granted, then, that "to the lower tribes of man, sun and stars,
trees and rivers, winds and clouds, become personal, animate
creatures, leading lives conformed to human or animal analogies,
and performing their special functions in the universe with the aid
of limbs like beasts, or of artificial instruments like men; or
that what men's eyes behold is but the instrument to be used or the
material to be shaped, while behind it there stands some prodigious
but yet half-human creature, who grasps it with his hands or blows
it with his breath. The basis on which such ideas as these are
built is not to be narrowed down to poetic fancy and transformed
metaphor. They rest upon a broad philosophy of nature; early and
crude, indeed, but thoughtful, consistent, and quite really and
seriously meant."[1]


[1] Primtive Culture, i. 285.


For the sake of illustration, some minor examples must next be
given of this confusion between man and other things in the world,
which will presently be illustrated by the testimony of a powerful
and long diffused set of institutions.

The Christian Quiches of Guatemala believe that each of them has a
beast as his friend and protector, just as in the Highlands "the
dog is the friend of the Maclaines". When the Finns, in their epic
poem the Kalewala, have killed a bear, they implore the animal to
forgive them. "Oh, Ot-so," chant the singers, "be not angry that
we come near thee. The bear, the honey-footed bear, was born in
lands between sun and moon, and he died, not by men's hands, but of