M. S. Reinach’s opinion that in Totemism is to be found the secret of the domestication of animals offers an attractive solution to that great problem, but it has not been, nor do I think that it will ever be, generally accepted. It, is however, plain, that where population is sparse, and dogs and guns undreamt of, wild animals would be far less wild than in countries with all the advantages of civilisation; the tameness of birds on lonely islands when the explorer first makes his descent is a case in point. No doubt, therefore, with the encouragement they received, the animal Totems acquired a considerable degree of tameness, but from that to domestication there is a long step. Our household “Totem,” the robin, is relatively tame; he will even eat crumbs on the breakfast-table, but he flies away in springtime and we see him no more. Besides being a social institution and a friendly bond between man and beast, Totemism is an attempt to explain the universe. Its spiritual vitality depends on the widely rooted belief in archetypes; the things seen are the mirror of the things unseen, the material is unreal, the immaterial the only reality. We are ourselves but cages of immortal birds. The real “I” is somewhere else; it may be in a fish, as in the Indian folk-tale, or it may be in a god. I do not know, by the by, if it has been remarked that a man can be a Totem: the incarnation of the indwelling race-spirit. The Emperor of Japan corresponds exactly to this description. The deified Cæsar was a Totem. A god can be a Totem: among the Hidery (islanders of the North Pacific whose interesting legends were published by the Chicago Folk-lore Association) the raven, which is their Totem, is the manifestation of the god Ne-kilst-lass who created the world. Here Totemism approaches till it touches Egyptian zoomorphism. Was this form an earlier or a later development than that in which the Totem is merely an ancestor? Our inability to reply shows our real want of certainty as to whether Totemism is a body of belief in a state of becoming or _in a state of dissolution_. [Illustration: _Photo:_ _Egypt Exploration Fund._ HATHOR COW. Cairo Museum. (_Found in 1906 by Dr. E. Naville at Deir-el-bahari._)] We do know that Egyptian zoomorphism is not old, at least in the exaggerated shape it assumed in the worship of the bull Apis. It is a cult which owed its success to the animistic tendency of the human mind, but its particular cause is to be looked for in crystallised figurative language. The stupendous marble tombs of the sacred bulls that seem to overpower us in the semi-obscurity of the Serapeum remind one of how easy it is to draw false conclusions relative to the past if we possess only half-lights upon it: had Egyptian hieroglyphics never yielded up their secret we might have judged the faith of Egypt to have been the most material, instead of one of the most spiritual of religions.