matter, scarcely any kinship can be pointed out between them. The one is vast, the other relatively minute; the one is of no de- finite shape, the other symmetrical; the o^e 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 &dth can cause a belief in their alleged relationship as progenitor and NATURE-WORSHIP. 893 progeny. There are, however, misinterpreted statements which lead to acceptance of this belief.
Bead first the following passages, from Bancroft's Native Maces of the Pacific Staies: — " Ucanam, the creator of the universe, is a powerfdl deity among the Chinooks, who have a mountain named after him from a belief that he there turned himself into stone."
" The Califomian tribes believe * « * the Navigos came to light from the bowels of a great mountain near the river San Jnan."
** The citizens of Mexico and those of Tlatelolco were wont to visit a hiU called Cacatepec, for they said it was their mother." Similarly of the Mexicans Prescott writes: — " A pnerile superstition of the Indians regarded these celebrated moun- tains as gods, and Iztaccihuatl as the wife of her more for- midable neighbour,'^ Popocatepetl. Of the Peruvians, de- scribed by Arriaga as worshipping the snow-mountains, we read that '* at Potosi there is a smaller hill, very similar to a larger 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's statements. He says the principal Auoca of the Yncas was that of the hill, Huwrui- cauri, whence their ancestors were said to have commenced their journey. It is described as ''a great figure of a man." '^This huaca was of Ayar-caclli, one of the four brothers who were said to have come out of the cave at Tampu." And Molina gives a prayer addressed to it: — " O Huana- cauril our father, may * * * thy son, the Tnca, always retain his youth, and grant that he may prosper in all he undertakes. And to us, thy sons and descendants," etc.
One way in which a mountain comes to be worshipped as ancestor, is here made sufficiently 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 langpiages, inexpressible. Either the early progenitors of a tribe were dwellers in caves on the moun- tain; or the mountain, maridng most conspicuously the ele- vated region whence they came, is identified as the object 394 THE DATA OF SOCIOIiOaT.
whence they sprang. We find tliis connexion of ideas else* where. 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 BomCj the traditional migration has become a genesis, and has originated worship. Thus the Santals regard the eastern Himalayas as their natal region; and Hunter tells us thatj " the national god of the Santals is Nurang Bum, the groat 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 vagpie and ideas chaotic, have readily become confounded in legend with the high stronghold in which he lived; when we remember, too, that even now, in our developed lan- guage, 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, I think, 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 pa- rentage of the race. This interpretation 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 " may be used by primitive men as nicknames metaphorically ex- pressing great size or great importance. Elsewhere I have suggested that a personal name thus arising, may have ini- tiated the belief of the New Zealand chief, who claimed the neighbouring volcano, Tongariro, as his ancestor: such an- cestor possibly having acquired this metaphorical name as expressive of his fiery nature and his bursts of fury. One positive t&ct only can I give in support of the belief that in some cases mountain-worship thus arises. Writing of HATUBE-W0E8HTP. 395 fhe Araucanians^ and stating that '' there is scarcely a ma- terial object which does not famish them with a discrimina- tive name ** of a family, Thompson specifies " Mountains '* as among their family names.
§ 187. Saye in respect of its motion^ which, however, is of an 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. Nevertheless the Sea has been personalized and worshipped, not only in the ancient East, but also in the West. Arriaga tells us 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.'' How could the conception leading to this practice have arisen?
We have seen 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 parallel genesis. Though when we call sailors ''sea-men,'' our organized knowledge and developed lan- guage save us from the error which literal interpretation might cause; yet a primitive people on whose shores there arrived unknown men coming 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 — as 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 can- not furnish. Though, writing as a Spaniard, and describing the Peruvians, Benzoni says — "They think that we are a congelation of the sea, and have been nourished by the 896 THE DATA OF SOCIOLOOT.
froth''; yet this statement^ reminding ns of the Greek myth of Aphrodite^ is attributed to a verbal misoonstrac- tion of his. Still it may be held that by a savage or semi- civilized people, who are without even the idea of lands below 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 also arises by misinterpretation of individual names, seems not improbable. Some indirect evidence is yielded by the fact that a religious teacher who appeared among the Iroquois about 1800 (probably a missionary) was called " Handsome Lake"; and if ''lake '' may become a proper name, there is no stretch of probability in the supposition that ocean may do so. There is direct evidence, however. We have the statement of Garcilasso, already quoted in another con- nexion (§164), that the Sea was claimed by some clans of the Peruvians as a family ancestor.
§ 188. If asked to instance a familiar appearance stiU less human in its attributes than a mountain or the sea, we might after reflection hit upon the one to be here 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 f And having personalized it did he gratuitously invent a specific biography, or rather many bio- graphies for it f Affirmative answers are currently given; but, as it seems to me, with extremely little warrant.
Treating of the dawn-myth. Prof. Max Miiller, in his Lectures on the Science of Language^ takes first Saramft as one of its embodiments. He quotes with qualified assent Prof. Kuhn's '' conclusion that Saram& meant storm.'' He does not doubt that '' the root of Saram& is sar, to go." He says: — ''Admitting that Saram& meant originjilly tho runner, how does it follow that the runner was meant for storm f '^ fiecognizing the faot that an allied word meant wind and cloud, he alleges that this is habitnallj masculine in Sanscrit 5 but admits that if the Yeda gave Saram& the 'Equalities of the wind" this incongruity "would be no insurmountable objection." He then giyes Saramft^s ad- ventures in search of the oows; and says it yields no evi- dence that Saramft is *^ representative of the storm." After saying that in a fuller version of the story, Saram& is de- scribed as 'E the dog of the gods " sent by Indra '' to look for the cows" — after giving from another source the state- ments that Saramft, 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 Miiller gives his own interpretation. He says: — " This being nearly the whole OTidence on wliioh we most form oor opinion of the original conception of Sarami, there can be little doubt that she was meant for the early dawn, and not for the storm."
Here, then, we have a sample of myth-rendering. It is agreed that the root is sar, to go; from which one distin- guished philologist infers that Saram& meant the runner and therefore the storm (allied words meaning wind and cloud); while another distinguished philologist thinks this inference erroneous. Saramft 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 which, if cows stand for clouds, may be applied figuratively to mean the dawn. On the strength of these vag^e agree- ments Prof. Max Miiller thinkf " The myth of which we have collected the fragments is dear enough. It is a reproduction of the old story of the break of day. The bright cows, the rays of the sun or the raia-cloads — for both go by the same name— have been stolen by the powers of darkness, by the Night and her manifold progeny,** etc., etc.
Thus, notwithstanding all the discrepancies and contra- 898 THE DATA OF SOCIOLOGY.
dictions, and thoagli the root of the name gives no colour to the interpretation, yet because of certain metaphors (which in primitiye speech are so loosely used as to mean almost anything) we are asked to believe that men person- alized a transitory appearance as remote from 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 metaphoricsJ name given to a rosy girl; though I cannot furnish proof 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 derived among the Karens, Mason instances '^ Harvest,'' "February,'' "Father-returned." He also, as we have seen (§ 185), shows us that the times of the day are similarly utilized; and then, among the names thus derived, he gives "Sunrise." South America supplies a kindred instance. In the account of the captivity of Hans Stade, lately pub- lished by the Hakluyt Society, the narrator says he 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 CoSma piranga means literally .the morning red or Aurora. Another case occurs in New . Zealand: Thomson states that the meaning of Bangihaeata, a Maori chiefs name, is " heavenly dawn; " (" lightning of . heaven " being also a chiefs name mentioned by him). If, then. Dawn is an actual name for a person — ^if where there prevails this mode of distinguishing children, it has pro- bably often been given to those bom early in the morning; the traditions concerning one of such who became noted, would, in the mind of the uncritical savage, believing firmly and literally whatever his fathers told him, lead to identifi- cation with the dawn; and the adventures would be inter- preted in such a manner as the phenomena of the dawn made NATUUB-WOBSHIP. 399 most feasible. Further^ in regions where this name had been borne either by members of different adjacent tribes^ or by members of the same tribe living at different times, incongruous genealogies and conflicting adventures of the dawn would result; in agreement with what we find.
§ 189. Is there a kindred origin for worship of the Stars? Can these also become identified with ancestors f ThiH seems difficult to conceive; and yet there are facts justifying the suspicion that it has been so.
We read that the Jews regarded the stars as living beings who in some cases transgressed and were punished; and that kindred notions of their animation existed among the Greeks. If we ask for the earlier forms of such beliefs, which now appear to us so strange, savages supply them. Erskine says that '' in Fiji large ' shooting stars ' are said to be gods; smaller ones, the departing souls of men.'' The South Australians, according to Angas, think ''the constellations are groups of children," and '' 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 somehow get up into the heavens, recurs in the Tasmanian tradition that fire was brought them 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 of these stars were fancied to be the distant fires lighted by these men after they went away. That such a genesis is not unlikely, is shown by an allied conception of 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 camvp-fires may be seen blazing as brighter stars." It harmonizes, too, with the still more 400 THB DATA OF 80CI0L00T.
concrete belief of some North Americans^ that their medi- cine men have gone np through holes in the sky, have found the son 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 very difficult so long as we frame hypotheses only; but it becomes less difficult when we turn to the facts. These same peoples furnish a legend yielding us a feasible solution. It is contained in Bancroft's Native Races of the Pacific States, vol. iii., pp. 138-9, quoted from Power's Pomo» First noting that Bobinson describes '' certain other Califomians as worship- ping for their chief god something in the form of a staffed coyote,'' read this legend of the Coyote, current among one of the Califomian tribes — ^the Cahrocs. The Coyote was " 80 proud that he determined to have a danoe through heaven itself, haying chosen as his partner a certain star that used to pAss quite dose by a mountain where he spent a good deal of his time. So he called out to the star to take him by the paw and they would go round the world together for a night; but the star only laughed, and winked in an excessiyely provoking way from time to time. The Coyote peraiflted angrily in his demand, and barked and barked at the star all round heaven, till the twinkUng thing grew tired of his noise and told him to be quiet and he should be taken next night Next night the star came quite up dose to the cliff where the Coyote stood, who leaping was able to catch on. Away they danced together through the blue heavens. Fine sport it was for a while; but oh, it grew bitter cold up there for a Coyote of the earth, and it was an awful sight to look down to where the broad Klamath lay like a slack bow-string and the Cahroc villages like arrow-heads. Woe for the Coyote! his numb paws have slipped their hold on his bright companion; dark is the partner that leads the dance now, and the name of him is Death. Ten long snows the Coyote is in filling, and when he strikes the earth he is ' smashed as flat as a willowmat' — Coyotes must not dance with stars."
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 NATUBE-WOESHIP. 401 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 hillsi 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 leasts seems a feasible explanation of the strange factj that the names of animals and men were, in the earliest 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. ' Wallace tells us that one of the Amazon tribes is called " Stars." By Bajah Brooke the name of a Dyak chief is rendered — "the bear of Heaven." And in Assyrian inscriptions, Tiglath Pileser is termed " the bright constel- lation," "the ruling constellation." Literal acceptance of legends containing such names has, in the earliest stages, not improbably led to identification.
If the ancestor, animal or human, supposed thus to have migrated to the heavens, becomes identified with certain stars, we get a clue to the fancies of astrology. A tribal progenitor so translated, will be conceived as still caring for his descendants; while the ancestors of other tribes (when conquest has united many into a nation) will be con- ceived 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 simi- larly easy the identification of the Moon with a man or woman. We may therefore expect a prevalence of stories in which the Moon is represented as a being who had a terrestrial origin.
Sometimes the traditional person is belieyed to reside in the Moon; as by the Lonchenx branch of the Tinneh, who^ while supplicating him for success in huntings say that he ^' once liyed among them as a poor ragged boy/' More frequently^ however^ there is an alleged metamorphosis. According to Hays^ the Esquimaux think sun, moon, and stars ^' are spirits of departed Esquimaux, or of some of the lower animals -/^ and in like manner we learn &om Angaa that " the South Australians believe that the sun, moon, etc., are living beings who once inhabited the earth/' Clearly, then, certain low races, who have no worship of the heavenly bodies, have nevertheless personali2sed these by a vague identification of them with ancestors in general. Among them biographies of the Moon do not occur; bat we find biographies among other races, and especially among those sufficiently advanced 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/' Similarly, Mendieta says the Mexican account of the creation of the Moon 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 f In- direct 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. That the Moon has been used in primitive times as a com- plimentary name for a woman, may hence, I think, be in- ferred. And, if so, erroneous identification of person and NATUBE-WOBSHIP. 403 object; originated a Innar myth wherever the woman so named survived in tradition.
To this, which is a hypothetical argument, is to be added an argument definitely based on fact. Whether it supplies complimentary names or not, the Moon certainly supplies names for children. Among those enumerated by Mason as given by the Karens, is " Pull Moon.'' Obviously, peo- ples whose custom it is to 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, naming after a phase of the Moon has probably been by no means uncommon, and subse- quent identifications with the Moon not rare.