Chapter V: Animism (2)

Spirits may have all the appurtenances of an animal body; for two of them waylaid an Australian, and made a wizard of him by taking out his entrails and filling up the cavity with the entrails of one of themselves.[213] They may marry mortals, as a devil begat Caliban upon a witch; and not long ago the “incubus” was very troublesome throughout Europe. In short, a ghost or spirit can act physically, just as a man can, because he has the same organs; but with greater power, because mysterious and more feared. And such beliefs persist amongst people whose culture is much higher than the Australian, as in Jacob’s wrestling with something at the ford Jabbok, and Grettir’s slaying of the ghost of Glam at Thorhallstad;[214] and Euthymus, the boxer, having put on his armour, defeated the ghost of Lycas at Temesa.[215] To this day, in Macedonia, there are vampires, or animated corpses (chiefly Turks), that walk, and throttle people and suck their blood.[216] “The Moslem corpse,” says R. Burton, “is partly sentient in the tomb.”[217] The Karok of California consider it the highest crime to utter the name of the dead; for it makes the mouldering skeleton turn in its grave and groan.[218] In fact, it is difficult to think of one’s own future corpse as entirely inanimate, and this adds some discomfort to one’s thoughts of death. According to Wundt, the Körperseele, as eine Eigenschaft des lebenden Körpers, is a starting-point of Animism independent of, and probably prior to, the breath and the dream, which suggest the idea of a free separable soul.[219] This confusion of ideas in popular Animism seems to me due to (1) the strong association of the ghost with the corpse, and the performance of rites (which must take place somewhere, if at all) naturally at the grave or in connection with relics; (2) the manifestation of ghosts as visible, speaking, tangible bodies in dreams; (3) the difficulty of imagining spirits to live and act except in the likeness of the body (though non-human forms—usually animal—are sometimes substituted); (4) the convenience of such imaginations to the story-teller; (5) the convenience of them to sorcerers and purveyors of mysteries, who rely upon such imaginations in producing illusion by suggestion. For ages a confusion of ghost with corpse may exist in the popular mind along with the more refined notion of soul-stuff in which a ghost becomes manifest, whilst there is no attempt to reconcile these imaginations; and it is only by metaphysical subtilties about “mind” and “matter,” or by mystical aversion to sensuosity, that the notion of pure incorporeal spirit without even spatial limitations is at last freed from these primitive associations, partially and amongst a few people. A tendency to abstract conception of the spirit is set up, indeed, in the ordinary way of “dissociation” by the belief in transmigration. For if a spirit may “possess” all sorts of bodies—men, plants, animals, etc.—it is independent of any particular body; though it may still be thought to need _some_ body. Where the idea of pure spirit has been established amongst educated people, it becomes necessary for those who believe in ghosts and have forgotten their soul-stuff to explain how a spirit can manifest itself to eye, ear, nose, hand, without a physical body, by “materialising” itself, as invisible vapour (say one’s own breath on a frosty morning) condenses into a cloud or into dew; for the power of analogy as an aid to thought, or as a substitute for it, is not yet exhausted.

The varieties of belief that occur here and there in the world cannot be explained without a much fuller knowledge of local circumstances than is usually available. The Semang say that souls are red, like blood, and no bigger than a grain of maize;[220] the Malays that they are vapoury, shadowy, filmy essences, about as big as one’s thumb;[221] in both cases shaped like the owner. Elsewhere in the Indian Archipelago, “the animating principle is conceived of, not as a tiny being confined to a single part of the body, but as a sort of fluid or ether diffused through every part.”[222] The less educated classes in Japan consider the soul as a small, round, black thing that can leave the body during sleep.[223] Amongst the Ekoi, the soul is a small thing dwelling in the breast, whilst a man lives; but at death expands into the body’s full stature.[224] The difficulty of finding the soul in the body leads some thinkers to suppose it must be very small, others very attenuated—thin as a shadow and as breath invisible.

Whilst many savages believe, like ourselves, that the body entertains one soul and gives up one ghost, the Ekoi believe in two, one animating a man’s body, the other possessing, or changing into, some animal in the bush. Three souls, the vegetative, sensitive and rational, are well known to European philosophy. The Mandans thought that a man has one black, one brown, and one light-coloured soul; but that only the last returned to the Lord of Life.[225] The observer who tells us this also reports (p. 484) that some of the Dakotas assign to each man four spirits: one that dies with the body; one that remains with, or near, it; one that accounts for its deeds and at death goes to the spirit-world; and one that lingers with the small bundle of the deceased’s hair, which is kept by relatives until they can throw it into an enemy’s country to become a roving, hostile demon. In West Africa, too, Miss Kingsley found four souls: one that survives the body; one that lives with some animal in the bush; one, the body’s shadow, that lies down every night in the shadow of the great god, and there recovers its strength; and, finally, the dream-soul. Some natives hold that the three last are functions of the first or true soul; but the witch-doctor treats all four separately.[226] The shadow of a man, his reflection, his name, his totem, his breath, his dream-wraith, his blood, his corpse, supply natural starting-points for such speculations. Some Chinese philosophers held that “each of the five viscera has its own separate male soul.”[227] I have found no belief in six souls; but in Siberia the Altaians distinguish six parts or (rather) conditions or stages of the soul; and this probably is only another attempt to convey the same meaning.[228] Mr. Skeat reports that, probably, in the old Animism of the Malays, each man had seven souls; though now they talk of only one; except in using spells, when the souls are addressed separately.[229] In the religion of Osiris there seems to have been a still greater number of souls: as of the name, the shape, the strength, the shadow, etc.: all reuniting with the immortal counterpart of a man’s mummy, if justified at the last judgment. Prof. Wiedemann suggests that these beliefs may have been collected from different local sources, and preserved for fear of losing anything that might be true.[230] Whereas, then, the prescientific mind is often accused of confusing things that are separate, we see here the opposite tendency to reify abstract aspects, and to separate things that are in nature united; and one probable cause of this is the practical interest of treating, and therefore of attending to and addressing, separately, certain aspects of a man in rites of exorcism, lustration, summoning, reinforcing, propitiation.

The belief in an external soul that exists apart from oneself (though identified with oneself for good or evil) in an animal, in the bush, or where not, may have arisen from the connecting of the soul with the shadow or reflection. The shadow is, indeed, attached to a man by the feet (except when he leaps), if the whole is seen; but it goes away at night: it stretches, as the sun declines, far across the plain, and then disappears. The reflection is quite separate, and is seen _within_ a pool (as in a mirror), not on the surface, approaching us when we advance, and withdrawing when we retire: whence it is easy to understand that to take a man’s photograph may be to take away his soul. If this kind of soul may be some feet distant, why may it not be much further off, if there be any motive (such as the desire of secrecy) to wish or think it so? If it may reside within a pool, why not within anything else? What, in fact, becomes of it when we turn away? That it should be in an animal in the bush is reasonable enough, if one’s Totem (even though imperfectly remembered as such) is an animal in the bush, and if oneself is in some sort that animal.

§ 8. ORIGIN AND DESTINY OF SOULS

Beliefs as to the origin of souls sometimes bear the character of fanciful explanation myths. The Semang say that souls grow upon a soul-tree in the world of Kari (their chief god); whence they are brought by birds, which are killed and eaten by an expectant mother: souls of fishes and animals are also obtained by the mothers’ eating certain fungi and grasses.[231] Here the analogy of the growth of fruits is adopted: being so familiar as to need no further explanation. Leibnitz’s suggestion that monads are _fulgurations continuelles de la Divinité_,[232] is at about the same level of thought. In other cases, we see the struggling to birth of ideas that still seem plausible: such is the widespread tenet that every present human soul is the reincarnation of an ancestor, which we find in Australia, Melanesia, Borneo, Manipur, on the Congo, in North America and elsewhere. The Bakongo seem to base their belief in reincarnation partly on personal resemblance; upon which ground a child may be thought to have the soul even of a living man; so that to point out such a resemblance is displeasing, since it implies that, the child having his soul, he must soon die.[233] Another reason they give for their belief is that the child speaks early of things its mother has not taught it, and that this must be due to an old soul talking in a new body. But Bakongo albinos are incarnations of water-spirits, and greatly feared. Possibly in some cases people began by naming children after their ancestors, and later inferred that those who bore the same name must be the same persons. Plato thought that, by a sort of law of psychic conservation, there must always be the same number of souls in the world:[234] there must, therefore, be reincarnation. That nothing absolutely begins to be, or perishes, though first explicit in the Ionian philosophy, is generally assumed in savage thinking; so why should it not be true of souls?

As to the destiny of souls there seems to exist amongst the tribes of men even greater variety of belief than as to their origin. They may pass through more than one stage of development: as in the western isles of Torres Straits one becomes at death, first a _mari_, and later a _markai_ with a more definite status;[235] or as with the Veddas, one is at first called, without much confidence, “the living one,” and only a few days later becomes, after trial of one’s virtue, a _yaka_,[236] or authentic ghost. Often the dead will be reincarnated, but the interval between death and rebirth may be passed in an underworld, or in a city in the forest, or indefinitely in a land of ancestors. They may turn into plants; as among the Mafulu old people’s ghosts become large funguses growing in the mountains:[237] but more frequently into animals; perhaps their Totems, or (with seeming caprice) into such things as termites or wild pigs; or (because wings seem to suit the spirit) into a butterfly or bee; or into owls or bats that haunt the night and dwell in caves that may be tombs; or into deer or bear-cats, because these are seen in the clearings near tombs; or into snakes, because these are seen to come out of tombs, and often come into huts as if returning to their homes, and, moreover, cast their skins and so typify the renewal of life. They may also become stars, or shooting stars, or mere naked demons, or white men.

It is only after ages of thought concerning the fate of our souls that there arises in any systematic form the doctrine of metempsychosis, which now prevails over great part of southern and eastern Asia, and was formerly known in Egypt and even in Greece. But in the widely diffused doctrines of reincarnation in men or in animals, or even in plants, and in the general belief that a soul may wander and possess any kind of body, we see the sources from which this vast flood of superstition collected its waters. The Buddhist belief that not the soul wanders, but its _karma_ (or character) creates a new body, may be considered as a retrogression from Animism to Magic; for what is it but a law of the action of an occult force or virtue?

Though the ghost survive the body, and it may be said (as by the Ekoi) that it cannot perish, and the reason may even be given (as in the Bismarck Archipelago), that it is of different nature from the body,[238] it is by no means always immortal. It may die, as it were a natural death, by oblivion; or, the next world being just like this, ghosts may fight together and kill one another;[239] according to the Tongans a ghost may be killed with a club; amongst the Bakongo it may be destroyed by burning its corpse.[240] It has been thought that to suppress the ghost was the original motive of cremation; but the western Tasmanians cremated their dead, and can hardly have done so to be rid of such mild Animism as seems to have been entertained by the eastern tribes, who buried their dead or abandoned them.[241] However, they seem to have been rid of it; whereas, in general, ghosts survive cremation, because this process cannot put an end to dreams; and it may then come to be believed that burning is necessary in order to set the soul free from its body; and, therefore, the wife of Periander, tyrant of Corinth, complained to him of being cold in the ghost world, because her clothes had been only buried in her tomb and not burnt.[242] According to the Egyptians, the ghost participated in every mutilation of the body, and perished with its dissolution. It may be held that even the gods die if neglected, and depend for their immortality upon the perpetuation of their rites and sacrifices.[243]

Whilst the ghost’s life endures, its dwelling may be in the earth or sky, sea or forest, or in the land of the setting sun, or in the land of ancestors whence the tribe remembers to have migrated. Before departing to that undiscovered country, it may haunt the grave or the old home, till burial, or till the flesh decays, or till the funeral feast, or till death has been avenged; or it may roam the country, a resentful demon, if its funeral rites be not duly celebrated. There may be one place for all ghosts, or two, or more, according to their age, or rank, or qualities (as sociable or unsociable), or whether or not their noses were bored; or according to the manner of their death, by violence, or suicide, or sorcery. It is late before our posthumous destiny is thought to depend on moral character (as it does in metempsychosis); and even then varies with the local conception of the good man, as observing custom or religious rites or, finally, the dictates of conscience.[244] I remember how puzzling it was in childhood to make out from sermons how far “going to heaven” depended on being good (conscientious) or on faith. Both seemed very desirable; yet there was a shadow of opposition between them, and to be good was a little dangerous. But faith was indispensable, and apparently the more difficult of the two, needing more elucidation, exhortation and reiteration.

The journey of ghosts to their own world may be short or long, an unadorned migration or rich in details of adventure. They may begin the new life exactly as they finished this one, or the old may be rejuvenated. As to their manner of life there, oftenest it is a repetition of their earthly state, perhaps better, or even much better, perhaps worse. And this conception is historically of the utmost importance: for (1) it seems to give the greatest confidence in a hereafter. Hume ascribes what seemed to him the incredulity of men with regard to a future life “to the faint idea we form of our future condition, derived from its want of resemblance to the present life.”[245] And (2) from this conception proceeds the development of ghostly polities: presided over, according to tribes that have no chiefs, by a headman, such as Damarulum, or by the greatest known hunt-leader, like Kande Yaka of the Veddas; under advancing political structures, by chieftains, amongst whom one may be paramount, and so become a king or lord of all. These ghostly politics support the earthly ones they imitate. It is everywhere an edifice built by hope and fear, under the guidance of analogy, and sometimes decorated by caprice, if this find acceptance with the tribe.

§ 9. THE TREATMENT OF GHOSTS

The behaviour of men toward the ghosts of their dead is chiefly governed by fear. The human power that has left the corpse is now invisible; that power, rarely quite trustworthy whilst in the body, especially when unobserved, retains its desires, caprices and hatreds that were partially controlled by social influences. What controls them now that the man is exempt from observation? How shall one defend oneself against him, or procure his neutrality, or even (as sometimes in the flesh) his help? The fear of ghosts has peculiar qualities: the invisibility of a spiritual enemy produces a general objectless suspicion and a sense of helplessness; associations with the physical conditions of the corpse and with darkness excite feelings very much like those aroused by snakes and reptiles. This fear explains why savages, such as the Australians, may believe in ghosts for ages without ever venturing to pray even to father or mother deceased; for to pray is to invoke, and they will come, and, on the whole, they are not wanted. Fear may make the survivors quit the neighbourhood of the dead; sometimes makes them adopt means to induce the ghost to leave, and invent stories of how and whither he goes, which are believed by biological necessity; because, unless they can be rid of the ghost and the dread of him, or establish in some way the _pax deorum_, it is impossible to go on living.

The Yerkla-mining never bury their dead, nor in any way dispose of them. On seeing death approaching a tribesman, they make up a good fire for him, and leave the neighbourhood, not to return for a considerable time.[246] The Sakai, having buried the dead affectionately with necklaces, wallets, etc., say to him: “Do not remember any more your father, mother, or relations. Think only of your ancestors gone to another place. Your living friends will find food.” They then burn his house and desert the settlement, even abandoning standing crops.[247] Among the Kikuyu, “if a person dies in a village, that village is often burnt, and the people trek off and build elsewhere,” though much labour may have been spent on the surrounding fields. Sick people are often deserted.[248] Where land is closely settled such flight becomes impossible, and in any case it is very inconvenient; so that if any one can believe it possible to deceive the ghost, or to frighten him away by shouting at him, beating the air with boughs or firebrands, letting off arrows or guns, or to restrain him from walking by breaking the corpse’s legs, or by placing loaded “ghost-shooters” (straws filled with gunpowder) around the grave, so much the better. Many such plans are adopted, and they _must_ be believed in.[249]

Affection, however, has its part in the treatment of the dead: it is reasonable to attribute to affection the beginnings of the practices of leaving food at the tomb, burying weapons or ornaments with the corpse, celebrating funerary rites with lamentations; though in time this motive may be mixed with, or superseded by, fear of the ghost, or by fear of being suspected of having murdered the deceased by sorcery, should rites be neglected or maimed. It is not uncommon to carry about some bones of the departed, to hang round one’s neck the skulls of infants untimely dead. The wild Veddas, though, having covered a corpse with boughs, they avoid the place for a long time for fear of being stoned, nevertheless have a strong feeling of good fellowship for the spirits of their dead.[250] In the eastern isles of Torres Straits, the Miriam perform an eschatological mystery, in which the recently deceased reappear on their way to the other world. The women and children take it for reality: their affections are said to be gratified; and at the same time their fears are allayed by the conviction that the ghosts, having been seen on their way to Hades, will no longer haunt them.[251] The old Norsemen believed that the dead were still united with the living by intense sympathy.[252] As rites begun in affection may become propitiatory through fear, and after prayer has been instituted may be further extended to obtain the aid of spirits or gods in hunting, war, revenge, love, agriculture, trade, or any undertaking for subsistence, riches or power, every passion in turn seeks its gratification through Animism.

Extravagance in funerary rites, often ruinous to the family, may sometimes be checked by considerations of economy or convenience. Thus some tribes of South Australia may burn all the property of the deceased except their stone axes, which are too valuable to be lost to the survivors. The Nagas bury with the body the things most closely associated with the dead; but things of small value, never the gun or the cornelian necklace.[253] The Todas, who burn their dead, lay the body on a bier with many valuable offerings and swing it three times over the fire; they then remove the money and the more valuable ornaments and burn the rest with the corpse. They say that the dead still have the use of everything that was swung over the fire; and tell a story to explain the ceremony; but Dr. Rivers observes that “this symbolic burning has the great advantage that the objects of value are not consumed, and are available for use another time.”[254] The Araucanians buried many things with the dead, and at the grave of a chief slew a horse. But for all valuables—silver spurs and bits and steel lance-heads—they left wooden substitutes. As for the horse, the mourners ate it, and the ghost got nothing but the skin and the soul of it.[255] Economy may also induce the belief that ghosts are easily deceived, or are unaccountably stupid in some special way: as in the widespread practice of carrying a corpse out of its house through a hole in the wall; trusting that, the hole having been immediately repaired, the ghost can never find his way back; so soon does he forget the familiar door. This is cheaper than to burn the house down. Superstitious practices may be carried out with self-destructive infatuation, or restricted at will: in Florida (Melanesia), in a certain stream, a very large eel was taken for a ghost; no one might bathe in, or drink at, the stream—“except at one pool, which for convenience was considered not to be sacred.”[256] A conflicting desire creates a limiting belief. Whilst often the most painful or disgusting rites are endured for fear of ghosts, at other times they are assumed to be so dull that we are tempted to say: “Whatever is convenient is credible.”

If we desire to know the future, ghosts are so wise that we consult their oracles and pay handsome fees to their inspired priests; but if we dread their presence, it is easy to accept any suggestion that they are obtuse or infatuated. They may (_e. g._) be afflicted with what psychiatrists call “arithmomania.” Returning from a funeral, strew the ground with millet-seed: then the ghost can never overtake you, for he must stop to count them. Or hang a sieve outside your window: he cannot enter until he has counted all the holes; moreover, his system of numeration does not reach beyond “two.” You can always block his path by drawing a line across it and pretending to jump over the line as if it were a stream of water: of course, he cannot pass that. Or blaze through the wood a circular trail, beginning at his grave and returning to it: he must follow it around for ever, always ending at the same cold grave. Alas, poor thin, shivering thing, that would go back to the old hearth and sit close amongst the kinsmen by the fire, and laugh at the old jokes and listen to the old stories—chiefly about ghosts—have you forgotten all the tricks that can be played upon your kind? Such is the homœopathy of superstition: imagination creates the fear of ghosts, and imagination cures it.

Imagination-beliefs, being swayed by moods and passions, are necessarily inconsistent. Natives of the Bismarck Archipelago are cannibals and greatly fear the ghosts of those they devour. Whilst feasting they hang up a slice for the ghost himself, and afterwards make an uproar to scare him away. Nevertheless they keep his skull and jawbone, which the ghost might be supposed especially to haunt; so easily do other passions overcome fear. Of the fear of ghosts sometimes seems true that which Bacon says of the fear of death, that there is no passion in the mind of man so weak but it mates and masters it. Sacrilegious miscreants have always robbed tombs, even the tombs of Pharaohs who were gods; and timid lovers have kept tryst in graveyards. The Sia Indians of North Mexico had a masterful way of dealing with the ghost of a slain enemy: they annexed him together with his scalp; for this having been brought to the village, a shaman offered a long prayer, and thus addressed the ghost: “You are now no longer an enemy; your scalp is here; you will no more destroy my people.”[257] To capture and enslave the ghost of an enemy is said to have been the chief motive of head-hunting in Malaya. Compare the conduct of the Romans in carrying off Juno from Veii and establishing her at Rome. The inconsistency (sometimes met with) of supposing a man’s personal qualities to go with his ghost, and yet eating some part of his body to obtain those qualities, may be due to the latter practice having been magical, and having persisted after the rise of Animism. Some of the Esquimo have such control over ghosts by Magic, that they fear them very little. After a death, the ghost remains peaceably in the house four days (if a man) or five (if a woman), and is then dismissed by a ceremony to the grave, to wait there until a child is born in the village, when it is recalled to be the child’s tutelary spirit.[258]

§ 10. EVOLUTION AND DISSOLUTION OF ANIMISM

Animism, originating in the belief in ghosts of men, tends to spread as the explanation of whatever had formerly been attributed to Magic (if we take this to have been earlier); although it is far from occupying the whole region that thus lies open to it. We have seen that the extent of its prevalence as an explanatory principle, and consequently as the basis of cults, differs greatly amongst different peoples. But more interesting than the spread of belief as to the agency of spirits so as to include more and more objects, is the gradual differentiation of some of them from common ghosts in power, character and rank, and their integration into families and polities, such as we see in the _Edda_ and the _Iliad_. A process, going on for ages and varying with every people, cannot be briefly described: the work of E. B. Tylor, Herbert Spencer, W. Wundt and others in this department is well known. In general it may be said that, allowing for the influences of geographical conditions and tradition and foreign intercourse, the chief cause of the evolution of a spirit-world is the political evolution of those who believe in it; so that the patriarchies, aristocracies, monarchies and despotisms of this world are reflected in heaven. Tribes of the lowest culture—some African Pygmies, Fuegians, Mafulu, Semangs, Veddas—have the least Animism; at successive grades—Australians, Melanesians, Congolese, Amerinds, Polynesians—Animism increases and grows more systematic; and it culminates in the barbaric civilisations of Egypt, Babylonia and India, and of Mexico and Peru. But in civilisations of our modern type it rapidly loses ground.

The cause of such differences in the extension and elaboration of the animistic hypothesis cannot be that some tribes have had more time than others to think it out; since they have all had an equally long past. Animism is known to be very ancient, and there is no reason to think that some races adopted it later than others. That, in the lower grades of culture, men want brains to think it out, is not a satisfactory explanation; because, on contact with superior races, backward peoples show themselves capable of much more than could have been inferred from their original state. Improvement in culture depends upon much besides native brains, namely, opportunities afforded by the resources of their habitat, and communication with other peoples. The most backward peoples are the most isolated peoples. The development of Animism is entirely a matter of operating with ideas; and it seems to me that before men can build with ideas they must build with their hands; there must be occupations that educate, and give advantage to, constructive power, as in the making of boats and the building of houses and temples; for to this day a nation’s material edifices are always, in clearness of plan, coherence and serviceableness, much in advance of their systems of theology and philosophy; because they must “work,” as the Pragmatists say. If you have ever gone over a battleship, compare her with the _Kritik d. r. Vernunft_. Secondly, a suitable model for the edifice of ideas must be presented in the world of fact; and this, as we have seen, is supplied by the tribe’s social and political structure; which, again, is clearly correlated with the improvement of architecture in building the houses of chiefs and gods. Thirdly, a favourable condition of the working out of any theory is to have the means of recording, either in oral literature or (still better) in writing, the advances already made; and, fourthly—a condition historically involved in the foregoing—the growth of a class of men, generally a priestly caste or order, sometimes poets, who have time to think, and the education and vocation to bring the accumulating masses of animistic—now religious—ideas into greater order and consistency. Hence there are two stages in the development of Animism—of course, not sharply separated: first, a long period of irregular growth in the tribal mind; and, secondly, a much shorter period, in which the extension of animistic theory depends more or less upon quasi-philosophical reflection.

With the differentiation of superior beings—heroic, ancestral or other gods—from common ghosts, Religion arises. As to the meaning of the word “religion,” indeed, there is no agreement: some lay stress upon the importance of beliefs concerning supernatural beings; others upon prayer, sacrifice and other rites of worship; still others upon the emotions of awe and mystery. To define “religion” (as a tribal institution) by all three of these characters seems to me the most convenient plan, and the most agreeable to common usage. That, on the one hand, pure Buddhism (if it ever was a living faith outside of a coterie of philosophers and saints), and, on the other hand, the spiritual condition of a few savages, may be wanting in one or other mark, is no serious objection. The former case is, in fact, exceptional and aberrant, and the latter rudimentary; not to give them the name of “religion” in a technical sense is no wrong to anybody. Thus understood, then, Religion brings to the development and support of Animism many social utilities and other influences; especially the influence of dynasties supposed to have descended from the gods; and of priesthoods, whose sustentation and authority depend upon the supposed necessity of their intervention in worship. In their hands the free popular development of animistic ideas comes to an end, and gives place to the co-ordination of ideas by reflection, and to the dictation of tenets and rites by policy. The simple motives of hope and fear that actuated popular Animism are now supplemented by dynastic and priestly interests and ambitions; beneath which lies, faintly recognised and ill served, the interest of society in order.

This later sophisticated Animism, so far as it obtains a hold upon the people, is imposed upon them by suggestion, authority and deception; but being superimposed upon ancient popular traditions that are never obliterated, it still appeals to the sentiments of awe, consolation, hope and enthusiastic devotion. The part of deception in the history of Animism, indeed, begins at the beginning, preceded, perhaps, and prepared for by the devices of Magic-mongers. Amongst the Arunta, women and children are taught that the noise of the bull-roarer during initiation ceremonies is the voice of the spirit Twanyirika.[259] Near Samoa Harbour, at harvest, they offer some of the firstfruits in a bowl to the ghosts; and, whilst the family feasts on the remainder, “the householder will surreptitiously stir the offerings in the bowl with his finger, and then show it to the others in proof that the souls of the dead have really partaken.”[260] So early is the end supposed to justify the means. Animism, like Magic, strives to maintain its imaginations by further stimulating the imagination; and, in both cases, such practices are, with many men, compatible with firm belief on the part of the practitioner; who is merely anxious to promote the public good by confirming the weaker brethren: himself weak in the perception of incongruities. But I am concerned chiefly with origins, and will pursue this nauseous topic no further.

Parallel with the development of Religion, a change takes place in the emotions connected with Animism. As the gods emerge from the shadow of night and the grave, and are cleansed from the savour of corruption, and withdraw to the summit of the world, they are no longer regarded with the shuddering fear that ghosts excite; as they acquire the rank of chiefs and kings, the sentiments of attachment, awe, duty, dependence, loyalty, proper to the service of such superiors, are directed to them; and since their power far exceeds that of kings, and implies the total dependence of man and nature upon their support and guidance, these sentiments—often amazingly strong toward earthly rulers—may toward the gods attain to the intensest heat of fanaticism. Extolled by priests and poets, the attributes of the gods are exaggerated, until difficulties occur to a reflective mind as to how any other powers can exist contrary to, or even apart from, them: so that philosophical problems arise as to the existence of evil and responsibility, and the doctors reason high—

“Of providence, foreknowledge, will and fate,
Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute,
And find no end, in wandering mazes lost.”

This is one cause of the dissolution of Animism: the power that comprehends all powers ceases to be an object, and becomes the immanence of all things, good and evil. Another cause is the complexity of theogonies, or of spiritual kingdoms with their orders and degrees: found too fanciful, when hierarchic despotisms, that furnished the analogues, give place to the simpler social structure of democracies; or, to a certain type of democrat, even insulting, a provocative disparagement of the sovereignty of the people. And Animism has other enemies in the growth of Positivism, and sometimes in the resurgence of Magic.

FOOTNOTES:

[155] _The Veddas_, pp. 126-7.

[156] _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 170.

[157] _The Land of Zing_, p. 219.

[158] J. O. Dorsey, _American Bureau of Ethnology_, 1889-90, XI. p. 419.

[159] Mariner’s _Tonga_, p. 105.

[160] _Myth, Ritual and Religion_, p. 48.

[161] _African Game Trails_, p. 333.

[162] _Outdoor Pastimes_, p. 77.

[163] Frazer, _Spirits of the Corn and the Wild_, I. p. 183.

[164] _The Melanesians_, pp. 249 and 356.

[165] _Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula_, II. p. 222.

[166] _Pagan Tribes of Borneo_, II. p. 3.

[167] _Camp and Tramp in African Wilds_, p. 174.

[168] _The Primitive Bakongo_, p. 283.

[169] _Among Congo Cannibals_, p. 275.

[170] _Among the Indians of Guiana_, p. 355.

[171] _Two Years with the Natives of the West Pacific_, p. 199. As to waterspouts and shooting stars, see the _Reports of the Cambridge Expedition to Torres Straits_, VI. p. 252.

[172] J. Hernell in the _Quarterly Journal of the Mythical Society_ (Bangalore), IV. No. 4, p. 158.

[173] A. A. Macdonell, _Sanskrit Literature_, p. 112.

[174] J. Mooney in _Reports of the American Bureau of Ethnology_, 1885-6, VII. p. 341.

[175] J. E. Bourke in the _Reports of the American Bureau of Ethnology_, 1887-8, IX. pp. 499-507.

[176] E. F. im Thurn, _Among the Indians of Guiana_, pp. 288, 354.

[177] _Principles of Sociology_, Vol. I. chs. viii.-xii.

[178] _Primitive Culture_, chs. xi., xii.

[179] J. H. Weeks, _Among Congo Cannibals_, pp. 262-3. My friend, Mr. Torday, tells me this belief is very common in Africa.

[180] See, _e. g._, A. W. Howitt, _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 406; and P. A. Talbot, _In the Shadow of the Bush_, pp. 83-8.

[181] _Indians of Guiana_, p. 344.

[182] S. H. C. Hawtrey, “The Lengua Indians,” _J.A.I._, 1901.

[183] J. Mooney, “Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees,” _Am. B. of Ethn._, VII. p. 352.

[184] C. G. Seligman, _Melanesians of British New Guinea_, pp. 190-91.

[185] S. H. Ray, “People and Language of Lifu,” _J.R.A.I._, LXVII. p. 296.

[186] Turner, _Samoa_, p. 277.

[187] A. W. Howitt, _op. cit._, p. 358.

[188] Spencer, _Principles of Sociology_, § 53.

[189] J. H. Weeks, _The Primitive Bakongo_, p. 238.

[190] J. H. Weeks, _Among Congo Cannibals_, p. 233.

[191] T. C. Hodson, _The Naga Tribes of Manipur_, p. 160.

[192] Coddrington, _The Melanesians_, p. 269.

[193] V. Stefànson, _My Life with the Eskimo_, p. 57.

[194] Hose and McDougall, _Pagan Tribes of Borneo_, II. p. 3.

[195] J. G. Frazer, _Belief in Immortality_, p. 403.

[196] _Polynesian Researches_, I. p. 523.

[197] _The Primitive Bakongo_, p. 371.

[198] E. im Thurn, _op. cit._, p. 363.

[199] _Principles of Sociology_, §§ 165-93.

[200] J. G. Frazer, _Belief in Immortality_, p. 220.

[201] Franz Boas, _American Bureau of Ethnology_, VI. 1884-5, p. 583.

[202] Callaway, _Religious System of the Amazulu_, pp. 1 and 40. Cf. Coddrington, _The Melanesians_, p. 150: Koevasi, a spirit, was never human, yet in some way the originator of the human race.

[203] E. Westermarck, _Marriage Ceremonies in Morocco_, p. 343.

[204] _J.R.A.I._, 1909, p. 163.

[205] See his ingenious speculations in _The Evolution of the Idea of God_, ch. xiii.

[206] _Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula_, II. iii. ch. vi.

[207] _Among Congo Cannibals_, p. 272.

[208] G. F. Abbott, _Macedonian Folklore_, p. 236.

[209] A. A. Macdonell, _Sanskrit Literature_, p. 44.

[210] T. C. Hodson, _The Naga Tribes of Manipur_, p. 126.

[211] P. A. Talbot, _In the Shadow of the Bush_, p. 73.

[212] Howitt, _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 437.

[213] Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 483.

[214] _Grettir Saga_, ch. xxxv.

[215] _Pausanias_, VI. p. 6.

[216] G. F. Abbott, _Macedonian Folklore_, p. 217.

[217] _First Footsteps in East Africa_, p. 52 note.

[218] _American Bureau of Ethnology_, I. p. 200.

[219] _Mythus und Religion_, 2º ed., p. 78.

[220] _Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula_, I. p. 194.

[221] _Malay Magic_, p. 47.

[222] _Spirits of the Corn and the Wild_, I. p. 183.

[223] W. G. Aston, _Shinto_, p. 50.

[224] _In the Shadow of the Bush_, p. 230.

[225] J. O. Dorsey, “Siouan Cults” in the _American Bureau of Ethnology_, 1889-90, XI. p. 512.

[226] _West African Studies_, p. 200.

[227] J. G. Frazer, _Balder the Beautiful_, II. pp. 196-208; where are reported other beliefs in a plurality of souls; in one case thirty, in another thirty-six.

[228] M. A. Czaplicka, _Aboriginal Siberia_, p. 282.

[229] _Malay Magic_, p. 48.

[230] _Religion of the Ancient Egyptians_, ch. ix.

[231] _Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula_, I. p. 194.

[232] _Monadologie_, 47.

[233] _The Primitive Bakongo_, p. 115.

[234] _Republic_, 611_a_.

[235] Haddon, _Cambridge Expedition to the Torres Straits_, Vol. V. p. 355.

[236] C. G. Seligman, _The Veddas_, p. 133.

[237] R. W. Williamson, _The Mafulu_, p. 266.

[238] J. G. Frazer, _Belief in Immortality_, p. 396.

[239] C. G. Seligman, _The Melanesians_, p. 658.

[240] J. H. Weeks, _The Primitive Bakongo_, p. 224.

[241] Ling Roth, _The Aborigines of Tasmania_, pp. 57-61.

[242] Herodotus, V. p. 93.

[243] On the mortality of gods, see Frazer, _The Dying God_, ch. i.

[244] _Primitive Culture_, II. pp. 75-96.

[245] _Treatise_, B. I., Part III. § 9.

[246] Howitt, _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 450.

[247] Skeat and Blagden, _Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula_, II. pp. 95-9. For similar formulæ of dismission (which, of course, are constraining spells) see W. Ellis, _Polynesian Researches_, I. p. 522; and J. O. Dorsey, “Siouan Cults,” _American Bureau of Ethnology_, X. p. 420.

[248] Stigand, _The Land of Zing_, p. 250.

[249] For the practice of appointing certain seasons at which the whole tribe or nation unites in driving out ghosts or demons by force of arms (sometimes with the help of cannon and elephants), as obtaining at all levels of culture, from Australian savagery to the enlightenment of China and Peru, and with more decorum at Athens and Rome, see Frazer, _The Scapegoat_, ch. iii. § 2.

[250] C. G. Seligman, _The Veddas_, p. 131.

[251] _Cambridge Expedition to Torres Straits_, VI. p. 253.

[252] Vigfussen and Powell, _Corpus Poeticum Boreale_, I. p. 417. For further examples of affectionate interest in ghosts, see _Primitive Culture_, II. pp. 31-3.

[253] Hodson, _The Naga Tribes of Manipur_, p. 100.

[254] _The Todas_, p. 363.

[255] E. R. Smith, _The Araucanians_, p. 172.

[256] Coddrington, _The Melanesians_, p. 177.

[257] Miss M. C. Stevenson, “The Sia” in _American Bureau of Ethnology_, 1889-90, XI. p. 121.

[258] Stefànson, _My Life among the Eskimo_, p. 397.

[259] Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 497.

[260] Frazer, _Belief in Immortality_, p. 259.