Sometimes we forget something, but yet retain a small part of it in the memory, as when we say, I have really forgotten his name; but I am sure it begins with B. The same thing happens to nations. The name of Venus, or Holda, was forgotten; but people were sure that she was a divine woman. Now to the Christians of the middle ages Divine Woman' and 'Mary' were one single idea; consequently, the name Mary, unobserved, took the place of the heathen goddesses in the numerous appellations and legends which are now connected with Mary. Of Mars it was only remembered that he was a warrior; so Tuesday, which was sacred to him, could only become Saint George's Day.

Similar was the history of the Israelites when they became monotheistic. The heathen cosmogony, and the heathen idea of the activity of the gods in physical occurrences, contradicted the new idea of the One Almighty God, before whom Nature is nothing. But even though the idea that this God alone created the world, had been long accepted and established, yet there were still, preserved in stereotyped expressions of language, many ideas which preserved from oblivion and ruin features of the old modes of thought alongside of the new. They remain, so long as attention is not drawn to the contradiction in which these separate words stand to the new general system. When the clouds were no longer regarded as a sea, as they once were, people ceased to understand the meaning of the heights of the sea;' this expression no longer finds any organ of apperception, because 'Sea' is no longer associated with the idea of the clouds. Therefore, the expression is sustained only by its traditional connexion with heights.' But 'heights' are very closely associated with earth and with the idea of mountains; and thus with the Prophet Amos' this association supplanted the older one-the living took the place of the dead. We will now, in conclusion, return to Samson.

1 See supra, p. 426.

13. HISTORY OF THE MYTH OF THE SUN-GOD.

We will now review the entire history of the old Semitic God of the Sun or of Heat, as he was present to the national consciousness of Israel.

16

I wonder whether I am mistaken? I flatter myself that I know the particle by which was expressed the greatest revolution ever experienced in the development of the human mind, or rather by which the mind itself was brought into existence. It is the particle 'as' in the verse And he [the Sun] is as a bridegroom, coming out of his chamber; he rejoices as a hero to run his course.' Nature appears to us as a man, as mind, but is not man or mind. This is the birth of Mind, the generation of Poetry. This as 'is unknown not only to the Vedas, but even to the Greeks. This does not mean that the Greeks had no poetry at all, but only that there is an inherent defect in their poetry, which is connected with the deepest foundation of their national mind. Helios, driving along the celestial road with fiery steeds, is not poetry, but only becomes poetical when we tacitly insert the 'as' of the Psalmist. He to whom Helios is a conscious being is childlike, if not childish: the Psalmist is poetical.

Now when such psalms were being spread abroad increasingly in Israel; when Jahveh was acknowledged as the being that brings up the sun, the stars and the rainclouds, that builds the house and guards the city; then the old Sun-god or Herakles was forgotten; that is, his divinity, and that only, was forgotten. His deeds were still recounted; but deeds demand an agent. And thus out of the god, who could exist no longer in the presence of Jahveh, a man was made, who with Jahveh's force to aid him performed superhuman things, but in other respects lived among men and within human conditions, worked quite as a man, and even enjoyed his superhuman

1 Ps. XIX. 6 [5].

SAMSON CONVERTED INTO A HUMAN HERO. 445

power only on human terms, namely the terms of Naziritism.

Deeds were reported of some one who had long hair. But who wore his hair long, but the Nazirite consecrated to Jahveh? Deeds were told, which no one could accomplish unless exceptionally endowed with strength by Jahveh; and Jahveh would give such privilege only to the Nazirite consecrated to him. Consequently, when Samson was no longer a god, he must be a Nazirite. Nevertheless, he was distinguished beyond all other Nazirites: he was so from his very birth, like Samuel, to whom with Naziritism was granted Prophecy, a gift vouchsafed to others only later in life and occasionally. The strictly mythical character, the allusion to a religion of nature, was entirely lost from the stories about Samson. Whatever happened to him took a purely human character.

There was also a dim memory of the same forgotten god, that he was Melkart, i.e. 'king or guardian of the city.' Samson, now reduced to humanity, could have been such a guardian only in a human sense, though perhaps in an extraordinary degree. Now Israel preserved from the first half of its political existence the memory of no other enemy so dangerous, so difficult to withstand, and again in its subsequent weakness so hateful, as the Philistines against them Samson must have fought. No other foe had laid on Israel so hard a yoke or such bitter degradation as the Philistines: but Samson must have avenged this on them. He must not only have conquered them, but likewise have given them a taste of his great physical and intellectual superiority: the Nazirite consecrated to Jahveh could scoff at the Philistines. Thus Samson was in the end a Judge, Shôphêt; for in the age of the Judges, the wars with the Philistines had begun, and after Eli and Samuel, Saul and David, or even beside any of them, Samson could not have lived. These were not deliberations, but unconscious impulses, which shaped the legend of Samson in the national mind of Israel.

No feature of the Solar hero has suffered a more characteristic conversion than his end, as is seen by a comparison with the corresponding polytheistic legends. Orion is blinded by the father of his lady-love, and Samson had his eyes put out. But Orion kindled the light of his eyes again at the rays of Helios, whereas Samson remains blind, and only prays to be endowed with strength to avenge the loss of one of his two eyes.' It is true, his hair grows again and brings back his strength: after the winter comes a new spring. But all in vain— Samson dies, notwithstanding. He dies like Herakles: but there is no Iolaos to wake him to a new life, no Athene and Apollon to lead him to Olympos, no Zeus and Here to present to him Hebe, the personification of the enjoyment of perpetual youth. Samson dies and remains dead; he dies, and tears down with him his own pillars-the pillars on which he had built the world-to find a grave beneath them. The heathen god is dead, and draws his own world down with him into his own nothingness; his battles were a play of shadows. Jahveh lives, he hath established the world by his wisdom,' 'he giveth rain, the autumn and the spring showers, each in its season, and keepeth to us the prescribed weeks of harvest,' 'cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night; he lives, the Lord of the world, the King of the earth, and his hero is Israel.

'Judges XVI. 28: 'Give me strength only this once, O God, and I will avenge myself with the vengeance of one of my two eyes on the Philistines.' This is the only possible meaning of the very simple Hebrew words nekam achath mishshethê ênay, which were misunderstood by the LXX and Vulg.; and the German and English versions have merely followed the latter.-TR. 2 Jer. X. 12, V. 24; Gen. VIII. 22.

INDEX.