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Show LXXXIV BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY This stage is popularly known through the writings of Max Miiller and others who have devoted much time to the study of Sanskrit literature. It is set forth in the popular accounts of Norse mythology and also in Germanic mythology. Again we find it well recorded in Homer and Hesiod. In fact, there is now a large body of literature gathered from various lands which is being carefully studied for the purpose of discovering the characteristics of this stage of myth. While romance is beast fable in savagery, romance is power myth in barbarism. To understand this transmutation we must see the change which is wrought in the concepts of worlds or in cosmology. It is a change which begins in savagery, but is more highly developed in barbarism. The concepts of space worlds control the concepts of the savage mind to such an extent that all of the attributes of bodies are referred to the worlds as properly belonging to them. Thus colors originally come to be classified as seven, for the act of expressing concepts in words is more potent than the sense of vision in controlling the judgment of the color of objects. The prismatic colors, as such, are unrecognized; but hues, tints, shades, and even patterns are classified, and there is a tendency to classify them as hues. The scheme of colors, perhaps, differs from tribe to tribe; of this I am not sure, but this I do find among some tribes: Blue is the color of the zenith, and things are said to have sky color. It is a very natural mistake for man to reach the conclusion that sky color is made by the sky or that it comes from the sky by the habit of language which already has been set forth. Color is thus reified and assigned to a world. Darkness, or black, seem to primitive man to come from below, and as darkness is reified, it is believed to come from the nadir world Green is held to belong properly to the midworld, for it is the color of plant bodies and is seen nowhere else. In tribal society the colors seem to be variously assigned to the cardinal worlds as hues, tints, shades, and patterns. In the cases whicli I have especially investigated, red belongs to the west, white to the east, yellow to the south, and gray to the north. |
