A warning may also not be out of place against connecting the belief in monsters and fabulous creatures with the mental processes that give rise to totemistic beliefs. In so far as totemism implies the descent of a clan or group from some animal, it rests in part upon the supposed resemblance between man and animals. Without this feature the thought of a descent of human beings from some animal would hardly have occurred to people, but this is only one factor involved. Ignorance as to processes of nature in bringing about a new life is an equally important factor; and there are others. But totemism does not involve the combination of the human and the animal form in one being. That combination belongs to an entirely different process of thought, though it also has as its starting-point the recognition of a resemblance between man and animals. The conception of hybrid beings is allied to that of human creatures or of animals who through defects or through an excess number of organs or of parts of the body represent striking deviations from the normal. Both classes fall within the category of monsters, i. e., they are signs sent for a specific purpose. Descent from an animal totem, however, where the belief exists, is not looked upon as abnormal, but on the contrary as the rule. Still a third direction taken by the impression made upon man through the recognition of a resemblance between him and certain species of the animal world is represented by the belief--so widespread--of the possibility of the change of the human form into the animal. References to such phenomena are not infrequent in Latin Literatures. Pliny[233] refers to several instances of women being transformed into men. Livy[234] also speaks of this phenomenon as a matter of common belief; and it is merely another phase of this same belief that we encounter in the famous Metamorphoses of Ovid where the gods take on the form of animals, Io being changed to a cow and back again to human form, Jupiter to a bull, Cadmus to a dragon, Medea to a fish, and so on through quite a long list. Circe by virtue of her powers can change men to swine, just as she transforms her rivals into trees. Apuleius' famous tale of the Golden Ass where the hero is changed into a talking ass rests upon the same deep-rooted belief, which appears again in a modified form in the Jatakas or Birth-stories of India where Buddha takes on the form of all kinds of animals and which lead to the beast fables of Bidpai where animals are introduced at every turn who talk and act as men[235]. Even such a tale as that of Balaam's talking ass would not have arisen without the antecedent belief in the possibility of a transformation of man to animals and the reverse. In fact the talking animal in all fairy tales rests in the last instance on a metamorphosis. But this metamorphosis has nothing to do with hybrid creatures or monsters. The universal spread of totemistic beliefs preclude =a priori= a