[248]. Man's social contact with the lower animals is doubtless as old as man himself, but there are no records of his earliest life, and it is not possible to say exactly when and how his religious relations with them began. His attitude toward them; as is remarked above, was a mixed one; in general, however, it may be assumed that constant intercourse with them revealed their great qualities and impressed on him the necessity of securing their good will. This was especially true of those of them that stood nearest to him and were of greatest importance for his safety and convenience. These, invested with mystery by reason of their power and their strangeness, were held in great respect as quasi-gods, were approached with caution, and thus acquired the character of sacredness. Gradually, as human society was better and better organized, as conceptions of government became clearer, and as the natures of the various animals were more closely studied, means were devised of guarding against their anger and securing their friendship and aid. Our earliest information of savage life reveals in every tribe an inchoate pantheon of beasts. All the essential apparatus of public religion is present in these communities in embryonic form—later movements have had for their object merely to clarify ideas and refine procedures.
[249]. The animals revered by a tribe are those of its vicinage, the inhabitants of its hunting grounds. Some of these man uses as food, some he fears. His relation to plains, mountains, forests, lakes, rivers, and seas, influences his choice of sacred beasts. Usually there are many of them, and the natural inference is that originally all animals are sacred, and that gradually those most important for man are singled out as objects of special regard.
[250]. Thus, to mention the principal of them: in Africa we find lion, leopard, hyena, hippopotamus, crocodile, bull, ram, dog, cat, ape, grasshopper; in Oceania, kangaroo, emu, pig, heron, owl, rail, eel, cuttlefish; in Asia, lion, elephant, bear, horse, bull, dog, pig, eagle, tiger, water wagtail, whale; in Europe, bear, wolf, horse, bull, goat, swan; in America, whale, bear, wolf, fox, coyote, hare, opossum, deer, monkey, tiger, beaver, turtle, eagle, raven, various fishes. The snake seems to have been generally revered, though it was sometimes regarded as hostile.[450] Since animals are largely valued as food, changes in the animals specially honored follow on changes in economic organization (hunting, pastoral, and agricultural stages).
[251]. Often animals are looked on as the abodes or incarnations of gods or spirits: so various birds, fishes, and beasts in Polynesia (in Samoa every man has a tutelary deity, which appears in the form of an animal[451]), Siberia, Mexico, and elsewhere. In other cases they are revered as incarnations of deceased men.[452] Where a species of animal is supposed to represent a god, this view is probably to be regarded not as a generalization from an individualistic to a specific conception (a process too refined for savages), but as an attempt to carry over to the animal world the idea of descent from a common ancestor combined with the idea of a special creator for every family of animals.[453]
[252]. In the course of religious growth the beast-god may be replaced or succeeded by an anthropomorphic god, and then the former is regarded as sacred to the latter—the recollection of the beast form still remains after the more refined conception has been reached, and the two, closely connected in popular feeling, can be brought into harmony only by making one subordinate to the other.[454] A certain element or flavor of divinity clings to the beast a long time, but finally vanishes under the light of better knowledge.
[253]. While the cases, very numerous, in which animals are associated in worship with gods—in composite forms (as in Egypt, Babylonia, and Assyria) or as symbols of deities or sacred to them—point probably to early beast-cults, Egypt alone of the ancient civilized nations maintained the worship of the living animal.[455] For the better thinkers of Egypt beasts doubtless were incarnations or symbols of deities; but the mass of the people appear to have regarded them as gods in their own persons.
[254]. Reverence for animals persists in attenuated form in civilized nations in various superstitions connected with them. Their appearances and their cries are believed to portend success or disaster. The great number of "signs" recognized and relied on by uneducated and educated persons at the present day bear witness to the strong hold that the cult of animals had on early man.[456]
[255]. It is in keeping with early ideas that savages often, perhaps generally, ascribe the creation or construction of the world (so far as they know it) to animals. The creation (whether by beasts or by other beings) is not conceived of as produced out of nothing; there is always preëxisting material, the origin of which is not explained; primitive thought seems not to have considered the possibility of a situation in which nothing existed. The "creation" conceived of is the arrangement of existing material into the forms familiar to man—every tribe accounting thus for its own environment. The origin of the land, of mountains, defiles, lakes, rivers, trees, rocks, sun, moon, and stars, wind and rain, human beings and lower animals, and sometimes of social organizations and ceremonies, is explained in some way natural to the thought of the time and place. Not all these details occur in the cosmogony of every tribe or clan, but the purpose of every cosmogony is to account for everything in the origin of which the people are interested.
[256]. The creator in the cosmogonies known to us is not always an animal—he is sometimes a man, sometimes a god; it is possible, however, that human and divine creators are the successors of original animal creators. In Central Australia the production of certain natural features of the country and the establishment of certain customs are ascribed to ancestors, mythical beings of the remote past, creatures both animal and human, or rather, either animal or human—possibly animals moving toward the anthropomorphic stage.[457] However this may be, there are instances in which the creator is an animal pure and simple, though, of course, endowed with extraordinary powers. The beast to which the demiurgic function is assigned is selected, it would seem, on the ground of some peculiar skill or other power it is supposed to possess; naturally the reason for the choice is not always apparent. For the Ainu the demiurge is the water wagtail;[458] for the Navahos and in California,[459] the coyote or prairie wolf; among the Lenni-Lenâpé, the wolf.[460] Various animals—as elephants, boars, turtles, snakes—are supposed to bear the world on their backs. The grounds of such opinions, resting on remote social conditions, are obscure.
[257]. Though, in early stadia of culture, animals are universally revered as in a sort divine, there are few recorded instances of actual worship offered them.[461] Whether the Bushmen and the Hottentots worship the mantis (the Bushman god Cagn) as animal is not quite clear.[462] The bear, when it is ceremonially slain, is treated by the Ainu as divine—it is approached with food and prayer, but only for the specific purpose of asking that it will speak well of them to its divine kin and will return to earth to be slain. The Zuñi cult of the turtle and the Californian worship of the bird called panes[463] present similar features. The non-Aryan Santhals of Bengal are said to offer divine worship to the tiger.[464] Such worship appears to be paid to the snake by the Naga tribes and the Gonds of India, and by the Hopi of North America.[465]