ABSTRACT
Mr. McLennan’s recent essays on the Worship of Animals and Plants have done much to elucidate a very obscure subject. If animal-worship is to be rationally interpreted, how can the interpretation set out by assuming a belief in the spirits of dead ancestors—a belief which just as much requires explanation? Grant, too, that hence may arise a worship of animals, plants, and even inanimate bodies. Hence, in proportion as the animals, plants, and inanimate objects or agents that originate names of persons, become numerous (which they will do in proportion as a tribe becomes large and the number of persons to be distinguished from one another increases), multitudinous things around will acquire imaginary personalities. Apparently Sir John Lubbock inclines to the belief, tacitly adopted also by Mr. McLennan, that animal-worship is derived from an original Fetichism, of which it is a more developed form.
