Serpent-Worship, and Other Essays, with a Chapter on TotemismWake, C. Staniland (Charles Staniland)
Religion
Serpent-Worship, and Other Essays, with a Chapter on Totemism
Wake, C. Staniland (Charles Staniland)
Phallicism; Serpent worship; Totemism
Now there is not the slightest reason to believe that animals have
any idea of qualities, as such. Even the taste for the beautiful,
which Mr. Darwin tells us is not unknown to various animals—especially
birds, has relation to the object which attracts by its colour, &c.,
and not to the colour itself. But it is just this perception of the
qualities of objects which is at the foundation, and forms the starting
point, of all human progress. The essential instrument of intellectual
development, articulate language, was first prompted by such a
perception, and it was in the recognition of the qualities of actions,
by reflection on their consequences, that the moral sense was gradually
evolved. It can hardly be that a power which has had so wonderful an
effect, and one which is so different from anything met with among the
lower animals, can be referred to any of the ordinary faculties which
these possess. If not, we must ascribe it to a new faculty altogether,
a kind of spiritual insight, which can be explained only as resulting
from the addition of a principle of activity superior to that which is
the seat of the animal life. If we were to trace the beginning of every
single branch of human culture, it would be found to have originated in
the exercise of such a faculty of reflection as that here described.
The elements of knowledge man possesses in common with the animals
around him; but these have not built up any superstructure, because
they have no spiritual insight such as will enable them to analyse
those elements, and thus to fit them for re-combination into that
wonderful series of forms which they have taken in the human mind.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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