Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/136

 Ii8 Reviews.

from a profound and prolonged study of the religion, calendar, and cosmogony of the ancient Mexicans, a new solution of the problems with which she had been confronted presented itself to her in the astronomical vision. The plurality of the gods, the mystical ceremonial, the curious social organisation with its seven powers ; in fact, everything connected with that ancient civilisation was now seen to have been based upon the old worship of the polar star and the Ursa major. Its circumvolutions round a fixed centre gave a satisfactory explanation of the Swastika, found as profusely on old Mexican and Central American sculptures and drawings as almost everywhere in the old world. This pole-star worship is then traced back to Asia through China, Persia, Assyria, Babylonia, Phoenicia, even to Egypt, and then to Europe. The author finds everywhere proofs for a deep-seated worship of the pole-star and the circumvolution of the Ursa major constellation, which produced the symbolism of the numerical value and basis of one, four, seven, and twelve. Mrs. Nuttall discusses the question as to whether all these systems point to one centre whence they radiated and from which they were carried from place to place; and furthermore the relation in which American — notably Mexican — civilisation stood to Asiatic. She is inclined to believe that the Phoenicians played a decisive role in the distribution of these astronomical conceptions, and that America owes to these Mediterranean seafarers its civilisation and its inhabitants. It is a bold conclusion, but the enormous mass of materials collected by Mrs. Nuttall and the close comparisons instituted by her, resting on the best available authorities, make her book a valuable con- tribution to the history of civilisation. The weakness of such investigations lies firstly in the undue weight given to apparent analogies, which, when examined in their respective historical developments, prove to have sprung from totally different origins ; and secondly in the generalisation of the results obtained by such comparisons. Too little is granted to human ingenuity, and too much stress is laid on one single source of influence upon primitive man and his more advanced successors.

It is not possible to reduce the whole mass of ancient faith and custom to one single set of ideas ; one, moreover, which is of a very complicated nature. Extensive astronomical observations are the result of leisure and of an advanced intellectual develop- ment. In a more primitive stage, simple observations of changes