Note 217 — Chapter IV · THE INFANTILE RECURRENCE OF TOTEMISM (continued 2)

It is known that the overcoming of one generation of gods by another in mythology represents the historical process of the substitution of one religious system by another, either as the result of conquest by a strange race or by means of a psychological development. In the latter case the myth approaches the “functional phenomena” in H. Silberer’s sense. That the god who kills the animal is a symbol of the libido, as asserted by C. G. Jung (l.c.), presupposes a different conception of the libido from that hitherto held, and at any rate seems to me questionable.