ral, their seemingly most
inexplicable trait is the habitual combination of alleged human ancestry
and adventures, with the possession of personalities otherwise figuring
in the heavens and on the earth, with totally non-human attributes. This
enormous incongruity, not the exception but the rule, the current theory
fails to explain. Suppose it to be granted that the great terrestrial
and celestial objects and agents naturally become personalized; it does
not follow that each of them shall have a specific human biography. To
say of some star that he was the son of this king or that hero, was born
in a particular place, and when grown up carried off the wife of a
neighbouring chief, is a gratuitous multiplication of incongruities
already sufficiently great; and is not accounted for by the alleged
necessary personalization of abstract and collective nouns. As looked at
from our present stand-point, however, such traditions become quite
natural--nay, it is clear that they will necessarily arise. When a
nickname has become a tribal name, it thereby ceases to be individually
distinctive; and, as already said, the process of nicknaming inevitably
continues. It commences afresh with each child; and the nickname of each
child is both an individual name and a potential tribal name, which may
become an actual tribal name if the individual is sufficiently
celebrated. Usually, then, there is a double set of distinctions; under
one of which the individual is known by his ancestral name, and under
the other of which he is known by a name suggestive of something
peculiar to himself: just as we have seen happens among the Scotch
clans. Consider, now, what will result when language has reached a
stage of development such that it can convey the notion of naming, and
is able, therefore, to preserve traditions of human ancestry. It will
result that the individual will be known both as the son of such and
such a man by a mother whose name was so and so, and also as "the Crab",
or "the Bear", or "the Whirlwind"--supposing one of these to be his
nickname. Such joint use of nicknames and proper names occurs in every
school. Now, clearly, in advancing from the early state in which
ancestors become identified with the objects they are nicknamed after,
to the state in which there are proper names that have lost their
metaphorical meanings, there must be passed through a state in which
proper names, partially settled only, may or may not be preserved