in the guise of light and heat and gravity, but a living reigning Lord: —
'O thou, that with surpassing glory crown'd, Look'st from thy sole dominion like the God Of this new world.'
It is no exaggeration to say, with Sir William Jones, that one great fountain of all idoltary in the four quarters of the globe was the veneration paid by men to the sun: it is no more than an exaggeration to say with Mr. Helps of the sun-worship in Peru, that it was inevitable. Sun-worship is by no means universal among the lower races of mankind, but manifests itself in the upper levels of savage religion in districts far and wide over the earth, often assuming the prominence which it keeps and develops in the faiths of the barbaric world. Why some races are sun-worshippers and others not, is indeed too hard a question to answer in general terms. Yet one important reason is obvious, that the Sun is not so evidently the god of wild hunters and fishers, as of the tillers of the soil, who watch him day by day giving or taking away their wealth and their very life. On the geographical significance of sun-worship, D'Orbigny has made a remark, suggestive if not altogether sound, connecting the worship of the sun not so much with the torrid regions where his glaring heat oppresses man all day long, and drives him to the shade for refuge, as with climates where his presence is welcomed for his life-giving heat, and nature chills at his departure. Thus while the low sultry forests of South America show little prominence of Sun-worship, this is the dominant organized cultus of the high table-lands of Peru and Cundinamarca.[1] The theory is ingenious, and if not carried too far may often be supported. We may well compare the feelings with which the sun-worshipping Massagetæ of Tartary must have sacrificed their horses to the deity who freed them from the miseries of winter, with the thoughts of men in those burn-
- ↑ D'Orbigny, 'L'Homme Américain,' vol. i. p. 242.
