the power of speech has served the animal by sur- rounding it with a halo of mystery. Its silence, moreover, can pass for contempt, as though it had something better to do than to converse with us. All this explains why humanity should have felt no aversion to animal worship. But how has it come about? We must note that it is for some specific quality that the animal is adored. In ancient Egypt the bull represented strength in battle; the lioness, destruction; the vulture, so careful of her young, motherhood. Now it would be incomprehensible that animals should become the object of a cult if man had begun by believing in spirits. But if man did not first have recourse to beings, but to beneficent or malevolent actions regarded as permanent, it is natural that after having gained control of actions, he should have wanted to get hold of qualities; these qualities seemed to be present, unalloyed, in animals, whose activity is simple, invariably consistent and apparently set in one direction. The adoration of animals was not, then, the primitive phase of religion; but on emerging from that phase, man had the choice between the cult of spirits and that of animals. Just as the nature of an animal seems to be concentrated in one single quality, so it would seem that its individuality ii TOTEMISM 155 merges into a type. To recognize a man is to distinguish him from other men; but to recognize an animal is usually