distinguished singer or actor a
star? And have we not in poems numerous comparisons of men and women to
the sun and moon; as in _Love's Labour's Lost_, where the princess is
called "a gracious moon," and as in _Henry VII._, where we read--"Those
suns of glory, those two lights of men?" Clearly, primitive peoples will
be not unlikely thus to speak of the chief hero of a successful battle.
When we remember how the arrival of a triumphant warrior must affect the
feelings of his tribe, dissipating clouds of anxiety and brightening all
faces with joy, we shall see that the comparison of him to the sun is
quite natural; and in early speech this comparison can be made only by
calling him the sun. As before, then, it will happen that, through a
confounding of the metaphorical name with the actual name, his progeny,
after a few generations, will be regarded by themselves and others as
descendants of the sun. And, as a consequence, partly of actual
inheritance of the ancestral character, and partly of maintenance of the
traditions respecting the ancestor's achievements, it will also
naturally happen that the solar race will be considered a superior race,
as we find it habitually is.

The origin of other totems, equally strange, if not even stranger, is
similarly accounted for, though otherwise unaccountable. One of the
New-Zealand chiefs claimed as his progenitor the neighbouring great
mountain, Tongariro. This seemingly-whimsical belief becomes
intelligible when we observe how easily it may have arisen from a
nickname. Do we not ourselves sometimes speak figuratively of a tall,
fat man as a mountain of flesh? And, among a people prone to speak in
still more concrete terms, would it not happen that a chief, remarkable
for his great bulk, would be nicknamed after the highest mountain within
sight, because he towered above other men as this did above surrounding
hills? Such an occurrence is not simply possible, but probable. And, if
so, the confusion of metaphor with fact would originate this surprising
genealogy. A notion perhaps yet more grotesque, thus receives a
satisfactory interpretation. What could have put it into the imagination
of any one that he was descended from the dawn? Given the extremest
credulity, joined with the wildest fancy, it would still seem requisite
that the ancestor should be conceived as an entity; and the dawn is
entirely without that definiteness and comparative constancy which enter
into the conceptio