\90 



* KNOWLEDGE 



[September 1, 1886. 



them, and so widespread that they might well be exouied 

 for regarding it m universal. The idea that honour had 

 thus been rendered to Deity had arisen when as yefc the 

 idea of Deity was imperfect ; and there was certainly no 

 intentional insult to Deity in the continued association of 

 these time-worn yet venerable ideas with the idea of the 

 Infinite, the Unknown, the Unknowable Power, which lies 

 beyond the .sun iu his might, beyond all the glories, seen 

 and unseen, of the infinite universe, and behind its most 

 awfal mysteries. 



Whatever opinion we may form as to the reasonableness, 

 or (with our knowledge) as to the propriety, of the ideas 

 here eonsiilered, there can be no question as to the actual 

 fact that in all sun-worshipping religions, and in all reli- 

 gions derived from them or retaining their ceremonial, these 

 ideas prevailed. It is obvious, indeed, that men in those 

 days would feel that they were wanting in respect if they 

 (lid not associate with their sun-god the same idea of the 

 obeisance of nature which they regarded as appropriate to 

 ordinary kings and heroes. As Dr. Geikie correctly 

 remarks in his " Life of Christ " — though he strangely foils 

 to note the significance of the fact — " It was universally 

 believed that extraordinary events, especially the birth and 

 death of great men, were heralded by appearances of stars, 

 and still more of comets, or by conjunctions of the heavenly 

 bodies." A preposterous belief truly ; but not so at the 

 time when it was thus universally accepted. We perceive 

 the folly of it ; thei/ regarded it as too natural to be ques- 

 tioned : some, of whom Drs. Farrar and Geikie may be 

 regarded as tyjaes, can at one and the same time perceive the 

 folly of the belief, and accept the universality of this false 

 belief as evidence for a recorded event. 



Even the Egyptians and Babylonians, far as they were 

 from perceiving the inherent absurdity of sun-worship, were 

 too well acquainted with astronomical laws to fall into the 

 mistake of imagining casual stars as heralds of great events. 

 They knew that known stars heralded definite astronomical 

 events. The heliacal rising of some known star in any 

 given era — lasting several hundred years — marked for them 

 the beginning of the annual career of their sun-god. The 

 appearance of this star in the east before sunrise would be 

 the manifestation of the birth of the sun of the year. 

 Accustomed, as we find they were, to recognise a slow and 

 gradual change in the season of the heliacal risings of the 

 stars, they might well recognise the beginning of some new 

 and fortunate era when first some conspicuous star rose 

 heliacally at the birth of the new year. But in any case 

 the annual heliacal rising of the star which showed that the 

 new year had begun would be welcomed with rejoicings. 

 Those who " blew up the trumpet in the new moon " would 

 welcome still more solemnly the new sun. The ruler of the 

 year was naturally held in higher honour than the ruler of 

 the month. When the priests, who were also the astrono- 

 mers or magi, announced that they had seen the star of the 

 sun-god in the east (that is, rising heliacally), all sorts and 

 conditions of men would be exjiected to ofter praises to the 

 new-born monarch of the year. Sacrifices and burnt 

 offerings, with perfumes and sweet savours, would be oflered 

 by the priests. No other annual observance would appear 

 so sacred except that belonging to the time when the sun, 

 thus born weak and lowly, in the depressed part of the 

 zodiac which might be compared to a cave,* should pass 

 to the glorious part of his career. 



* Iu the case of Herakles, this .same part of the zodiac was 

 represented as a stable to be cleansed by the miglit of that solar 

 hero from the gloom and darkne.s3 wliich seem to defile it. This 

 zodiacal task was not associated witli the birth of Herakles. His 

 first achievement was stranglinj; the serpents which represent the 

 clouds of night. Throughout the ancient solar myths we recognise 



Let us, however, see how far the ancient stories of sun- 

 gods agree iu presenting the three features mentioned 

 above. 



{Tu be continued.) 



MR. FROUDE ON GREATER BRITAIN.* 



]\lr. Fronde's sp.^cial purpose in writing 

 "Oceana" we wish to say little here. In 

 truth, the problem with which he under- 

 takes to deal is one of considerable com- 

 jilexity. We doubt whether he or any man 

 can T'eally form an opinion as to the future 

 development cf Oceana, or the best way in 

 which that development may be directed. Our view of his 

 opinions about this diflicult problem may be best expressed 

 perhaps in words of his own— whose application, however, 

 to social .science we consider unsound. " It is in the mar- 

 vellous power in men to go wrong," he says, " that the impos- 

 sibility stands of forming scientific calculations of what men 

 will do before the fact, or scientific explanations of what 

 they have done after the fact." ... In history " the phenomena 

 never repeat themselves. There we ai-e wholly dependent 

 on the record of things said to have happened once, but 

 which never happen or can happen a second time. There 

 no experiment is possible ; we can watch for no recurring 

 foot to test the worth of our conjectures." If ]\Ir. Fronde, 

 whose favourite literature is the literature of ancient Greece, 

 believes that the study of history cannot enable us to con- 

 jecture the probable future of States under conditions seem- 

 ingly resembling those which existed in former times, it 



the intermixing of ideas relating to the sun as god of the day and 

 to the sun as god of the year — Herakles and lole at morn and eve 

 (the time of the birth and death of the day sun), and Herakles 

 strangling the serpents, these stories relate to tlie day, while 

 Herakles going through his twelve zodiacal labours and Herakles 

 conquering the Lern;\;an Hydra (the clouds of winter) are stories 

 belonging to the year. The same difficulty is found, and the same 

 explanation presents itself, in the story of Hamson (Shemshin, from 

 the older Shamash, the sun), which is unmistakably a solar myth ; 

 but most of the story of the Semitic solar hero relates to the sun as 

 ruler of the year. Dalilah, ''the languishing one," represents 

 winter. The hero's hair, as in all sun stories, represents the sun's 

 rays. The Philistines are the clouds, which darken (or blind) the 

 sun when his rays have baen cut off in winter. The destruction of 

 the Philistines at the time of their celebration in honour of the fish 

 god, Dagon (the winter deity supposed to have triumphed over the 

 sun as god of summer), represents the triumph of the sun when, at 

 spring, he returns to the glorious p.art of his course, over the clouds 

 of winter, by which, till then, he had been, as it were, imprisoned. 

 Yet many of the triumphs of Samson over the Philistines obviously 

 represent the triumph of the sun of day over the gloom of night. 

 The Gaza story combines both ideas. It represents tlie triumph of 

 the midsummer sun, manifesting its power when, as yet, the 

 middle of the night is scarcely past. All the absurdities of 

 the story of Samson, considered as relating to a ruler or judge 

 in Israel, disappear, and the interest it derive? from its venerable 

 antiquity is developed, when it is thus read as a very ancient 

 adaptation — scarcely altered in the adapting — of a far more ancient 

 myth. 



In the same way the story of Jonah loses its absurdity when we 

 recognise Jonah as identical with the Cannes of the Chaldeans, the 

 winter god or hero, issuing from the great fish which represented the 

 gloom and cold of winter. So reading the strange old storj-, we 

 need no longer be concerned to inquire what sort of a fish that may 

 have been which could swallow a man whole, and in whose interior 

 a man might remain alive three days and three nights. Indeed, 

 many occasions for somewhat degrading attempts to reconcile the 

 impossible and absurd witli known facts might be avoided if men 

 would be content to take the stories and myths of ancient days for 

 what they obviously are, instead of insisting on believing in them as 

 records of historical events. 



* "Oceana; or, England and her Colonies.'' By James Anthony 

 Froude. London : Ijongmans & Co. 



