of rags, or whatever the extravagent imagination of the idolater may pitch upon.” Here, although the nature of the protecting influence is apparently different from that which the Americans are supposed to obtain, it is in reality the same. In either case it is a guardian spirit, whether it is called a “mystery” animal or an object having the attributes of Deity. Dr. M’Lennan saw a necessary connection between totemism and animal-worship, and he affirms[326] that the ancient nations passed, in pre-historic times, “through the totem stage, having animals and plants, and the heavenly bodies conceived as animals, for gods before the anthropomorphic gods appeared.” By _totem_, Dr. M’Lennan evidently understood merely the animal or plant friend or protector of the family or tribe, and if it had any reference to _soul_ or _spirit_, it is the soul or spirit of the animal or plant. He speaks[327] of men “believing themselves to be of the serpent-breed derived from serpent-ancestors,” and so of other animals. He does not see in the totem any reference to the actual progenitor of the family, and he could hardly do so in accordance with his view of the mental condition of men in the totem stage, where “natural phenomena are ascribable to the presence in animals, plants, and things, and in the forces of nature, of such spirits prompting to action as men are conscious they themselves possess.” Professor Robertson Smith accepts, in his work on the early Arabs,[328] Dr. M’Lennan’s views on the subject of totemism and animal-worship, and gives as one of the three points which supply complete proof of early totemism in any race, “the prevalence of the conception that the members of the stock are of the blood of the eponym animal, or are sprung from a plant of the species chosen as totem.” When Prof. Smith comes to consider this point, however, it appears that among the Arabs certain animals were not eaten because “they were thought to be men in another guise,” that is, they were not merely animals but were men in disguise.[329] This is very different from the animistic theory, which makes men trace their descent from animals or plants, although these may be supposed to have the same kind of spirits as their human descendants; but it is consistent with the doctrine of transmigration to which we shall have soon to refer.