early religious thought and make it difficult to trace its
history in detail.

+709+. Among natural objects the heavenly bodies, sun, moon, and stars,
and particularly the sun and moon, have very generally attracted men's
attention and become objects of worship. The deification of the sun may
be traced through all stadia of development, from the crudest
objectivism to a highly developed monolatry or a virtual
monotheism.[1213] Veneration of the physical sun, or a conception of it
as a supernatural man, is found in many parts of the world.[1214] It has
not been observed, apparently, in Australia, Melanesia, Indonesia, and
on the North American Pacific Coast;[1215] these regions are all
backward in the creation of gods--devoting themselves to the elaboration
of social organization they have contented themselves largely with an
apparatus of spirits and divine animals. In Central and Northern Asia
and among the Ainu of Jesso, while there appears to be a recognition of
the sun as divine, it is difficult to distinguish real solar
divinities.[1216] In Japan mention is made of a sun-goddess but she
plays an insignificant part in the religious system.[1217]

+710+. The cult is more developed in Eastern and Central North America,
particularly in the former region. The Navahos (in the center of the
continent) have a vague deity of the sun, but the cult is most prominent
among the Algonkin (Lenape) and Natchez tribes; the last-named
especially have an elaborate cult in which the sun as deity seems to be
distinct from the physical form.[1218]

+711+. The highest development of this cult in America was reached in
Mexico and Peru. In both these countries, which had worked out a
noteworthy civilization, the solar cult became supreme, and in Peru it
attained an ethical and universalistic form which entitles it to rank
among the best religious systems of the lower civilized nations.[1219]

+712+. The Egyptians, with their more advanced civilization, finally
carried sun-worship to a very high point of perfection. The hymns to Ra,
the sun-god, reached the verge of monotheism and are ethically high, yet
traces of the physical side of the sun appear throughout.[1220] The same
thing is true of the old Semitic sun-cult. The Babylonian and Assyrian
Shamash is in certain respects an independent deity with universal
attributes, but retains also some of the physical characteristics of the
sun.[1221] In Africa, outside of Egypt, the only trace o