THE SEASON OF THE YEAR. 237 



at least man's pre-human ancestors go back far into the Tertiary 

 period. Only later would men begin to note that some thirteen 

 moons, and the recurrence of a food stuff, concurred with a particular 

 solar season. 



Indeed, if one comes to think of it, how much even now do any 

 of us, save the most scientific, mean by the year, beyond the visible 

 change of summer and winter? What we are thinking of is the 

 leafless trees, the ice and snow, the green grass in spring, the flowers 

 and warm days in summer, not the abstract astronomical fact of the 

 earth's revolution round the sun, or the due succession of the signs 

 of the zodiac. It is that visible organic year that must have counted 

 most with man from the first; though no doubt its meaning and 

 reality are much more vividly present since the coming on of the 

 Glacial epoch, and the more so in proportion as we live nearer to the 

 north or south pole; while at the equator the year is to the last a 

 much more inconspicuous period — a largely artificial mode of reck- 

 oning. 



Still, from the very first, there was one element of diversity in 

 the year which must have struck all men, in the temperate and frigid 

 zones at least, perhaps even in a certain way in the tropics. I mean, 

 the varying length of the day, always perceptible in the frigid and 

 temperate zones; for as soon as men in these regions began to think 

 and to observe at all, they must have noticed that the days increased 

 in their summer and lessened in their winter; and they must have 

 learned to correlate this waxing and waning of the day with the 

 appearance or abundance of certain fruits, seeds, birds, fishes, game, 

 roots and other food stuffs. It is at least certain that all the world 

 over men do now celebrate the solstices and the equinoxes as special 

 feasts; and the close similarity in most such celebrations leads one 

 to suspect that the custom has been handed down from the very 

 remote time when the human family was still a single continuous 

 body. 



In the tropics, it is true, the days vary so little that this differ- 

 ence in itself is not likely to have struck primaeval man. But there, 

 another point would come in — the annual movement of the sun 

 overhead from south to north and vice versa; and though this would 

 be less directly important to human life than in temperate regions, 

 it would still be indirectly important. It would bring the rain with 

 it. In Europe, of course, and in temperate America, we can see at 

 once that the return of the sun northward must always have meant 

 spring, the increase of food stuffs, the promise of corn or maize, the 

 suggestion of harvest; and we can therefore understand why the 

 midwinter feast, when the sun after his long journey south begins 

 to move visibly north again, should have been both in pagan and 



