+578+. The cases just mentioned are susceptible of other explanations than that of an evolution from totem to god. The history of the cult of heroes in Yam and other Torres Straits islands is obscure, but from known facts the indications are that the hero figures have arisen independently of the totem figures and have been, by a natural process, identified with these.[930] The peculiarity of the Rewa deities is that they assume animal forms at will, and such animals, not being eaten, are held to be totems. Whether totems or not they are sacred and might easily be identified with gods who stood alongside of them; an obvious explanation of this identity would be that the god assumed the form of the animal.[931] A similar explanation may be given of incarnations of gods in animals--a metamorphosis is a temporary incarnation. The Samoan Moso is incarnate in half a dozen different objects, and some deities are incarnate in men. As for the title "father," it belongs of course to the object from which a clan is supposed to be descended.
+579+. The sacramental eating of the totem, where such a custom exists, involves a certain identity of nature of totem and clan god, but the two are regarded as distinct--their distinctness is, indeed, a necessary condition of the sacrificial efficacy of the totem as a means of placating the deity.[932]
+580+. Our review seems, thus, to lead to the conclusion that there is no good ground for the opinion that a totem has ever grown into a god. The question, belonging, as it does, to a period for which we have no contemporary records, must be admitted to be difficult, and answers to it must be of the nature of hypotheses; but gods and spirits appear to have taken shape through processes of thought different from those that lie at the basis of totemism.[933]
+581+. So far we have been considering the growth of the simpler religious ideas and the parallel development of a quasi-religious social organization. The ethical development is no less important than the religious and the political, with which it has always been closely connected. Ethical ideas and customs are in their origin independent of religion. Religion deals with the relation between human beings and supernatural Powers; ethics has to do with the relation between man and man.[934]