SCORPION

Tylor, Edward Burnett, Sir, 1832-1917

"Primitive culture : researches into the development of mythology, philosophy, religion, language, art, and custom"

CHAPTER XI,

ANIMISM.

Religious ideas generally appear among low races of Mankind Negative
statements on this subject frequently misleading and mistaken : many
cases uncertain Minimum definition of Religion Doctrine of Spiritual
Beings, here termed Animism Animism treated as belonging to Natural
Religion Animism divided into two sections, the philosophy of Souls,
and of other Spirits Doctrine of Souls, its prevalence and definition
among the lower races Definition of Apparitional Soul or Ghost-Soul
It is a theoretical conception of primitive Philosophy, designed to
account for phenomena now classed under Biology, especially Life and
Death, Health and Disease, Sleep and Dreams, Trance and Visions
Relation of Soul in name and nature to Shadow, Blood, Breath
Division of Plurality of Souls Soul cause of Life ;

its restoration to body
I when supposed absent Exit of Soul in Trances Dreams and Visions :
theory of exit of dreamer's or seer's own soul ; theory of visits received
by them from other souls Ghost-Soul seen in Apparitions Wraiths
and Doubles Soul has form of body ; suffers mutilation with it Voice
of Ghost Soul treated and defined as of Material Substance; this
appears to be the original doctrine Transmission of Souls to service in
future life by Funeral Sacrifice of wives, attendants, &c. Souls of
Animals Their transmission by Funeral Sacrifice Souls of Plants
Souls of Objects Their transmission by Funeral Sacrifice Relation
of doctrine of Object-Souls to Epicurean theory of Ideas Historical
development of Doctrine of Souls, from the Ethereal Soul of primitive
Biology to the Immaterial Soul of modern Theology.

ARE there, or have there been, tribes of men so low in
culture as to have no religious conceptions whatever ? This
is practically the question of the universality of religion,
which for so many centuries has been affirmed and denied,
with a confidence in striking contrast to the imperfect
evidence on which both affirmation and denial have been
based. Ethnographers, if looking to a theory of develop-
ment to explain civilization, and regarding its successive

417

418 ANIMISM.

stages as arising one from another, would receive with
peculiar interest accounts of tribes devoid of all religion.
Here, they would naturally say, are men who have no reli-
gion because their forefathers had none, men who represent
a prae-religious condition of the human race, out of which
in the course of time religious conditions have arisen. It
does not, however, seem advisable to start from this ground
in an investigation of religious development. Though the
theoretical niche is ready and convenient, the actual statue
to fill it is not forthcoming. The case is in some degree
similar to that of the tribes asser ted to exist without language
or without the use of fire ; nothing in the nature of things
seems to forbid the possibility of such existence, but as a
matter of fact the tribes are not found. Thus the assertion
that rude non-religious tribes have been known in actual
existence, though in theory possible, and perhaps in fact
true, does not at present rest on that sufficient proof
which, for an exceptional state of things, we are entitled
to demand.

It is not unusual for the very writer who declares in
general terms the absence of religious phenomena among
some savage people, himself to give evidence that shows
his expressions to be misleading. Thus Dr. Lang not only
declares that the aborigines of Australia have no idea of a
supreme divinity, creator, and judge, no object of worship,
no idol, temple, or sacrifice, but that ' in short, they have
nothing whatever of the character of religion, or of reli-
gious observance, to distinguish them from the beasts that
perish/ More than one writer has since made use of this
telling statement, but without referring to certain details
which occur in the very same book. From these it appears
that a disease like small-pox, which sometimes attacks the
natives, is ascribed by them ' to the influence of Budyah,
an evil spirit who delights in mischief ; ' that when the
natives rob a wild bees' hive, they generally leave a little of
the honey for Buddai ; that at certain biennial gatherings
fo the Queensland tribes, young girls are slain in sacrifice

RELIGION OF LOWER RACES. 419

to propitiate some evil divinity ; and that, lastly, according
to the evidence of the Rev. W. Ridley, ' whenever he has
conversed with the aborigines, he found them to have de-
finite traditions concerning supernatural beings Baiame,
whose voice they hear in thunder, and who made all things,
Turramullum the chief of demons, who is the author of
disease, mischief, and wisdom, and appears in the form of a
serpent at their great assemblies, &C.' 1 By the concurring
testimony of a crowd of observers, it is known that the
natives of Australia were at their discovery, and have since
remained, a race with minds saturated with the most vivid
belief in souls, demons, and deities. In Africa, Mr. Mo fiat's"
declaration as to the Bechuanas is scarcely less surprising
that ' man's immortality was never heard of among that
people/ he having remarked in the sentence next before,
that the word for the shades or manes of the dead
' liriti.' * In South America, again, Don Felix de Azara
comments on the positive falsity of the ecclesiastics' asser-
tion that the native tribes have a religion. He simply
declares that they have none ; nevertheless in the course of
his work he mentions such facts as that the Payaguas bury
arms and clothing with their dead and have some notions
of a future life, and that the Guanas believe in a Being who
rewards good and punishes evil. In fact, this author's
reckless denial of religion and law to the lower races of this
region justifies D'Orbigny's sharp criticism, that, ' this is
indeed what he says of all the nations he describes, while
actually proving the contrary of his thesis by the very facts
he alleges in its support.' 3

Such cases show how deceptive are judgments to which
breadth and generality are given by the use of wide words in
narrow senses. Lang, Moff at , and Azara are authors to whom
ethnography owes much valuable knowledge of the tribes

1 J. D. Lang, ' Queensland,' pp. 340, 374, 380, 388, 444 (Buddai appeari,
p. 379, as causing a deluge ; he is probably identical with Budyah).

1 Moff at, 4 South Africa,' p. 261.

8 Azara, ' Voy. dans I'Amfrique Me>idionale,' vol. ii. pp. 3, 14, 25, 51, 60,
91, 119, &c. ; D'Orbigny, ' L'Homme Amdricain,' vol. ii. p. 318.

420 ANIMISM.

^ >

they visited, but they seem hardly to have recognized any-
thing short of the organized and established theology of the
higher races as being religion at all. They attribute irre-
ligion to tribes whose doctrines are unlike theirs, in much
the same manner as theologians have so often attributed
atheism to those whose deities differed from their own] from
Ee time when the ancient invading Aryans described the
aboriginal tribes of India as adeva, i.e. ' godless,' and
the Greeks fixed the corresponding term aOeoi on the early
Christians as unbelievers in the classic gods, to the com-
paratively modern ages when disbelievers in witchcraft and
apostolical succession were denounced as atheists ; and down
to our own day, when controversialists are apt to infer, as in
past centuries, that naturalists who support a theory of
development of species therefore necessarily hold atheistic
opinions. 1 These are in fact but examples of a general
perversion of judgment in theological matters, among the
results of which is a popular misconception of the religions
of the lower races, simply amazing to students who have
reached a higher point of view. Some missionaries, no
doubt, thoroughly understand the minds of the savages
they have to deal with, and indeed it is from men like
Cranz, Dobrizhoffer, Charlevoix, Ellis, Hardy, Callaway,
J. L. Wilson, T. Williams, that we have obtained our best
knowledge of the lower phases of religious belief. But for
the most part the ' religious world ' is so occupied in
hating and despising the beliefs of the heathen whose vast
regions of the globe are painted black on the missionary
maps, that they have little time or capacity left to under-
stand them. It cannot be so with those who fairly seek to
comprehend the nature and meaning of the lower phases of
religion. These, while fully alive to the absurdities be-
lieved and the horrors perpetrated in its name, will yet

1 Muir, ' Sanskrit Texts,' part ii. p. 435 ; Euseb. * Hist. Eccl.' iv. 15;
Bingham, book i. ch. ii. ; Vanini, ' De Admirandis Naturae Arcanis,' dial. 37 ;
Lecky, ' Hist, of Rationalism,' vol. i. p. 126 ; Encyclop. Brit. (5th ed.) s.v.
' Superstition/

RELIGION OF LOWER RACES. 421

regard with kindly interest all record of men's earnest
seeking after truth with such light as they could find. Such
students will look for meaning, however crude and childish,
at the root of doctrines often most dark to the believers
who accept them most zealously ; they will search for the
reasonable thought which once gave life to observances now
become in seeming or reality the most abject and super-
stitious folly. The reward of these enquirers will be a
more rational comprehension of the faiths in whose midst
they dwell, for no more can he who understands but one
, religion understand even that religion, than the man who
knows but one language can understand that language. No
religion of mankind lies in utter isolation from the rest,
and the thoughts and principles of modern Christianity
are attached to intellectual clues which run back through
far prae-Christian ages to the very origin of human civili-
zation, perhaps even of human existence.

While observers who have had fair opportunities of study-
ing the religion of savages have thus sometimes done scant
justice to the facts before their eyes, the hasty denials of
others who have judged without even facts can carry no
great weight. A 16th-century traveller gave an account of
the natives of Florida which is typical of such : ' Touching
the religion of this people, which wee have found, for want
of their language wee could not understand neither by signs
'nor gesture that they had any religion or lawe at all. ...
We suppose that they have no religion at all, and that they
live at their own libertie.' l Better knowledge of these
Floridans nevertheless showed that they had a religion, and
better knowledge has reversed many another hasty asser-
tion to the same effect ; as when writers used to declare
that the natives of Madagascar had no idea of a future state,
and no word for soul or spirit ; * or when Dampier enquired
after the religion of the natives of Timor, and was told

1 J. de Verrazano in Hakluyt, vol. iii. p. 300.

* See W. Ellis, ' Hist, ot Madagascar,' vol. i. p. 429 ; Flacourt, ' Hist, de
Madagascar/ p. 59.

i. 2 E

422 ANIMISM.

that they had none j 1 or when Sir Thomas Roe landed in
Saldanha Bay on his way to the court of the Great Mogul,
and remarked of the Hottentots that ' they have left off
their custom of stealing, but know no God or religion/ 1
Among the numerous accounts collected by Lord Avebury
as evidence bearing on the absence or low development
of religion among low races, 8 some may be selected as
lying open to criticism from this point of view. Thus
the statement that the Samoan Islanders had no religion
cannot stand, in face of the elaborate description by the
Rev. G. Turner of the Samoan religion itself ; and the
assertion that the Tupinambas of Brazil had no religion
is one not to be received on merely negative evidence, for
the religious doctrines and practices of the Tupi race have
been recorded by Lery, De Laet, and other writers. Even
with much time and care and knowledge of language,
it is not always easy to elicit from savages the details of
their theology. They try to hide from the prying and con-
temptuous foreigner their worship of gods who seem to
shrink, like their worshippers, before the white man and his
mightier Deity. Mr. Sproat's experience in Vancouver's :
Island is an apt example of this state of things. He says :
' I was two years among the Ahts, with my mind constantly
directed towards the subject of their religious beliefs, before
I could discover that they possessed any ideas as to an
overruling power or a future state of existence. The traders
on the coast, and other persons well acquainted with the
people, told me that they had no such ideas, and this
opinion was confirmed by conversation with many of the
less intelligent savages ; but at last I succeeded in getting
a satisfactory clue/ 4 It then appeared that the Ahts had
all the time been hiding a whole characteristic system of
religious doctrines as to souls and their migrations, the

1 Dampier, ' Voyages,' vol. ii. part ii. p. 76.

8 Roe in Pinkerton, vol. viii. p. 2.

8 Lubbock, ' Prehistoric Times/ p. 564 : see also * Origin of Civilization,'

p. 138-

4 Sproat, ' Scenes and Studies of Savage Life,' p. 305.

RELIGION OF LOWER RACES. 423


spirits who do good and ill to men, and the great gods above
all. Thus, even where no positive proof of religious ideas
among any particular tribe has reached us, we should dis-
trust its denial by observers whose acquaintance with the
tribe in question has not been intimate as well as kindly.
It is said of the Andaman Islanders that they have not the
rudest elements of a religious faith ; yet it appears that
the natives did not even display to the foreigners the rude
music which they actually possessed, so that they could
scarcely have been expected to be communicative as to
their theology, if they had any. 1 In our time the most
striking negation of the religion of savage tribes is that
published by Sir Samuel Baker, in a paper read in 1866
before the Ethnological Society of London, as follows :
'The most northern tribes of the White Nile are the
Dinkas, Shillooks, Nuehr, Kytch, Bohr, Aliab, and Shir.
A general description will suffice for the whole, excepting
the Kytch. Without any exception, they are without a
belief in a Supreme Being, neither have they any form of
worship or idolatry ; nor is the darkness of their minds
enlightened by even a ray of superstition/ Had this
distinguished explorer spoken only of the Latukas, or of
other tribes hardly known to ethnographers except through
his own intercourse with them, his denial of any religious
consciousness to them would have been at least entitled to
stand as the best procurable account, until more intimate
communication should prove or disprove it. But in speak-
ing thus of comparatively Well known tribes such as the
Dinkas, Shilluks and Nuehr, Sir S. Baker ignores the
existence of published evidence, such as describes the
sacrifices of the Dinkas, their belief in good and evil spirits
(adjok and djyok), their good deity and heaven-dwelling
creator, Dendid, as likewise N6ar the Deity of the Nuehr,
and the Shilluk's creator, who is described as visiting, like
other spirits, a sacred wood or tree. Kaufmann, Brun-

1 Mouat, 'Andaman Islanders,' pp. 2, 279, 303. Since the above was
written, the remarkable Andaman religion has been described by Mr. E.
H. Man, in ' Journ. Anthrop. Inst.' vol. xii. (1883) p. 156. [Note to 3rd ed.]

424 , ANIMISM.

Rollet, Lejean, and other observers, had thus placed on
record details of the religion of these White Nile tribes,
years before Sir S. Baker's rash denial that they had any]
religion at all. 1

The first requisite in a systematic study of the religions
of the lower races, is to lay down a rudimentary definition,
of religion. By requiring in this definition the belief in a
supreme deity or of judgment after death, the adoration of,
idols or the practice of sacrifice, or other partially-diffused
doctrines or rites, no doubt many tribes may be excluded
from the category of religious. But such narrow definition
has the fault of identifying religion rather with particular
developments than with the deeper motive which underlies
them. It seems best to fall back at once on this essential
source, and simply to claim, as a minimum definition ofj
Religion, the belief in Spiritual Beings. If this standard
be applied to the descriptions of low races as to religion,
the following results will appear. It cannot be positively)
asserted that every existing tribe recognizes the belief in
spiritual beings, for the native condition of a considerable
number is obscure in this respect, and from the rapid change
or extinction they are undergoing, may ever remain so. It
would be yet more unwarranted to set down every tribe i
mentioned in history, or known to us by the discovery of
antiquarian relics, as necessarily having passed the!
defined minimum of religion. Greater still would be the
unwisdom of declaring such a rudimentary belief natural or
instinctive in all human tribes of all times ; for no evidence

1 Baker, ' Races of the Nile Basin,' in Tr. Eth. Soc. vol. v. p. 231 ; ' The
Albert Nyanza,' vol. i. p. 246. See Kaufmann, ' Schilderungen aus Central-
afrika,' p. 123 ; Brun-Rollet, ' Le Nil Blanc et le Soudan,' pp. 100, 222, also
pp. 164, 200, 234 ; G. Lejean in ' Rev. des Deux M.' April i, 1862, p. 760 ;
Waitz, * Anthropologie,' vol. ii. pp. 72-5 ; Bastian, ' Mensch,' vol. iii. p. 208.
Other recorded cases of denial of religion of savage tribes on narrow definition
or inadequate evidence may be found in Meiners, ' Gesch. der Rel.' vol. i.
pp. 11-15 (Australians and Californians) ; Waitz, 'Anthropologie.' vol. i.
p. 323 (Aru Islanders, &c.) ; Farrar in ' Anthrop. Rev.' Aug. 1864, p. ccxvii.
(Kafirs, &c.) ; Martius, ' Ethnog. Amer.' vol. i. p. 583 (Manaos) ; J. G.
Palfrey, Hist, of New England,' vol. i. p. 46 (New England tribes).


DEFINITION OF RELIGION. 425

f

I


justifies the opinion that man, known to be capable of so
vast an intellectual development, cannot have emerged from
a non-religious condition, previous to that religious condi-
tion in which he happens at present to come with sufficient
clearness within our range of knowledge. It is desirable,
however, to take our basis of enquiry in observation rather
than from speculation. Here, so far as I can judge from the
immense mass of accessible evidence, we have to admit that
the belief in spiritual beings appears among all low races
with whom we have attained to thoroughly intimate ac-
quaintance ; whereas the assertion of absence of such belief,
must apply either to ancient tribes, or to more or less im- '
perfectly described modern ones. The exact bearing of this
state of things on the problem of the origin of religion may
be thus briefly stated. Were it distinctly proved that non-
religious savages exist or have existed, these might be at
least plausibly claimed as representatives of the condition
of Man before he arrived at the religious state of culture.
It is not desirable, however, that this argument should be
put forward, for the asserted existence of the non-religious
tribes in question rests, as we have seen, on evidence often
mistaken and never conclusive. The argument for the
natural evolution of religious ideas among mankind is not
invalidated by the rejection of an ally too weak at present
> to give effectual help. Non-religious tribes may not exist
in our day, but the fact bears no more decisively on the
development of religion, than the impossibility of finding a
modern English village without scissors or books or lucifer-
matches bears on the fact that there was a time when no
such things existed in the land.

I propose here, under the name of Animism, to investigate
the deep-lying doctrine of Spiritual Beings, which embodies
the very essence of Spiritualistic as opposed to Materialistic
philosophy. Animism is not a new technical term, though
now seldom used. 1 From its special relation to the doctrine

1 The term has been especially used to denote the doctrine of Stahl,
the promulgator also of the phlogiston-theory. The Animism of Stahl is a

426 ANIMISM.

of the soul, it will be seen to have a peculiar appropriate-
ness to the view here taken of the mode in which theological
ideas have been developed among mankind. The word
Spiritualism, though it may be, and sometimes is, used in a
general sense, has this obvious defect to us, that it has be-
come the designation of a particular modern sect, who indeed
hold extreme spiritualistic views, but cannot be taken as
typical representatives of these views in the world at large.
The sense of Spiritualism in its wider acceptation, the
general belief in spiritual beings, is here given to Animism.
Animism characterizes tribes very low in the scale of
humanity, and thence ascends, deeply modified in its trans-
mission, but from first to last preserving an unbroken con-
tinuity, into the midst of high modern culture. Doctrines
adverse to it, so largely held by individuals or schools, are
usually due not to early lowness of civilization, but to later
changes in the intellectual, course, to divergence from, or
rejection of, ancestral faiths ; and such newer developments
do not affect the present enquiry as to the fundamental
religious condition of mankind. Animism is, in fact, the
groundwork of the Philosophy of Religion, from that of
savages up to that of civilized men. And although it may
at first sight seem to afford but a bare and meagre defini-
tion of a minimum of religion, it will be found practically
sufficient ; for where the root is, the branches will generally
be produced. It is habitually found that the theory of
Animism divides into two great dogmas, forming parts of
one consistent doctrine; first, concerning souls of individual
creatures, capable of continued existence after the death or
destruction of the body ; second, concerning other spirits,
upward to the rank of powerful deities. Spiritual beings
are held to affect or control the events of the material world,
and man's life here and hereafter; and it being considered

revival and development in modern scientific shape of the classic theory
identifying vital principle and soul. See his ' Theoria Medica Vera,' Halle,
1737 ; and the critical dissertation on his views, Lemoine, ' Le Vitalisme et
I'Animisme de Stahl,' Paris, 1864.

PHILOSOPHY OF SPIRITUAL BEINGS. 427

that they hold intercourse with men, and receive pleasure or
displeasure from human actions, the belief in their existence
leads naturally, and it might almost be said inevitably, sooner
PI or later to active reverence and propitiation. Thus Animism
in its full development, includes the belief in souls and in a
; future state, in controlling deities and subordinate spirits,
these doctrines practically resulting in some kind of active
' worship. One great element of religion, that moral element
: which among the higher nations forms its most vital part, is
j indeed little represented in the religion of the lower races.
'It is not that these races have no moral sense or no
Amoral standard, for both are strongly marked a'mong them,
if not in formal precept, at least in that traditional con-
sensus of society which we call public opinion, according to
which certain actions are held to be good or bad, right or
wrong. It is that the conjunction of ethics and Animistic
philosophy, so intimate and powerful in the higher culture,
seems scarcely yet to have begun in the lower. I propose
here hardly to touch upon the purely moral aspects of reli-
gion, but rather to study the animism of the world so far
as it constitutes, as unquestionably it does constitute, an
ancient and world-wide philosophy, of which belief is the
theory and worship is the practice. Endeavouring to shape
the materials for an enquiry hitherto strangely undervalued
and neglected, it will now be my task to bring as clearly as
may be into view the fundamental animism of the lower
races, and in some slight and broken outline to trace its
course into higher regions of civilization. Here let me
state once for all two principal conditions under which the
present research is carried on First, as to the religious
doctrines and practices examined, these are treated as
belonging to theological systems devised by human reason,
without supernatural aid or revelation ; in other words, as
being developments of Natural Religion. Second, as to
the connexion between similar ideas and rites in the reli-
gions of the savage and the civilized world. While dwell-
ing at some length on doctrines and ceremonies of the lower

428 ANIMISM.

races, and sometimes particularizing for special reasons the
related doctrines and ceremonies of the higher nations, it
has not seemed my proper task to work out in detail the
problems thus suggested among the philosophies and creeds
of Christendom. Such applications, extending farthest
from the direct scope of a work on primitive culture, are
briefly stated in general terms, or touched in slight allusion,
or taken for granted without remark. Educated readers
possess the information required to work out their general
bearing on theology, while more technical discussion is left
to philosophers and theologians specially occupied with
such arguments.

The first branch of the subject to be considered is the
doctrine of human and other Souls, an examination of
which will occupy the rest of the present chapter. What
the doctrine of the soul is among the lower races, may be
explained in stating the animistic theory of its development.
It seems as though thinking men, as yet at a low level of
culture, were deeply impressed by two groups of biological
problems. In the first place, what is it that makes the
difference between_ajiymg^o^ and a dead one ; what
causes waHngT^sleep, Trance^ disease, death ? In the
second place, what are those human shapes which appear in
<^dreams and visions ? Looking at these two groups of phe-
nomena, the ancient savage philosophers probably made
their first step by the obvious inference that every man has
two things belonging to him, namely, a life and a phantom.
These two are evidently in close connexion with the body,
the life as enabling it to feel and think and act, the phantom
as being its image or second self ; both, also, are perceived
to be things separable from the body, the life as able to go
away and leave it insensible or dead, the phantom as appear-
ing to people at a distance from it. The second step would
seem also easy for savages to make, seeing how extremely
difficult civilized men have found it to unmake. It is merely
to combine the life and the phantom. As both belong to the
body, why should they not also belong to one another, and

DOCTRINE OF SOULS. 429

be manifestations of one and the same soul ? Let them
then be considered as united, and the result is that well-
known conception which may be described as an appari-
:,tional-soul, a ghost-soul. This, at any rate, corresponds
: with the actual conception of the personal soul or spirit
among the lower races, which may be denned as follows : It
is a thin unsubstantial human image, in its nature a sort of
vapour, film, or shadow ; the cause of life and thought in
the individual it animates ; independently possessing the
personal consciousness and volition of its corporeal owner,
past or present ; capable of leaving the body far behind, to
flash swiftly from place to place; mostly impalpable and in-
f visible, yet also manifesting physical power, and especially
s appearing to men waking or asleep as a phantasm separate
from the body of which it bears the likeness; continuing to
exist and appear to men after the death of that body ; able
to enter into, possess, and act in the bodies of other men,
of animals, and even of things. Though this definition is by
no means of universal application, it has sufficient gene-
rality to be taken as a standard, modified by more or less
divergence among any particular people. Far from these
world- wide opinions being arbitrary or conventional pro-
ducts, it is seldom even justifiable to consider their uni-
formity among distant races as proving communication of
any sort. They are doctrines answering in the most forcible
way to the plain evidence of men's senses, as interpreted by
a fairly consistent and rational primitive philosophy. So
well, indeed, does primitive animism account for the facts
of nature, that it has held its place into the higher levels of
education. Though classic and mediaeval philosophy modi-
fied it much, and modern philosophy has handled it yet
more unsparingly, it has so far retained the traces of its
original character, that heirlooms of primitive ages may be
claimed in the existing psychology of the civilized world.
Out of the vast mass of evidence, collected among the
most various and distant races of mankind, typical details
may now be selected to display the earlier theory of the

43 ' ANIMISM.

soul, the relation of the parts of this theory, and the
manner in which these parts have been abandoned, modi-
fied, or kept up, along the course of culture.

To understand the popular conceptions of the human
soul or spirit, it is instructive to notice the words which
have been found suitable to express it. The ghost or phan-
tasm seen by the dreamer or the visionary is an unsubstan-
tial form, like a shadow or reflexion, and thus the familiar
term of the shade comes in to express the soul. Thus the
Tasmanian word for the shadow is also that for the spirit ; l
the Algonquins describe a man's soul as otahchuk, ' his
shadow;' 2 the Quiche language uses natub for 'shadow,
soul;' 8 the Arawak ueja means 'shadow, soul, image;' 4
the Abipones made the one word lodkal serve for ' shadow,
soul, echo, image.' 5 The Zulus not only use the word
tunzi for ' shadow, spirit, ghost,' but they consider that
at death the shadow of a man will in some way depart from
the corpse, to become an ancestral spirit/ The Basutos
not only call the spirit remaining after death the seriti or
' shadow,' but they think that if a man walks on the river
bank, a crocodile may seize his shadow in the water and
draw him in; 7 while in Old Calabar there is found the
same identification of the spirit with the ukpon or
' shadow,' for a man to lose which is fatal. 8 There are
thus found among the lower races not only the types of
those familiar classic terms, the skia and umbra, but also
what seems the fundamental thought of the stories of
shadowless men still current in the folklore of Europe, and
familiar to modern readers in Chamisso's tale of Peter

1 Bon wick, ' Tasmaniana,' p. 182.

1 Tanner's ' Narr.' p. 291, Cree atchak=soul.

* Brasseur, ' Langue Quiche^,' s.v.

* Martius, ' Ethnog. Amer.' vol. i. p. 705 ; vol. ii. p. 310.
6 Dobrizhoffer, * Abipones,' vol. ii. p. 194.

6 Dohne, ' Zulu Die.' s.v. ' tunzi ; ' Callaway, ' Rel. of Amazulu,' pp. 91,
126 ;' Zulu Tales,' vol. i. p. 342.

7 Casalis, ' Basutos,' p. 245 ; Arbousset and Daumas, ' Voyage,' p. 12.

8 Goldie, ' Efik Dictionary,' s.v. ; see Kolle, ' Afr. Native Lit.' p. 324
(Kanuri). Also ' Journ. Ind. Archip.' vol. v. p. 713 (Australian).

APPARITIONAL AND VITAL SOUL. 43!

hlemihl. Thus the dead in Purgatory knew that Dante
alive when they saw that, unlike theirs, his figure cast a
ow on the ground. 1 Other attributes are taken into
notion of soul or spirit, with especial regard to its being
cause of life. Thus the Caribs, connecting the pulses
ith spiritual beings, and especially considering that in the
dwells man's chief soul, destined to a future heavenly
life, could reasonably use the one word iouanni for ' soul,
life, heart.'* The Tongans supposed the soul to exist
throughout the whole extension of the body, but particu-
larly in the heart. On one occasion, the natives were
declaring to a European that a man buried months ago was
nevertheless still alive. ' And one, endeavouring to make
me understand what he meant, took hold of my hand, and
squeezing it, said, 'This will die, but the life that is within
you will never die ; " with his other hand pointing to my
heart.' 8 So the Basutos say of a dead man that his heart
is gone out, and of one recovering from sickness that his
heart is coming back. 4 This corresponds to the familiar
Old World view of the heart as the prime mover in life,
thought, and passion. The connexion of soul and blood,
familiar to the Karens and Papuas, appears prominently in
Jewish and Arabic philosophy. 8 To educated moderns the
idea of the Macusi Indians of Guiana may seem quaint,
that although the body will decay, ' the man in our eyes '
will not die, but wander about. 6 Yet the association of
personal animation with the pupil of the eye is familiar to
European folklore, which not unreasonably discerned a sign
of bewitchment or approaching death in the disappearance
of the image, pupil, or baby, from the dim eyeballs of the
sick man. 7

1 Dante, ' Div. Comm. Purgatorio,' canto iii. Compare Grohmann, ' Aber-
glauben aus Bohmen,' p. 221. See ante, p. 85.
1 Rochefort, pp. 429, 516 ; J. G. Miiller, p. 207.

Mariner, ' Tonga Is.' vol. ii. p, 135 ; S. S. Farmer, * Tonga,' &c. p.. 131.
4 Casalis, I.e. See also Mariner, ibid.

Bastian, ' Psychologic,' pp. 15-23.

J. H. Bernau, * Brit. Guiana,' p. 134.

7 Grimm, * D. M.' pp. 1028, 1133. Anglo-Saxon man-lica.

432 t ANIMISM

The act of breathing, so characteristic of the higher
animals during life, and coinciding so closely with life in its
departure, has been repeatedly and naturally identified with
the. life or soul itself. Laura Bridgman showed in her in-
structive way the analogy between the effects of restricted
sense and restricted civilization, when one day she made
the gesture of taking something away from her mouth : ' I
dreamed/ she explained in words, ' that God took away
my breath to heaven.' 1 It is thus that West Australians
used one word waug for ' breath, spirit, soul;' 2 that in the
Netela language of California, piuts means ' life, breath,
sovd;' 8 that certain Greenlanders reckoned two souls to
man, namely his shadow and his breath ;* that the Malays
say the soul of the dying man escapes through his nostrils,
and in Java use the same word nawa for ' breath, life,
soul.' 6 How the notions of life, heart, breath, and phantom
unite in the one conception of a soul or spirit, and at the
same time how loose and vague such ideas are among
barbaric races, is well brought into view in the answers to
a religious inquest held in 1528 among the natives of
Nicaragua. ' When they die, there comes out of their
mouth something that resembles a person, and is called
julio [Aztec yuli=to live]. This being goes to the place
where the man and woman are. It is like a person, but
does not die, and the body remains here.' Question. ' Do
those who go up on high keep the same body, the same
face, and the same limbs, as here below ? ' Answer. ' No ;
there is only the heart.' Question. ' But since they tear
out their hearts [i.e. when a captive was sacrificed], what
happens then ? ' Answer. ' It is not precisely the heart,
but that in them which makes them live, and that quits the
body when they die/ Or, as stated in another interro-

1 Lieber, ' Laura Bridgman,' in Smithsonian Contrib. vol. ii. p. 8.

1 G. F. Moore, ' Vocab. of W. Australia,' p. 103.

8 Brinton, p. 50, see p. 235 ; Bastian, ' Psychologic,' p. 15.

4 Cranz, ' Gronland,' p. 257.

6 Crawfurd, ' Malay Gr. and Die.' s.v. ; Marsden, * Sumatra,' p. 386.

LIFE, HEART, BREATH. 433

itory, ' It is not their heart that goes up above, but what
ikes them live, that is to say, the breath that issues from
leir mouth and is called Julio.'* The conception of the
il as breath may be followed up through Semitic and
in etymology, and thus into the main streams of the
>hilosophy of the world. Hebrew shows nephesh, ' breath,'
>ing into all the meanings of ' life, soul, mind, animal,'
rtiile ruach and neshamah make the like transition from
breath ' to ' spirit ' ; and to these the Arabic nefs and
ruh correspond. The same is the history of Sanskrit dtrnan
and prdna, of Greek psyche and pneuma, of Latin animus,
anima, spiritus. So Slavonic duck has developed the mean-
ing of ' breath ' into that of soul or spirit ; and the dialects
of the Gypsies have this word duk with the meanings of
' breath, spirit, ghost/ whether these pariahs brought the
word from India as part of their inheritance of Aryan
speech, or whether they adopted it in their migration across
Slavonic lands. 2 German geist and English ghost, too, may
possibly have the same original sense of breath. And if any
should think such expressions due to mere metaphor, they
may judge the strength of the implied connexion between
breath and spirit by cases of most unequivocal significance.
Among the Seminoles of Florida, when a woman died in
childbirth, the infant was held over her face to receive her
parting spirit, and thus acquire strength and knowledge for
its future use. These Indians could have well understood
why at the death-bed of an ancient Roman, the nearest
kinsman leant over to inhale the last breath of the depart-
ing (et excipies hanc animam ore pio). Their state of mind
is kept up to this day among Tyrolese peasants, who can
still fancy a good man's soul to issue from his mouth at
death like a little white cloud. 8

1 Oviedo, ' Hist, du Nicaragua,' pp. 21-51.

* Pott, ' Zigeuner,' vol. ii. p. 306 ; ' Indo-Germ. Wurzel-W6rterbuch, vol.
i. p. 1073 ; Borrow, ' Lavengro,' vol. ii. ch. xxvi. ' write the lit of him whose
dook gallops down that hill every night,' see vol. iii. ch. iv.

3 Brinton, ' Myths of New World,' p. 253 j Comm. in Virg. -flSn. iv. 684 j

434 ANIMISM.

It will be shown that men, in their composite and con-
fused notions of the soul, have brought into connexion a
list of manifestations of life and thought even more multi-
farious than this. But also, seeking to avoid such per-
plexity of combination, they have sometimes endeavoured
to define and classify more closely, especially by the theory
that man has a combination of several kinds of spirit, soul,
or image, to which different functions belong. Already
in the barbaric world such classification has been invented
or adopted. Thus the Fijians distinguished between a man's
' dark spirit ' or shadow, which goes to Hades, and his
' light spirit ' or reflexion in water or a mirror, which stays
near where he dies. 1 The Malagasy say that the saina or
mind vanishes at death, the aina or life becomes mere air,
but the matoatoa or ghost hovers round the tomb. 8 In
North America, the duality of the soul is a strongly marked
Algonquin belief ; one soul goes out and sees dreams while
the other remains behind ; at death one of the two abides
with the body, and for this the survivors leave offerings of
food, while the other departs to the land of the dead. A
division into three souls is also known, and the Dakotas
say that man has four souls, one remaining with the corpse,
one staying in the village, one going in the air, and one to
the land of spirits.* The Karens distinguish between the ' la '
or ' kelah,' the personal life-phantom, and the ' thah/ the
responsible moral soul. * More or less under Hindu influence,
the Khonds have a fourfold division, as follows : the first soul
is that capable of beatification or restoration to Boora the
Good Deity; the second is attached to aKhond tribe on earth
and is re-born generation after generation, so that at the

Cic. Verr. v. 45 ; Wuttke, ' Volksaberglaubc,' p. 210 ; Rochholz, * Deutscher
Glaube,' &c. vol. i. p. in.

* Williams, f Fiji,' vol. i. p. 241.

* Ellis, ' Madagascar,' vol. i. p. 393.

3 Charlevoix, ' Nouvelle France,' vol. vi. pp. 75-8 ; Schoolcraft, ' Indian
Tribes,' part i. pp. 33, 83, part iv. p. 70 ; Waitz, vol. iii. p. 194 ; J. G.
Muller, pp. 66, 207-8.

* Cross in ' Journ. Amer. Oriental Soc.' vol. iv. p. 310.

PLURALITY OF SOULS. 435

birth of each child the priest asks who has returned ; the
third goes out to hold spiritual intercourse, leaving the body
in a languid state, and it is this soul which can pass for a
time into a tiger, and transmigrates for punishment after
death ; the fourth dies on the dissolution of the body. 1
Such classifications resemble those of higher nations, as for
instance the three-fold division of shade, manes, and
spirit :

' Bis duo sunt homini, manes, caro, spiritus, umbra :

Quatuor ista loci bis duo suscipiunt.
Terra tegit carnem, tumulum circumvolat umbra,
Orcus habet manes, spiritus astra petit.'

Not attempting to follow up the details of such psychical
division into the elaborate systems of literary nations, I
shall not discuss the distinction which the ancient Egyptians
seem to have made in the Ritual of the Dead between the
man's ba, akh, ka, khaba, translated by Dr. Birch as his
' soul/ ' mind,' * image/ ' shade/ or the Rabbinical division
into what may be roughly described as the bodily, spiritual,
and celestial souls, or the distinction between the emanative
and genetic souls in Hindu philosophy, or the distribution
life, apparition, ancestral spirit, among the three souls
the Chinese, or the demarcations of the nous, psyche, and
tma, or of the anima and animus, or the famous
classic and mediaeval theories of the vegetal, sensitive, and
rational souls. Suffice it to point out here that such specu-
lation dates back to the barbaric condition of our race, in a
state fairly comparing as to scientific value with much that
gained esteem within* the precincts of higher culture.
[t would be a difficult task to treat such classification on a
>istent logical basis. Terms corresponding with those of
5, mind, soul, spirit, ghost, and so forth, are not thought
as describing really separate entities, so much as the
reral forms and functions of one individual being. Thus

1 Macpherson, pp. 91-2. See also Klemm, * C. G.' vol. Hi. p. 71 (Lapp) ;
* John, Far East,' vol. L p. 189 (Dayaks),

436 ANIMISM.

the confusion which here prevails in our own thought and
language, in a manner typical of the thought and language
of mankind in general, is in fact due not merely to vague-
ness of terms, but to an ancient theory of substantial unity \
which underlies them. Such ambiguity of language, how-
ever, will be found to interfere little with the present,
enquiry, for the details given of the nature and action oi
spirits, souls, phantoms, will themselves define the exact;
sense such words are to be taken in.

The early animistic theory of vitality, regarding the func-j
tions of life as caused by the soul, offers to the savage mind
an explanation of several bodily and mental conditions, asi
being effects of a departure of the soul or some of its con-i
stituent spirits. This theory holds a wide and strong
position in savage biology. The South Australians express
it when they say of one insensible or unconscious, that he
is ' wilyamarraba,' i.e., ' without soul/ 1 Among the Algon-i
quin Indians of North America, we hear of sickness being :
accounted for by the patient's ' shadow ' being unsettled or
detached from his body, and of the convalescent being;
reproached for exposing himself before his shadow was
safely settled down in him ; where we should say that a,
man was ill and recovered, they would consider that he
died, but came again. Another account from among the!
same race explains the condition of men lying in leth-|
argy or trance ; their souls have travelled to the banks
of the River of Death, but have been driven back and
return to reanimate their bodies. 2 Among the Fijians,
' when any one faints or dies, their spirit, it is said, may
sometimes be brought back by calling after it ; and occa-
sionally the ludicrous scene is witnessed of a stout man
lying at full length, and bawling out lustily for the return of
his own soul/ 8 To the negroes of North Guinea, derange-

1 Shurmann, ' Vocab. of Parnkalla Lang.' s.v.

8 Tanner's ' Narr.' p. 291 ; Keating, ' Narr. of Long's Exp.' vol. ii. p. 154.
8 Williams, ' Fiji,' vol. i. p. 242 ; see the converse process of catching
away a man's soul, causing him to pine and die, p. 250.

DEPARTURE AND RETURN OF SOUL. 437

nt or dotage is caused by the patient being prematurely
I deserted by his soul, sleep being a more temporary with-
! drawal. 1 Thus, in various countries, the bringing back of
: lost souls becomes a regular part of the sorcerer's or priest's
profession. The Salish Indians of Oregon regard the spirit
1 as distinct from the vital principle, and capable of quitting
the body for a short time without the patient being con-
: scious of its absence ; but to avoid fatal consequences it
must be restored as soon as possible, and accordingly the
medicine-man in solemn form replaces it down through the
patient's head. 2 The Turanian or Tatar races of Northern
Asia strongly hold the theory of the soul's departure in
disease, and among the Buddhist tribes the Lamas carry
: out the ceremony of soul-restoration in most elaborate
form. When a man has been robbed by a demon of his
rational soul, and has only his animal soul left, his senses
and memory grow weak and he falls into a dismal state.
Then the Lama undertakes to cure him, and with quaint
rites exorcises the evil demon. But if this fails, then it is the
patient's soul itself that cannot or will not find its way back.
So the sick man is laid out in his best attire and surrounded
with his most attractive possessions, the friends and rela-
tives go thrice round the dwelling, affectionately calling back
the soul by name, while as a further inducement the Lama
reads from his book descriptions of the pains of hell, and
the dangers incurred by a soul which wilfully abandons its
body, and then at last the whole assembly declare with one
voice that the wandering spirit has returned and the patient
will recover. 3 The Karens of Burma will run about pre-
tending to catch a sick man's wandering soul, or as they
say with the Greeks and Slavs, his ' butterfly ' (leip-pya),
and at last drop it down upon his head. The Karen doc-
trine of the ' la ' is indeed a perfect and well-marked

1 J. L. Wilson, ' W. Afr.' p

2 RaoHon ' \T*norVi ' \re\\ ii

220.

Bastian, ' Mensch,' vol. ii. p. 319 ; also Sproat, p.' 213 (Vancouver's I.).
8 Bastian, 'Psychologic/ p. 34; Gmelin, ' Reisen durch Sibirien,' vol. ii.
p. 359 (Yakuts) j Ravenstein, ' Amur,' p. 351 (Tunguz).

. 2 F

438 ANIMISM.

vitalistic system. This la, soul, ghost, or genius, may be
separated from the body it belongs to, and it is a matter of
the deepest interest to the Karen to keep his 1 with him,
by calling it, making offerings of food to it, and so forth.
It is especially when the body is asleep, that the soul goes
out and wanders ; if it is detained beyond a certain time,
disease ensues, and if permanently, then its owner dies.
When the ' wee ' or spirit-doctor is employed to call back
the departed shade or life of a Karen, if he cannot recover
it from the region of the dead, he will sometimes take the
shade of a living man and transfer it to the dead, while its
proper owner, whose soul has ventured out in a dream,
sickens and dies. Or when a Karen becomes sick, languid
and pining from his la having left him, his friends will
perform a ceremony with a garment of the invalid's and
a fowl which is cooked and offered with rice, invok-
ing the spirit with formal prayers to come back to the
patient. 1 This ceremony is perhaps ethnologically con-
nected, though it is not easy to say by what manner of
diffusion or when, with a rite still practised in China.
When a Chinese is at the point of death, and his soul
is supposed to be already out of his body, a relative
may be seen holding up the patient's coat on a long
bamboo, to which a white cock is often fastened, while
a Tauist priest by incantations brings the departed
spirit into the coat, in order to put it back into the sick
man. If the bamboo after a time turns round slowly in
the holder's hands, this shows that the spirit is inside the
garment. 2

Such temporary exit of. the soul has a world-wide appli*
cation to the proceedings of the sorcerer, priest, or seer
himself. He professes to send forth his spirit on distant

1 Bastian, ' Oestl. Aaien,' vol. i. p. 143 ; vol. ii. pp. 388, 418 ; vol. Hi.
p. 236. Mason, ' Karens,' I.e. p. 196, &c. ; Cross, ' Karens,' in ' Journ.
Amer. Oriental Soc.' vol. iv. 1854, p. 307. See also St. John, ' Far East,'
I.e. (Dayaks).

2 Doolittle, ' Chinese,' vol. i. p. 150.


DEPARTURE AND RETURN OF SOUL. 439

journeys, and probably often believes his soul released for a
time from its bodily prison, as in the case of that remark-
able dreamer and visionary Jerome Cardan, who describes
himself as having the faculty of passing out of his senses as
into ecstasy whenever he will, feeling when he goes into
this state a sort of separation near the heart as if his soul
were departing, this state beginning from his brain and
passing down his spine, and he then feeling only that he is
out of himself. 1 Thus the Australian native doctor is al-
leged to obtain his initiation by visiting the world of spirits
, in a trance of two or three days' duration ; 2 the Khond priest
authenticates his claim to office by remaining from one to
fourteen days in a languid and dreamy state, caused by one of
his souls being away in the divine presence ; 3 the Greenland
angekok's soul goes forth from his body to fetch his familiar
demon ; 4 the Turanian shaman lies in lethargy while his
soul departs to bring hidden wisdom from the land of
spirits. 8 The literature of more progressive races supplies
similar accounts. A characteristic story from old Scandi-
navia is that of the Norse chief Ingimund, who shut up
three Finns in a hut for three nights, that they might visit
Iceland and inform him of the lie of the country where he
was to settle ; their bodies became rigid, they sent their
souls on the errand, and awakening after the three days they
gave a description of the Vatnsdael. 6 The typical classic
case is the story of Hermotimos, whose prophetic soul went
out from time to time to visit distant regions, till at last his
wife burnt the lifeless body on the funeral pile, and when
the poor soul came back, there was no longer a dwelling for
it to animate. 7 A group of the legendary visits to the

1 Cardan, ' De Varietate Rerum,' Basel, 1556, cap. xliii.

2 Stanbridge, ' Abor. of Victoria,' in ' Tr. Eth. Soc.' vol. i. p. 300.

3 Macpherson, ' India,' p. 103.

4 Cranz, ' Gronland,' p. 269. See also Sproat, I.e.

5 Ruhs, 4 Finland,' p. 303 ; Castre"n, ' Finn. Myth.' p. 134 ; Bastian,
Mensch,' vol. ii. p. 319.

6 Vatnsdsela Saga ; Baring-Gould, ' Werewolves,' p. 29.

7 Plin. vii. 53 ; Lucian. Hermotimus, Muse. Encom. 7.

440 ANIMISM.

spirit-world, which will be described in the next chapter,
belong to this class. A typical spiritualistic instance may
be quoted from Jung-Stilling, who says that examples have
come to his knowledge of sick persons who, longing to
see absent friends, have fallen into a swoon during which
they have appeared to the distant objects of their affection. 1
As an illustration from our own folklore, the well-known
superstition may serve, that fasting watchers on St. John's
Eve may see the apparitions of those doomed to die during
the year come with the clergyman to the church door and
knock ; these apparitions are spirits who come forth from
their bodies, for the minister has been noticed to be much
troubled in his sleep while his phantom was thus engaged,
and when one of a party of watchers fell into a sound sleep
and could not be roused, the others saw his apparition
knock at the church door. 2 Modern Europe has indeed
kept closely enough to the lines of early philosophy, for
such ideas to have little strangeness to our own time.
Language preserves record of them in such expressions
as ' out of oneself/ ' beside oneself/ ' in an ecstasy/
and he who says that his spirit goes forth to meet a
friend, can still realize in the phrase a meaning deeper
than metaphor.