Page:Origin and Growth of Religion (Rhys).djvu/193

Rh there are even now nations, such as the Samoans, that directly attribute rain to the sun. In other words, the sun is the king of the heavens, as poets have so often told us; and even when one does not feel the immediate effect of his power, one supposes his presence behind the clouds that conceal him. The confusion between the sun-god and the sky-god is frequent in mythology, as it would seem to be in nature itself. Once one believes in the existence over our heads of a god in the sky, that is to say, of a man with more than human power, it is easy at one time to fancy there several gods, relations of one another, rivals or enemies, and at another to attribute all atmospheric phenomena to one and the same god, one's good father in the heavens—all that depends on the subjective disposition of man; so the variety of his opinions, and, therefore, of his conceptions, must be understood in relation to epochs and surroundings in which his beliefs have not been reduced to the immutable regularity of dogmas. Such are the views entertained by M. Gaidoz; but how the sun should have been thought a great hunter and warrior, needs no remark; and how a god of this origin should become likewise that of the sea and the nether world, is a form of the question which did not come in M. Gaidoz's way to discuss. It admits, however, of being readily answered in the same spirit as the other forms of it; for the sun is seen to sink to the world beneath the horizon every evening, and to rise thence in the morning, so that he might be said to pass half his time in the lower world. For the inhabitants of