coming out of their houses crying "Behold the Moon!" 1 The Ahts of Vancouver's Island, it is stated, worship the Sun and Moon, particularly the full moon and the sun ascending to the zenith. Regarding the Moon as husband and the Sun as wife, their prayers are more generally addressed to the Moon as the superior deity; he is the highest object of their worship, and they speak of him as "looking down upon the earth in answer to prayer, and seeing everybody." 2. With a somewhat different turn of mythic fancy, the Hurons seem to have considered Aataentsic the Moon as maker of the earth and man, and grandmother of Iouskeha the Sun, with whom she governs the world.3 In Africa, Moon-worship is prominent in an immense district where Sun-worship is unknown or insignificant. Among southcentral tribes, men will watch for the first glimpse of the new Moon, which they hail with shouts of kua! and vociferate prayers to it; on such an occasion Dr. Livingstone's Makololo prayed, "Let our journey with the white man be prosperous!" etc. These people keep holiday at new-moon, as indeed in many countries her worship is connected with the settlement of periodic festivals. Negro tribes seem almost universally to greet the new Moon, whether in delight or disgust. The Guinea people fling themselves about with droll gestures, and pretend to throw firebrands at it; the Ashango men behold it with superstitious fear; the Fetu negroes jumped thrice into the air with hands together and gave thanks. The Congo people fell on their knees, or stood and clapped their hands, crying, "So may I renew my life as thou art renewed!" The Hottentots are described early in the last century as dancing and singing all night at new and full moon, calling the Moon the Great Captain, and crying to him "Be greeted!” “Let us get much honey!" May our cattle get much to eat and give much milk!" With the same thought as that just noticed in

De la Borde, 'Caraibes,' p. 525.

Sproat, Ind. of Vancouver's I.', in 'Tr. Eth. Soc.' vol. v. p. 253.

3 Brebeuf in Rel. des Jes.' 1635, p. 34.

4 Livingstone, S. Afr.' p. 235; Waitz, vol. ii. pp. 175, 342.

Romer, 'Guinea,' p. 84; Du Chaillu, Ashango-land,' p. 428; see Purchas,

vol. v. p. 766. Müller, 'Fetu,' p. 47.

Merolla, Congo,' in Pinkerton, vol. xvi. p. 273.

the district north-west of them, the Hottentots connect the Moon in legend with that fatal message sent to Man, which ought to have promised to the human race a moon-like renewal of life, but which was perverted into a doom of death like that of the beast who brought it.1

The more usual status of the Moon in the religions of the world is, as nature suggests, that of a subordinate companion deity to the Sun, such a position as is acknowledged in the precedence of Sunday to Monday. Their various mutual relations as brother and sister, husband and wife, have already been noticed here as matter of mythology. As wide-lying rude races who place them thus side by side in their theology, it is enough to mention the Delawares of North America, the Ainos of Yesso, the Bodos of North-East India, the Tunguz of Siberia.5 This is the state of things which continues at higher levels of systematic civilization. Beside the Mexican Tonatiuh the Sun, Metztli the Moon had a smaller pyramid and temple; in Bogota, the Moon, identified in local myth with the Evil Deity, had her place and figure in the temple beside the Sun her husband; the Peruvian Mother-Moon, Mama-Quilla, had her silver disc-face to match the golden one of her brother and husband the Sun, whose companion she had been in the legendary civilizing of the land. In the ancient Kami-religion of Japan, the supreme Sun-god ranks high above the Moon-god, who was worshipped under the form of a fox. Among the historic nations of the Old World, documents of Semitic culture show Sun and Moon side by side. For one, we may take the Jewish law, to stone with stones till they died the man or woman who “hath gone and served other gods, and worshipped them, either the sun, or moon, or any of the host of heaven." For another, let us glance over

1 Kolbe, 'Beschryving van de Kaap de Goede Hoop,' part i. xxix. See ante, vol. i. p. 320.

2 Loskiel, 'Ind. of N. A.' part i. p. 43.

3 Bickmore, Ainos,' in 'Tr. Eth. Soc.' vol. vii. p. 20.

Hodgson, Abor. of India,' p. 167.

5 Georgi, 'Reise im Russ. R.' vol. i. p. 275.

Clavigero, 'Messico,' vol. ii. pp. 9, 35; Tylor, Mexico,' 1. c.

7 Waitz, vol. iv. p. 362.

8 Prescott, 'Peru,' vol. i. p. 90. But compare Garcilaso de la Vega, iii. 21. 9 Siebold, 'Nippon,' part v. p. 9.

VOL. II.

T

the curious record of the treaty-oath between Philip of Macedon and the general of the Carthaginian and Libyan army, which so well shows how the original identity of nature-deities may be forgotten in their different local shapes, so that the same divinity may come twice or even three times over in as many national names and forms. Herakles and Apollo stand in company with the personal Sun, and as well as the personal Moon there is to be seen the Carthaginian goddess, whom there is good reason to look on as herself wholly or partly of lunar nature. This is the list of deities invoked: "Before Zeus and Hera and Apollo; before the goddess of the Carthaginians (δαίμονος Καρχηδονίων) and Herakles and Iolaos; before Ares, Triton, Poseidon; before the gods who fought with the armies, and Sun and Moon and Earth; before the rivers and meadows and waters; before all the gods who rule Macedonia and the rest of Greece; before all the gods who were at the war, they who have presided over this oath." When Lucian visited the famous temple of Hierapolis in Syria, he saw the images of the other gods, "but only of the Sun and Moon they show no images." And when he asked why, they told him that the forms of other gods were not seen by all, but Sun and Moon are altogether clear, and all men see them. In Egyptian theology, not to discuss other divine beings to whom a lunar nature has been ascribed, it is at least certain that Aah is the Moon in absolute personal divinity. In Aryan theology, the personal Moon stands as Selēnē beside the more anthropomorphic forms of Hekatē and Artemis, as Luna beside the less understood Lucina, and Diana with her borrowed attributes, while our Teutonic forefathers were content with his plain name of Moon. As for lunar survivals in the higher religions, they are much like the solar Monotheist as he is, the Moslem still claps his hands at sight of

1 Deuteron. xvii. 3; Polyb. vii. 9; see Movers, 'Phönizier,' pp. 159, 536, 605. 2 Lucian de Syria Dea, iv. 34.

3 Wilkinson, Ancient Egyptians,' vol. iv. p. 239, vol. v. p. 5. Bunsen, 'Egypt,' vol. iv. See Plutarch. Is. et Osir.

the new moon, and says a prayer. In Europe in the 15th century it was matter of complaint that some still adored the new moon with bended knee, or hood or hat removed, and to this day we may still see a hat raised to her, half in conservatism and half in jest. It is with reference to silver as the lunar metal, that money is turned when the act of adoration is performed, while practical peasant wit dwells on the ill-luck of having no piece of silver when the new moon is first seen.

Thus, in tracing the development of Nature-Worship, it appears that though Fire, Air, Earth, and Water are not yet among the lower races systematized into a quaternion of elements, their adoration, with that of Sun and Moon, shows already arising in primitive culture the familiar types of those great divinities, who received their further development in the higher Polytheism.

Akerblad, 'Lettre à Italinsky.'

Burton, Central Afr.' vol. ii. p. 346.

Mungo Park, Travels,' in Pinkerton,' vol. xvi. p. 875.

Grimm, 'D. M.' pp. 29, 667; Brand, vol. iii. p. 146; Forbes Leslie, Early

Races of Scotland,' vol. i. p. 136.

CHAPTER XVII.

ANIMISM (continued).

Polytheism comprises a class of Great Deities, ruling the course of Nature and the life of Man-Childbirth-god-Agriculture-god-War-god-God of the Dead -First Man as Divine Ancestor-Dualism; its rudimentary and unethical nature among low races; its development through the course of culture— Good and Evil Deity-Doctrine of Divine Supremacy, distinct from, while tending towards, the doctrine of Monotheism-Idea of Supreme Deity evolved in various forms among the lower races; its place as completion of the Polytheistic system and outcome of the Animistic philosophy; its continuance and development among higher nations-General survey of Animism as a Philosophy of Religion-Recapitulation of the heory advanced as to its development through successive stages of culture; its primary phases best represented among the lower races, while survivals of these among the higher races mark the transition from savage through barbaric to civilized faiths-Transition of Animism in the History of Religion; its earlier and later stages as a Philosophy of the Universe; its later stages as the principle of a Moral Institution.

POLYTHEISM acknowledges, beside great fetish-deities like Heaven and Earth, Sun and Moon, another class of great gods whose importance lies not in visible presence, but in the performance of certain great offices in the course of Nature and the life of Man. The lower races can furnish themselves with such deities, either by giving the recognised gods special duties to perform, or by attributing these functions to beings invented in divine personality for the purpose. The creation of such divinities is however carried to a much greater extent in the complex systems of the higher polytheism. For a compact group of examples showing to what different ideas men will resort for a deity to answer a special end, let us take the deity presiding over Childbirth. In the West Indies, a special divinity occupied with this function took rank as one of the