Handbook of American Indians north of Mexico / edited by Frederick Webb Hodge.
- Date:
- 1907-1910
Licence: In copyright
Credit: Handbook of American Indians north of Mexico / edited by Frederick Webb Hodge. Source: Wellcome Collection.
984/1000 (page 966)
![they exercise derivative powers or are joined in mysterious kinsiiip groups, al- ways combining the symbolism of ]>er- sonifieil objective phenomena with im- puted life% mind, and volition, and with the exercise of attributed oreyida, or magic power, of diverse function and potency. M oreover, the size and the muscular [>ower of the objective reality personified have little, if any, relation to the strength of the ornida exercised by the man-1 )eing. To explain in part the multiform ])benomena of different and successive environments, the philosophic ancestors of the Indians of to-day subconsciously impute<l mind and immorfal life to every object and j)henomen(m in nature, and to nearly every faculty and affection of the human mind and body. Concomi- tantly with this endownuait of lifcdess things with life and mind was the addi- tional endowment with omnia, which differed in strength and futudion with the individual. These dogmas underlie the inytliology and religion of all the Indians, as they supplied to the latter’s inchoate reasoning satisfactory explana- tions of the phenomena of nature—life and death, dreams and disease, floral and faunal growth and rei)roduction, light and darkness, cold and heat, winter and summer, rain and snow, frost and ice, wind and storm. The term “animism” has been applied by some to this doctrine of thei^ossession of immortal life and mind by lifeless and mindless things, hut with an insutlicient definition of the objective for which it stands. The uses and defini- tions of this term are now so numerous and contradictory that the critical student can not afford to employ it withr)ut an exact objective definition. Primarily, animism, or the imputation of life to life- less things, was selected to express what was considered the sole essential charac- teristic basis of the complex institutions called mythology and religion. But if the ascription of life to lifeless things is animism, then it becomes of fundamental importance to know exactly wdiat kind of life is thus ascribed. If there is one difference between things which should he carefully distinguished, it is that be- tween the alleged ghosts of dead human beings and those other alleged si)iritual beings which never have been real hu- man beings—the animal and the primal sj)irits. Does animism denote theascrip tion of oidy one or of all tlu'si' three classes of spirits? Definite ex]>lanation is here lacking. 80, as a key to the satisfactory interpretation of what constitutes mythol- ogy and religion, animism as heretofore defined has failed tonuH't the criticism of such scholars as Speiuvr, Max Muller, and Brinton, and so has fallen into that long category of ecjuivocal words of which fetishism, shamanism, solarism, ancestor- W'orship, personification, and totemism are other members. Every one of the.se terms, as commonly eni])loyed, denotes some important phases or element in re- ligion or mythology which, variously de- fined by different students, does not, how’- ever, form the characteristic basis of mythology and religion. The great apostle of ancestor-worship, Lippert, makes animism a mere sul)- divisionof thew'orshipof ancestral spirits, or ghosts. But Gruppe, adding to the confusion of ideas, makesaniniism synony- mous with fetishism, and descrihesa fetish as the tenement of a di.^embodied human spirit or ghost, and erroneously hokls that fetishism is the result of a widely prevalent belief in thepowerof the human ghost to take ])os.session of any object whatsoever, to leave its ordinary dwell- ing, the remains of the human body, to enter some other object, such as the sky, the sun, the moon, the earth, a star, or wdiat not. Even thechief grids of Greece, Ronu“, and India are by some regarded as fetishes develojx-d through the exalta- tion of ancestral ghosts to this state. Their cult is regarded as a development of fetishism, which is an outgrowth of animism, wdiich is, in turn, a development of ancestor-worship. To add to this array of conflicting definitions, Max Muller de- claresthatfetishism is really the “very la.<!t stage ill thedownwai’dcourseof religion.” Gruppe further holds that w hen a sky fetish or a star fetish becomes a totem, then the idea of “.sons of heaven,” or “children of the sun,” is develojied in the human mind, and so, according to this doctrine, every religion, ancient and modern, ma) be explained by animism, fetishism, and totemism. IMoved by this array of conflicting definitions, IMax 31 fil- ler declares that, to .secure clear thinking and sober reasoning, these three terms should be entirely discarded, or, if used, then let animism he defined as a belief in and worship of ancestral spirits, whence arises in the mind the simplest and most primitive ideasof immortalitj'; let fetish- ism he defined as a worship of chance objects having miraculous powers; and, finally, let totemism be defined as the custom of choosing some emblem as the family or triltal mark to which worship is paid and which is regarded as the human or su|ierhuman ancestor. 31 filler has failed to grasp the facts clearly, for no one of the.se excludes the others. Stahl (17.'I7), adopting and developing into modern scientific form the clas.sical theory of the identity f)f life and soul, em]fioved the term “animism” to desig- nate this doctine. Tylor (1871), ado])ting the term “animism” from Stahl,defines it as “the](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b24881739_0984.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
