112 IMAGES AND NAMES. 



of the grossest superstition and delusion. But the student 

 who occupies himself in tracing the early stages of human 

 civilization^ can see in the rude image of the savage an impor- 

 tant aid to early religious development^ while it often happens 

 that the missionary is as unable to appreciate the use and value 

 of an idol, as the grown-up man is to reaUze the use of a doll 

 to a child. 



Man being the highest living creature that can be seen and 

 imitated, it is natural that idols should mostly be imitations, 

 more or less rude, of the human form. To show that the beings 

 they represent are greater and more powerful than man, they 

 are often huge in size, and sometimes, by a very natural expe- 

 dient, several heads and pairs of arms and legs show that they 

 have more wisdom, strength, and swiftness than man. The 

 sun and moon, which, in the physical system of the savag*e, are 

 often held to be living creatures of monstrous power, are re- 

 presented by images. The lower animals, too, are often raised 

 to the honour of personating supernatural powers, a practice 

 which need not surprise us, when we consider that the savage 

 does not set the lower animals at so great a depth below him 

 as the civilized man does, but allows them the possession of 

 language, and after his fashion, of souls, while we perhaps err 

 in the opposite direction, by stretching the great gap which 

 separates the lowest man from the highest animal, into an im- 

 passable gulf. Moreover, as animals have some powers which 

 man only possesses in a less degree, or not at all, these powers 

 may be attributed to a deity by personating him under the 

 forms of the animals which possess them, or by giving to an 

 image of human form parts of such animals; thus the feet of a 

 stag, the head of a lion, or the wings of a bird, may serve to 

 express the swiftness or ferocity of a god, or to show that he 

 can fly into the upper regions of the air, or, hke the goat's feet 

 of Pan, they may be mere indications of his character and func- 

 tions. 



It is not necessary that the figure of a deity should have the 

 characteristics of the race who worship it ; the figure of another 

 race may seem fitter for the purpose. Mr. Cathn, for instance, 

 brought over with him a tent from the Crow Indians, which he 



