heroes; or, again, they were mighty mountains piled one above
another, in whose cavernous recesses the divining-wand of the
storm-god Thor revealed hidden treasures. The yellow-haired
sun, Phoibos, drove westerly all day in his flaming chariot;
or perhaps, as Meleagros, retired for a while in disgust from
the sight of men; wedded at eventide the violet light (Oinone,
Iole), which he had forsaken in the morning; sank, as
Herakles, upon a blazing funeral-pyre, or, like Agamemnon,
perished in a blood-stained bath; or, as the fish-god, Dagon,
swam nightly through the subterranean waters, to appear
eastward again at daybreak. Sometimes Phaethon, his rash,
inexperienced son, would take the reins and drive the solar
chariot too near the earth, causing the fruits to perish, and
the grass to wither, and the wells to dry up. Sometimes, too,
the great all-seeing divinity, in his wrath at the impiety of
men, would shoot down his scorching arrows, causing pestilence
to spread over the land. Still other conceptions clustered
around the sun. Now it was the wonderful treasure-house, into
which no one could look and live; and again it was Ixion
himself, bound on the fiery wheel in punishment for violence
offered to Here, the queen of the blue air.

[9] "No distinction between the animate and inanimate is made
in the languages of the Eskimos, the Choctaws, the Muskoghee,
and the Caddo. Only the Iroquois, Cherokee, and the
Algonquin-Lenape have it, so far as is known, and with them it
is partial." According to the Fijians, "vegetables and stones,
nay, even tools and weapons, pots and canoes, have souls that
are immortal, and that, like the souls of men, pass on at last
to Mbulu, the abode of departed spirits."--M'Lennan, The