Feb. 5, 1880] 



NATURE 



333 



;o much time, labour, and ingenuity had not been more usefully 

 employed ! 



MiCROscoric Structure of Scottish Rocks. — Students 

 of petrography may be interested to know that Mr. Bryson, of 

 Edinburgh, has prepared for sale a series of sections of typical 

 Scottish recks, which have been selected for him by Prof. 

 Geikie. They illustrate some of the most characteristic aqueous, 

 igneous, and metamorphic rocks of Scotland. They are thirty 

 in number. 



MYTHOLOGIC PHILOSOPHY^ 

 II. 

 J?.l/X. — The Shoshoni philosopher believes the domed firma- 

 ment to be ice, and surely it is the very colour 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 

 Shoshoni philosopher actually sees the serpent of the storm in 

 the rainbow of many colours. 



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 en the cliffs of Arizona. In winter Muingwa crushes 

 the ice of the lakes of the heaven*, and scatters it over the earth, 

 when 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 

 thunderbolts, and the rains descend to irrigate the earth. 



The philosopher of civilisation expounds to us the methods 

 by which the waters are evaporated from the land and the sur- 

 face of the sea, and carried away by the winds and gathered into 

 clouds, to be discharged again upon the earth, keeping up forever 

 that wonderful circulation of water from the heavens to the earth 

 and from the earth to the heavens, that orderly succession of 

 events in which the waters travel by river, by sea, and by cloud. 



Migration of Birds. — The Algonkin philosopher explains the 

 migration of birds by relating the myth of the combat between 

 Ka-bi-no-ke and Shingapis, the prototype or progenitor of the 

 water-hen, one of their animal gods. A fierce battle raged 

 between Ka-bi-no-ke and Shingapis, but the latter could not be 

 conquered. 



All the birds were driven from the land but Shingapis, and 

 then was it established that, whenever in the future Wintermaker 

 sh juld come with his cold winds, fierce snows, and frozen 

 waters, all the birds should leave for the south except Shingapis 

 and his friends. So the birds that spend their winters north are 

 called by the Algonkin philosophers " the friends of Shingapis." 



In contrast to this explanation of the flight of birds may be 

 placed the explanation of the modern evolutionist, who says that 

 the birds migrate in quest of abundance of food and a genial 

 climate, guided by an instinct of migration which is a cumulation 

 of inherited memories. 



Diversity of Languages. — The Kaibabit philosopher accounts 

 for the diversity of languages in this manner : Si-chom-pa 

 Ma-so-its, the grandmother goddess of the Sea, brought up man- 

 kind from beneath the waves in a sack, which she delivered to 

 the Shinau-av brothers, the great wolf-gods of his mythology, 

 and told them to carry it from the shores of the sea to the 

 Kaibab Plateau, and there to open it, but they were by no means 

 to open the package e.e their arrival, lest some great disaster 

 should befall. 



The curiosity of the younger Shinau-av overcame him, and 

 he untied the sack and the people swarmed out, but the elder 

 Shinau-av, the wiser god, ran back and closed the sack while 

 yet not all the people had escaped, and they carried the sack 

 with its remaining contents to the plateau and there opened it. 



Those that remained in the sack found a beautiful land, a 

 great plateau covered with mighty forests, through which elk, 

 <leer, and antelopes roamed in abundance, and many mountain 

 sheep were found on the bordering crags ; pive, the nuts of the 

 edible pine, they found on the foot-hills, and use, the fruit of the 



1 From Vice-Presidential Address of Pn f. J. \V. Powell, of Washington, 

 Vice-President Section B, American Association for the Advancement of 

 Science, Saratoga Meeting, August, 1879. tont.nued from p. 314. 



Yucca, in sunny glades, and nant, the meschal crowns, for their 

 feasts, and chuar, the cactus-apple, from which to make their 

 wine ; reeds grew about the lakes for their arrow -shafts ; the 

 rocks were full of flints for their barbs and knives, and away- 

 down in the canon they found a pipestone quarry, and on the 

 hills they found arrarumpive, their tobacco. 



Oh ! it was a beautiful land that was given to these, the 

 favourites of the gods. The descendants of these people are the 

 present Kaibabits of Northern Arizona. Those who escaped by 

 the way, through the wicked curiosity of the younger Shinau-av, 

 scattered over the country and became Navahoes, Moquis, Sioux, 

 Comanches, Spaniards, Americans — poor, sorry fragments of 

 people, without the original language of the gods, and only able 

 to talk in imperfect jargons. 



The Hebrew philosopher tells us that on the plains of Shinar 

 the people of the world were gathered to build a city and erect 

 a tower, the summit of which should reach above the waves of 

 any flood Jehovah might send. But their tongues were confused, 

 as a punishment for their impiety. 



The philosopher of science tell us that mankind was widely 

 scattered over the earth anterior to the development of articulate 

 speech, that the languages of which we are cognisant sprang 

 from innumerable centres as each little tribe developed its own 

 language, and that in the study of any language an orderly suc- 

 cession of events may be discovered in its evolution from a few 

 holophrastic locutions to a complex language, with a multiplicity 

 of words and an elaborate grammatic structure, by the differen- 

 tiation of the parts of speech and the integration of the sentence. 



Mythologic Philosophy has Four Stages. — Mythologic philoso- 

 phy is the subject with which we deal. Its method, as stated in 

 general terms, is this : All phenomena of the outer objective 

 world are interpreted by comparison with those of the inner 

 subjective world. Whatever happens, some one does it. That 

 some one has a will, and works as he wills. The basis of the 

 philosophy is personality. The persons who do the things we 

 observe in the phenomena of the universe, are the gods of 

 mythology — //;;■ cosmos is a pantheon. Under this system, what- 

 ever may be the phenomena observed, the philosopher asks, 

 "Who does it? and why?'' and the answer comes, "A god 

 with his design." The winds blow and the interrogatory is 

 answered, " /Eolus frees them from the cave to speed the ship of 

 a friend, or destroy the vessel of a foe." 



The actors in mythologic philosophy are gods. In the 

 character of these gods four stages of philosophy may be dis- 

 covered. In the lowest and earliest stage everything has life, 

 evetything is endowed with personality, will, and design ; 

 animals are endowed with all the wonderful attributes of man- 

 kind ; all inanimate objects are believed to be animate ; trees 

 think and speak ; stones have loves and hates ; hills and moun- 

 tain--, iprings and rivers, and all the bright stars have life. 

 Everything discovered objectively by the senses is looked upon 

 subjectively by the philosopher and endowed with all the 

 attributes supposed to be inherent in himself. In this stage of 

 philosophy everything is a god. Let us call it hecastotheism. In 

 the second stage men no longer attribute life indiscriminately to 

 inanimate things, but the same powers and attributes recognised 

 by subjective vision in man are attributed to the animals by 

 which he is surrounded. No line of demarcation is drawn 

 between man and beast ; all are great beings endowed with 

 wonderful attributes. Let us call this stage zoothcism, when 

 men worship beats. All the phenomena of nature are the 

 doings of these animal gods; all the facts of nature, all the 

 phenomena of the known universe, all the institutions of humanity 

 known to the philosophers of this stage, are accounted for in the 

 mythologic history of these zoomorphic gods. 



In the third stage a wide gulf is placed between man and the 

 lower animals. The animal gods are dethroned, and the powers 

 and phenomena of nature are personified and deified. Let us 

 call this stage physitheism. The gods are strictly anthropo- 

 morphic, having the form as well a^ the mental, moral, and 

 social attributes of men. Thus we have a god of the sun, a god 

 of the mi ion, a god of the air, a god of dawn, and a deity of the 

 night. In the fourth stage, mental, moral, and social character- 

 istics are personified and deified. Thus we have a god of war, 

 a god of revelry, a god of plenty, and like 

 personages who preside over the institutions ami occupations of 

 mankind. Let us call this psychothcisiu. With the mental, 

 moral, and social characteristics in these gods are associated the 

 powers of nature, ami they differ from nature gods, chiefly in 

 that they have more distinct psychic characteristics, r'sychotheism 



