20 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



suit not only personal names of honor and divine names, but also official 

 titles. On reading that the Mexicans distinguished Cortes as " the ofip- 

 spring of the Sun," that the Chibchas called the Spaniards in general 

 " children of the Sun," and that in Tlascala Alvarado was named by 

 the people " Sun " — on reading that " Child of the Sun " was the com- 

 plimentary name often given to any one particularly clever in Peru, 

 where the Incas, regarded as descendants of the Sun, successively en- 

 joyed a title hence derived — we are enabled to understand how " Son 

 of the Sun " came to be a title borne by the successive Egyptian kings, 

 which was joined with proper names individually distinctive of them. 

 And remembering how in Egypt, along with elaborate ancestor-worship, 

 there went worship of living kings, we shall have no difficulty in see- 

 ing that as the kings, besides the solar title borne in common by them, 

 took from the same original such special titles as "the Sun becoming 

 victorious," "the Sun orderer of Creation," etc., there naturally result- 

 ed, among their gods arising by apotheosis, solar titles similarly special- 

 ized; as "the Cause of Heat," "the Author of Light," "the Power of 

 the Sun," " the Vivifying Cause," " the Sun in the Firmament," and 

 " the Sun in his Resting-place." 



Given, then, the metaphorically-descriptive name and we have the 

 germ from which grew up these primitive titles of honor; which, 

 at first individual titles, become in some cases titles attaching to the 

 offices filled. 



To say that the words which in various languages are the equiva- 

 lents of our word " God," are originally descriptive words, will be a 

 startling proposition to those who, unfamiliar with the facts, credit the 

 savage with thoughts like our own ; and will be a repugnant proposi- 

 tion to those who, knowing something of the facts, yet persist in as- 

 serting that the conception of a universal creative power was possessed 

 by man from the beginning. But whoever studies the evidence without 

 bias will find proof that the general word for deity was at first simply 

 a word expressive of sujDeriority. Among the Feejeeans the name is ap- 

 plicable to anything great or marvelous ; among the Malagasy to what- 

 ever is new, useful, or extraordinary ; among the Toda^ to everything 

 mysterious — so that, as Marshall says, "it is truly an adjective noun of 

 eminence." Applied alike to animate and inanimate things, as indicat- 

 ing some quality above the common, the word is in this sense applied 

 to human beings, both living and dead ; but as the dead are supposed 

 to have acquired mysterious powers of doing good and evil to the liv- 

 ing, the word comes to be more especially applicable to them. Though 

 ghost and god have with us widely-distinguished meanings, yet they 

 are originally equivalent words ; or rather, originally, there is but one 

 word for the supernatural being. Besides being shown this by mis- 

 sionaries who have found no native word for god which did not also 

 mean ghost, demon, or devil ; besides being shown this by the Greeks 



