that Michabo is like Herakles in those striking features which
the contemplation of solar phenomena would necessarily suggest to
the imagination of the primitive myth-maker, but also that the two
characters are similarly conceived, and that the two careers agree in
seemingly arbitrary points of detail, as is the case in the stories of
Punchkin and the Heartless Giant. The mere fact that solar heroes, all
over the world, travel in a certain path and slay imps of darkness is of
great value as throwing light upon primeval habits of thought, but it
is of no value as evidence for or against an alleged community of
civilization between different races. The same is true of the sacredness
universally attached to certain numbers. Dr. Blinton's opinion that the
sanctity of the number four in nearly all systems of mythology is due to
a primitive worship of the cardinal points, becomes very probable
when we recollect that the similar pre-eminence of seven is almost
demonstrably connected with the adoration of the sun, moon, and
five visible planets, which has left its record in the structure and
nomenclature of the Aryan and Semitic week. [137]

In view of these considerations, the comparison of barbaric myths
with each other and with the legends of the Aryan world becomes doubly
interesting, as illustrating the similarity in the workings of the
untrained intelligence the world over. In our first paper we saw how
the moon-spots have been variously explained by Indo-Europeans, as a
man with a thorn-bush or as two children bearing a bucket of water on a
pole. In Ceylon it is said that as Sakyamuni was one day wandering half
starved in the forest, a pious hare met him, and offered itself to him
to be slain and cooked for dinner; whereupon the holy Buddha set it on
high in the moon, that future generations of men might see it and marvel
at its piety. In the Samoan Islands these dark patches are supposed
to be portions of a woman's figure. A certain woman was once hammering
something with a mallet, when the moon arose, looking so much like a
bread-fruit that the woman asked it to come down and let her child
eat off a piece of it; but the moon, enraged at the insult, gobbled up
woman, mallet, and child, and there, in the moon's belly, you may still
behold them. According to the Hottentots, the Moon once sent the Hare to
inform men that as she died away and rose again, so should men die
and again come to life. But the stupid Hare forgot th