e of the goat Amaltheia who suckled him in his infancy;
there are a number of legends which connected the Arcadian Artemis with
the worship of the bear, Apollo with the wolf, and so forth. And, most
curious as showing similarity of rites between the Old and New Worlds,
there are found plenty of examples of the wearing of beast-masks in
religious processions among the native tribes of both North and South
America. In the Atlas of Spix and Martius (who travelled together in
the Amazonian forests about 1820) there is an understanding and
characteristic picture of the men (and some women) of the tribe of the
Tecunas moving in procession through the woods mostly naked, except for
wearing animal heads and masks--the masks representing Cranes of various
kinds, Ducks, the Opossum, the Jaguar, the Parrot, etc., probably
symbolic of their respective clans.

By some such process as this, it may fairly be supposed, the forms of
the Gods were slowly exhaled from the actual figures of men and women,
of youths and girls, who year after year took part in the ancient
rituals. Just as the Queen of the May or Father Christmas with us are
idealized forms derived from the many happy maidens or white-bearded
old men who took leading parts in the May or December mummings and thus
gained their apotheosis in our literature and tradition--so doubtless
Zeus with his thunderbolts and arrows of lightning is the idealization
into Heaven of the Priestly rain-maker and storm-controller; Ares the
god of War, the similar idealization of the leading warrior in the
ritual war-dance preceding an attack on a neighboring tribe; and Mercury
of the foot-running Messenger whose swiftness in those days (devoid of
steam or electricity) was so precious a tribal possession.

And here it must be remembered that this explanation of the genesis of
the gods only applies to the SHAPES and FIGURES of the various deities.
It does not apply to the genesis of the widespread belief in spirits or
a Great Spirit generally; that, as I think will become clear, has
quite another source. Some people have jeered at the 'animistic' or
'anthropomorphic' tendency of primitive man in his contemplation of the
forces of Nature or his imaginations of religion and the gods. With a
kind of superior pity they speak of "the poor Indian whose untutored
mind sees God in clouds and hears him in the wind." But I must confess
that to me the "poor Indian" seems on the whole to show more good sense