Note 89 — Chapter II · Man and his Place in the Universe

Side by side with this general conception of an universally animate nature, we find abundant evidences of a special theory of Human Origin which is held to account not only for the larger mammals, but also for the existence of a large number of birds, and even for that of a few reptiles, fishes, trees and plants, but seems to lose its operative force in proportion to its descent in the scale of creation, until in the lowest scale of all, the theory of Human Origin disappears from sight, and nothing remains but the partial application of a few vague anthropomorphic attributes.89 It is, doubtless, to the prevalence of this theory that we owe the extraordinary persistence of anthropomorphic ideas about animals, birds, reptiles, trees, if not of minerals, in Malay magical ceremonies;90 and it is hard to say which of these two notions—the theory of Human Origin, or the other theory of Universal Animism—is to be considered the original form of Malay belief.