Note 44.3 — Chapter VIII · THE LIFE-TOKEN IN TALE AND CUSTOM.

Mr. Frazer, in the remarkable work to which I have been indebted for numerous illustrations in the course of this chapter, refers to the belief on the part of many peoples in the lower culture that the lives of individual men and women are bound up with those of various animals. In Rome the animals in question were snakes; and the superstition was so widely spread that, according to Pliny, they multiplied to an extent which would have rendered it impossible to make head against their fecundity, if their numbers had not been kept down by occasional conflagrations. The snake was, in fact, the genius of a man—his external soul, and therefore was carefully guarded from all harm.44.3 The Zulus also believe in an ihlozi, or mysterious serpent, belonging to every man. It is usually invisible, underground; but it may be killed, and then the man must die. In other parts of the world there is no such monopoly: all sorts of animals are looked upon by different members of the same clan as their second selves. Mr. Frazer frames from this a theory of totemism which it is foreign to my present purpose to examine. Whatever may be thought of the theory, it is clear that some aspects of the Totem, the External Soul, and the Fetish approach one another very nearly, and require a closer study than they have yet received from any scientific anthropologist, with the exception of the distinguished author of The Golden Bough.