discovered. It is not easy to explain the beginnings of totemism in Gaul
or elsewhere, but it should always be borne in mind that early man could
not regard it as an axiomatic truth that he was the superior of every
other animal. To reach that proud consciousness is a very high step in
the development of the human perspective, and it is to the credit of the
Celts that, when we know them in historic times, they appear to have
attained to this height, inasmuch as the human form is given to their
deities. It is not always remembered how great a step in religious
evolution is implied when the gods are clothed with human attributes. M.
Salomon Reinach, in his account of the vestiges of totemism among the
Celts, suggests that totemism was merely the hypertrophy of early man's
social sense, which extended from man to the animals around him. This
may possibly be the case, but it is not improbable that man also thought
to discover in certain animals much-needed allies against some of the
visible and invisible enemies that beset him. In his conflict with the
malign powers around him, he might well have regarded certain animals as
being in some respects stronger combatants against those powers than
himself; and where they were not physically stronger, some of them, like
the snake, had a cunning and a subtlety that seemed far to surpass his
own. In course of time certain bodies of men came to regard themselves
as being in special alliance with some one animal, and as being descended
from that animal as their common ancestor. The existence side by side of
various tribes, each with its definite totem, has not yet been fully
proved for the Gaulish system, and may well have been a developed social
arrangement that was not an essential part of such a mode of thought in
its primary forms. The place of animal-worship in the Celtic religion
will be more fully considered in a later chapter. Here it is only
indicated as a necessary stage in relation to man's civilisation in the
hunting and the pastoral stages, which had to be passed through before
the historic deities of Gaul and Britain in Roman times could have come