Abstract
DR. SCHMIDT has more learning than method. In fact, he belongs to that school of paradoxers who are less common in Germany than in this country. He proposes to show that the sun is a cold inhabited body, heat being developed by the friction of its rays against the earth and other celestial bodies. Upon this physical theory he superimposes his mythological one. Words which have a slight resemblance in sound and meaning are gathered together from all parts of the world and assumed to be connected in spite of their belonging to different families of speech. Out of this hodgepodge are extracted such conclusions as that the sun-god was believed to illumine the dead in Hades or that the snake represented the return of Apollo to the light of day. But the philology of the writer may be easily appreciated when we find him speaking of “the Armeno-Caucasian family, to which belong not only Semites and Aryans, but also some Turanian tribes,” and intimating that the roots of the Chinese language are allied to those of the “Armeno-Caucasian.” As might have been expected, Dr. Schmidt is not always right in the words he quotes from the numerous languages, ancient and modern, which he has laid under contribution.
Unser Sonnenkörper nach seiner physikalischen, sprachlichen und mythologischen Seite hin betrachtet.
By Dr. Schmidt. (Trübner, 1877.)
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Unser Sonnenkörper nach seiner physikalischen, sprachlichen und mythologischen Seite hin betrachtet . Nature 16, 41 (1877). https://doi.org/10.1038/016041b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/016041b0