Page:Life and death (1911).djvu/19

 CHAPTER II.

ANIMISM.

The Common Characteristic of Animism and Vitalism: the Human Statue—Primitive Animism—Stahl's Animism—First Objection with Reference to the Relation between Soul and Body—Second Objection: the Unconscious Character of Vital Operations—Twofold Modality of the Soul—Continuity of the Soul and Life.

Children are taught that there are three kingdoms in Nature—the mineral kingdom and the two living kingdoms, animal and vegetable. This is the whole of the sensible world. Then above all that is placed the world of the soul. School-boys therefore have no doubts on the doctrines that we discuss here. They have the solution. To them there are three distinct spheres, three separate worlds—matter, life, and thought.

It is this preconceived idea that we are about to examine. Current opinion solves a priori the question of the fundamental homogeneity or lack of resemblance of these three orders of phenomena—the phenomena of inanimate nature, of living nature, and of the thinking soul. Animism, vitalism, and monism are, in reality, different ways of looking at them. They are the different answers to this question:—Are vital, psychic, and physico-chemical manifestations essentially distinct? Vitalists distinguish be