Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/304

296 grounds: First, however necessary may, as I have already pointed out, be, for Mr. Spencer, the elaboration of a Ghost-theory in order to account, if possible, for a conception of the animation of Nature, which he admits to be actual, but denies to be primordial, there is, as I have also already pointed out, no such necessity for Dr. Tylor's theory of Animism. But setting this aside, I must remark, secondly, that, as we have absolutely no evidence whatever of a spontaneous origin of Civilisation among Savages, so we have absolutely no evidence whatever of the spontaneous origin of such a reasoned inductive and deductive Philosophy among Savages, as is attributed to them by Dr. Tylor, as also by Mr. Spencer. Thirdly, the undeveloped mental capacities of Savages, which have been by no one more clearly demonstrated than by Mr. Spencer—the utter absence, or extreme defect, among them of capacities of surprise and curiosity, of abstraction, and of deliberate and coherent thought—make impossible the elaboration of such a complex and consistent theory as is attributed to them by Dr. Tylor's theory of Animism, as also, in contradiction of his own principles, by Mr. Spencer himself in his Ghost-theory. Fourthly, while there would be at least