i88i] ANIMAL WORSHIP AND ANIMAL TRIBES 483 



no natural merit which could form the ground of its choice 

 as the people of Jehovah. Our investigations appear to 

 confirm this judgment, and to show that the superstitions 

 with which the spiritual religion had to contend were not 

 one whit less degrading than those of the most savage 

 nations. And indeed the second commandment, the 

 cardinal precept of spiritual worship, is explicitly directed 

 against the very worship of the denizens of air, earth, 

 and water which we have been able to trace out. It 

 does not appear that Israel was, by its own wisdom, more 

 fit than any other nation to rise above the lowest level of 

 heathenism. 1 



1 The substitution of an image for the living animal god is well 

 illustrated by the golden and silver fish used in the worship of Atergatis 

 (Athenaeus, I.e.), which do not affect the fact, as stated by Xenophon, 

 that the living fish were themselves treated as divine. To the fish 

 stock may be referred the Hebrew Ben Nun and Syriac 



