THE RELIGIOUS IDEA. 683 



with animals, and consequent reverence for the animals: 

 now resulting in superstitious regard, and now in worship. 

 Creatures which, frequent burial places or places supposed to 

 be haunted by spirits, as well as creatures which fly by night, 

 are liable to be taken for forms assumed by deceased men. 

 Tims the Bongo dread 



&quot; Ghosts, whose abode is said to be in the shadowy darkness of the 

 woods. Spirits, devils, and witches have their general appellation of 

 * bitaboh ; wood-goblins being specially called ronga. Comprehended 

 under the same term are all the bats ... as likewise are owls of 

 every kind.&quot; 



Similarly, the belief that ghosts often return to their old 

 homes, leads to the belief that house-frequenting snakes are 

 embodiments of them. The negroes round Blantyre think 

 that &quot;if a dead man wants to frighten his wife he may 

 persist in coming as a serpent ;&quot; and &quot; when a man kills a 

 serpent thus belonging to a spirit, he goes and makes an 

 apology to the offended god, saying, Please, please, I did not 

 know that it was your serpent/ &quot; Moreover, &quot; serpents were 

 regarded as familiar and domestic divinities by a multitude 

 of Indo-European peoples ; &quot; and &quot; in some districts of Poland 

 [in 1762] the peasants are very careful to give milk and eggs 

 to a species of black serpent which glides about in their . . . 

 houses, and they would be in despair if the least harm befel 

 these reptiles.&quot; Beliefs of the same class, sug 



gested in other ways, occur in North America. The Apaches 

 &quot; consider the rattlesnake as the form to be assumed by the 

 wicked after death.&quot; By the people of Xayarit it was 

 thought that &quot; during the day they [ghosts] were allowed to 

 consort with the living, in the form of flies, to seek food : &quot; 

 recalling a cult of the Philistines and also a Babylonian belief 

 expressed in the first Izdubar legend, in which it is said that 

 &quot; the gods of Ui iik Suburi (the blessed) turned to flies. 3 



Identification of the doubles of the dead with animals 

 now with those which frequent houses or places which the 

 doubles are supposed to haunt, and now with those which are 

 like certain of the dead in their malicious or beueticent natures 



