Rest Days; A Sociological Study 107 



Whether these considerations can with safety be apphed outside 

 the American area is highly doubtful. 



Roscher's exhaustive investigations have conclusively shown 

 that the number seven enjoyed a mystic significance very early in 

 Greek life, being especially prominent in the cults of Apollo 

 and Dionysus."' The learned author believes that the important 

 role of seven is to be found in its use as a divisor of the "light " 

 month of twenty-eight days, this being in turn connected with the 

 mvsterious influence which the moon has been supposed to exert 

 on nature and on human life.^^ He points out further that the 

 old Pythagoreans in their philosophical and mathematical specula- 

 tions appear to have recognized the seven-day period as arising 

 from the quartering of the lunar month. ^- The influence of 

 Babylonian astrological conceptions based on the cult of the seven 

 planets must be certainly attributed to a subsequent period of 

 Greek history. Their introduction only served to reinforce ideas 



Anthropologist, 1894, vii. 168-73; idem, Myths of the Nezc IVorld,^ Phila- 

 delphia, 1896, pp. 83 sqq. A suggestive but highly speculative treatment 

 has been given by W J McGee (" Primitive Numbers," Nineteenth Annual 

 Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 821-52), who believes that 

 the germs of the number-concept starting with the Halves and advancing 

 to that of the Quarters, must be traced back to prehuman conditions. 

 Some students have seen in the much discussed swastika a symbol of the 

 Four Quarters and of quadruplicate division in general (Gushing, 

 " Observations relative to the Origin of the Fylfot or Swastika," American 

 Anthropologist, 1907, n. s., ix. 334-36). Mrs. Zelia Nuttall has sought to 

 apply these considerations to the common explanation of cults of 4 and 7 

 in India, Babylonia and Egypt as ultimately derived from cosmical con- 

 ceptions (" The Fundamental Principles of Old and New World Civiliza- 

 tions," Archaeological and Ethnological Papers of the Peabody Museum, 

 ii. 544 sqq.). The researches of Thomas Wilson have traced the wide 

 diffusion of the swastika in both Asia and Europe. See his elaborate 

 monograph "The Swastika," Annual Report of the U. S. National 

 Museum for 1894, esp. 799-905. 



'" " Fristen," 49; " Sieben- und Xeunzahl," 4-19, 67 sq. 



" " Fristen," 4. 72, sq. : " Hebdomadenlehren," 157 sqq. Cf. supra for 

 criticisms of this theory. 



""Hebdomadenlehren," 31. 



107 



