CHAPTER XI. ANIMISM. (continued 1)
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Tylor, Edward B. (Edward Burnett)
As to the doctrine of souls of plants, fragmentary evidence of the history of its breaking down in Asia has reached us. In our own day and country, the notion of souls of beasts is to be seen dying out. Animism, indeed, seems to be drawing in its outposts, and concentrating itself on its first and main position, the doctrine of the human soul. This doctrine has undergone extreme modification in the course of culture. It has outlived the almost total loss of one great argument attached to it,—the objective reality of apparitional souls or ghosts seen in dreams and visions. The soul has given up its ethereal substance, and become an immaterial entity, ‘the shadow of a shade.’ Its theory is becoming separated from the investigations of biology and mental science, which now discuss the phenomena of life and thought, the senses and the intellect, the emotions and the will, on a ground-work of pure experience. There has arisen an intellectual product whose very existence is of the deepest significance, a ‘psychology’ which has no longer anything to do with ‘soul.’ The soul’s place in modern thought is in the metaphysics of religion, and its especial office there is that of furnishing an intellectual side to the religious doctrine of the future life. Such are the alterations which have differenced the fundamental animistic belief in its course through successive periods of the world’s culture.
Yet it is evident that, notwithstanding all this profound change, the conception of the human soul is, as to its most essential nature, continuous from the philosophy of the savage thinker to that of the modern professor of theology. Its definition has remained from the first that of an animating, separable, surviving entity, the vehicle of individual personal existence. The theory of the soul is one principal part of a system of religious philosophy which unites, in an unbroken line of mental connexion, the savage fetish-worshipper and the civilized Christian. The divisions which have separated the great religions of the world into intolerant and hostile sects are for the most part superficial in comparison with the deepest of all religious schisms, that which divides Animism from Materialism.
END OF VOL. I.
Footnotes
Source notes
1. Fortnightly Review: ‘Origin of Language,’ April 15, 1866; ‘Religion of Savages,’ August 15, 1866. Lectures at Royal Institution: ‘Traces of the Early Mental Condition of Man,’ March 15, 1867; ‘Survival of Savage Thought in Modern Civilization,’ April 23, 1869. Lecture at University College, London: ‘Spiritualistic Philosophy of the Lower Races of Mankind,’ May 8, 1869. Paper read at British Association, Nottingham, 1866: ‘Phenomena of Civilization Traceable to a Rudimental Origin among Savage Tribes.’ Paper read at Ethnological Society of London, April 26, 1870: ‘Philosophy of Religion among the Lower Races of Mankind,’ &c., &c.
2. Blackstone, ‘Commentaries on the Laws of England,’ bk. II., ch. 3. The above example replaces that given in former editions. Another example may be found in his explanation of the origin of deodand, bk. I., ch. 8, as designed, in the blind days of popery, as an expiation for the souls of such as were snatched away by sudden death; see below, p. 287. [Note to 3rd ed.]
3. G. W. Earl, ‘Papuans,’ p. 79; A. R. Wallace, ‘Eastern Archipelago.’
4. Rochefort, ‘Iles Antilles,’ pp. 400-480.
5. Gibbon, ‘Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,’ ch. xxxviii.
6. De Maistre, ‘Soirées de St. Pétersbourg,’vol.ii.p. 150.
7. De Brosses, ‘Dieux Fétiches,’p. 15; ‘Formation des Langues,’ vol. i. p. 49; vol. ii. p. 32.
8. Goguet, ‘Origine des Lois, des Arts,’ &c., vol. i. p. 88.
9. Whately, ‘Essay on the Origin of Civilisation,’ in Miscellaneous Lectures, &c. His evidence is examined in detail in my ‘Early History of Mankind,’ ch. vii. See also W. Cooke Taylor, ‘Natural History of Society.’
10. Goguet, vol.iii.p. 270.
11. Lecret.v. 923, &c.; see Hor. Sat. i. 3.
12. ‘Avesta,’ trans. Spiegel & Bleeck, vol. ii. p. 50.
13. Hardy, ‘Manual of Budhism,’ pp. 64, 128.
14. Niebuhr, ‘Römische Geschichte,’ part i. p. 88: ‘Nur das haben sie übersehen, dasz kein einziges Beyspiel von einem wirklich wilden Volk aufzuweisen ist, welches frey zur Cultur übergegangen wäre.’
15. Whately, ‘Essay on Origin of Civilisation.’
16. Ovid. Ex Ponto, iii. 8; see Grote, ‘History of Greece,’ vol. xii. p. 641.
17. W. C. Taylor, ‘Nat. Hist. of Society,’ vol. i. p. 202.
18. Fynes Moryson, ‘Itinerary;’ London, 1617, part iii. p. 162, &c.; J. Evans in ‘Archæologia,’ vol. xli. See description of hide-boiling, &c., among the wild Irish, about 1550, in Andrew Boorde, ‘Introduction of Knowledge,’ ed. by F. J. Furnivall, Early English Text Soc. 1870.
19. Buchanan, ‘Rerum Scoticarum Historia;’ Edinburgh, 1528, p. 7. See ‘Early History of Mankind,’ 2nd ed. p. 272.
20. Martin, ‘Description of Western Islands,’ in Pinkerton, vol. iii. p. 639.
21. Barrow, ‘Mutiny of the Bounty’; W. Brodie, ‘Pitcairn’s Island.’
22. Wallace, ‘Malay Archipelago,’ vol. i. pp. 42, 471; vol. ii. pp. 11, 43, 48; Latham, ‘Descr. Eth.,’ vol. ii. pp. 492-5; D. and C. Livingstone, ‘Exp. to Zambesi,’ p. 45.
23. Southey, ‘History of Brazil,’ vol. iii. p. 422.
24. J. L. Wilson, ‘W. Afr.,’ p. 189.
25. Waitz, ‘Anthropologie,’ vol. ii. p. 359, see 91; Du Chaillu, ‘Ashangoland,’ p. 116; T. H. Bent, ‘Ruined Cities of Mashonaland.’
26. Charlevoix, ‘Nouvelle France,’vol.vi.p. 51.
27. Irving, ‘Astoria,’ vol. ii. ch. v.
28. Milton and Cheadle, ‘North West Passage by Land,’ p. 241; Waitz, vol. iii. pp. 74-6.
29. ‘Early History of Mankind,’ p. 187.
30. Schoolcraft, ‘Algic Res.,’ vol. i. p. 50.
31. Steller, ‘Kamtschatka,’ p. 272.
32. See G. Campbell, ‘Ethnology of India,’ in Journ. As. Soc. Bengal, 1866 part ii.
33. J. Bailey, ‘Veddahs,’ in Tr. Eth. Soc., vol. ii. p. 278; see vol. iii. p. 70; Knox, ‘Historical Relation of Ceylon,’ London, 1681, part iii. chap. i. See A. Thomson, ‘Osteology of the Veddas,’ in Journ. Anthrop. Inst. 1889, vol. xix. p. 125; L. de Zoysa, ‘Origin of Veddas,’ in Journ. Ceylon Branch Royal Asiatic Soc., vol. vii.; B. F. Hartshorne in Fortnightly Rev., Mar. 1876. [Note to 3rd edition.]
34. Journ. Ind. Archip., vol. i. pp. 295-9; vol. ii. p. 237.
35. For the connexion between the Aztec language and the Sonoran family extending N. W. toward the sources of the Missouri, see Buschmann, ‘Spuren der Aztekischen Sprache im Nördlichen Mexico,’ &c., in Abh. der Akad. der Wissensch, 1854; Berlin, 1859; also Tr. Eth. Soc., vol. ii. p. 130. For the connexion between the Natchez and Maya languages see Daniel G. Brinton, in ‘American Historical Magazine,’ 1867, vol. i. p. 16; and ‘Myths of the New World,’ p. 28.
36. J. H. Lamprey, in Trans. of Prehistoric Congress, Norwich, 1868, p. 60; J. Linton Palmer, in Journ. Eth. Soc., vol. i. 1869.