650 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



standing of primitive ideas in three respects, of which one is here relatively 

 irrelevant. The first message decides destiny : when the plodding, con- 

 scientious tortoise delivers the real message it is too late because the reckless 

 hare has already delivered the wrong one. This impossibility of repeal is 

 the irrelevant issue here. The second significance is relevant, for it is the 

 authoritative role of the moon. The moon can decree fate for men, though 

 she is subject to the whims and mistakes of her messengers. This is significant, 

 but there is a prior significance in the social status of animals and, since the 

 moon is personified for her role of authority, of inanimate objects. 



The animal messengers extend the boundaries of human society beyond 

 human beings, for they convey messages and receive hospitality as if they 

 were human. A further extension includes the moon and hints that society 

 as it is understood to-day is a contracted residue of an assemblage of beings 

 that originally included every variety of existence — even stones by the 

 wayside. The inclusion of animals with human beings in a society em- 

 bracing both is written clearly on primitive annals as they are guaranteed 

 by the practices, beliefs, and legends of uncivilised peoples to-day. Animal 

 actors who are men, or supermen, in animal form, fill folk-lore to over- 

 flowing. Primitive men do not agree with Sir Thomas More that " The World 

 was made to be inhabited by Beasts, but studied and contemplated by 

 Man," ^ nor with Descartes that animals have no reason. ^ They are innocent 

 of modern depreciatory distinctions, like Lester F. Ward's " The environ- 

 ment transforms the animal, while man transforms the environment," ^ 

 and would condemn such belittlings of the animal if they understood them. 

 They incline their depreciation towards man, favouring the animal by 

 preferring an animal ancestry. The Delaware Indians who call the rattle- 

 snake their grandfather, the Wakanda of East Africa who reckon the hyaena 

 in their ancestry, the Malagasy who are descended from crocodiles, the 

 Sumatran clansmen who trace their descent to a tiger,* and the Iroquois 

 whose clan ancestor was a turtle ^ indulge a widespread primitive preference 

 for non-human ancestors. This estimate is directed by an estimate of 

 animal superiority, for ancestry is associated in the primitive mind with 

 eminence. The deeds of ancestors and the significance of their actions for 

 the destiny of their posterity penetrate primitive legends and rites. The 

 identification of ancestry with eminency and with animal kinship hints at 

 the primitive estimate of the animal asserted by Wundt, There was a 

 period in the history of the human race, in the opinion of this writer, when 

 men systematically thought of the animal as superior in wisdom and power 

 to themselves.^ Hints of this formerly universal estimate of the animal 

 are scattered through legends and rites of present primitive peoples. In 

 Paraguayan Chaco a beetle was raised to the supreme eminency of creator 

 of the world '—a startling commentary on the assertion of Durkheim that 

 the humbler natural objects are the first to be divinised.^ The Indian who 

 was taught by a black bear to catch salmon and build canoes,^ the Gold 

 Coast natives who are helped by pythons or crocodiles,i° and the pagan tribes 



^ Sir Thomas Browne, loc. cit. 



^ Descartes, Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason 

 and Seeking for Truth in the Sciences, pt. v. 

 ^. Lester F. Ward, Pure Sociology, pt. i. 

 ■* Sir James Frazer, loc. cit., vol. i, ch. i. 



'" Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (Swain's trans.). 

 " Wilhelm Wundt, Elements of Folk Psychology (Schaub's trans.), Introd, 

 ' W. Burbrooke Grubb, An Unknown People in an Unknown Land. 

 * Durkheim, loc. cit., bk. i, ch. iii. 

 « Ibid. 

 1'' Cardinall, loc. cit., pp. 37-9. 



