.' The Vedic myth of Indra's amours in shape of a ram, I say
'will doubtless be explained away as metaphorical.' Nay, I will go
further. It is perfectly conceivable to me that in certain cases a
poetic epithet applied by a poet to a god (say bull, ram, or snake)
_might_ be misconceived, and _might_ give rise to the worship of a god as
a bull, or snake, or ram. Further, if civilised ideas perished, and if a
race retained a bull-god, born of their degradation and confusion of
mind, they might eat him in a ritual sacrifice. But that _all_
totemistic races are totemistic, because they all first metaphorically
applied animal names to gods, and then forgot what they had meant, and
worshipped these animals, sans phrase, appears to me to be, if not
incredible, still greatly in want of evidence.

Mr. Frazer and I

It is plain that where a people claim no connection by descent and blood
from a sacred animal, are neither of his name nor kin, the essential
feature of totemism is absent. I do not see that eaters of the bull
Dionysus or cultivators of the pig Demeter {86} made any claim to kindred
with either god. Their towns were not allied in name with pig or bull.
If traces of such a belief existed, they have been sloughed off. Thus
Mr. Frazer's explanation of Greek pigs and bulls and all their odd rites,
as connected with the beast in which the corn-spirit is incarnate, holds
its ground better than my totemistic suggestion. But I am not sure that
the corn-spirit accounts for the Sminthian mouse in all his aspects, nor
for the Arcadian and Attic bear-rites and myths of Artemis. Mouse and
bear do appear in Mr. Frazer's catalogue of forms of the corn-spirits,
taken from Mannhardt. {87} But the Arcadians, as we shall see, _claimed
descent_ from a bear, and the mouse place-names and badges of the Troad
yield a hint of the same idea. The many Greek family claims to descent
from gods as dogs, bulls, ants, serpents, and so on, _may_ spring from
gratitude to the corn-spirit. Does Mr. Frazer think so? Nobody knows so
well as he that similar claims of descent from dogs and snakes are made
by many savage kindreds who have no agriculture, no corn, and, of course,
no corn-spirits. These remarks, I trust, are not undiscriminating, and
naturally I yield the bull Dionysus and the pig Demeter to the
corn-spirit, vice totem, superseded. But I do hanker after the Arcadian
bear as, at least, a possible survival of totemism. The