Part I The Context of Understanding and Debate

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Introduction

We begin with four classic and profound statements on the nature of religion which take us from one of the ablest evolutionists (Tylor), through the two greatest socio- logists on the subject (Durkheim and Weber), to the anthropologist who has been, if not the most infl uential, at least the most talked about theoretician in the latter decades of the 20th century (Geertz). The fi rst three fi gures present what came (along with a Freudian model) to be seen as the main alternative approaches to the under- standing of religion. Through the mid-20th century the choice was particularly between Durkheim and Tylor. Then, in part through the writing of Geertz, Weber became of great interest to anthropology. Tylor and Durkheim both seek the origins or foundations of religion. For Tylor they lie in individual reasoning, hence his position is often referred to as rationalist or intellectualist, whereas for Durkheim they lie in the collective consciousness that society has of itself. Durkheim’s position is therefore social. Both men seek the clearest exemplifi cation of religion’s foundations in what they consider to be the simplest known societies. Tylor’s method is one of comparison, derived from osten- sible facts gleaned from a voluminous number of travelers’ reports of varying quality, while Durkheim begins with the analysis of what he takes to be a single case, namely Aboriginal Australia. For Tylor the presence of religion could be explained as a reasonable, albeit mistaken, attempt to solve intellectual problems, whereas Durkheim took a more symbolic approach and argued that religious ideas and rituals both express and regenerate society. Weber’s concerns were not with the origins of religion per se so much as with the role of religion in the origins of modernity. He was concerned not with small- scale societies but with states, especially when comparing Asia with Europe. His approach was also distinctly historical, in contrast to the synchronic structure- functionalism to which Durkheimian ideas gave rise. He was interested, like Tylor, in what motivated people to think and act as they did, but he understood action in P

cc01.indd01.indd 2211 88/16/2007/16/2007 5:30:295:30:29 PMPM 22 OPENING FRAMEWORKS the context of collective systems of meaning. Where Tylor saw religious ideation as the product of direct and universal human concerns, Weber emphasized how such concerns are themselves shaped by diverse religious traditions. Likewise, where Tylor operated with an ostensibly universal and unequivocally positive idea of rationality, Weber was concerned with alternate kinds of means–ends relations, and especially with the emergence of various forms of what he called rationalization, which he viewed with some unease. In Weber the narrative of unequivocal progress assumed by the Victorians is replaced by distinct ambivalence. This is not the place to rehearse the complex elements of either Durkheim’s or Weber’s analyses of religion, nor to chart a history of the respective traditions they founded or the way they twine through anthropological work (see O’Toole 1984 for a good sociological introduction). But it is to note that most contemporary anthropological analyses are informed by both these thinkers, whether in affi rma- tion or resistance, tacitly or explicitly, and whether leavened by doses of Marx and Freud. Marx and Freud do belong here as well, and would have been represented by excerpts from Capital on commodity fetishism and from Totem and Taboo. Certain Freudian and Marxist arguments are presented in the selections from Obeyesekere and Taussig, respectively. All these interpretations of religion are pre- fi gured by Feuerbach’s analysis of religion as a human product (1975). Geertz is present in this section not as a founding ancestor but as one of the strongest attempts within modern anthropology to compose a defi nition of religion and hence a model for subsequent research. Moreover, Geertz attempts a kind of implicit synthesis of previous approaches. We can see threads of both Tylor and Durkheim, while the overriding interest is Weberian. Geertz’s roots are also Boasian, via Ruth Benedict, in that he is interested in portraying distinctive cultural worlds by means of ethnographic particulars. Few other anthropologists have been able to develop original and powerful defi ni- tions of religion or to model its relationships to culture and society. A theoretical synthesis by sociologist Peter Berger, The Sacred Canopy (1967; see also Berger and Luckmann 1966), has strong parallels with Geertz. Rappaport (1999) is a magiste- rial anthropological attempt to understand religion’s place in nature and, like Durkheim, its place at the foundations of social life.

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“The growth of religious ideas is envi- size their “imaginative and emotional” roned with such intrinsic diffi culties that side. Tylor was a rationalist and departed it may never receive a perfectly satis- from many of his contemporaries in factory exposition. Religion deals so fi nding this quality in so-called “primi- largely with the imaginative and emo- tive man” as well. However, he felt tional nature, and consequently with equally that despite the rationality of such uncertain elements of knowledge, their thought, the conclusions reached that all primitive religions are grotesque by members of small-scale societies were and to some extent unintelligible.” Such in error. was the opinion of Lewis Henry Morgan If Tylor is the only 19th-century writer (1877: 5, as cited by Guenther 1999: 58), to be included here, it is not only because a contemporary of Tylor’s. While Tylor he was among the more sensible, but (1832–1917) and Morgan are considered because the core of his defi nition of reli- the leading fi gures of 19th-century evo- gion as “the belief in Spiritual Beings” lutionary anthropology, and certainly remains congenial to many contempo- among the very few who are still read rary thinkers and is indeed almost a today, Tylor’s view of religion could not part of western “common sense” on the have departed further from Morgan’s subject. His characterization of animism statement. Tylor, holder of the fi rst chair remains fruitful and does serve as one in anthropology at the University of means to generalize about religious Oxford, found primitive religions nei- phenomena of all kinds. Animism speaks ther grotesque nor unintelligible, and today to refl ections on the mind/body he thought he had developed a model problem and conceptualizations of the of their development. Nor did he empha- person, to the relations between humans

From Sir Edward Burnett Tylor, Primitive Culture (New York: Harper & Row, 1958 [1871]), pp. 8–19, 80–6, 444–7. Copyright © by Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc. Abridged, footnotes removed, paragraph breaks added. P

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and other species, especially in hunting pictures. Members of small-scale societ- societies, and to conceptualizations of ies are far more sophisticated thinkers death and the centrality of both mortu- than either gave them credit for. They ary ritual and sacrifi ce in human societ- have far greater knowledge of the ies. (See the essay by Viveiros de Castro, human condition and far richer, more chapter 23 below.) variegated, and complex religious lives Tylor’s main successor was Sir James than Tylor recognized. They are also Frazer, who developed a stronger con- capable of much greater critical distance trast between magic, religion, and and abstract reasoning than Lévy-Bruhl science as forms of reasoning (1890). It imagined. Moreover, it is a mistake to was Lucien Lévy-Bruhl (1985 [1910], 1966 generalize about small-scale societies; [1923]) who provided the most direct there are great differences among them alternative to rationalism. He is associ- and over time. A comprehensive critique ated with the view that “natives” lived of Tylor, Lévy-Bruhl, and other evolu- in some mystical connection with the tionists is to be found in Evans-Pritchard world that transcends or evades the (1965). rational. It is easy to criticize Lévy-Bruhl Nevertheless, there are kernels of (and he eventually criticized himself – thought here that subsequent anthro- 1949), but his argument looks rather pologists have found of interest. There more sophisticated if we see it as the has been a stream of self-conscious complete inverse of Tylor, namely that if “Neo-Tyloreanism” (notably Horton primitives are not rational, neither can 1993) in response to an overly structure- they be said to be in error with respect functionalist approach to religion. This to their conclusions. For Lévy-Bruhl, at school draws particular inspiration from least, the relation to the world was a the fact that whatever his ethnocen- rich and powerful one. trism, Tylor begins with the rational and The criticisms of Tylor have been questioning nature of all people to try well rehearsed. The evolutionism entails to understand the human situation and value judgments and assumes a static our place in the world, and that reli- quality to the thought of small-scale gious ideas are adequate to the worlds societies, as if they had been frozen in they describe and shift as the horizons time; the comparative method decon- of those worlds shift, as Horton put textualizes ethnographic facts whose it, from microcosm to macrocosm. In meaning is thereby reduced and dis- reading Tylor today it is striking to see torted; the rationalism ignores the behind the evolutionary language a emotional side of religion; and the intel- basic concern with universals in human lectualism ignores the collective, sym- thought and experience and the conti- bolic, representational dimension. The nuity of religious thought between fact that Tylor sees religion grounded in small-scale societies and his own; in this error has appeared to many subsequent respect Tylor forms a precursor to con- thinkers to debase and reduce the temporary cognitivist approaches. More- subject. Moreover, despite his concern over, although some of the language for accurate empirical evidence, Tylor’s used appears highly problematic, Tylor’s approach is characterized by his own basic argument was against those who excessive speculation. Tylor’s errors were saw in smaller-scale societies either a compounded in Frazer. degeneration or a borrowing from Both Tylor and Lévy-Bruhl present large-scale ones. What Tylor staunchly one-sided and therefore impoverished defends is the rationalism and creativity P

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of all humans. Conversely, authors such neither mental nor bodily relation- as Devisch (1993) and Jackson (1989) ships are unmediated; on both counts (see also Leenhardt 1979 [1947]) sugges- Durkheimian or culturalist understand- tively reimagine aspects of mystical ings of the way society and language participation through ideas of embod- shape collective representations and ied knowledge and experience. However, individual experiences are critical.

[. . .] evidence, we have to admit that the belief in The fi rst requisite in a systematic study of spiritual beings appears among all low races the religions of the lower races, is to lay down with whom we have attained to thoroughly a rudimentary defi nition of religion. By requir- intimate acquaintance; whereas the assertion ing in this defi nition the belief in a supreme of absence of such belief must apply either to deity or of judgment after death, the adoration ancient tribes, or to more or less imperfectly of idols or the practice of sacrifi ce, or other described modern ones. The exact bearing of partially-diffused doctrines or rites, no doubt this state of things on the problem of the origin many tribes may he excluded from the cate- of religion may be thus briefl y stated. Were it gory of religious. But such narrow defi nition distinctly proved that non-religious savages has the fault of identifying religion rather with exist or have existed, these might be at least particular developments than with the deeper plausibly claimed as representatives of the con- motive which underlies them. It seems best to dition of Man before he arrived at the religious fall back at once on this essential source, and state of culture. It is not desirable, however, simply to claim, as a minimum defi nition of that this argument should be put forward, Religion, the belief in Spiritual Beings. If this for the asserted existence of the non-religious standard be applied to the descriptions of low tribes in question rests . . . on evidence often races as to religion, the following results will mistaken and never conclusive. The argument appear. It cannot be positively asserted that for the natural evolution of religious ideas every existing tribe recognizes the belief in among mankind is not invalidated by the rejec- spiritual beings, for the native condition of a tion of an ally too weak at present to give considerable number is obscure in this respect, effectual help. Non-religious tribes may not and from the rapid change or extinction they exist in our day, but the fact bears no more are undergoing, may ever remain so. It would decisively on the development of religion, than be yet more unwarranted to set down every the impossibility of fi nding a modern English tribe mentioned in history, or known to us by village without scissors or books or lucifer- the discovery of antiquarian relics, as necessar- matches bears on the fact that there was a time ily having passed the defi ned minimum of reli- when no such things existed in the land. gion. Greater still would be the unwisdom of I propose here, under the name of Animism, declaring such a rudimentary belief natural or to investigate the deep-lying doctrine of Spiri- instinctive in all human tribes of all times; for tual Beings, which embodies the very essence no evidence justifi es the opinion that man, of Spiritualistic as opposed to Materialistic known to be capable of so vast an intellectual philosophy. Animism is not a new technical development, cannot have emerged from a term, though now seldom used. From its nonreligious condition, previous to that reli- special relation to the doctrine of the soul, it gious condition in which he happens at present will be seen to have a peculiar appropriateness to come with suffi cient clearness within our to the view here taken of the mode in which range of knowledge. It is desirable, however, theological ideas have been developed among to take our basis of enquiry in observation mankind. The word Spiritualism, though it rather than from speculation. Here, so far as I may be, and sometimes is, used in a general can judge from the immense mass of accessible sense, has this obvious defect to us, that it has P

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become the designation of a particular modern standard, for both are strongly marked among sect, who indeed hold extreme spiritualistic them, if not in formal precept, at least in that views, but cannot be taken as typical represen- traditional consensus of society which we call tatives of these views in the world at large. The public opinion, according to which certain sense of Spiritualism in its wider acceptation, actions are held to be good or bad, right or the general belief in spiritual beings, is here wrong. It is that the conjunction of ethics and given to Animism. Animistic philosophy, so intimate and power- Animism characterizes tribes very low in the ful in the higher culture, seems scarcely yet to scale of humanity, and thence ascends, deeply have begun in the lower. I propose here hardly modifi ed in its transmission, but from fi rst to to touch upon the purely moral aspects of last preserving an unbroken continuity, into religion, but rather to study the animism of the the midst of high modern culture. Doctrines world so far as it constitutes, as unquestion- adverse to it, so largely held by individuals or ably it does constitute, an ancient and world- schools, are usually due not to early lowness wide philosophy, of which belief is the theory of civilization, but to later changes in the intel- and worship is the practice. lectual course, to divergence from, or rejection Endeavouring to shape the materials for an of, ancestral faiths; and such newer develop- enquiry hitherto strangely undervalued and ments do not affect the present enquiry as to neglected, it will now be my task to bring as the fundamental religious condition of man- clearly as may be into view the fundamental kind. Animism is, in fact, the groundwork of animism of the lower races, and in some slight the Philosophy of Religion, from that of and broken outline to trace its course into savages up to that of civilized men. And higher regions of civilization. Here let me state although it may at fi rst sight seem to afford once for all two principal conditions under but a bare and meagre defi nition of a minimum which the present research is carried on. First, of religion, it will be found practically suffi - as to the religious doctrines and practices cient; for where the root is, the branches will examined, these are treated as belonging to generally be produced. It is habitually found theological systems devised by human reason, that the theory of Animism divides into two without supernatural aid or revelation; in great dogmas, forming parts of one consistent other words, as being developments of Natural doctrine; fi rst, concerning souls of individual Religion. Second, as to the connexion between creatures, capable of continued existence after similar ideas and rites in the religions of the the death or destruction of the body; second, savage and the civilized world. While dwelling concerning other spirits, upward to the rank at some length on doctrines and ceremonies of of powerful deities. Spiritual beings are held to the lower races, and sometimes particularizing affect or control the events of the material for special reasons the related doctrines and world, and man’s life here and hereafter; and ceremonies of the higher nations, it has not it being considered that they hold intercourse seemed my proper task to work out in detail with men, and receive pleasure or displeasure the problems thus suggested among the phi- from human actions, the belief in their exis- losophies and creeds of Christendom. Such tence leads naturally, and it might almost be applications, extending farthest from the direct said inevitably, sooner or later to active rever- scope of a work on primitive culture, are ence and propitiation. Thus Animism in its full briefl y stated in general terms, or touched in development, includes the belief in souls and slight allusion, or taken for granted without in a future state, in controlling deities and remark. Educated readers possess the informa- subordinate spirits, these doctrines practically tion required to work out their general bearing resulting in some kind of active worship. on theology, while more technical discussion One great element of religion, that moral is left to philosophers and theologians spe- element which among the higher nations forms cially occupied with such arguments. its most vital part, is indeed little represented The fi rst branch of the subject to be consid- in the religion of the lower races. It is not that ered is the doctrine of human and other Souls, P these races have no moral sense or no moral an examination of which will occupy the rest

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of the present chapter. What the doctrine of of other men, of animals, and even of things. the soul is among the lower races, may be Though this defi nition is by no means of explained in stating the animistic theory of its universal application, it has suffi cient general- development. It seems as though thinking men, ity to be taken as a standard, modifi ed by as yet at a low level of culture, were deeply more or less divergence among any particular impressed by two groups of biological prob- people. lems. In the fi rst place, what is it that makes Far from these world-wide opinions being the difference between a living body and a arbitrary or conventional products, it is seldom dead one; what causes waking, sleep, trance, even justifi able to consider their uniformity disease, death? In the second place, what are among distant races as proving communica- those human shapes which appear in dreams tion of any sort. They are doctrines answering and visions? Looking at these two groups of in the most forcible way to the plain evidence phenomena, the ancient savage philosophers of men’s senses, as interpreted by a fairly probably made their fi rst step by the obvious consistent and rational primitive philosophy. inference that every man has two things So well, indeed, does primitive animism belonging to him, namely, a life and a phantom. account for the facts of nature, that it has held These two are evidently in close connexion its place into the higher levels of education. with the body, the life as enabling it to feel and Though classic and mediæval philosophy think and act, the phantom as being its image modifi ed it much, and modern philosophy has or second self; both, also, are perceived to be handled it yet more unsparingly, it has so far things separable from the body, the life as able retained the traces of its original character, to go away and leave it insensible or dead, the that heirlooms of primitive ages may be claimed phantom as appearing to people at a distance in the existing psychology of the civilized from it. world. Out of the vast mass of evidence, col- The second step would seem also easy for lected among the most various and distant savages to make, seeing how extremely diffi - races of mankind, typical details may now be cult civilized men have found it to unmake. It selected to display the earlier theory of the is merely to combine the life and the phantom. soul, the relation of the parts of this theory, As both belong to the body, why should they and the manner in which these parts have been not also belong to one another, and be mani- abandoned, modifi ed, or kept up, along the festations of one and the same soul? Let them course of culture. then be considered as united, and the result To understand the popular conceptions of is that well-known conception which may be the human soul or spirit, it is instructive to described as an apparitional-soul, a ghost-soul. notice the words which have been found suit- This, at any rate, corresponds with the actual able to express it. The ghost or phantasm seen conception of the personal soul or spirit among by the dreamer or the visionary is an unsub- the lower races, which may be defi ned as fol- stantial form, like a shadow or refl exion, and lows: It is a thin unsubstantial human image, thus the familiar term of the shade comes in to in its nature a sort of vapour, fi lm, or shadow; express the soul. Thus the Tasmanian word for the cause of life and thought in the individual the shadow is also that for the spirit; the it animates; independently possessing the per- Algonquins describe a man’s soul as otahchuk, sonal consciousness and volition of its corpo- “his shadow;” the Quiché language uses natub real owner, past or present; capable of leaving for “shadow, soul;” the Arawak ueja means the body far behind, to fl ash swiftly from place “shadow, soul, image;” the Abipones made to place; mostly impalpable and invisible, yet the one word loákal serve for “shadow, soul, also manifesting physical power, and espe- echo, image.” The Zulus not only use the word cially appearing to men waking or asleep as tunzi for “shadow, spirit, ghost,” but they phantasm separate from the body of which it consider that at death the shadow of a man bears the likeness; continuing to exist and will in some way depart from the corpse, to appear to men after the death of that body; become an ancestral spirit. The Basutos not able to enter into, possess, and act in the bodies only call the spirit remaining after death the P

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seriti or “shadow,” but they think that if a The act of breathing, so characteristic of the man walks on the river bank, a crocodile may higher animals during life, and coinciding so seize his shadow in the water and draw him closely with life in its departure, has been in; while in Old Calabar there is found the repeatedly and naturally identifi ed with the life same identifi cation of the spirit with the ukpon or soul itself. Laura Bridgman showed in her or “shadow,” for a man to lose which is fatal. instructive way the analogy between the effects There are thus found among the lower races of restricted sense and restricted civilization, not only the types of those familiar classic when one day she made the gesture of taking terms, the skia and umbra, but also what something away from her mouth: “I dreamed,” seems the fundamental thought of the stories she explained in words, “that God took away of shadowless men still current in the folklore my breath to heaven.” It is thus that West of Europe, and familiar to modern readers in Australians used one word waug for “breath, Chamisso’s tale of Peter Schlemihl. Thus the spirit, soul;” that in the Netela language of dead in Purgatory knew that Dante was alive California, piuts means “life, breath, soul;” when they saw that, unlike theirs, his fi gure that certain Greenlanders reckoned two souls cast a shadow on the ground. to man, namely his shadow and his breath; Other attributes are taken into the notion of “that the Malays say the soul of the dying man soul or spirit, with especial regard to its being escapes through his nostrils, and in Java use the cause of life. Thus the Caribs, connecting the same word ñawa for “breath, life, soul.” the pulses with spiritual beings, and especially How the notions of life, heart, breath, and considering that in the heart dwells man’s chief phantom unite in the one conception of a soul soul, destined to a future heavenly life, could or spirit, and at the same time how loose and reasonably use the one word iouanni for “soul, vague such ideas are among barbaric races, is life, heart.” The Tongans supposed the soul to well brought into view in the answers to a exist throughout the whole extension of the religious inquest held in 1528 among the body, but particularly in the heart. On one natives of Nicaragua. “When they die, there occasion, the natives were declaring to a Euro- comes out of their mouth something that pean that a man buried months ago was never- resembles a person, and is called julio [Aztec theless still alive. “And one, endeavouring to yuli = to live]. This being goes to the place make me understand what he meant, took hold where the man and woman are. It is like a of my hand, and squeezing it, said, ‘This will person, but does not die, and the body remains die, but the life that is within you will never here.” Question. “Do those who go up on high die;’ with his other hand pointing to my heart.” keep the same body, the same face, and the So the Basutos say of a dead man that his heart same limbs, as here below?” Answer. “No; is gone out, and of one recovering from sick- there is only the heart.” Question. “But since ness that his heart is coming back. This corre- they tear out their hearts [i.e. when captive sponds to the familiar Old World view of the was sacrifi ced], what happens then?” Answer. heart as the prime mover in life, thought, and “It is not precisely the heart, but that in them passion. The connexion of soul and blood, which makes them live, and that quits the familiar to the Karens and Papuas, appears body when they die.” Or, as stated in another prominently in Jewish and Arabic philosophy. interrogatory, “It is not their heart that goes To educated moderns the idea of the Macusi up above, but what makes them live, that is to Indians of Guiana may seem quaint, that say, the breath that issues from their mouth although the body will decay, “the man in our and is called julio.” eyes” will not die, but wander about. Yet the The conception of the soul as breath may be association of personal animation with the followed up through Semitic and Aryan ety- pupil of the eye is familiar to European folk- mology, and thus into the main streams of lore, which not unreasonably discerned a sign the philosophy of the world. Hebrew shows of bewitchment or approaching death in the nephesh, “breath,” passing into all the mean- disappearance of the image, pupil, or baby, ings of “life, soul, mind, animal,” while ruach P from the dim eyeballs of the sick man. and neshamah make the like transition from

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“breath” to “spirit”; and to these the Arabic marked Algonquin belief; one soul goes out nefs and ruh correspond. The same is the and sees dreams while the other remains history of Sanskrit âtman and prâna, of Greek behind; at death one of the two abides with psyche- and pneuma, of Latin animus, anima, the body, and for this the survivors leave offer- spiritus. So Slavonic duch has developed the ings of food, while the other departs to the meaning of “breath” into that of soul or spirit; land of the dead. A division into three souls is and the dialects of the Gypsies have this word also known, and the Dakotas say that man has du-k with the meanings of “breath, spirit, four souls, one remaining with the corpse, one ghost,” whether these pariahs brought the staying in the village, one going in the air, word from India as part of their inheritance of and one to the land of spirits. The Karens Aryan speech, or whether they adopted it in distinguish between the “là” or “kelah,” the their migration across Slavonic lands. German personal life-phantom, and the “thah,” the geist and English ghost, too, may possibly have responsible moral soul. More or less under the same original sense of breath. And if any Hindu infl uence, the Khonds have a fourfold should think such expressions due to mere division, as follows: the fi rst soul is that capable metaphor, they may judge the strength of the of beatifi cation or restoration to Boora the implied connexion between breath and spirit Good Deity; the second is attached to a Khond by cases of most unequivocal signifi cance. tribe on earth and is reborn generation after Among the Seminoles of Florida, when a generation, so that at the birth of each child woman died in childbirth, the infant was held the priest asks who has returned; the third goes over her face to receive her parting spirit, and out to hold spiritual intercourse, leaving the thus acquire strength and knowledge for its body in a languid state, and it is this soul future use. These Indians could have well which can pass for a time into a tiger, and understood why at the death-bed of an ancient transmigrates for punishment after death; the Roman, the nearest kinsman leant over to fourth dies on the dissolution of the body. inhale the last breath of the departing (et Such classifi cations resemble those of higher excipies hanc animam ore pio). Their state of nations, . . . mind is kept up to this day among Tyrolese [. . .] peasants, who can still fancy a good man’s Having thus surveyed at large the theory of soul to issue from his mouth at death like a spirits or souls of objects, it remains to point little white cloud. out what, to general students, may seem the It will be shown that men, in their composite most important consideration belonging to it, and confused notions of the soul, have brought namely, its close relation to one of the most into connexion a list of manifestations of life infl uential doctrines of civilized philosophy. and thought even more multifarious than this. The savage thinker, though occupying himself But also, seeking to avoid such perplexity of so much with the phenomena of life, sleep, combination, they have sometimes endeavored disease, and death, seems to have taken for to defi ne and classify more closely, especially granted, as a matter of course, the ordinary by the theory that man has a combination of operations of his own mind. It hardly occurred several kinds of spirit, soul, or image, to which to him to think about the machinery of think- different functions belong. Already in the ing. Metaphysics is a study which fi rst assumes barbaric world such classifi cation has been clear shape at a comparatively high level of invented or adopted. Thus the Fijians distin- intellectual culture. The metaphysical philoso- guished between man’s “dark spirit” or phy of thought taught in our modern Euro- shadow, which goes to Hades, and his “light pean lecture-rooms is historically traced back spirit” or refl exion in water or a mirror, which to the speculative psychology of classic Greece. stays near where he dies. The Malagasy say Now one doctrine which there comes into that the saina or mind vanishes at death, the view is especially associated with the name aina or life becomes mere air, but the matoatoa of Democritus, the philosopher of Abdera, in or ghost hovers round the tomb. In North the fi fth century bc. When Democritus pro- America, the duality of the soul is a strongly pounded the great problem of metaphysics, P

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“How do we perceive external things?” – thus which civilized philosophy owes to primitive making, as Lewes says, an era in the history of animism. philosophy – he put forth, in answer to the The doctrine of ideas, thus developed in the question, a theory of thought. He explained classic world, has, indeed, by no means held the fact of perception by declaring that things its course thenceforth unchanged through are always throwing off images (ε′δωλα) of metaphysics, but has undergone transition themselves, which images, assimilating to somewhat like that of the doctrine of the soul themselves the surrounding air, enter a recipi- itself. Ideas, fi ned down to the abstract forms ent soul, and are thus perceived. or species of material objects, and applied Now, supposing Democritus to have been to other than visible qualities, have at last really the originator of this famed theory of come merely to denote subjects of thought. ideas, how far is he to be considered its inven- Yet to this day the old theory has not utterly tor? Writers on the history of philosophy are died out, and the retention of the signifi cant accustomed to treat the doctrine as actually term “idea” (δα, visible form) is accompa- made by the philosophical school which taught nied by a similar retention of original meaning. it. Yet the evidence here brought forward It is still one of the tasks of the metaphysician shows it to be really the savage doctrine of to display and refute the old notion of ideas object-souls, turned to a new purpose as a as being real images, and to replace it by method of explaining the phenomena of more abstract conceptions. It is a striking thought. Nor is the correspondence a mere instance that Dugald Stewart can cite from coincidence, for at this point of junction the works of Sir Isaac Newton the following between classic religion and classic philosophy distinct recognition of “sensible species:” “Is the traces of historical continuity may be still not the sensorium of animals, the place where discerned. To say that Democritus was an the sentient substance is present; and to which ancient Greek is to say that from his childhood the sensible species of things are brought, he had looked on at the funeral ceremonies of through the nerves and brain, that there they his country, beholding the funeral sacrifi ces of may be perceived by the mind present in that garments and jewels and money and food and place?” Again, Dr. Reid states the original drink, rites which his mother and his nurse theory of ideas, while declaring that he con- could tell him were performed in order that ceives it the phantasmal images of these objects might pass into the possession of forms shadowy like to have no solid foundation, though it has themselves, the souls of dead men. Thus Demo- been adopted very generally by philosophers. critus, seeking a solution of his great problem . . . This notion of our perceiving external objects, not immediately, but in certain images of the nature of thought, found it by simply or species of them conveyed by the senses, decanting into his metaphysics a surviving seems to be the most ancient philosophical doctrine of primitive savage animism. This hypothesis we have on the subject of percep- thought of the phantoms or souls of things, if tion, and to have, with small variations, simply modifi ed to form a philosophical theory retained its authority to this day. of perception, would then and there become his doctrine of Ideas. Nor does even this fully Granted that Dr. Reid exaggerated the extent represent the closeness of union which con- to which metaphysicians have kept up the nects the savage doctrine of fl itting object- notion of ideas as real images of things, few souls with the Epicurean philosophy. Lucretius will deny that it does linger much in modern actually makes the theory of fi lm-like images minds, and that people who talk of ideas do of things (simulacra, membranæ) account both often, in some hazy metaphorical way, think for the apparitions which come to men in of sensible images. One of the shrewdest things dreams, and the images which impress their ever said about either ideas or ghosts was minds in thinking. So unbroken is the con- Bishop Berkeley’s retort upon Halley, who tinuity of philosophic speculation from bantered him about his idealism. The bishop P savage to cultured thought. Such are the debts claimed the mathematician as an idealist also,

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his ultimate ratios being ghosts of departed Let us see at a glance in what general rela- quantities, appearing when the terms that pro- tion the doctrine of souls among savage tribes duced them vanished. stands to the doctrine of souls among barbaric It remains to sum up in few words the doc- and cultured nations. Among races within the trine of souls, in the various phases it has limits of savagery, the general doctrine of souls assumed from fi rst to last among mankind. In is found worked out with remarkable breadth the attempt to trace its main course through and consistency. The souls of animals are rec- the successive grades of man’s intellectual ognized by a natural extension from the theory history, the evidence seems to accord best with of human souls; the souls of trees and plants a theory of its development, somewhat to the follow in some vague partial way; and the following effect. At the lowest levels of culture souls of inanimate objects expand the general of which we have clear knowledge, the notion category to its extremest boundary. Thence- of a ghost-soul animating man while in the forth, as we explore human thought onward body, and appearing in dream and vision out from savage into barbarian and civilized life, of the body, is found deeply ingrained. There we fi nd a state of theory more conformed to is no reason to think that this belief was learnt positive science, but in itself less complete and by savage tribes from contact with higher consistent. Far on into civilization, men still races, nor that it is a relic of higher culture act as though in some half-meant way they from which the savage tribes have degener- believed in souls or ghosts of objects, while ated; for what is here treated as the primitive nevertheless their knowledge of physical animistic doctrine is thoroughly at home science is beyond so crude a philosophy. As to among savages, who appear to hold it on the the doctrine of souls of plants, fragmentary very evidence of their senses, interpreted on evidence of the history of its breaking down in the biological principle which seems to them Asia has reached us. most reasonable. We may now and then hear In our own day and country, the notion of the savage doctrines and practices concerning souls of beasts is to be seen dying out. Animism, souls claimed as relics of a high religious indeed, seems to be drawing in its outposts, culture pervading the primeval race of man. and concentrating itself on its fi rst and main They are said to be traces of remote ancestral position, the doctrine of the human soul. This religion, kept up in scanty and perverted doctrine has undergone extreme modifi cation memory by tribes degraded from a nobler in the course of culture. It has outlived the state. It is easy to see that such an explanation almost total loss of one great argument attached of some few facts, sundered from their con- to it – the objective reality of apparitional souls nexion with the general array, may seem plau- or ghosts seen in dreams and visions. The soul sible to certain minds. But a large view of the has given up its ethereal substance, and become subject can hardly leave such argument in pos- an immaterial entity, “the shadow of a shade.” session. The animism of savages stands for and Its theory is becoming separated from the by itself; it explains its own origin. The animism investigations of biology and mental science, of civilized men, while more appropriate to which now discuss the phenomena of life and advanced knowledge, is in great measure only thought, the senses and the intellect, the emo- explicable as a developed product of the older tions and the will, on a groundwork of pure and ruder system. It is the doctrines and rites experience. There has arisen an intellectual of the lower races which are, according to their product whose very existence is of the deepest philosophy, results of point-blank natural evi- signifi cance, a “psychology” which has no dence and acts of straightforward practical longer anything to do with “soul.” The soul’s purpose. It is the doctrines and rites of the place in modern thought is in the metaphysics higher races which show survival of the old in of religion, and its especial offi ce there is that the midst of the new, modifi cation of the old of furnishing an intellectual side to the religious to bring it into conformity with the new, aban- doctrine of the future life. donment of the old because it is no longer Such are the alterations which have differ- compatible with the new. enced the fundamental animistic belief in its P

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course through successive periods of the the few and simple ideas of primitive philoso- world’s culture. Yet it is evident that, notwith- phy which form the common groundwork of standing all this profound change, the con- them all, appeared to me an urgently needed ception of the human soul is, as to its most contribution to the science of religion. This essential nature, continuous from the philoso- work I have carried out to the utmost of my phy of the savage thinker to that of the modern power, and I can now only leave the result in professor of theology. Its defi nition has the hands of other students, whose province it remained from the fi rst that of an animating, is to deal with such evidence in wider schemes separable, surviving entity, the vehicle of indi- of argument. vidual personal existence. The theory of the Again, the intellectual rather than the emo- soul is one principal part of system of religious tional side of religion has here been kept in philosophy which unites, in an unbroken line view. Even in the life of the rudest savage, of mental connexion, the savage fetish-wor- religious belief is associated with intense shipper and the civilized Christian. The divi- emotion, with awful reverence, with agoniz- sions which have separated the great religions ing terror, with rapt ecstasy when sense and of the world into intolerant and hostile sects thought utterly transcend the common level of are for the most part superfi cial in comparison daily life. How much the more in faiths where with the deepest of all religious schisms, that not only does the believer experience such which divides Animism from Materialism. enthusiasm, but where his utmost feelings of [. . .] love and hope, of justice and mercy, of for- Lastly, a few words of explanation may be titude and tenderness and self-sacrifi cing offered as to the topics which this survey has devotion, of unutterable misery and dazzling included and excluded. To those who have happiness, twine and clasp round the fabric of been accustomed to fi nd theological subjects religion. Language, dropping at times from dealt with on a dogmatic, emotional, and such words as soul and spirit their mere philo- ethical, rather than an ethnographic scheme, sophic meaning, can use them in full confor- the present investigation may seem misleading, mity with this tendency of the religious mind, because one-sided. This one-sided treatment, as phrases to convey a mystic sense of tran- however, has been adopted with full consider- scendent emotion. Yet of all this religion, the ation. Thus, though the doctrines here exam- religion or vision and of passion, little indeed ined bear not only on the development but the has been said in these pages, and even that actual truth of religious systems, I have felt little rather in incidental touches than with neither able nor willing to enter into this great purpose. Those to whom religion means above argument fully and satisfactorily, while experi- all things religious feeling, may say of my argu- ence has shown that to dispose of such ques- ment that I have written soullessly of the soul, tions by an occasional dictatorial phrase is one and unspiritually of spiritual things. of the most serious of errors. The scientifi c Be it so: I accept the phrase not as needing value of descriptions of savage and barbarous an apology, but as expressing a plan. Scientifi c religions, drawn up by travellers and especially progress is at times most furthered by working by missionaries, is often lowered by their along a distinct intellectual line, without being controversial tone, and by the affectation of tempted to diverge from the main object to infallibility with which their relation to the what lies beyond, in however intimate con- absolutely true is settled. There is something nexion. The anatomist does well to discuss pathetic in the simplicity with which a narrow bodily structure independently of the world of student will judge the doctrines of a foreign happiness and misery which depends upon religion by their antagonism or conformity to it. It would be thought a mere impertinence his own orthodoxy, on points where utter dif- for a strategist to preface a dissertation on ference of opinion exists among the most the science of war, by an enquiry how far it is learned and enlightened scholars. lawful for a Christian man to bear weapons The systematization of the lower religions, and serve in the wars. My task has been here P the reduction of their multifarious details to not to discuss Religion in all its bearings, but

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to portray in outline the great doctrine of tion of morality to religion is diffi cult, intri- Animism, as found in what I conceive to be its cate, and requiring an immense array of earliest stages among the lower races of evidence, and may be perhaps more profi tably mankind, and to show its transmission along discussed in connexion with the ethnography the lines of religious thought. of morals . . . The almost entire exclusion of ethical ques- The essential connexion of theology and tions from this investigation has more than a morality is a fi xed idea in many minds. But it mere reason of arrangement. It is due to the is one of the lessons of history that subjects very nature of the subject. To some the state- may maintain themselves independently for ment may seem startling, yet the evidence ages, till the event of coalescence takes place. seems to justify it, that the relation of morality In the course of history, religion has in various to religion is one that only belongs in its rudi- ways attached to itself matters small and great ments, or not at all, to rudimentary civiliza- outside its central scheme, such as prohibition tion. The comparison of savage and civilized of special meats, observance of special days, religions bring into view, by the side of a deep- regulation of marriage as to kinship, division lying resemblance in their philosophy, a deep- of society into castes, ordinance of social law lying contrast in their practical action on and civil government. Looking at religion from human life. So far as savage religion can stand a political point of view, as a practical infl u- as representing natural religion, the popular ence on human society, it is clear that among idea that the moral government of the universe its greatest powers have been its divine is an essential tenet of natural religion simply sanction of ethical laws, its theological en- falls to the ground. Savage animism is almost forcement of morality, its teaching of moral devoid of that ethical element which to the government of the universe, its supplanting the educated modern mind is the very mainspring “continuance-doctrine” of a future life by the of practical religion. Not, as I have said, “retribution-doctrine” supplying moral motive that morality is absent from the life of the in the present. But such alliance belongs almost lower races. Without a code of morals, the or wholly to religions above the savage level, very existence of the rudest tribe would be not to the earlier and lower creeds. It will aid impossible; and indeed the moral standards of us to see how much more the fruit of religion even savage races are to no small extent well- belongs to ethical infl uence than to philosophi- defi ned and praiseworthy. But these ethical cal dogma, if we consider how the introduc- laws stand on their own ground of tradition tion of the moral element separates the religions and public opinion, comparatively indepen- of the world, united as they are throughout by dent of the animistic belief and rites which one animistic principle, into two great classes, exist beside them. The lower animism is not those lower systems whose best result is to immoral, it is unmoral. For this plain reason, supply a crude childlike natural philosophy, it has seemed desirable to keep the discussion and those higher faiths which implant on this of animism, as far as might be, separate from the law of righteousness and of holiness, the that of ethics. The general problem of the rela- inspiration of duty and of love.

P

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