But little, however, in what has been said throws much light on the main point at issue, namely, why the serpent should be yielded worship. The cause must be sought for, to some extent, in peculiarities of the animal itself. And it has peculiarities enough. Remarkable in form and in mode of locomotion, and in some species possessed of deadly venom, one might well regard it with admiration and awe. Then, its longevity and apparent power of renewing its age serve to make it a very extraordinary creature. The opinion has been expressed[253] that its power to glide along without limbs, like the heavenly bodies, was the reason why it was held to be sacred. No doubt its remarkable power of motion in the absence of limbs forcibly impressed the ancients.[254] Solomon himself said that one of the four things he could not understand was “the way of a serpent upon a rock.”[255] Herbert Spencer maintains that the first step toward the worship of serpents and other animals was the naming or, rather, nicknaming of men after creatures to which they bore some points of resemblance. Thus, from having apparently, like Holmes’s Elsie Venner, some of the qualities of a snake, one might be compared with the animal, and so named after it. Then the descendants, out of regard for their ancestor,[256] might take the name, or, in other words, accept the snake as their totem. Although the Æsculapian serpent was innocent, it was mostly a harmful species which received worship. The asp of the Egyptians and the cobra of the East Indians are decidedly venomous. Under the name of _uræus_ the asp was a symbol of royalty in ancient Egypt. Ebers makes Rameses say: “My predecessors chose the poisonous _uræus_ as the emblem of their authority, for we can cause death as quickly and as certainly as the venomous snake.”[257] The American Indians were devoted to the rattlesnake, which is extremely venomous. Thus, says Dr. Brinton: “The rattlesnake was the species almost exclusively honored by the red race. It is slow to attack, but venomous in the extreme, and possesses the power of the basilisk to attract within its spring small birds and squirrels.”[258] Evidently the worship of such reptiles must have been inspired, in a measure at least, by fear. Still, it appears certain, as the author just quoted believes, that, as employed to express the divine element in atmospheric and other natural phenomena, it far more frequently typified what was favorable and agreeable than the reverse. Ebers gives it as his opinion that “mythological figures of snakes have quite as often a benevolent as a malevolent signification.”[259]