another in the dog, another in the owl, another in the lizard;
and so on, throughout all the fish of the sea and birds and
four-footed beasts and creeping things. In some of the shell-
fish even, gods were supposed to be present. A man would eat
freely of what was regarded as the incarnation of the god of
another man, but the incarnation of his own particular god he
would consider it death to injure or eat."<23>


We have here that which appears to be the origin, or one of the
origins, of food prohibitions, on the one hand, and of totemism
on the other. When it is remembered that the old Israelites
sprang from ancestors who are said to have resided near, or in,
one of the great seats of ancient Babylonian civilisation, the
city of Ur; that they had been, it is said for centuries, in
close contact with the Egyptians; and that, in the theology of
both the Babylonians and the Egyptians, there is abundant
evidence, notwithstanding their advanced social organisation, of
the belief in spirits, with sorcery, ancestor-worship, the
deification of animals, and the converse animalisation of gods--
it obviously needs very strong evidence to justify the belief
that the rude tribes of Israel did not share the notions from
which their far more civilised neighbours had not
emancipated themselves.

But it is surely needless to carry the comparison further.
Out of the abundant evidence at command, I think that sufficient
has been produced to furnish ample grounds for the belief, that
the old Israelites of the time of Samuel entertained theological
conceptions which were on a level with those current among the