One further verification may be drawn from facts which are obstacles to the converse hypothesis. These objects and powers, celestial and terrestrial, which force themselves most on men's attention, have some of them several proper names, identified with those of different individuals, born at different places, and having different sets of adventures. Thus we have the sun variously known as Apollo, Endymion, Helios, Tithonos, etc.--personages having irreconcilable genealogies. Such anomalies Prof. Max Müller apparently ascribes to the untrustworthiness of traditions, which are "careless about contradictions, or ready to solve them sometimes by the most atrocious expedients." (_Chips_, vol. ii., p. 84.) But if the evolution of the myth has been that above indicated, there exists no anomalies to be got rid of: these diverse genealogies become parts of the evidence. For we have abundant proof that the same objects furnish metaphorical names of men in different tribes. There are Duck tribes in Australia, in South America, in North America. The eagle is still a totem among the North Americans, as Mr. McLennan shows reason to conclude that it was among the Egyptians, among the Jews, and among the Romans. Obviously, for reasons already assigned, it naturally happened in the early stages of the ancient races, that complimentary comparisons of their heroes to the Sun were frequently made. What resulted? The Sun having furnished names for sundry chiefs and early founders of tribes, and local traditions having severally identified them with the Sun, these tribes, when they grew, spread, conquered, or came otherwise into partial union, originated a combined mythology, which necessarily contained conflicting stories about the Sun-god, as about its other leading personages. If the North-American tribes, among several of which there are traditions of a Sun-god, had developed a combined civilization, there would similarly have arisen among them a mythology which ascribed to the Sun several different proper names and genealogies. * * * * * Let me briefly set down the leading characters of this hypothesis which give it probability. True interpretations of all the natural processes, organic and inorganic, that have gone on in past times, habitually trace them to causes still in action. It is thus in Geology; it is thus in Biology; it is thus in Philology. Here we find this characteristic repeated. Nicknaming, the inheritance of nicknames, and to some extent, the misinterpretation of nicknames, go on among us still; and were surnames absent, language imperfect, and knowledge as rudimentary as of old, it is tolerably manifest that results would arise like those we have contemplated.