any day, unless we are very careful.
So we won't call it 'the sun,' but I will draw a picture of a man
killing a snake; and whenever I do that you will know what I mean.
The sun doesn't look at all like a man killing a snake; so nobody can
possibly know. It will be a little secret between us; and while the
slaves and the children fancy I am quite excited with a grand tale of
a writhing dragon and a wrestling demigod, I shall really MEAN this
delicious little discovery, that there is a round yellow disc up in the
air." One does not need to know much mythology to know that this is a
myth. It is commonly called the Solar Myth.

Quite plainly, of course, the case was just the other way. The god
was never a symbol or hieroglyph representing the sun. The sun was a
hieroglyph representing the god. Primitive man (with whom my friend
Dombey is no doubt well acquainted) went out with his head full of gods
and heroes, because that is the chief use of having a head. Then he saw
the sun in some glorious crisis of the dominance of noon on the distress
of nightfall, and he said, "That is how the face of the god would shine
when he had slain the dragon," or "That is how the whole world would
bleed to westward, if the god were slain at last."

No human being was ever really so unnatural as to worship Nature. No
man, however indulgent (as I am) to corpulency, ever worshipped a man
as round as the sun or a woman as round as the moon. No man, however
attracted to an artistic attenuation, ever really believed that the
Dryad was as lean and stiff as the tree. We human beings have never
worshipped Nature; and indeed, the reason is very simple. It is that all
human beings are superhuman beings. We have printed our own image upon
Nature, as God has printed His image upon us. We have told the enormous
sun to stand still; we have fixed him on our shields, caring no more
for a star than for a starfish. And when there were powers of Nature we
could not for the time control, we have conceived great beings in human
shape controlling them. Jupiter does not mean thunder. Thunder means the
march and victory of Jupiter. Neptune does not mean the sea; the sea is
his, and he made it. In other words, what the savage really said about
the sea was, "Only my fetish Mumbo could raise such mountains out of
mere water." What the savage really said about the sun was, "Only my
great great-grandfather Jumbo could deserve such a blazing crown."

About all these myt