evident that the magical ornaments worn by them on these occasions[1] are but superorganic survivals of a plastic mould of the body which is still represented by lower organisms but has disappeared in the course of evolution. To speak with Semon we shall say that it is the numerous "engrams" of former changes[2] both temporary and permanent which survives in the belief in the possibility of a change from one shape to the other. In a Wichita legend of the deeds of "Wets the Bed" we read: "They took a small bowl and filled it with water. They poured it on fire and when the smoke went up it sounded like thunder; as the people who had determined to change their nature flew up in the air those that wished to exist as animals went to different directions, some to the water."[3] Or we may compare the story of "Child of a Dog". "So after recounting many troubles, they said to one another: Let us become something else, for we have met so much trouble and we are likely to meet more and in order to prevent this we must leave our old home and become something else."[4] Most primitive people have an age of the world when everything is continually becoming something else,[5] and here again primitive man finds himself in accordance with modern science which tells us that Nature operates through a sort of trial and error method
and that the natural species which has proved itself best adapted
- ↑ See the books of Spencer and Gillen quoted above as well as Strehlow and Leonhardi: Die Aranda- und Loritjastämme in Zentralaustralien, Veröffentlichungen aus dem Städtischen Völkermuseum, Frankfurt am Main, 1907. The theoretical remarks found in the text above will be set forth and, as far as proof in such matters is possible, proved in my work on "Australian Totemism".
- ↑ R. Semon: Die Mneme, 1920.
- ↑ G. A. Dorsey: The Mythology of the Wichita, 1904, p. 114.
- ↑ Dorsey: op. cit. 149.
- ↑ Cf. for instances F. G. Speck: Ethnology of the Yuchi Indians, (Univ. Penns. Anthr. Publ.) 1909, p. 107; J. Teit: Traditions of the Thompson River Indians of British Columbia, 1898 (F. Boas: Introduction, p, 6.); Th. Koch-Grünberg: Vom Roroima zum Orinoco, 1916, II, S. 5. "Makunaima ist, wie alle Stammesheroen, der große Verwandler"; W. H. Brett: The Indian Tribes of Guiana, 1868, p. 376 "Materials for the verse of an Indian Ovid"; Leo I. Frachtenberg: Lower Umpqua Texts, Columbia University Contributions to Anthropology, 1914, IV, p. 7. "The Universal Change"; Dubois: Religion of the Luiseño Indians, Univ. Cal. Publ, 1908, p. 139. The hero of the creation myth says "After things were in shape it would be this way"; J. Curtin: A Journey in Southern Siberia, 1909, pp. 100, 101.
