MYTHOLOGIC PHILOSOPHY. 801 



different rates from east to west about the earth, and that the sun is 

 set in one of these spheres and the moon in another. 



The philosopher of civilization tells us that the sun is an incandes- 

 cent globe, one of the millions afloat in space. About this globe the 

 planets revolve, and the sun and planets and moons were formed from 

 nebulous matter by the gradual segregation of their particles con- 

 trolled by the laws of gravity, motion, and affinity. The sun, travel- 

 ing by an appointed way across the heavens with the never-ending 

 succession of day and night, and the ever-recurring train of seasons, is 

 one of the subjects of every philosophy. Among all peoples, in all 

 times, there is an explanation of these phenomena, but in the lowest 

 stage, way down in savagery, how few the facts discerned, how vague 

 the discriminations made, how superficial the resemblances by which 

 the phenomena are classified ! In this stage of culture, all the daily 

 and monthly and yearly phenomena which come as the direct result of 

 the movements of the heavenly bodies are interpreted as the doings of 

 some one some god acts. In civilization the philosopher presents us 

 the science of astronomy with all its accumulated facts of magnitude, 

 and weights, and orbits, and distances, and velocities with all the 

 nice discriminations of absolute, relative, and apparent motions ; and 

 all these facts he is endeavoring to classify in homologic categories, 

 and the evolutions and revolutions of the heavenly bodies are ex- 

 plained as an orderly succession of events. 



Bain. The Shoshone philosopher believes the domed firmament to 

 be ice, and surely it is the very color of ice, and he believes further 

 that a monster serpent-god coils his huge back to the firmament and 

 with his scales abrades its face and causes the ice-dust to fall upon the 

 earth. In the winter-time it falls as snow, but in the summer-time it 

 melts and falls as rain, and the Shoshone philosopher actually sees the 

 serpent of the storm in the rainbow of many colors. 



The Oraibi philosopher who lives in a pueblo is acquainted with 

 architecture, and so his world is seven-storied. There is a world below 

 and five worlds above this one. Muingwa, the rain-god who lives in 

 the world immediately above, dips his great brush made of feathers of 

 the birds of the heavens into the lakes of the skies and sprinkles the 

 earth with refreshing rain for the irrigation of the crops tilled by these 

 curious Indians who live on the cliffs of Arizona. In winter, Munin- 

 gwa crushes the ice of the lakes of the heavens and scatters it over the 

 earth, and we have a snow-fall. 



The Hindoo philosopher says that the lightning-bearded Indra 

 breaks the vessels that hold the waters of the skies with his thunder- 

 bolts, and the rains descend to irrigate the earth. 



The philosopher of civilization expounds to us the methods by 

 which the waters are evaporated from the land and the surface of the 

 sea, and carried away by the winds, and gathered into clouds to be 

 discharged again upon the earth, keeping up for ever that wonderful 



VOL. XT. 51 



