Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/276

 236 Reviews.

Wundt in the second part of vol. ii. of his Volkerpsychologie, and Mr, E. Clodd read a paper on " Pre- Animistic Stages in Religion" to the third International Congress of the History of Religions at Oxford last year. The subject is one, therefore, which cannot be dismissed lightly.

Before considering, and indeed without necessarily going on to consider, whether there are pre-animistic stages in religion, we may safely say that the pre-animistic must be non-animistic. We have therefore to enquire what is meant by a non-animistic stage of religion, and any answer to the enquiry must proceed upon a definition of animism. Animism " in the strict scientific sense," Mr. Marett holds, " implies the attribution, not merely of per- sonality and will, but of soul or spirit," whereas " a simple straightforward act of personification " is not animism at all — save " in the loose sense of some writers " — but is non-animistic. Next, we may observe, there are persons, of our own acquaintance, who are not gods and are not supernatural ; and, accordingly, the mere act of personification is not enough to raise the thing or power personified to the rank of a supernatural being or a god. Something more is required, and something more is forthcoming, if the object personified is to be or become an object of worship. Religion, Mr. Marett holds, is " fundamentally a mode of social behaviour," and " the springs of social behaviour are furnished less by our ideas than by our emotions." It is, on Mr. Marett's view, the emotion of Awe and Wonder, which is a constant factor in religion. An object of religious worship therefore must be one conceived of and approached with feelings of Awe, Wonder, and the like ; " there is a powerful impulse to objectify and even personify " that which is approached with such emotions ; and that which is thus approached is a " supernatural " something. It is in a supernaturalism of this kind that Mr. Marett finds a stage of religion which he regards as certainly non-animistic, and prob- ably pre-animistic.

At first sight, and apparently, the whole of this argument pro- ceeds upon the distinction between animism in the strict scientific sense and animism in the. loose sense of some writers. Those, therefore, who are inclined to regard the distinction drawn by Mr. Marett as a distinction without a difference, will say that, on