Ever since the beginnings of the study of myths, enquirers have been inclined, like Mr. Casaubon, to search for some one "key to all the mythologies." Often, as in the case of Max Müller and the nature school, they have hit on a true principle, and run it to death; so the latest exponent of this school, O. Gilbert, who derives everything from the clouds, has been led to propound the most fantastic theories in order to include everything. The day of totems too, seems to be waning; and of late years the tendency has been to exaggerate the importance of astronomy. This is exemplified in the works of Mr. Robert Brown, Jr., and Mr. St. Clair. The book now before us is a third instance of the same mistake.
Mr. Hewitt divides his work into books dealing successively with the Age of Polar Star Worship, the Age of Lunar-Solar Worship, and the Age of Solar Worship. He connects the religious beliefs which he sees, with the worship of trees and animals, with the various migrations of mankind, and with their arrangement of the calendar; and uses his principles to interpret certain legends of the saints and others. But these connections are not made clear. Probably they are clear to the writer, but to the reader they are not so. Nor is proof offered, other than coincidence, of the connection of astronomy with religion. The theories are, for the most part, propounded ex cathedra, and left to commend themselves by their inherent appropriateness. Symbolism and metaphor too often do duty for argument. Thus Mr. Hewitt says:
Achilles was the sun-god of the race of the Myrmidons or ants, the sons of the red earth, the Adamite race who succeeded the sons of the southern mother-tree, and who believed that man was formed from the dust of the earth moulded by the Divine Potter, the Pole-star god, who turned the potter's wheel of the revolving earth.
This is all pure imagination. Symbolism is also used to explain certain primitive signs, amongst them the sign for the female, which is clearly pictorial (p. 72). The Bœotian eel, in place of being a fisher's firstling, is also moralised (p. 128); so is the bed of
