52 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



definiteness by the corroborating testimony of other members of the 

 tribe, there would naturally arise a desire to gain the favor or avert 

 the displeasure of these powerful beings by gifts and offerings similar 

 to what would have given pleasure during life ; these offerings would 

 usually be made at the grave, cave, or house where the dead body was 

 laid, and thus the tomb would become an altar or temple, as we see 

 the tomb and temple associated even in civilized communities. In 

 addition to the belief that the ghost of a dead ancestor or relative has 

 the power to pass into the body of a beast, is the fact that the lan- 

 guages of the lower races of man are so imperfect that metaphorical 

 names require to be interpreted literally, and consequently primitive 

 speech is unable to transmit to posterity the slight shades of difference 

 between an animal and a person named after that animal ; moreover, 

 having no knowledge of proper names, naming after animals, from 

 some fancied resemblance or association of ideas, is most common, 

 and hence we find such names as Black-Hawk, Little-Crow, Lone-Wolf, 

 and Sitting-Bull. In the course of a few generations these animals 

 would be looked upon as the ancestors of respective tribes, and would 

 be reverenced and sacrificed to as deities. Besides explaining animal- 

 gods, this hypothesis accounts for sundry anomalous beliefs, the divini- 

 ties half -brute and half-human, the animals that talk and play active 

 parts in human affairs, the doctrine of metempsychosis, etc.* 



On the other hand, the pantheistic theory assumes that whatever 

 caused the sentiment of awe, wonder, or fear, in the mind of primi- 

 tive man, would be deified and worshiped ; that the first objects that 

 would excite these emotions would be the sun, moon, and stars, clouds, 

 wind, rain, thunder, lightning, etc. ; that from their ignorance of even 

 the rudiments of physical science, together with the want of exactness 

 of early language and its wealth of metaphor and personification, these 

 cosmic objects and forces would be conceived of as individual entities, 

 each having absolute personal volition : and since these metaphoric 

 names would vary with the varying conception of each one of these 

 fervent old pantheists, there would thus arise that almost endless 

 polyonomy which has been the fertile source of so many of the myths 

 that have puzzled and horrified mankind ever since their origin was 

 forgotten. Moreover, since all metaphors depend upon some real or 

 fancied resemblance of things less known to things better known, all 

 of these deified powers of nature would be invested with forms and 

 attributes similar to the animals and men with which they were already 

 familiar, though in a magnified degree ; and from this conception, by 

 a very natural and usual transition of thought, the human or animal 

 form, which had at first been sacred only as the eidolon of the god, 

 would in a short time be thought to possess some intrinsic sanctity 

 independent of that divine association.! 



* Herbert Spencer, " Principles of Sociology," vol. i, chaps, xv to xxv. 

 f Cox, " Aryan Mythology," vol. i, chapters i to v. 



