to reproduce. In discussing these imaginary beings, it is above all things needful to bring our minds into sympathy with the lower philosophy. Here we must seek to realize to the utmost the definition of the Nature-Spirits, to understand with what distinct and full conviction savage philosophy believes in their reality, to discern how, as living causes, they can fill their places and do their daily work in the natural philosophy of primæval man. Seeing how the Iroquois at their festivals could thank the invisible aids or good spirits, and with them the trees, shrubs, and plants, the springs and streams, the fire and wind, the sun, moon, and stars — in a word, every object that ministered to their wants — we may judge what real personality they attached to the myriad spirits which gave animated life to the world around them.[1] The Gold Coast negro's generic name for a fetish-spirit is 'wong;' these aerial beings dwell in temple-huts and consume sacrifices, enter into and inspire their priests, cause health and sickness among men, and execute the behests of the mighty Heaven-god. But part or all of them are connected with material objects, and the negro can say, 'In this river, or tree, or amulet, there is a wong.' But he more usually says, 'This river, or tree, or amulet is a wong.' Thus among the wongs of the land are rivers, lakes, and springs, districts of land, termite-hills, trees, crocodiles, apes, snakes, elephants, birds.[2] In a word, his conceptions of animating souls and presiding spirits as efficient causes of all nature are two groups of ideas which we may well find it hard to distinguish, for the sufficient reason that they are but varying developments of the same fundamental animism.
In the doctrine of nature-spirits among nations which have reached a higher grade of culture, are found at once traces of such primitive thought, and of its change under
