,
tribes in the stage of thought here described, hold themselves to be
actually descended from material objects often the most diverse from
human form. These are not only animals (beasts, birds, fishes, reptiles,
and even insects) or vegetables, but occasionally the sun, the sea, the
earth, and other things unendowed with life. Such mythic ancestors are
worshipped as divine. This superstition is called _Totemism_, and the
mythic ancestor is known as the _Totem_. As a people passes gradually
into a higher stage of culture, greater stress is constantly laid on the
human qualities of the Totem, until it becomes at length an
anthropomorphic god. To such deity the object previously reverenced as a
Totem is attached, and a new and modified legend grows up to account for
the connection.

The belief in metamorphosis involves opinions on the subject of death
which are worth a moment's pause. Death is a problem to all men, to the
savage as to the most civilized. Least of any can the savage look upon
it as extinction. He emphatically believes that he has something within
him that survives the dissolution of his outward frame. This is his
spirit, the seat of his consciousness, his real self. As he himself has
a spirit, so every object in the world has a spirit. He peoples the
universe, as he knows it, with spirits akin to his own. It is to their
spirits that all the varied objects around him, all the phenomena
observable by day or by night, owe the consciousness, the personality, I
have already tried to describe. These spirits are separable from the
material form with which they are clad. When the savage sleeps, his
spirit goes forth upon various adventures. These adventures he remembers
as dreams; but they are as veritable as his waking deeds; and he awakes
when his spirit returns to him. In his dreams he sees his friends, his
foes; he kills imaginary bears and venison. He knows therefore that
other men's spirits travel while their bodies sleep and undergo
adventures like his own, and in company often with his spirit. He knows
that the spirits of wild animals range abroad and encounter his spirit.
What is death but the spirit going forth to return no more? Rocks and
rivers perhaps cannot die, or at least their life immeasurably exceeds
that of men. But the trees of the forest may, for he can cut them down
and burn them. Yet, inasmuch as it is the nature of a body to have an
indwelling spirit, death--the permanent severing of body