Space prevents any adequate reference to the part which +animism+ has held in the history of Palestinian religion; without a recognition of this fundamental factor in all religions much of our evidence would be unintelligible.[1] When we take the ideas which are associated with the _name_, we find that it has magical powers, its use enlists or confers protection or possession; it is the nature or essence of the thing which bears it--indeed, almost identical with it (comp. Is. xxx. 27). Hence the meaning of names is always instructive. The supposition that the child who bears an animal-name will acquire something of the quality of the animal in question (whatever be the original {61} motive) preserves more than metaphor, and indicates a stage when man saw little difference between animals and himself. Even at the present day it is still believed that the soul of an ancestor can reappear in an animal (comp. p. 50). In like manner, the personal names of our period which denote kinship with a deity point to a belief in a physical relationship as natural as the conviction of the modern native when he refers to Allah in terms which imply that man is in every detail the literal image of the Almighty. A difference between human and superhuman is scarcely recognised at the present day. The women of the land continue to visit the holy sites to obtain offspring, and it is freely acknowledged that welis and spirits of the dead can be physical fathers. This absence of any clear dividing-line between natural and supernatural is inveterate. The Egyptian Pharaoh of old was both a god and the son of a god, and a record is preserved of the visit of the god Amon to queen Ahmose in the form of her husband. The halo of divinity was perhaps not so distinct as in earlier times, but in their king the people still saw the earthly likeness of the deity. [1] It must suffice to refer to works dealing with primitive religion, see E. Clodd, _Animism, the Seed of Religion_ (London, 1905), A. C. Haddon, _Magic and Fetishism_ (1906), in this series.