akes, too, from their habit of gliding out of their own
skins with renewed brightness and color were suggestive of resurrection
and re-vivification; pigs and sows by their exceeding fruitfulness would
in their hour of sacrifice remind old mother Earth of what was expected
from her! Moreover, no doubt it had been observed that the scattering of
dead flesh over the ground or mixed with the seed, did bless the
ground to a greater fertility; and so by a strange mixture of primitive
observation with a certain child-like belief that by means of symbols
and suggestions Nature could be appealed to and induced to answer to the
desires and needs for her children this sort of ceremonial Magic arose.
It was not exactly Science, and it was not exactly Religion; but it was
a naive, and perhaps not altogether mistaken, sense of the bond between
Nature and Man.

(1) See Gilbert Murray's Four Stages of Greek Religion, p. 29.

For we can perceive that earliest man was not yet consciously
differentiated from Nature. Not only do we see that the tribal life was
so strong that the individual seldom regarded himself as different or
separate or opposed to the rest of the tribe; but that something of the
same kind was true with regard to his relation to the Animals and to
Nature at large. This outer world was part of himself, was also himself.
His sub-conscious sense of unity was so great that it largely dominated
his life. That brain-cleverness and brain-activity which causes modern
man to perceive such a gulf between him and the animals, or between
himself and Nature, did not exist in the early man. Hence it was
no difficulty to him to believe that he was a Bear or an Emu.
Sub-consciously he was wiser than we are. He knew that he was a bear or
an emu, or any other such animal as his totem-creed led him to fix his
mind upon. Hence we find that a familiarity and common consent existed
between primitive man and many of his companion animals such as has
been lost or much attenuated in modern times. Elisee Reclus in his very
interesting paper La Grande Famille (1) gives support to the idea that
the so-called domestication of animals did not originally arise from any
forcible subjugation of them by man, but from a natural amity with
them which grew up in the beginning from common interests, pursuits and
affections. Thus the chetah of India (and probably the puma of Brazil)
from far-back times took to hunting in the company of his two-legged and