The only means he can think of to avert the
catastrophe is to kill a member of the species in whose veins the
tide of life is still running strong and has not yet stagnated among
the fens of old age. The life thus diverted from one channel will
flow, he fancies, more freshly and freely in a new one; in other
words, the slain animal will revive and enter on a new term of life
with all the spring and energy of youth. To us this reasoning is
transparently absurd, but so too is the custom. A similar confusion,
it may be noted, between the individual life and the life of the
species was made by the Samoans. Each family had for its god a
particular species of animal; yet the death of one of these animals,
for example an owl, was not the death of the god, "he was supposed
to be yet alive, and incarnate in all the owls in existence."
2. Killing the Sacred Ram
THE RUDE Californian rite which we have just considered has a close
parallel in the religion of ancient Egypt. The Thebans and all other
Egyptians who worshipped the Theban god Ammon held rams to be
sacred, and would not sacrifice them.
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