Primitive man did not recognise any difference of intelligence and
self-consciousness between himself and the lower animals and even
plants, but believed them all to be possessed of consciousness and
volition as he was. He knew of no natural laws of the constitution of
matter and the action of forces, and therefore thought that all natural
phenomena, the sun, moon and stars, the wind and rain, were similarly
appearances, manifestations or acts of volition of beings conscious
like himself. This is what is meant by animism. Among several races the
community was divided into totem-clans, and each clan held sacred some
animal or bird, which was considered as a kinsman. All the members
of the clan were kin to each other through the tie formed by their
eating their totem animal, which in the hunting stage was probably
their chief means of subsistence, and from which they consequently
thought that they derived their common life. [335] In process of time
the animals which were domesticated, such as the horse, the sheep,
the cow and the camel, acquired a special sanctity, and became, in
fact, the principal deities of the community, such as the calf-god
Apis, the cow-goddess Isis-Hathor, and the ram-god Amen in Egypt,
Hera, probably a cow-goddess, and Dionysus, who may be the deified
bull or goat (or a combination of them) in Greece, and so on.