dern Negroes. The artistic evolution of the gods, a
remarkably rapid one after a certain point, could be traced in every
temple. It began with the rude stone, and rose to the wooden idol, in
which, as we have seen, Pausanias and Porphyry found such sanctity.
Next it reached the hammered bronze image, passed through the archaic
marbles, and culminated in the finer marbles and the chryselephantine
statues of Zeus and Athena. But none of the ancient sacred objects lost
their sacredness. The oldest were always the holiest idols; the oldest
of all were stumps and stones, like savage fetish-stones.

(1) Pausanias, ii. 2.

(2) Clemens Alex., Protrept. (Oxford, 1715). p. 41.

(3) Gill, Myths of South Pacific, p. 60. Compare a god, which proved to
be merely pumice-stone, and was regarded as the god of winds and waves,
having been drifted to Puka-Puka. Offerings of food were made to it
during hurricanes.

Another argument in favour of the general thesis that savagery left
deep marks on Greek life in general, and on myth in particular, may be
derived from survivals of totemism in ritual and legend. The following
instances need not necessarily be accepted, but it may be admitted that
they are precisely the traces which totemism would leave had it once
existed, and then waned away on the advance of civilisation.(1)

(1) The argument to be derived from the character of the Greek (Greek
text omitted) as a modified form of the totem-kindred is too long and
complex to be put forward here. It is stated in Custom and Myth, "The
history of the Family," in M'Lennan's Studies in Early history, and is
assumed, if not proved, in Ancient Society by the late Mr. Lewis Morgan.

That Greeks in certain districts regarded with religious reverence
certain plants and animals is beyond dispute. That some stocks even
traced their lineage to beasts will be shown in the chapter on Greek
Divine Myths, and the presumption is that these creatures, though
explained as incarnations and disguises of various gods, were once
totems sans phrase, as will be inferred from various examples. Clemens
Alexandrinus, again, after describing the animal-worship of the
Egyptians, mentions cases of zoolatry in Greece.(1) The Thessalians
revered storks, the Thebans weasels, and the myth ran that the weasel
had in some way aided Alcmena when in labour with Heracles. In another
form of the myth the weasel was the foster-mother of the hero.(2) Other
Thessalians, the