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Queries on Animism.

materially conceived Supernals of Savage and Folk Belief. And under the Fifth Query I indicated what appeared to be a far more probable derivation of the notion of such beings from ordinary psychological processes, if we postulated first of all a direct conception of objects as themselves Powers, harmful or beneficial. Thus we are again, as in our previous argument, brought to the conclusion that the conception of Spiritual Beings with Arbitrary Wills, which is distinctive of Religion (as ordinarily defined), is a later development than that conception of objects as themselves Powers, and hence of all the parts of Nature as bound together by Mutual Influences, which is the distinctive conception of Witchcraft, or, generally, of Magic. And we should now proceed to inquire whether a more verifiable theory of the origin of the conceptions distinctive of Religion may not be suggested, than that maintained in the theory of Animism. But such an inquiry would, in my view of the means of arriving at a verifiable solution, involve consideration of the historical, as distinguished from Dr. Tylor's hypothetical, Origins of Civilisation, and of the results of the Conflict of Higher and Lower Races. And, as Mr. Kipling would say, "that is another story."

Such, then, are the Seven Queries which I would submit to you with respect to Animism. When I read Dr. Tylor's book on its publication twenty-one years ago, it was with an interest which I shall never forget, and which I gratefully record. But no two decades in the history of Science have been more fruitful than those since the publication of Primitive Culture. It is these later results of research that have suggested these Queries, and encouraged me to venture on their statement. And this seemed the more necessary, as Dr. Tylor has just published a third, but not a new edition of his work—"not having", as he says in his Preface, "found it needful to alter the general argument", but only "to insert further details of evidence, and to correct some few statements," not particularised. His fundamental postulates—the Homogeneity of Human Races, and the Spontaneous and Independent Origins of