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 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 development to explain civilization, and regarding its successive
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