104 The Religion of the Veda who investigate human customs, institutions, and be- liefs all over the world? Does not the entire subject of the origin and development of religions belong to Ethnology rather than Philology? For instance, the Indo-Europeans make much of the worship of the sun as a supreme being. But so do the Iroquois Indians, and many other savage or semi-barbarous peoples. It is indeed true, and it is an important truth, that the human race, endowed as it is essentially alike, is liable anywhere and at any time to incorporate in its beliefs this most imposing and deifiable visible object in all nature, the sun, the source of light and heat, seasons and vegetation. This is the simple ethnological fact. The fact in Indo-European Comparative Mythology is a differ- ent one: it is a historical fact. In the carly period of each Indo-European people heaven, its agents and powers, including of course the sun, were, as we know on excellent authority, worshipped or deified. We are therefore to-day, as formerly, securely intrenched in the conviction that the worship of heaven and the visible heavenly phenomena, more or less personal- ised, did in fact form the common kernel of Indo- European religion. Now do I fail to see what the beliefs of other peoples, not Indo-European, along the same line, have to do with this particular case, except to show that the Indo-Europeans were
