692 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



seeming identity in the images are therefore reduced to a small 

 number of comparisons. They are exceptional cases, in which the 

 aspect of the asterism may have had something to do with the 

 suggestion of similar images. Aside from this there is nothing 

 in common : the figures set in the sky upon the constellations 

 were peculiar to each people ; they were arbitrary creations, and 

 that proves that the outlines formed by the stars did not directly 

 suggest either personages or animals by which the imagination 

 was struck. Apart from a few geometrical figures a quadrilat- 

 eral, a triangle, or a cross the configurations of the stars pre- 

 sented no relations with the objects selected to designate them. 

 We are dealing, then, with a fanciful creation by each people, in 

 which each one exhibited the peculiar tendencies of its imagina- 

 tion and genius. 



This circumstance renders the nomenclature in question still 

 more remarkable, since there is nothing or hardly anything in the 

 aspect of the celestial tableau to provoke the construction of it. 

 We return to the question with which we started : By what cause 

 has a nomenclature so strange, unique in its kind, possessed, in a 

 seemingly inevitable way, all the peoples who have looked into the 

 sky ? For we might predict, from the generality of the method, 

 that if some new people, having everything to begin again, should 

 start to construct its system of knowledge, it would again make a 

 pictured sphere for the stars. I will not pretend to answer a 

 question of scientific archseology that has not been sounded, not 

 even outlined, till now. If I suggest a solution, it is simply as an 

 essay and hint, leaving it to professional students of folk-lore to 

 enlighten us more fully. It sometimes seems to me that we might 

 draw some indications of a comparison between the manner in 

 which places in hitherto uninhabited countries are named and 

 the nomenclature of the stars. 



When immigrants arrive in countries without inhabitants and 

 unmapped, the first names given to the natural landmarks the 

 rivers, hills, clumps of trees, and rocks are descriptive ones. 

 These names often survive after the first arrivals have been dis- 

 persed and replaced by other peoples ; and we know how ethnog- 

 raphers find, in geographical appellations, the track, the limits, 

 and the language of the ancient inhabitants of a country. In 

 such primary nomenclature, they say, for instance, the blue water, 

 the green mountain, the brown rock, the cedar wood, the steep 

 cliff, etc. It was the natural course, which has been followed 

 everywhere. Why has the human mind taken a wholly differ- 

 ent course for the sky ? Was it not because the multiplicity of 

 objects and their great resemblance had exhausted the series 

 of descriptive terms ? Multiplicity often confuses the judgment ; 

 for it is known that the view of the sky conveys the impression 



