[74] Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites, p. 290. Cf. Isaiah, lxv. 4, and lxvi. 3, 17, where this sacrifice is alluded to as a heathen abomination.
[75] Herodotus, ii. 47. Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride, 8. Aelian, De natura animalium, x. 16.
[76] Herodotus, ii. 47. Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride, 8.
Of the abhorrence of cannibalism I shall speak in a separate [chapter], but in this connection it is worth noticing that the eating of certain animals is regarded with horror or disgust either because they are supposed to be metamorphosed ancestors[77] or on account of their resemblance to men. Various peoples refrain from monkey’s flesh;[78] and European travellers mention their own instinctive repugnance to it and their aversion to shooting monkeys.[79] The Indians of Lower California will eat any animal, except men and monkeys, “the latter because they so much resemble the former.”[80] According to an ancient writer quoted by Porphyry, the Egyptian priests rejected those animals which “verged to a similitude to the human form.”[81] The Kafirs say that elephants are forbidden food because their intelligence resembles that of men.[82]
[77] Frazer, Golden Bough, ii. 430 sqq. St. John, op. cit. i. 186 (Land Dyaks).
[78] Shooter, op. cit. p. 215 (Zulus). Schurtz, op. cit. p. 28 (Abyssinians). Skeat and Blagden, op. cit. i. 134 (Orang Sletar). In the Institutes of Vishnu (li. 3) the eating of apes is particularly stigmatised.
[79] Schurtz, op. cit. p. 28. Infra, on [Regard for the Lower Animals].
[80] Bancroft, op. cit. i. 560.
[81] Porphyry, op. cit. iv. 7.
[82] Müller, Ethnographie, p. 189.