The breach--and it can be considered no less--with the primitive time-reckoning is part negative, part positive. Positively, the length of the solar year in whole days has been astonishingly early recognised, but the greatest advance is in the negative direction. The calendar has been detached from the concrete phenomena of the heavens: thereby it acquires a numerical character, and only so is the genuine time-reckoning created. For in practice it is more necessary to be able to reckon conveniently than to remain in accurate agreement with the incommensurability of the motions of the heavenly bodies. Hence the Egyptian calendar held good, although its year was a shifting year and in spite of the fact that the ideal year underlying it was a sidereal and not the actual solar year, and the Greek astronomers reckoned by it on account of its convenience, just as our astronomers still reckon by the Julian calendar. The Egyptian year therefore lies at the bottom of our year, which has been altered so as to remain in agreement with the seasons,--this being necessary in view of the spread of the historic sense among the people--but has also unfortunately been spoiled in the division into months, owing to the influence of the Roman months. The Egyptian calendar is the greatest intellectual fact in the history of time-reckoning; like all the greatest achievements of this nature, e. g. the alphabet, it was attained through a radical simplification, in which also practical convenience played a great part. It should not be forgotten that astronomy and the calendar are not identical. In matters of the calendar practical utility is more welcome than refined astronomical calculation. CHAPTER XI. POPULAR MONTHS OF THE EUROPEAN PEOPLES. In ancient times, and even at the present day in lands which lie outside the path of the great leveller, civilisation, the months taken over with the Roman calendar are not numbered divisions of the year, the names of which are a matter of indifference, but are concretely conceived and named as seasons. They are, in fact, nothing but seasons, the number and duration of which are determined by the conventional calendar. The striving after concreteness which characterises not too highly civilised man leads to the abolition of the obscure and unintelligible Roman names of months, and the substitution of other names describing the season, or more rarely taken from some great festival falling within the month. Only the Hungarian months are entirely named after ecclesiastical festivals[984]. It is also found that the Latin names are as far as possible rendered intelligible by popular etymology.