gination of the savage has been defined by Mr. Tylor as "midway
between the conditions of a healthy, prosaic, modern citizen, and of a
raving fanatic, or of a patient in a fever-ward". If any relics of
such imagination survive in civilised mythology, they will very closely
resemble the productions of a once universal "temporary insanity". Let
it be granted, then, that "to the lower tribes of man, sun and stars,
trees and rivers, winds and clouds, become personal, animate creatures,
leading lives conformed to human or animal analogies, and performing
their special functions in the universe with the aid of limbs like
beasts, or of artificial instruments like men; or that what men's eyes
behold is but the instrument to be used or the material to be shaped,
while behind it there stands some prodigious but yet half-human
creature, who grasps it with his hands or blows it with his breath. The
basis on which such ideas as these are built is not to be narrowed
down to poetic fancy and transformed metaphor. They rest upon a
broad philosophy of nature; early and crude, indeed, but thoughtful,
consistent, and quite really and seriously meant."(1)

(1) Primtive Culture, i. 285.

For the sake of illustration, some minor examples must next be given
of this confusion between man and other things in the world, which
will presently be illustrated by the testimony of a powerful and long
diffused set of institutions.

The Christian Quiches of Guatemala believe that each of them has a beast
as his friend and protector, just as in the Highlands "the dog is
the friend of the Maclaines". When the Finns, in their epic poem the
Kalewala, have killed a bear, they implore the animal to forgive them.
"Oh, Ot-so," chant the singers, "be not angry that we come near thee.
The bear, the honey-footed bear, was born in lands between sun and moon,
and he died, not by men's hands, but of his own will."(1) The Red Men of
North America(2) have a tradition showing how it is that the bear does
not die, but, like Herodotus with the sacred stories of the Egyptian
priests, Mr. Schoolcraft "cannot induce himself to write it out".(3) It
is a most curious fact that the natives of Australia tell a similar tale
of THEIR "native bear". "He did not die" when attacked by men.(4) In
parts of Australia it is a great offence to skin the native bear,
just as on a part of the west coast of Ireland, where seals are
superstitiously regarded, the people cannot be bribed t