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271
The Folk-lore of Plants
·
T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
27
According
to
Mr.
Fergusson,
tree-worship
has
sprung
from
a
perception
of
the
beauty
and
utility
of
trees.
"With
all
their
poetry,"
he
argues,
"and
all
their
usefulness,
we
can
hardly
feel
astonished
that
the
primitive
races
of
mankind
should
have
considered
trees
as
the
choicest
gifts
of
the
gods
to
men,
and
should
have
believed
that
their
spirits
still
delighted
to
dwell
among
their
branches,
or
spoke
oracles
through
the
rustling
of
their
leaves."
But
Mr.
McLennan[4]
does
not
consider
that
this
is
conclusive,
adding
that
such
a
view
of
the
subject,
"Does
not
at
all
meet
the
case
of
the
shrubs,
creepers,
marsh-plants,
and
weeds
that
have
been
worshipped."
He
would
rather
connect
it
with
Totemism,[5]
urging
that
the
primitive
stages
of
religious
evolution
go
to
show
that,
"The
ancient
nations
came,
in
pre-historic
times,
through
the
Totem
stage,
having
animals,
and
plants,
and
the
heavenly
bodies
conceived
as
animals,
for
gods
before
the
anthropomorphic
gods
appeared;"
While
Mr.
Herbert
Spencer[6]
again
considers
that,
"Plant-worship,
like
the
worship
of
idols
and
animals,
is
an
aberrant
species
of
ancestor-worship--a
species
somewhat
more
disguised
externally,
but
having
the
same
internal
nature."
Anyhow
the
subject
is
one
concerning
which
the
comparative
mythologist
has,
at
different
times,
drawn
opposite
theories;
but
of
this
there
can
be
no
doubt,
that
plant-worship
was
a
primitive
faith
of
mankind,
a
fact
in
connection
with
which
we
may
quote
Sir
John
Lubbock's
words,[7]
how,
"By
man
in
this
stage
of
progress
everything
was
regarded
as
having
life,
and
being
more
or
less
a
deity."
Indeed,
sacred
rivers
appear
in
the
very
earliest
mythologies
which
have
been
recovered,
and
lingered
among
the
last
vestiges
of
heathenism
long
after
the
advent
of
a
purer
creed.
As,
too,
it
has
been
remarked,[8]
"Either
as
direct
objects
of
worship,
or
as
forming
the
temple
under
whose
solemn
shadow
other
and
remoter
deities
might
be
adored,
there
is
no
part
of
the
world
in
which
trees
have
not
been
regarded
with
especial
reverence.
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