Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/299

tion in which men fall so woefully short of the perfect discrimination attributed to other animals. Dr. Tylor, how- ever, does not merely elaborate a theory of "souls" for the sake of such an "animation" of Nature as, in opposition to Mr. Spencer, he has already postulated; but, still more illogically, if possible, he brings his primordial personifications under that general Theory of Animism which is but a secondary result of the elaboration of a theory of "souls". Dr. Tylor professes himself a believer in Fetishism precisely as it was defined by Comte, namely, as "characterised by the free and direct exercise of our primitive tendency to conceive all external bodies soever, natural and artificial, as animated by life essentially analogous to our own, with mere differences of intensity".^[1] But though the Fetishist theory of Comte, with which Dr. Tylor thus expressly agrees, is in the most definite opposition to his own theory of Animism, defined as "the doctrine of Spirits in general", Dr. Tylor thinks that it will, to use his own words, add to the clearness of our conceptions", if we define Fetishism as a "subordinate department of the doctrine of spirits",^[2] and so give the name of Animism to two conceptions of Nature, which are not only essentially different in their characteristics, but which, according to Dr. Tylor's own contention, have two different origins—the origin of the one being a primitive tendency, "quite independent of the Ghost-theory", and the origin of the other being entirely derived from the Ghost-theory.^[3] And supported as I am both by Mr. Spencer^[4] and by Professor

1. Philosophie Positive, tom. v, p. 30.
2. Prim. Cult., ii, 132.
3. "It will probably add to the clearness of our conception of the state of mind which thus sees in all nature the action of animated life, and the presence of innumerable spiritual beings, if we give it the name of Animism instead of Fetishism." (Mind, 1877, ii, p. 488.) Compare Prim. Cult., i, pp. 431 and 145, 260, etc., and ii, pp. 132, etc.
4. Mind, ii, 1877, pp. 418-19, 428-29.