rpent
to the skies, perhaps, but his interest in the animal began on earth, not
in the clouds. It is excessively improbable, and quite unproved, that
any race ever regarded lightning as the flashes of a mouse's teeth. The
hypothesis is a jeu d'esprit, like the opposite hypothesis about the
mouse of Night. In these, and all the other current theories of the
Sminthian Apollo, the widely diffused worship of ordinary mice, and such
small deer, has been either wholly neglected, or explained by the first
theory of symbolism that occurred to the conjecture of a civilised
observer. The facts of savage animal-worship, and their relations to
totemism, seem still unknown to or unappreciated by scholars, with the
exception of Mr. Sayce, who recognises totemism as the origin of the
zoomorphic element in Egyptian religion.

Our explanation, whether adequate or not, is not founded on an isolated
case. If Apollo superseded and absorbed the worship of the mouse, he did
no less for the wolf, the ram, the dolphin, and several other animals
whose images were associated with his own. The Greek religion was more
refined and anthropomorphic than that of Egypt. In Egypt the animals
were still adored, and the images of the gods had bestial heads. In
Greece only a few gods, and chiefly in very archaic statues, had bestial
heads; but beside the other deities the sculptor set the owl, eagle,
wolf, serpent, tortoise, mouse, or whatever creature was the local
favourite of the deity. {118a} Probably the deity had, in the majority
of cases, superseded the animal and succeeded to his honours. But the
conservative religious sentiment retained the beast within the courts and
in the suit and service of the anthropomorphic god. {118b}

The process by which the god ousted the beasts may perhaps be observed in
Samoa. There (as Dr. Turner tells us in his 'Samoa') each family has its
own sacred animal, which it may not eat. If this law be transgressed,
the malefactor is supernaturally punished in a variety of ways. But,
while each family has thus its totem, four or five different families
recognise, in owl, crab, lizard, and so on, incarnations of the same god,
say of Tongo. If Tongo had a temple among these families, we can readily
believe that images of the various beasts in which he was incarnate would
be kept within the consecrated walls. Savage ideas like these, if they
were ever entertained in Greece, would account for the holy animals of