344 THE EVOLUTION OF THF.OLOOy VTTT 



perhaps half a do/en dilferent gods was invoked in MK r--ion uii 

 tlic occasion, but the one who happened to IHJ addressed ji; 

 the child was born was marked and deelaivd to be tin- eln'ld'.s 

 god for life. 



These gods were supposed to appear in some r'txlbl incarna* 

 (!ii, and the particular thing in which his god was in the habit 

 of appearing was, to the Samoan, an object of vein-ration. li 

 was in fact his idol, and he was careful never to injure it i.r 

 treat it with contempt. One, for instance, saw hi* god in the- 

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

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

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

 leasts 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 eousider 

 it death to injure or eat. ] 



We have here that which appears to be tho 

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

 on the one hand, and of totemisra on tin- other. 

 When it is remembered that the old Israelites 

 sprang from ancestors \vlio are said to have resided 

 near, or in, one of the great seats of am -in it 

 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 an i utilisation of gods it ob- 

 viously iH-eds \vry strong evidence to justify tin 1 



1 Turner, Kinctrrn Yrar* i-n 7W///'wV', p. 238. 



