having in view anthropological results. It is the basis of the
remarkable researches of Sir Norman Lockyer as to the astrological and
solar origin of Stonehenge and other circles, and in his chapter which
deals with the question, "Where did the British worship originate?" he
finds himself bound to the theory of a borrowed civilisation which
established the solar system.[157] This borrowed civilisation is
Egyptian, but it is too much to ask mythology to supply not only a
complete system of belief but a civilisation which belongs to it. What
is needed is independent evidence of the civilisation. Without such
independent evidence it is impossible to accept the deduction drawn
only from one sphere of information.

The error of transferring to the domain of mythology events and
occurrences which belong to history, is followed by an error of
another sort, namely, the transferring to some general department of
human belief the particular beliefs of a people, or of tribes of
people. It is wrong to continue to label particular cults as nature
myths, when they have already been transferred from that position to a
more definite position among the beliefs of a people. Thus even so
good a scholar as Mr. A. B. Cook, rightly interpreting Greek evidence
of the hill-top fires and of the house fire, yet denies to the exactly
corresponding Irish evidence the same interpretation, and argues that
"the ritual of Samain, at which all the hearths in Ireland were
supplied with fresh fire from a common centre at Tlachtga [is] almost
certainly solar," and that "we shall not be far wrong if we suppose
that the solar fires of Beltaine were the ritual of the sky god
connected with the Ash of Uisnech."[158] Mr. Frazer, too, has
interpreted these bonfires as mainly sun charms, and he sees in the
Balder myth, and in the peasant customs all over Europe, which he
asserts illustrate this myth, an ancient ritual which originally
marked the beginning of the new year, when the tree spirit, or spirit
of vegetation, was burned, the special reasons why the deity of
vegetation should die by fire being that as "light and heat are
necessary to vegetable growth, on the principle of sympathetic magic,
by subjecting the personal representative of vegetation to their
influence you secure a supply of these necessaries for trees and
crops."[159] Mr. Frazer goes far afield for evidence. He does not see
that the fire ceremonies which he collects from all Europe have a
s