The threshold of religion / by R.R. Marett.

  • Robert Ranulph Marett
Date:
[1914]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The threshold of religion / by R.R. Marett. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    he replied—“ the hantus of the forest, of the moun- tains, of the rivers, the hantus of the Sakai chiefs who are dead, the hantus of headache and stomach-ache, the hantus that make people gamble and smoke opium, the hantus that send disputes, and the hantus that send mosquitoes.”1 Now are all these hantus, animistically speaking, on a par, or are some original, others derived? I take it that I am at one with most orthodox upholders of animism in supposing the hantus of the dead to be the original animcz whence the rest have derived their distinctively ani- mistic, that is to say ghostly, characteristics. For this view it will perhaps be enough to allege a single reason. The revenant of dream and hallucination in its actual appearance to the senses presents so exactly and completely the type to which every spirit, however indirect its methods of self-mani- festation, is believed and asserted to conform, that I am personally content to regard this conclusion as one amongst the few relative certainties which Anthropology can claim to have established in the way of theory. Suppose this granted, then we find ourselves confronted with the following important train of questions, yielding us a definite nucleus and rallying-point for our present inquiry: “ How came an animistic colour to be attached to a number of things not primarily or obviously connected with death and the dead? What inherent general char- acter of their own suggested to man’s mind the group- ing together of the multifarious classes of so-called ‘spiritual’ phenomena as capable of common ex- lj. A. /., xv. 300-1.
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