asses of spirit, the "ancestral" and the "spirit of nature."
From this general body was developed a regular hierarchy of good and
evil spirits, gradually ascending to the conception of one great
creative spirit, or superior deity.

[Illustration: Stonehenge. Looking N.E. from the altar stone
towards the hele stone.]

To these early men, therefore, there was always the problem of
maintaining diplomatic relations with the unseen forces about them,
and for this purpose a primitive priesthood became necessary. The
chieftain would manage the temporal affairs of the tribe, those
spiritual would be relegated to a special body of wise men, or
intermediaries. These men would certainly, from the nature of their
calling, be not so much men of action as men of learning, the
recorders of history and tradition, students of the natural phenomena,
and of all those signs and portents which concerned the good of the
community. One of the earliest facts which impressed itself upon them
must have been the horizon. It was above that horizon that the sun
rose in the morning, and below that horizon that it sank to rest at
night; further, when the sun had set the moon and stars peeped up from
that line, and sank below it, all in due course. These were facts
easily apprehended. The common people even had grasped them, but the
wise men learned more. As the link between man and the spirits of the
stars, sun, and moon, they came to recognise that the sun did not rise
over the same spot on the horizon every day. In the summer it rose
roughly in the north-east and set in the north-west. In the winter, on
the other hand, it rose in the south-east and set in the south-west.
Moreover, these variations would be found to be regular and recurring.
The sun would appear to move every day after the Solstice towards the
east, and from the east towards the south, back again towards the
east, and once more northwards. A staff set in the ground would
determine the range of the sun's apparent journey and its extreme
limits or turning points. This would fix the Summer Solstice in the
north-east, and the winter Solstice in the south-east. Even such
simple learning as this was probably beyond the capacity of the
tribesman, whose daily duties took him afield early and late. But it
was to his interest that all such observations should be entrusted to
individuals who could keep definite count, and know exactly at what
part of the horizon the sun might be expected