346 
graphs are very frequently constructed upon this principle, 
beginning, of course, with the sign for “ two, twice. - ”* Thus 
ana-essecu (“ God-three-times,” Triune God?) = star + star + 
star. 
4. Purely Mental Reduplication . — And this applied to (1) 
personages, (2) general ideas, and (3) their embodiment in 
tales and legends. Thus, e.y., the one solar power became 
almost infinitely divided, and the story of the sun and the 
dawn is told and retold with innumerable variations. M. Ber- 
gaigne has attempted in the treatment of the Yedic portion of 
this branch of the subject to establish a “law of mythic num- 
bers ”; and whether his particular solution be accepted or not, 
sooner or later a general principle underlying them will, doubt- 
less, be detected. 
20. The Illustration of the Metaphysical through the 
Physical. 
The last principle which I can here notice, and one which 
has been copiously illustrated in the present paper, is the Law 
of the Illustration of the Metaphysical through the Physical ; 
that is to say, that the human mind employed physical pheno- 
mena in working out those ideas which we now call meta- 
physical. This principle must be carefully distinguished from 
the theory of the evolution of the metaphysical from the 
physical, which with it has no affinity. Just as Pindar tells 
that Zeus possessed something which the other gods had 
not,t so man possessed something, — call it x 3 — which the 
other animals had not ; and which showed itself in the capacity 
for entertaining abstract ideas, in language, and in religion. 
There is not the slightest evidence that any other animal pos- 
sesses even the not-yet of any of these capabilities or qualities ; 
and hence the difference between them and man may well 
be said to be in kind and not in degree. But this x pos- 
sessed by man contained the non-yet of metaphysics or “ the 
things which come after physics ”; J and when applied by 
him to the physical world produced purely metaphysical 
ideas, e.g . : — 
* Vide e.g., the following numbers in Prof. Sayce’s Cuneiform Syllabary , 
4a, 16, 17, 39a, 107a, 137, 140, 165, 166, 168, 169, 188, 197, 198, 212a, 281, 
311, 314, 356, 358, 382, 438, 481. 
t Vide Bunsen, God in History, ii. 149 ; Prof. Max Midler, Lectures on 
the Science of Language, ii. 484. 
% 44 The name 4 Metaphysics ’ is a mere title signifying 4 the things which 
follow after physics ’—a title given by Aristotle’s school to a mass of papers 
which they edited after his death,” and which 44 were composed after the 
physical treatises” (Sir Alexander Grant, Aristotle, 160), 
