ANIMISM

the doctrine o. souls and other spiritual beings. Through the medium of dreams, phantoms, and other agencies, primitive, man is driven to believe in spiritual existence—.e., to refuse to identify life with matter in all cases. Thus attributing vaguely his own life to a spirit within himself, he proceeds by analogy to trace the changes and movements of: the external world as being due to similar causes. He has not learned to differentiate conscious and unconscious existence, he cannot define personality, but he looks on all nature— rivers, mountains, winds, storms, rocks, stones, plants, and animals—as being the abode of spirits. The drama of nature around him, its succe ions of repose and strife, lead him to think of these spiritual beings as capable of a uming various forms—mineral, vegetable, animal; his instinct for a unity in nature makes such a continuity of life, a transmigration of soul, appear a likely proce ; and this stage of thought, in which soul or spirit is attributed to all natural objects, is called Animism.