12 Evolution and Religion 



to bears. ^ In Abyssinia hyenas are considered en- 

 chanters.^ The serpent has been worshiped the world 

 over.^ And that this superstitious regard has been 

 handed down from time immemorial, or that it is not 

 merely circumscribed or local, consider man's wide- 

 spread, primitive belief in the transmigration of souls, 

 a belief which rendered almost all animal life sacred. 

 Metempsychosis has been common to Brahmanism in 

 India, to Buddhism in China, Japan, Siam, Ceylon, 

 Nepaul, and Thibet, to the religion of ancient Egypt, 

 to the speculative thought of Chaldea, Persia, and 

 Greece.* We find it in its lowest forms to-day among 

 several tribes of Africa and America, which believe 

 " that the soul, immediately after death, must look out 

 for a new owner, and, if need be, enter even the body 

 of an animal." ^ 



Struggle for Existence 



What is the matter then? Is our theory wrong? 

 Not necessarily. I would not have you take such an 

 extreme position as that; for what appears to be the 

 best thought of our time seems to be tending more and 

 more toward accepting the doctrine of evolution, only 



1 Grieve's Hist, of Kamtschatka, p. 205. Erman's Siberia, vol. I. 

 p. 492; vol. II. pp. 42, 43. 



2 Murray's Life of Bruce, p. 472. 



3 Matter's Histoire du Gnosticisme, vol. I. p. 380, Paris, 1828. 

 See all these authorities collated in Buckle, vol. I. p. 90. 



* Q. E. Lessing, Dass mehr als filnf sinne fiir den Menschen sein 

 konnen. Conclusion. See Int. Cyc. vol. XIV. p. 538. 

 5 Ibid. p. 534. 



