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Animal-worship has played a great rôle in religious history, but the special part assigned to totemism has often been exaggerated. These positions are not justified by known facts, and it will conduce to clearness to give totemism its distinct place in that general regard for animals and plants of which it is a peculiar part.
The first is animal-worship, a phenomenon of frequent occurrence and of perplexing import. Mr. McLennan has shown that much at least of the widespread worship of animals is to be traced to an early totem-stage of society, when animals were held sacred as the ancestors of men. In the second place, totemism explains the view taken in the early world of the nature of religious fellowship.
Apparently he inclines to the belief, tacitly adopted also by Mr. McLennan, that animal-worship is derived from an original Fetichism, of which it is a more developed form. If a writer who discusses unsettled questions takes up every gauntlet thrown down to him, polemical writing will absorb much of his energy.
We see in it higher conceptions of religion struggling out of lower. In the recumbent wingless sphinx of Egypt we see anthropomorphic ideas of religion emerging out of the gross animal-worship of more primitive times.
Max Muller will not look at religion in this way. Mr. Max Muller's remarks on 'Zoolatry, as De Brosses calls it, or animal- worship, require only the briefest comment. De Brosses, very unluckily, confused zoolatry with other superstitions under the head of Fetichism. This was unscientific; but is it scientific of Mr. Max Muller to discuss animal-worship without any reference to totemism?
He is figured as a mummy; and we know that full length burial and mummifying begin with the dynastic race. He was identified with the earlier animal-worship of the bull Apis; but it is not likely that this originated his creative aspect, as he creates by moulding clay, or by word and will, and not by natural means.
The facts of savage animal-worship, and their relations to totemism, seem still unknown to or unappreciated by scholars, with the exception of Mr. Sayce, who recognises totemism as the origin of the zoomorphic element in Egyptian religion. Our explanation, whether adequate or not, is not founded on an isolated case.
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