Note 43.4 — Chapter II · THE PREHISTORIC PERIOD

The first anthropologists who dealt with the primitive forms of Hellenic religion read this special set of phenomena in the light of totemism; but progressive students have now abandoned the totemistic hypothesis, on the ground that there is little or no trace of Totemism in any Greek or any Aryan Society, and that theriolatry, or the direct worship of animals, needs no such explanation. Also, as I have recently pointed out elsewhere,43.4 the theriomorphic concept of divinity can and frequently does co-exist at certain periods and in certain peoples with the anthropomorphic; nor can we say with assurance that in the mental history of our race the former is prior to the latter, or that generally the anthropomorphic was evolved from the animal-god.