344 THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY vm 



perhaps half a dozen different gods was invoked in succession on 

 the occasion, but the one who happened to be addressed just as 

 the child was born was marked and declared to be the child's 

 god for life. 



These gods were supposed to appear in some visible incarna- 

 tion, and the particular thing in which his god was in the habit 

 of appearing was, to the Samoan, an object of veneration. It 

 was in fact his idol, and he was careful never to injure it or 

 treat it with contempt. One, for instance, saw his god in the 

 eel, another in the shark, another in the turtle, another in the 

 dog, another in the owl, another in the lizard ; and so on, 

 throughout all the fish of the sea and birds and four-footed 

 beasts and creeping things. In some of the shell-fish even, 

 gods were supposed to be present. A man would eat freely of 

 what was regarded as the incarnation of the god of another man, 

 but the incarnation of his own particular god he would consider 

 it death to injure or eat. 1 



We have here that which appears to be the 

 origin, or one of the origins, of food prohibitions, 

 on the one hand, and of totemism on the other. 

 When it is remembered that the old Israelites 

 sprang from ancestors who are said to have resided 

 near, or in, one of the great seats of ancient 

 Babylonian civilisation, the city of Ur ; that they 

 had been, it is said for centuries, in close contact 

 with the Egyptians ; and that, in the theology of 

 both the Babylonians and the Egyptians, there is 

 abundant evidence, notwithstanding their advanced 

 social organisation, of the belief in spirits, with 

 sorcery, ancestor- worship, the deification of animals, 

 and the converse animalisation of gods it ob- 

 viously needs very strong evidence to justify the 

 1 Turner, Nineteen Years in Polynesia, p. 238. 



