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Solar mythology, the notion that myths were essentially accounts of the recurrence of day and night, was the brainchild of nineteenth-century German philologist Max Muller. Muller's greatest American devotee was the erudite Daniel Garrison Brinton. In Brinton's Myths of the New World we find the most important statement of solar mythology by an American and a valuable comparative study of the origin and creation myths and culture-hero legends of North and South American Indian tribes. An exponent of the fundamental psychic unity of mankind, Brinton draws on the recurrent elements of Native American mythology and culture--the idea of a soul; creation, flood, and afterworld; symbols such as the bird, the serpent, and the cross; certain numbers, such as the three, the four, and the seven--to demonstrate the universality of various myths and symbols in contemporary as well as primitive societies. While solar mythology had become passe by the end of the nineteenth century, Brinton's work lives on because of its all-embracing treatment of Indian government, arts, rites and myths and for anticipating the significance of universal mythological themes later expounded by Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell.