TIIERIOLATRVOR Animal g011,a11V:111Y have human characteristics and are (wile aniline popathie. Love or fear, as in the ease of human gods, prompts that greater respect which with savages constitutes worship. This is t•speeially easy in the ease of animals. for savages establish no barrier of soul and reason as peculiar posses sion, of man between themselves and beasts. A very early belief in metempsychosis (q.v.) taught primitive 1111111 to believe that beast soul and human soul were interchangeable. Thus the tiger is worshiped not only from fear, lint because a special tiger is often believed to possess the soul of a departed chief. Some animals become divine as totems, but not all. Ordinary are depre cated by prayer and offerings. Some are worshiped merely because they are useful.. The best developed systems of theriolatry are found the Egyptians. Babylonians, and' American Indians. But some of the monstrous beasts of Babylon are adored through symbolism rather than because of totemistie survivals. Itevere»ee alone prompts man to make the image of god-beasts more powerful and mysterious than Ile natural beasts, and some of the beast forms are dearly symbolic, as in the portrayal of the sun as a swift horse or as a winged bull, or of spring as a winged snake. Of all forms of beast worship, ophiotatry or serpent-worship seems to be most widespread. Other animals, horse. ass, reindeer, bear, tiger, boar, together with a few cases of divine fishes are worshiped by different races; but the snake appears to have been wor shiped in every land, either as a soul-reeeptaele or friendly house-snake, in whose body resides the soul of an ancestor (as in Rome and India), or as a healing and mantic power of wisdom (as in the cults of Babylon and (;reeve), or as an evil spirit, world-snake or dragon. The negroes of Africa, the Dravidians and redskins among savages, the lexical's and Peruvians on a higher plane, and the Egyptians, Oreeks, Romans, and Semites (in cluding Hebrews) regarded the snake in one or another of these forms as a divine animal. Some times the same snake is conceived differently at different times. In Sayce's opinion, Nina, the Babylonian serpent (laughter of Ea, the water god of wisdom, was at first typical only of divine wisdom, and the transference to the conception of the guile-loving evil serpent was due to the influence of the parallel conception of Tiamat, the dragon monster of chaos and evil. The drag
on of the Eddas is evil, he is the Midgardswurm that embodies destruction, like the rain-prevent ing dragon Vritra of the leiy-lcda, but beside the latter stands the figure of the 'Dragon of the Deep,' to whom the Vedic Aryan prays as to a beneficent. divinity. So Apollo as a healing god is associated with _Esculapins's snake, hut destroys the Pytho dragon. Among the Mon goloid Naga tribes, as among the Chinese, the dragon-snake is a world-divinity. Special aspects of snake-worship are the close eonnection with tree and phallic worship, as found among certain Dravidian tribes, who wo•slhip snakes with phallic rites, and the ditch-snake o• mound-snake, a sym bolic snake among the American wild tribes. Further, and perhaps most fundamental. is to be noticed the close connection between snakes and treasures, which they secrete o• guard, as in the case of the Hesperides and many fairy-stories in the West and East. So in Egypt, Osiris in snake form is associated with wealth, as is the Chaldean Hoa. This trait may he due to the fAet that serpents actually hoard jewels and other bright objects. Probably the beauty, poison. and un canny motion of the snake all combined to make it revered. Under zoillatr;y must also be noticed the worship of birds, according to more or less definite racial lines of demarcation. Thus the dove is Semitic. and is Greek only as belong ing to a Semitic deity: the goose is the most universally revered ldrd, being worshiped by the Egyptians (sacred to the god Seb), the Japanese, the early Britains, the Romans, and especially by the Dravidians, from the remotest antiquity. Among tlie Aryans it yielded to the eagle (also the Hittite emblem). but it is still regarded as emblematic of the highest soul in the races to the east of Indbi (Chinese and Japanese), whereas in India itself it has been displaced among the higher classes by the swan. The cock also was widely revered and was sacred to Mars, ,Esculapius, Osiris, and to the Hindu battle-god, Ka rtikeya.