Page:The Fables of Bidpai (Panchatantra).djvu/50

xl From the Bushmen or their ancient representatives, it seems to be suggested, it may have passed on to Egypt, and thence have percolated to Phœnicia, Assyria, Greece (may not Æsop he connected with, it is asked), and India. Benfey himself gives some support to this contention by suggesting that in the first instance metempsychosis was derived from Egypt.

But against all this inquiry about the place from which beast-fables first came may be urged the probability that they came from nowhere, because they have always been everywhere where nomad man was. The doctrine of metempsychosis itself we now know, thanks to Mr. Tylor, to be merely an extension of the general tendency of early races towards an "animistic" theory of things, by which the savage observer of Nature projects his personality into all surrounding objects, whether animate or inanimate. The