Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/185

 Pre- animistic Religion. 175

these." Further, suppose a friend of the proprietor wish to eat of the fruit, he will light a fire, and ask the fire to explain to the stone that nothing wrong is being done.^ Here we seem to have simple Animatism, but it may be said to tremble on the verge of Animism, inasmuch as by itself — that is, by the mere attribution of life and will — it is unable to account for the magical powers of the stone. How this may be done with the help of Animism is shown us by the Banks' Islanders, already referred to, who, employing stones of a peculiar long shape in much the same way to protect their houses, do so on the explicit ground that the stones have " eaten ghostl" — the ghost of a dead man being not un- naturally taken as the type and ne plus ultra of awful power.'"' Not to multiply instances, let me roundly state that amid the vast array of facts relating to the worship of stones, there will be found the most divergent ideal representations of their supernatural nature and powers, ranging from the vaguest semi-conscious belief in their luckiness,'^ onwards through Animatism, to the distinct animistic conception of them as the home of spirits of the dead or the unborn, or as the image and visible presence of a god ; but that underlying all these fluctuating interpretations of thought there may be discerned a single universal feeling, namely the sense of an Awfulness in them intimately affecting man and demanding of him the fruits of Awe, namely respect, veneration, pro- pitiation, service.

Passing now from the region of what we regard as the. Inanimate to that of the Sub-animate and the Animate, we come first in order of upward progress to that tantalising

, ' Hose,/. A. I., xxiii., i6i.

- Codrington, I.e.

^ I am afraid it may be said that I have not given sufficient prominence to that "moment " in religious feeling which corresponds to the belief in Luck. I do not, however, regard it as a specific emotion in itself, but rather as a com- pound of the Wonder produced by a coincidence and of sufficient Awe of the power therewith seemingly connected, to make it appear worth while to try to conciliate it.