a male deity, like the German _mond_ and _monat_, or the
_Lunus_ of the Latins; and it is worthy of remark, that the same
custom of calling it male is retained in the East to the present day,
while the sun is considered female, as in the language of the
Germans." [112] "In Slavonic," Sir George Cox tells us, "as in the
Teutonic mythology, the moon is male. His wedding with the sun
brings on him the wrath of Perkunas [the thunder-god], as the song
tells us

'The moon wedded the sun
In the first spring.
The sun rose early
The moon departed from her.
The moon wandered alone;
Courted the morning star.
Perkunas, greatly wroth,
Cleft him with a sword.
'Wherefore dost thou depart from the sun,
Wandering by night alone,
Courting the morning star?'" [113]

"In a Servian song a girl cries to the sun--

'O brilliant sun! I am fairer than thou
Than thy brother, the bright moon.'"

In South Slavonian poetry the sun often figures as a radiant youth.
But among the northern Slavonians, as well as the Lithuanians, the
sun was regarded as a female being, the bride of the moon. 'Thou
askest me of what race, of what family I am,' says the fair maiden of
a song preserved in the Tambof Government--

'My mother is--the beauteous Sun,
And my father--the bright Moon.'" [114]

"Among the Mbocobis of South America the moon is a man and the
sun his wife." [115] The Ahts of North America take the same view;
and we know that in Sanskrit and in Hebrew the word for moon is
masculine.

This may seem to many a matter of no importance; but if mythology
throws much light upon ancient history and religion, its importance
may be considerable, especially as it lies at the root of that sexuality
which has been the most prolific parent of both good and evil in
human life. The sexual relation has existed from the very birth of
animated nature; and it is remarkable that a man of learning and
piety in Germany has made the strange if not absurd statement that
in the beginning "Adam was externally sexless." [116] Another
idea, more excusable, but equally preposterous, is, that grammatical
gender has been the cause of the male and female personation of
deities, when really it has been the result. The cause, no doubt, was
inherent in man's constitution; and was the inevitable effect of
thought and expression. The same necessity of natural language
which led the Hebrew prophets