THE SERPENT'S STRANGENESS 171 



holism does not exist among barbarians and 

 savages : it comes in only when the intellect has 

 progressed sufficiently far to become enamoured of 

 subtleties. When the savage Shawnees heard the 

 hissing of a great snake in the thunder, and saw 

 in the lightning a fiery serpent descending to the 

 earth, the beings they heard and saw were real — 

 as real as the rattlesnake. The same may be said 

 of the monster serpent with a precious stone for a 

 crown of the Iroquois and Algonquins ; and of the 

 mighty Onnient, the serpent of the Hurons, bearing 

 a horn on its head with which it was able to pierce 

 through rocks and hills. 



Greater than these (as gods are greater than 

 heroes) were some of the serpents of old, and they 

 also had a vastly greater influence on human 

 destiny ; but in their origins they were probably 

 the same — merely the strange births of the mythical 

 faculty and the lawless imagination of the primitive 

 mind : the Mexican Cihua Cohuatl, " the woman 

 of the serpent," and mother of the human race ; 

 and the serpent of the Edda that encircled the 

 world ; and Persian Ahriman, " the old serpent 

 having two feet," who seduced Mechia and 

 Mechiana, the first man and woman ; and, most 

 awful of all, Aphophis, " the destroyer, the enemy 

 of the gods, and devourer of the souls of men ; 

 dweller in that mysterious ocean upon which the 

 Boris, or boat of the sun, was navigated by the 

 gods through the hours of day and night, in the 

 celestial region." 



