‘180 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
which were more in harmony with their mental 
condition. The proudest boast of their highest 
intellects was that they had never bowed in rever- 
ence or kissed their hand to anything in nature. 
In such circumstances it was unavoidable that the 
specific object—rock, or tree, or animal—singled 
out for worship, or for superstitious veneration, 
should to some extent become involved in the 
feeling first excited against the worshipper. If the 
Jews hated the serpent with a peculiarly bitter 
hatred, it was doubtless because all others looked 
on it as a sacred animal, an incarnation of the 
Deity. The chosen people had also been its wor- 
shippers at an earlier period, as the Bible shows, 
and while hating it, they still retained the old 
belief, intimately connected with serpent-worship 
everywhere, in the creature’s preternatural subtlety 
and wisdom. The priests of other Eastern nations 
introduced it into their sacred rites and mysteries; 
the Jewish priests introduced it historically into the 
Garden of Eden to account for man’s transgression 
and fall. “Be ye wise as serpents,” was a saying 
of the deepest significance. In Europe men were 
anciently taught by the Druids to venerate the 
adder; the Jews—or Jewish books—taught them 
to abhor it. To my way of thinking, neither 
blessing nor banning came by instinct. 
Veneration of the serpent still survives in a 
great part of the world, as in Hindustan and other 
parts of Asia. It is strong in Madagascar, and 
flourishes more or less throughout Africa. It 
