they certainly would do so if we identified the "religious emotion" with the idea of a "possessing spirit;" and this we are entitled to do, seeing that the controverted point is the worship of nature. If then the idea of a possessing spirit does arise when there is an unfamiliar appearance, how can it be that, whatever the power manifested, no religious emotion is excited? Not to split dialectic hairs, I question the correctness of the statement that the savage is so unsusceptible of emotion. I know there are travellers who bear out Mr. Spencer's opinion; and I am especially mindful of Darwin's account of the Patagonians; nevertheless (and I speak from personal observation of savages in various parts of the world), I incline to think that, unless in overwhelming numbers, savages, from shyness or suspicion, or from whatever cause, simulate and dissimulate before strangers in such a way as entirely to mislead them. I do not believe the savage exists who is not terrified by a crash of thunder; certainly lower animals are so: and were I to observe indifference in a savage's manner under startling circumstances, I should at once assume that he was acting.

But the second part of the above statement concedes all we here contend for. No one alleges that the idea of a possessing spirit would arise under conditions other than those suggested. The mythologist holds, I suppose, that the firmament was personified because of the unfamiliar, i.e., infrequent, appearances, motions, sounds, and changes, which it is wont to display. The heavens were neither personified nor worshipped because there were ghosts abroad; but simply because the heavens appeared to behave, in respect of change, as live animals themselves behave. It is impossible, however, for any one to state the case against Mr. Spencer more forcibly than he himself puts it. "I believe," says he, "M. Comte expressed the opinion that fetichistic conceptions are formed by the higher animals. Holding, as I have given reasons for doing, that fetichism is not original but derived, I cannot,

of course, coincide in this view. Nevertheless, I think the behaviour of intelligent animals elucidates the genesis of it." He then gives, by way of illustration, two instances of which he was a witness. In one, a dog, having hurt himself with the stick which he was playing with, ran away in fear: which showed that the dog regarded the stick as capable of again doing him injury. "Similarly in the mind of the primitive man, knowing scarcely more of natural causation than a dog, the anomalous behaviour of an object previously classed as inanimate suggests animation. The idea of voluntary action is made nascent; and then arises a tendency to regard the object with alarm, &c. The vague notion of animation thus aroused will obviously become a more definite notion, as fast as development of the ghost-theory furnishes a specific agency to which the anomalous behaviour can be ascribed." In other words, the movement of an inanimate object having first suggested animation-first, because the dog has no theory about ghosts-the ghost-theory then comes into play, converts the primordial fetichism into personification of nature; and by so doing, paves the way for ancestorworship, or for polytheism, as the case may be.

Should the above rendering of Mr. Spencer's doctrine be still questionable, take his chapter on the origin of the distinction between the living and the not-living. If, he tells us, we would understand the nature of this distinction as conceived by primitive man, we must observe the development of it through lower forms of consciousness. With his usual felicity in choice of illustration, Mr. Spencer bids us mark the cirrhipeds on the sea-shore, and watch them draw to the doors of their cells when there is sudden obscuration by cloud. "Various inferior types, whose lives are carried on by reflex actions only, display no very marked advance on this mode of discriminating the living from the not-living as visually presented."1 "Speaking generally, we may say that in 1 Vol. i. p. 139.

such cases the motion which implies life is confounded with the motion which does not. The kind of mental act is like that occurring in ourselves when some large object suddenly passes close in front. . . . Here the primary suggestion with us, as with these lower creatures, is that motion implies life," &c. Is not this the pith and moment of the whole affair? Motion implies life. Here we get down to the uttermost depths of animism; and-shall we say the word?-the basis of religion is discovered in the reflex action of a mollusc.

LETTER VII.

IT is a true saying of Mr. Tylor's, that "whatever bears on the origin of philosophic opinion, bears also on its validity." For all that, I would not have you fling these letters aside when you apply this aphorism to the conclusion just arrived at. We have many men's brains to ransack yet, and many creeds to collate. But we must steadfastly believe that, however startling or alarming a truth may be, it is at best but a partial truth. Our mental, like our ocular vision, commands a segment only of the circle; and even then, but the prison walls.

There is little else connected with the rise of mythology that needs detain us; for, what remains does but confirm, not shake, the drift of the foregoing arguments. I shall quote a few authors who have as good a claim to be heard as any, and then pass to the next stage of our inquiry. Creuzer, in his great work, "Symbolik und Mythologie der alten Völker," &c., says: "Language was also a prolific mother of gods and heroes. As it was extremely figurative and metaphorical, it must often, in passing from one people to another, and at wide intervals, have assumed a singularly foreign aspect; such and such expressions ceased to be understood, and myths were invented to make them intelligible." "Symbols and hieroglyphics must also have been affluent sources of myth. Thus the inventive genius of the Greeks readily found a meaning for the Egyptian vases surmounted with the human head, and having handles ornamented with serpents. They sought no mystic interpretation in the cultus of Isis, for which the vases were used, but simply

turned the sacred emblem into a Greek hero, tacked on a legend of the Trojan war, and then set to work to embroider an elaborate myth." After the same fashion the story of Cleopatra's suicide may not improbably be derived from a statue of this queen crowned with asps, the asp being a common emblem of royalty. Another parallel instance of the myth-making art is that given by Herodotus (Bk. I. chaps. i., ii.) of the story of Io. In the Greek myth, as we all know, the priestess Io, who is loved by Zeus, excites the jealousy of Hera. Zeus, to appease his spouse, changes Io into a white cow. Hera, not yet satisfied, sets the many-eyed Argos to watch her; whereupon Zeus sends the crafty Hermes to kill Argos. Hera retaliates by so tormenting Io with a gad-fly, that the latter wanders over the world for rest until she reaches the banks of the Nile; where, at the touch of Zeus, she regains her form and bears a son named Epaphos. The Persian version of the story as related by Herodotus is simply this: "The Phoenicians, who traded in the wares of Egypt and Assyria, happened to land at Argos. Here a number of women, and among them Io-the daughter of the king-came down to the beach. Suddenly the Phoenicians seized Io and set sail for Egypt."

Sir Henry Rawlinson traces the name of Io to a cuneiform inscription where mention is made of some Greek colonists under the name of the Yaha tribes. He further suggests that the name "may perhaps furnish an astronomical solution of the entire fable, &c., the Egyptian title of the moon being Yah, and the primitive Chaldæan title being represented by a cuneiform sign, which is phonetically Ai, as in modern Turkish." This last view was also entertained by Keightley,1 who says, "The general opinion respecting Io seems to be that she is the moon, and Argos the starry heaven, which, as it were, keeps ceaseless watch over her; her wanderings are thought to denote the continual revolutions of this planet. In con 1 Mythology of Ancient Greece, &c.