RELIGION 309 



and inviolate, and were worshipped in the shape of an image 

 carved out of wood. There are hunter-tribes in North America 

 and Australia where totemism holds its own to this day ; and 

 it is from this that we conclude that the palaeolithic hunters 

 of Europe observed totemism ; but we have no proof to this 

 effect, for even if totems were erected in front of the cave- 

 dwellings and huts of these hunters, and we can readily credit 

 them with the requisite skill, they must long ago have 

 mouldered into dust. Perhaps these palaeolithic men, like the 

 North Americans, had their individual totems, selected at will 

 from the animal kingdom in addition to their chief totem, and 

 carried them about in medicine-bags, parts of these animals, as 

 fetishes. This, however, is only conjecture, for the pierced teeth 

 of wolves and bears worn round the neck may be explained in 

 another way as mere trophies of the chase and evidences of 

 prowess in hunting. 



There is much better foundation for the view that in the 

 dawn of mankind, animism, belief in and cult of the soul, held 

 sway, emanating from an uneasy presentiment, or conviction, 

 of the survival of the soul after the body has perished. The 

 departed soul was pictured as the phantom likeness of the body 

 (the ghost), or as transformed into the shape of an animal 

 (usually a bird or snake). This belief in immortality, this 

 world-wide faith in the existence of the ghosts of the dead 

 among the living, has been combined in the form of respect of 

 death on the one hand, with a selfish hope of assistance from 

 the departed, and on the other, with a secret dread of injury 

 from them. If the departed were prominent men during life 

 (warriors, hunters or pioneers of culture), they were in the 

 course of time raised to the rank of heroes or demigods. Did 

 this belief in the soul and immortality exist in palaeolithic 

 ages ? Gabriel de Mortillet answers with a definite " No," and 

 supports his opinion with the fact that among the ornaments of 

 the reindeer hunters in the caves of France, no symbolic signs 

 have been found (circles, triangles or crosses), and that among 

 palaeolithic races neither burial nor the cult of the dead was 

 known. Cartailhac, on the contrary, rightly points to the red- 

 coloured skeletons in the grotto of Mentone (Barma grande), 

 and Mas d'Azil, as well as other burial-caves in France and 



