ANIMISTIC BELIEFS 103 



We think that even the elaborate cult of the 

 hawk and of the other omen-birds is to be explained 

 on these lines. If we think of the hawk's erratic 

 behaviour, how he will come suddenly rushing down 

 out of the remotest blue of the sky to hover over- 

 head, and then perhaps to circle hither and thither 

 in an apparently aimless manner, or will keep flying 

 on before a boat on the river, or come swiftly to 

 meet it, screaming as he comes, — if we think of this, 

 it is easy to understand how a people whose whole 

 world consists of dense forests and dangerous rivers, 

 a people extremely ignorant of natural causation, 

 yet intelligent and speculative, and always looking 

 out for signs that shall guide them among the 

 mystery and dangers that surround them, may have 

 come to see in the hawk a messenger sent to them 

 by the beneficent Supreme Being. For this Being 

 is vaguely conceived by them as dwelling in the 

 skies whence the hawk comes, and whither he so 

 often returns. And then we may suppose that the 

 messenger himself has come to be an object of 

 worship in various degrees with the different tribes, 

 as seems to be the rule in all religious systems in 

 which servants of a deity mediate between him and 

 man. 



The origin of the various rites in which the fowl 

 and pig are sacrificed, and their blood smeared or 

 sprinkled on men or on the altar-posts of gods, or 

 on the image of the hawk, and their souls charged 

 with messages to the Supreme Being — the origin of 

 this group of customs must be sought in a different 

 direction. To any one acquainted with Robertson 

 Smith's Religion of the Semites, and with Mr. Jevon's 

 Introduction to the History of Religion, the idea 

 naturally suggests itself that these animals are or 

 were true totems, of which the cult has passed into 

 a late stage of decay. It might be supposed that, 

 being originally totem animals, they thereby became 



VOL. II H 



