62 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



attributed to the animals by which man is surrounded, or rather 

 to the ancestral types of these animals, which are worshiped. 

 This is the religion of zootheism. Throughout the world, when 

 advance was made from this plane, it was to a stage in which the 

 powers and phenomena of nature are personified and deified. In 

 this stage the gods are anthropomorphic, having the mental, 

 moral, and social attributes of men, and represented under the 

 forms of men. This is the religion of physitheism. The most 

 advanced of the Indian tribes showed evidence of transition from 

 zootheism to physitheism. The Israelites, in the latter part of 

 the period selected, showed the same transition in a somewhat 

 higher degree than the Indians did when their independent prog- 

 ress was arrested. 



It is needless to enlarge upon the animal gods of the Indians, 

 or to furnish evidence that they gave some vague worship to the 

 sun, the lightning, to fire and winds. 



There is no doubt that the Israelites were for a long period in 

 the stage of zoolatry. They persisted in the worship of animal 

 gods the golden calf, the brazen serpent, the fish-god, and the 

 fly-god. The second commandment is explicitly directed against 

 the worship of the daimons of air, earth, and water, which is 

 known to have been common ; and the existence of the prohibition 

 shows the necessity for it, especially as it was formulated, after 

 the practice had existed for centuries, by a religious party which 

 sought to abolish that worship. 



The god of Sinai was a god of storm and lightning, which 

 phenomena were strange to the Israelites after their sojourn in 

 plains. The ancient local god of the Canaanites began in the 

 exodus to affect the religious concepts of the Israelites, so that 

 they associated Jahveh with the god whose lands they were plant- 

 ing and whose influence they felt. Sinai was thenceforward the 

 locality of their theology. Jahveh, through all after-changes, 

 remained there as his home ; he spoke with the voice of thunder, 

 and never appeared without storm and earthquake. 



Another class of gods connected with beast-worship and also 

 with the totemic institution (to be hereafter specially noted) was 

 tutelar, the special cult of tribes, clans, and individuals. It was 

 conspicuous both among the Israelites and the Indians. 



Jahveh may first have been a clan or tribal god, either of the 

 clan to which Moses belonged or of the clan of Joseph, in the pos- 

 session of which was the ark. No essential distinction was felt to 

 exist between Jahveh and El, any more than between Ashur and El. 

 Jahveh was only a special name of El, which had become current 

 within a powerful circle, and which, therefore, was an acceptable 

 designation of a national god. When other tutelar gods did not 

 succeed, there was resort to Jahveh, probably in the early in- 



