Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 42.djvu/412

396 There are many conclusive reasons for believing that all ancient races, during their early development, lived under this crude system, and, like the savage stocks of our own time, based their laws, both social and religious, upon the well-marked lines of totemism.

The figures of the gods in ancient Egypt were represented on the monuments for ages in animal form. The organization of the local population ran on totem lines. Each city had different beast gods. In the royal genealogies, beasts are named as ancestors; showing that the early Egyptians actually considered themselves descendants of animals. The primitive element in the early Greek religion has been preserved in the "sacred chapters," fragments of which have been given us by Herodotus, Pausanias, and others—proving that the oldest images of the Grecian gods were represented in animal forms, and that the different royal houses claimed descent from animals, as do the savages of America and Australia. Mr. J. McLennan, in his papers on The Worship of Plants and Animals, calls our attention to many evidences that the early Romans as well as the Greeks worshiped totems. The Old Testament records show—notwithstanding the various revisions through which these venerated books have passed—many indications of animal-worship among the Israelites, which must have lasted for ages before the prohibition inculcated in the second line of the Decalogue was formulated. At a comparatively late date "Jehovah was worshiped under the popular symbol of a bull, while the twelve oxen upholding the laver in Solomon's temple, as well as the horns adorning the altar, were drawn from the prevalent bull-worship." Modern research has also proved that the cherubim were represented in the form of winged bulls. M. Lenormant, in his famous book on the Beginnings of History, says that, during the time of the kings and prophets, "most assuredly the cherubim, as there described, are animals."

The process by which the anthropomorphic god superseded the worship of the totem deity has been suggested by Mr. Andrew Lang. "The encyclopædia of myths," as he has been rightly called, has gained the lasting gratitude of all earnest students of primitive culture for his lucid explanations of the puzzling problem of animal-worship. He says: "Among certain peoples, as in Samoa, we see the process of advance toward the Greek and Syrian view of sacred animals. They allege that, in these various beast-totems of their various stocks, the one god common to all these stocks is incarnate. . . . Savage ideas like these would account for the holy animals of different deities, especially in