CHAPTER XV.
ANIMISM (continued).
Spirits regarded as personal causes of Phenomena of the World — Pervading Spirits as good and evil Demons affecting man — Spirits manifest in Dreams and Visions: Nightmares; Incubi and Succubi; Vampires; Visionary Demons — Demons of darkness repelled by fire — Demons otherwise manifest: seen by animals; detected by footprints — Spirits conceived and treated as material — Guardian and Familiar Spirits — Nature-Spirits; historical course of the doctrine — Spirits of Volcanoes, Whirlpools, Rocks — Water-Worship: Spirits of Wells, Streams, Lakes, &c. — Tree-Worship: Spirits embodied in or inhabiting Trees; Spirits of Groves and Forests — Animal-Worship: Animals worshipped, directly, or as incarnations or representatives of Deities; Totem-Worship; Serpent-Worship — Species-Deities; their relation to Archetypal Ideas.
We have now to enter on the final topic of the investigation of Animism, by completing the classified survey of spiritual beings in general, from the myriad souls, elves, fairies, genii, conceived as filling their multifarious offices in man's life and the world's, up to the deities who reign, few and mighty, over the spiritual hierarchy. In spite of endless diversity of detail, the general principles of this investigation seem comparatively easy of access to the enquirer, if he will use the two keys which the foregoing studies supply: first, that spiritual beings are modelled by man on his. primary conception of his own human soul, and second, that their purpose is to explain nature on the primitive childlike theory that it is truly and throughout 'Animated Nature.' If, as the poet says, 'Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas,' then rude tribes of ancient men had within them this source of happiness, that they could explain to their own content the causes of things. For to
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