3Q 



NA TURE 



[Nov. 13, 1S79 



Mr. Conway passes in review the m>ths which spring 

 from lightning, as the blasting-eye of Siva, the dart of 

 Rudra, the spear of Odin, and the sword of St. George ; 

 and treats of the typhoon caused by the passing of the 

 bob-tailed dragon and the various embodiments of whirl- 

 wind and waterspout, of sand-cloud and flood. He next 

 proceeds to deal with the animal demons ; and here, 

 whilst we find much amusing folk-lore, we are surprised 

 that he has not worked out that degradation of deities to 

 which he himself alludes, and which might here be so 

 effectively produced. Thus, although we have a sugges- 

 tion of association between the hare and the moon, due 

 probably to the resemblance of their Sanskrit names, and 

 a statement that the lion is a symbol of majesty and of 

 the sun in his glory reached in the zodiacal Leo, we have 

 no hint of the extremely important change from the wor- 

 ship of the bull to that of the lamb due to the precession 

 of the equinox, which brought a different sign for adora- 

 tion at the vernal equinox, and which caused, in all 

 probability, the substitution of the Pascal Lamb for the 

 worship of Apis ; this feast of the transit having its 

 remembrance at the present day in the hot cross bun. 

 Similarly we have no explanation of the association of 

 the ass, the cock, and the goat with phallic ritual, though 

 their association with the most holy rites of that creed 

 could not fail to have diabolised them in the eyes of 

 adherents to succeeding faiths. The Pleiades, the Suc- 

 coth Benoth of the Chaldeans, were represented by a 

 hen gathering her chickens under her wings ; and we are 

 surprised that Mr. Conway, who rarely loses an opportu- 

 nity for startling the orthodox, has not here found a 

 parallel to Christ's lament over Jerusalem. He has an 

 interesting notice of the wehr-wolf, which was seemingly 

 suggested by Mr. Fiske's excellent little work, " Myths 

 and Myth-Makers," a volume to which, if we mistake not, 

 Mr. Conway is much indebted. The animal kingdom 

 thus furnished its quota of demons, and we are shown 

 how every force which could be exerted injuriously in 

 claw, fang, sting, or hoof, was pressed into the service of 

 evil. 



Hostile races were demonised of old, just as is the 

 kidnapping white man of to-day amongst the black races 

 of Africa. The varying physique of contending nations 

 may have originated the myths of giants and dwarfs. A 

 small people possessed of superior intellectual powers 

 would scarcely fail to impress their huger opponents ; 

 though we must not lose sight of the gigantic features 

 which are so frequently associated with solar heroes, and 

 which may, perhaps, suggest a more satisfactory expla- 

 nation. With our recent experience of famine in India, 

 we shall have no difficulty in understanding the dread in 

 which its embodiment was held, nor the adoration of the 

 Hindu for the rain-giving Indra. Yet Mr. Conway justly 

 laments that this adoration has taken the form of temple 

 building throughout the land, for the offering of a worship 

 impotent to arrest the famine demon, whose course might 

 have been stayed had the expenditure thus lavished been 

 devoted to observatories — since modern science has 

 pointed out the relation existing between sun-spots and 

 years of scarcity. He at the same time reminds us that 

 we are more intent upon scaring our own people with 

 the hell and devils which we have inherited from our 

 pagan forefathers, than in endeavouring'to remedy the 



demoniacal vice, infamy, and misery by which we are 

 surrounded. We cannot follow Mr. Conway through his 

 long and interesting catalogue df the other natural 

 features which have been demonised — the mountain steep, 

 the gloomy night, the mysteries of disease and of death — 

 this he has worked out with great care, and a resume of 

 these sections would fail to afford an idea of their 

 interest. These natural obstacles personified and demon- 

 ised by man having played their part, shrunk, as he 

 advanced in civilisation, from their terrible proportions, 

 to make way for more general forms expressing com- 

 paratively abstract conceptions of physical evil. 



On the one hand stood moral man, on the other un- 

 moral nature. Man had by this time discovered that 

 moral order in nature was represented solely by his own 

 power ; the good gods were now respected only as incar- 

 nate in men, whilst the active powers of evil remained 

 hateful and hurtful to man, each becoming more purely a 

 demon, and passing on to become a devil. Man in his 

 growing culture gave a more symbolic cast to those repre- 

 sentations, which had hitherto been purely naturalistic, 

 and those semi-metaphysical conceptions were evolved 

 which Mr. Conway classes under the general heading of 

 dragon. In this class come the chimasra and sphinx, 

 huge worm and serpent, Behemoth and Leviathan. 

 Finally, the terrible conclusion that evil is a positive and 

 imperishable principle in the universe — the notion of 

 remorseless fate — of arbitrary will to which every human 

 agony is attributable, detached from universal organic 

 necessity, gave birth to the stupendous conception of 

 embodied abstract evil in the person of the devil. 



Only those who have attempted an investigation similar 

 to the present one of Mr. Conway can appreciate the 

 patient labour incident to the collection of widely-scattered 

 materials and the mass of varied reading necessary to fit 

 the author for his task, and we are happy to bear witness 

 to the evidences of careful preparation with which these 

 volumes abound. It is to be regretted that his excellent 

 matter is frequently enveloped in rhetorical embellish- 

 ments which render the comprehension of his meaning 

 difficult. Mr. Conway's style of writing is charac- 

 terised by recapitulation, want of concentration, and a 

 constant parenthetical introduction of matter only col- 

 laterally related to the subject in hand, which render 

 parts of his book far from easy reading. His explana- 

 tions of the formation of legendary characters and of 

 myths appear to us at times somewhat strained, and he 

 leans unduly upon the metaphysical aspect of the ques- 

 tion to the exclusion of those archaeological and astrono- 

 mical explanations which would have so greatly enhanced 

 the value of his work. He has indeed dealt with phases 

 of folk-lore, and has shown how physical and material 

 wants were crystallised as entities, but he has, in our 

 opinion, failed to make out, as he might have done, the 

 genealogy of the infernal powers, and to cite those 

 explanations which a knowledge of the astronomy of the 

 ancients so constantly affords. In illustration of our 

 remark, we may instance his treatment of one of the 

 most important m>ths, that of Bel and the Dragon. He 

 mentions that Bel is lord of the surface of the earth, 

 including the atmosphere, and quotes long translations 

 from tablets, giving accounts of the conflict as it w 

 known to the Babylonians. He compares Bel's sword 



