landers. No actual adventure of Wild Edric or Raymond of Lusignan gave
rise to these stories. English patriot and Burgundian Count were only
the names whereon they fastened,--the mountains which towered above the
plain and gathered about their heads the vapours already floating in the
atmosphere. We must therefore go back far beyond the Middle Ages to
learn in what manner we are to understand these stories,--back to the
state of savagery whence the inhabitants of Europe had long emerged when
Map and Gervase wrote, but of which the relics linger among us even yet.

The necessarily meagre exposition of some of the most salient
characteristics of savage thought with which we started has been
illustrated and its outlines filled in to some extent in the course of
the subsequent discussions. I need not, therefore, do more than draw
attention as briefly as possible to those characteristics that are
relevant here. First and foremost, we have found some of the
Swan-maiden tales boldly professing to account for the worship of
totems; and so thoroughly does totemism appear to be ingrained in the
myth that there is some reason for thinking that here we have a clue to
the myth's origin and meaning. But the intellect to which totemism is a
credible theory draws no line of demarcation between humanity and the
life and consciousness it recognizes in the whole encircling universe.
To it, accordingly, a story of union between a man and a fish, a swan or
a serpent, involves no difficulty. When advancing knowledge, and with
knowledge repulsion from such a story, begins to threaten it, another
belief advances to its defence. For nothing is easier to creatures as
clever as the lower animals than a change of form. They can, whenever
they please, assume the appearance of man or woman: it is as natural to
them as the shape under which they are usually seen. Again, the life
that swarms about the savage philosopher does not always manifest itself
visibly. It is often unseen. The world is filled with spirits, of whom
some have inhabited human bodies, others have not. To the savage they
are all alike; for those who have not hitherto inhabited human bodies
may do so at will, or may inhabit other bodies, either animal or
vegetable, and those who have once done so may do so again.

All these--Totemism, the equality and essential identity of nature
between man and all other objects in the universe, the doctrine of
Transformation, the doctrine of Spirit