nose. See Hale's
_Polynesian Dictionary_. All peoples have slowly attained to typical
ideas, and many are even now in process of formation. Thus, the Finns,
Lapps, Tartars, and Mongols, have no generic words for _river_, although
even the smallest streams have their names. They have not a word to
express _fingers_ in general, but special words for thumb, fore-finger,
etc. They have no word for tree, but special words for _pine_, _birch_,
_ash_, etc. In the Finn language, the word first used for _thumb_ was
afterwards applied to fingers generally, and the special word for the
bay in which they lived came to be used for all bays. See Castren,
_Vorlesungen ueber Finnische Mythologie_. This original confusion in the
definition of scientific ideas, and the successive alternations by which
they were re-cast, may be gathered from the analysis of language, and
from facts which still occur among uncultured and ignorant people. When
the inhabitants of Mallculo saw dogs for the first time, they called
them _brooas_, or pigs. The inhabitants of Tauna also call the dogs
imported thither _buga_, or pigs. When the inhabitants of a small island
in the Mediterranean saw oxen for the first time, they called them
_horned asses_.

[18] See Gaussin's _Langue Polynesienne_.

[19] This process of the evolution of primitive myth and of fetishes,
will be more elaborately considered in Chapter VII., when we come to
speak generally of the historic evolution of science and of myth. The
repetition is not superfluous, since it is necessary for the complete
understanding of my theory.

[20] For example, in ancient Roman mythology the _Fons_ was first
adored, then _Fontus_, the father of all sources, and finally _Janus_, a
solar myth, the father of Fontus. Janus, as the sun, was the producer of
all water, which rose by evaporation and fell again in rain.

[21] The Sanscrit word _Vayuna_, meaning light, was personified in
Aurora, and afterwards signified the intelligence, or inward light; a
symbolical evolution of myth towards a rational conception. The worship
of heaven and earth, united in a common type, is found among all Aryan
peoples, and among other races. The Germans worshipped _Hertha_, the
original form of _Erde_, earth. The Letts worshipped _Mahte_, or
_Mahmine_, mother earth. So did the Magyars, and the Ostiaks adored the
earth under the Slavonic name of _Imlia_. In China sacrifices to the
divine earth _Heou-tou_ and to the heaven _Tien