modern
style on these things, I yet have no reasonable doubt that he felt (and
FEELS, in those cases where we can still trace the workings of his
mind) his essential relationship to the creatures of the forest more
intimately, if less analytically, than we do to-day. If the animals with
all their wonderful gifts are (as we readily admit) a veritable part
of Nature--so that they live and move and have their being more or less
submerged in the spirit of the great world around them--then Man, when
he first began to differentiate himself from them, must for a long
time have remained in this SUBconscious unity, becoming only distinctly
CONSCIOUS of it when he was already beginning to lose it. That early
dawn of distinct consciousness corresponded to the period of belief
in Magic. In that first mystic illumination almost every object was
invested with a halo of mystery or terror or adoration. Things were
either tabu, in which case they were dangerous, and often not to be
touched or even looked upon--or they were overflowing with magic grace
and influence, in which case they were holy, and any rite which released
their influence was also holy. William Blake, that modern prophetic
child, beheld a Tree full of angels; the Central Australian native
believes bushes to be the abode of spirits which leap into the bodies of
passing women and are the cause of the conception of children; Moses
saw in the desert a bush (perhaps the mimosa) like a flame of fire, with
Jehovah dwelling in the midst of it, and he put off his shoes for
he felt that the place was holy; Osiris was at times regarded as a
Tree-spirit (1); and in inscriptions is referred to as "the solitary one
in the acacia"--which reminds us curiously of the "burning bush." The
same is true of others of the gods; in the old Norse mythology Ygdrasil
was the great branching World-Ash, abode of the soul of the universe;
the Peepul or Bo-tree in India is very sacred and must on no account be
cut down, seeing that gods and spirits dwell among its branches. It is
of the nature of an Aspen, and of little or no practical use, (2) but so
holy that the poorest peasant will not disturb it. The Burmese believe
the things of nature, but especially the trees, to be the abode of
spirits. "To the Burman of to-day, not less than to the Greek of long
ago, all nature is alive. The forest and the river and the mountains
are full of spirits, whom the Burmans call Nats. There are all kinds of
Nats, g