taught him of the differences between the objects which fill the world.[1] "To the ear of the savage, animals certainly seem to talk." "As far as the Indians of Guiana are concerned, I do not believe that they distinguish such beings as sun and moon, or such other natural phenomena as winds and storms, from men and other animals, from plants and other inanimate objects, or from any other objects whatsoever." Bancroft says about North American myths, "Beasts and birds and fishes fetch and carry, talk and act, in a way that leaves even Æsop's heroes quite in the shade."[2]
The savage tendency is to see in inanimate things animals, and in animals disguised men. M. Réville quotes in his Religions des Peuples Non-Civilisés, i. 64, the story of some Negroes, who, the first time they were shown a cornemuse, took the instrument for a beast, the two holes for its eyes. The Highlander who looted a watch at Prestonpans, and observing, "She's teed," sold it cheap when it ran down, was in the same psychological condition. A queer bit of savage science is displayed on a black stone tobacco-pipe from the Pacific Coast.[3] The savage artist has carved the pipe in the likeness of a steamer, as a steamer is conceived by him. "Unable to account for the motive power, he imagines the paddle to be linked round the tongue
- ↑ Journ. Antrhop. Inst., xi. 366–369. A very large and rich collection of testimonies as to metamorphosis will be found in J. G. Müller's Amerikanischen Urreligionen, p. 62 et seq.; while, for European superstitions, Bodin on La Démonomanie des Sorciers, Lyon, 1598, may be consulted.
- ↑ Vol. iii. p. 127.
- ↑ Magazine of Art, January 1883.
