Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/191

 Pre-animistic Religion, i8l

As regards the charge of triteness, I would only say that a disregarded commonplace is no commonplace at all, and that disregard is, anthropologically speaking, to be measured by the actual use to which a conception is put when there is available evidence in the shape of raw facts waiting to be marshalled and pigeon-holed by its aid. I do not find that the leading theorists have by the organisation of their material shown themselves to be sufficiently aware that the animistic idea represents but one amongst a number of ideas, for the most part far more vague than it is, and hence more liable to escape notice ; all of which ideas, however, are active in savage religion as we have it, struggling one with the other for supremacy in accordance with the normal tendency of religious thought towards uniformity of doctrinal expression. On the contrary, the impression left on my mind by a study of the leading theorists is that animistic interpretations have by them been decidedly overdone; that, whereas they are prone in the case of the religions of civilisa- tion to detect survivals and fading rudimentary forms, they are less inclined to repeat the process when their clues have at length led them back to that stage of primitive thought which perforce must be " original " for them by reason of the lack of earlier evidence, but is not in the least "original" in an absolute sense and from the standpoint of the racial history.

As for the charge of inconclusiveness, this might be in point were it a question of assigning exact limits to the concept to which the word Religion, as employed by Anthro- pology, ought to correspond. As I have said, however, the only real danger at present can come from framing what is bound to be a purely experimental and preliminary defini- tion in too hard-and-fast a manner. Thus Mr. Frazer, though he is doubtless well aware of all the facts I have cited, prefers to treat of Magic and Religion as occupying mutually exclusive spheres, whilst I regard these spheres, not indeed as coincident by any means, but still as over-