The magnetic compass, of which the history is a little uncertain (see p. 228, _supra_), may be put aside in our present inquiry, since it belongs to a state of society of comparatively high development. The unembellished teaching which is to be examined dates far earlier than the birth of science in the Middle Ages, or the period of the introduction of the magnetic needle into Europe. We shall find, however, that the folk-lore of the Cardinal Points received many additions at the hands of Mediaeval symbolists. The mythology of that epoch has, indeed, been fitly compared to a complex alloy, formed by the blending of pure ores from various sources. The traditions of previous ages were retained, and blended, but new material was thrown into the crucible. Certain patent facts would appeal even to the elementary minds of the Stone Age men. These folk saw the sun rise daily in the East, traverse the sky by way of the South, and finally set at evening in the West. Birth and brightness were followed by ascendancy and power; the descent led to disappearance and darkness. There was the dawn, followed by warm beams which dispersed both gloom and vapour. The blue South yielded the heat of noonday, at which time the sunbeams were genial, even in the depth of winter. But when the dying sun had withdrawn for the day, primitive men would experience discomfort and uneasy forebodings. This disappearance of the great luminary, the lord and giver of life, was a permanent mystery; the rebirth next morning was even more perplexing. At a later period, the men of China and North America, of Greece and Rome, evolved curious explanations of these phenomena, but at first only the physical effects of the sun’s apparent movements would concern the barbaric mind. Very early in the growth of ideas man would learn that the position of the sun was a good index of direction. It has been mooted whether the most ancient method of denoting direction, that is, “orientation” in its wider sense, was not to describe the speaker’s surroundings, or to indicate natural features known to him and his fellows[833]. Thus, a hunter might speak of a place by reference to some prominent rock or tree; his direction might, in the same way, be told in terms of the prevailing winds. One is nevertheless driven to believe that simple observations of the sun’s position would be made almost as soon as man began to take notice of any natural features or occurrences whatever; in either case, any slight priority of method is of such trivial account as to be negligible.