This recognition would lead to his gradually learning to utilize Polaris as a means of ascertaining direction. His appreciation of valuable guidance rendered in perilous wanderings would develop feelings of trust, dependence and gratitude towards the one changeless star which permanently rendered valuable services and under whose guidance difficult and essential nocturnal expeditions could be safely undertaken. Superiority and, eventually, extensive supernatural power would more and more be attributed to it, as knowledge was gained of the laws of motion from which it alone seemed to be exempt. This exemption would cause it to be viewed as superior to all other heavenly bodies and even to the sun, and it is easy to see how this idea, becoming predominant, might cause the cult of the pole-star to disestablish an organized sun-cult amongst some tribes. Historical evidence, to which I shall revert more fully proves, indeed, that a native American ruler and reformer actually employed the following reasoning in order to convert his council and people from the worship of the sun to that of a superior divinity which could have been no other but Polaris: "It is not possible that the sun should be the God who created all things, for if so he would sometimes rest and light up the whole world from one spot. Thus it cannot be otherwise but that there is someone who directs him and this truly is the true Creator."
These words shed a whole flood of light upon primitive religious ideas at an early stage of development. They prove that the association of repose and immovability with the supreme power signified a radical change of thought, based upon prolonged astronomical observation, and indicated intellectual advancement. Attempts to render the new idea objective, to express it and impress it upon the multitude, would naturally end in the production of images of the supernatural power, representing or typifying immovability, changelessness, strength combined with absolute repose.
It is thus rendered evident what a deep significance may be embodied in the rudest images of supernatural beings in attitudes of repose, since a prolonged course of astronomical observation and reasoning may have preceded their production.