ABSTRACT
Primitive man is not merely neighbour, he is also kin of the beasts and even of the plants which surround him. To the animals especially he was related by ties of origin and he had no shame in acknowledging the relationship as his descendants have to-day. He knew that they were his companions in life whom he ate or who ate him, but he respected them, admired them, imitated them, and went even so far as to deify them as mysterious beings who had faculties and knowledge which he himself did not possess. Among their numbers he early distinguished, in relation to himself, two classes. On the one hand there were the malignant animals to be dreaded; on the other the inoffensive, feeble animals whom he could master and mould. The former inspired respect and fear; the latter sympathy and gratitude, two reasons, opposed, indeed, but equally convincing, to make him revere them and try to conciliate them.
