oses_. It was once a man or a woman, and has been changed to
bird or beast by a god or a magician. Men, again, have originally been
beasts, in his philosophy, and are descended from wolves, frogs, or
serpents, or monkeys. The heavenly bodies are traced to precisely the
same sort of origin; and hence, we conclude, come their strange animal
names, and the strange myths about them which appear in all ancient
poetry. These names, in turn, have curiously affected human beliefs.
Astrology is based on the opinion that a man's character and fate are
determined by the stars under which he is born. And the nature of
these stars is deduced from their names, so that the bear should have
been found in the horoscope of Dr. Johnson. When Giordano Bruno wrote
his satire against religion, the famous 'Spaccio della bestia
trionfante,' he proposed to banish not only the gods but the beasts
from heaven. He would call the stars, not the _Bear_, or the _Swan_,
or the _Pleiades_, but Truth, Mercy, Justice, and so forth, that men
might be born, not under bestial, but moral influences. But the beasts
have had too long possession of the stars to be easily dislodged, and
the tenure of the _Bear_ and the _Swan_ will probably last as long as
there is a science of Astronomy. Their names are not likely again to
delude a philosopher into the opinion of Aristotle that the stars are
animated.

This argument had been worked out to the writer's satisfaction when he
chanced to light on Mr. Max Mueller's explanation of the name of the
_Great Bear_. We have explained that name as only one out of
countless similar appellations which men of every race give to the
stars. These names, again, we have accounted for as the result of
savage philosophy, which takes no great distinction between man and
the things in the world, and looks on stars, beasts, birds, fishes,
flowers, and trees as men and women in disguise. Mr. Mueller's theory
is based on philological considerations. He thinks that the name of
the _Great Bear_ is the result of a mistake as to the meaning of
words. There was in Sanskrit, he says,[155] a root _ark_, or _arch_,
meaning 'to be bright.' She-stars are called _riksha_, that is, bright
ones, in the Veda. 'The constellations here called the Rikshas, in the
sense of the "bright ones," would be homonymous in Sanskrit with the
Bears. Remember also that, apparently without rhyme or reason, the
same constellation is called by Greeks and Romans the Bear..