In effect, all historical treatises unite to show thatanimism or polydemonism has at one time or other been universal.
Animism or polydemonism—Formation of the dualist conception of spirit—Social relations with spirits.
The first way leads to abstract monism, the second to polytheism; and out of polytheism, by a process of degeneration, arise polydemonism or animism and then fetichism.
Let us now consider the inherent necessity under which animism lies of developing into theism.
In its rudest forms, this pantheism branches out into animism or shamanism, fetichism and phallicism.
Yet, whatever its form in literature or art, it is the later elaborated representation of ancient Animism which selected the tortoise as one of the manifold incarnations or media of the myriad spirits that populate the air.
In actual Shamanism or Animism there may or there may not be a belief in or conception of a single all-powerful Creator above and beyond all.
Further illustrations of far Eastern Animism and Fetichism are seen in forms once vastly more prevalent in Japan than now.
As out of Animism or Shamanism grows Fetichism in which a visible object is found for the abode or medium of the spirit, so also, out of the same soil arises what we may call Imaginary Zoölogy.
Demons, when they are regarded as spirits, may belong to either of the classes of spirits recognized by primitive animism (q.
If so, Animism was not needed for the earliest idea of a moral Eternal.
Mr. Im Thurn, a good observer, has written on 'The Animismof the Indians of British Guiana.
On the lower plane, Chinese religion is overrun, as everyone knows, by Animism and ancestor-worship.
In the intervening years, psychologists and hypnotists have devoted much attention to the theme of these 'secondary personalities,' which Animism explains by the theory of possession.
But how degeneration worked--namely, by Animismsupplanting Theism--is conspicuously plain on our theory.
But even where Mr. Im Thurn finds, in Guiana, nothing but Animism of the lowest conceivable type, he also finds in that Animism the only or most potent moral restraint on the conduct of men.
It has reached the last stage of integration and definition, beyond which the way lies downward from the high, quasi-spiritual ground of animism to the tamer levels of normality and causal uniformities.
But it vindicates its standing as a true animism by never becoming fatalistic and never being confused or confounded with the sequence of cause and effect.
The Physiocrat's animism rests on a broader outlook, and does not proceed by such an immediately impulsive imputation of propensity.
The body of learning through which the discipline of animism and invidious comparison transmitted its effects to the science of economics was what is known as natural theology, natural rights, moral philosophy, and natural law.
They insensibly lower to the level of animism and fetishism that religion which, as we have seen, bears comparison in its grander aspects with the most renowned mythologies of the ancient world.
I merely wish to mention that you cannot use it in this restricted sense, but want the whole of his grand theory of animism wherewith to describe the religion of the West Africans.
All changes in popular belief have been, and, practically, remain superficial; the old animism pervades the higher creeds.
Since Tylor wrote his memorable work, the doctrine of animism has become classical.
The various classes may be regarded as relics of the various stages of development from crude animism to sublime monotheism: in the fragmentary legends we trace the floating material from which great mythologies have been framed.
Thus the theory of animism illumines the religious condition of that borderland of history in which Romulus and Numa Pompilius have their dwelling-place.
We see at the start the simple religion of an agricultural people still strongly tinged with animism and inheriting from an animistic past a certain formalism which is so great that it almost becomes a content.
The record is there, "there is blood upon the hand," and not all the apologies of a self-convicted animism can ever wipe it clean.
And as people realise this they turn to clear-eyed science for guidance, leaving religion to such representatives of primitive animism as still survive in a civilised community.
When Professor Tylor said that the deepest of all divisions in the history of human thought was that which divided Animism from Materialism, he was saying what I have been endeavouring to say, in another manner, in the foregoing pages.
Savage animism is almost devoid of that ethical element which, to the educated, modern mind, is the very mainspring of religion.
Thus the various stages of belief from simple animismto anthropomorphism are visible to the student of mythology in perusing this one legend.
Animism It has been admitted that the ancient Egyptians, like other early races, could not have evolved a religion unless by the usual processes of religious growth.
Survivals of Animism in the Babylonian Religion 180 XII.
Such statements as that the real religion of the Burmese is not Buddhism but animism are, I think, incorrect, but even the Burmese are dangerously tolerant.
It grew up in an atmosphere of animism which peopled the trees and streams and mountains with spirits.
But the truth seems to be that the oldest popular theology of Egypt was only a variety of Negro animism and fetishism.
So-called "secular" and godless alternatives may be offered; but their incongruity with the whole evolution of humanity from prehistoric animism to the higher Pantheism will make their doom short and sure.
The more animism the less theism, is the general rule.
A crowd of venal, easy-going, serviceable deities has now been evolved out of ghosts, and Animism is on its way to supplant or overlay a rude early form of theism.
Some modern writers believe animism to be a relatively late manifestation in the religious history of mankind.
He himself failed entirely to realize the weight and abundance of the evidence for early polytheism and animism among the Israelites.
He believes that animism received its definite form in Egypt, where it was fostered by the art of mummification, and spread thence broadcast.
Even the lowest races we know have developed these considerably, and so we are only acquainted with animism in its pure form theoretically,[21] as a phase of religious experience through which man must at one time have passed.
That is where animism with its branches, totemism and fetishism, may be distinguished from the religions of the higher cultus, the polytheisms which possess definite pantheons, and the monotheisms.
Animism will be dealt with more fully hereafter, but in this introductory sketch we will cite one or two examples of animistic myth to illustrate what was, so far as we know, the earliest type of myth.
This stage of religious culture is called Animism (Spiritism).
The believer in animism was not in the least aware of any contradiction in holding, as he did for a long time, that these two forms, the corporeal soul and the breath soul, exist side by side.
All the more marked was the progress of animism and fetishism, of which the former is closely connected, in its origin, with totem belief, while the latter is a sort of degenerate totemism.
It is fitting, however, to enter upon a connected account of animism at this point, because the development of the main forms of soul belief and of their transformations takes place within the totemic age.
It represents that branch of animismwhich exercised a long-continuing influence on the tribal organization as well as on the beliefs of peoples.
And Animism has other enemies in the growth of Positivism, and sometimes in the resurgence of Magic.
Hence the priority of Animism to every other theory of things seemed at that time a matter of course.
Animism can never have directly enriched Science with a single natural law; but, indirectly, it has instigated many investigations.
Animism by retrogradation, and (elsewhere) often from coincidences.
Magic, therefore, is always derivative and secondary; and Animism is entirely independent of Magic.
For pure Animism involves the belief that a ghost, spirit, or god (though he may work by Magic) can produce an effect by his direct action, without using any visible or invisible means other than his own spiritual body and force.
The belief in the Unseen World seems to be coextensive with theism; the animism of the lowest savages includes both.
In fetishism the wind that blows a tree down is endowed with personality and supposed to exert conscious effort; in animism some ghost of a dead man is animating that gust of wind.
This psychological first step was man's first attempt to frame a theory of things satisfactory to his intellect--an attempt that, beginning in the crude animism of the savage, ends in the verifiable laws of modern science.
Evidently animism is a more persistent frame of mind than most people are inclined to believe.
Here is the doctrine of the "pneuma," the product of the philosophical mould into which the animism of primitive men ran in Greece, in full force.
